So it begins, the break. My gifts are all wrapped and sorted. The one card I wrote this year has been posted. There are things I did not do, things I forgot to do, and things I would have liked to do, but life dishing out black treacle and some such means that we are where we are, as I always like to say, and that it all does not matter that much.
I know a few people, some of them very loosely, we are off to the Caribbean for Christmas and, in my mind, it’s almost akin to deciding to spend Christmas in a war zone. Why would anyone want that? I know that we are shaped by our experiences and wishes quite a bit, but I will never be able to reconcile a northern hemisphere person actively seeking a mid-August-like Christmas, not unless they actively hate Christmas, which is a different convo.
As it stands, my Christmases in Cheshire [and the ones in the proximity of the Alps too] are a distant memory, particularly as every year in London Christmas has been wetter and, with that, warmer. I seem to recall Christmas Day in 2020 gifting us with a wondrous blue and chilly day, but nothing before then or since has really chimed winter. And considering today was the winter solstice and the moment our side of the world astronomically tilts into winter, it seems like the only thing we can look forward to as a vestige of winter is some blustery weather and a bucketful of rain. Oh and 14C.
Christmas 2009 was, of course, both an anomaly and a gift. It is with great nostalgia that I look at images of the Cheshire countryside under a thick blanket of snow and I recall driving my parents from Manchester Airport to the house at 3am, when they finally made it after their flight had been re-routed to Birmingham and the rest of their journey had to take place by coach.
London is very vanilla in that respect. And the rest of Europe south of here [minus the highest peaks of the Alps] is becoming warmer and as un-winter-like as I could never have predicted when, as a child, four very distinct seasons existed and the air at the end of September already suggested that scarves and gloves were about to be required.
Therefore, I am always a little bit surprised [although I think I am really trying to say alarmed] to see so many people seek the so-called winter sun because the prevalent narrative [and is it just a narrative? I don’t think it is] is that the speed with which the planet is overheating isn’t natural, but rather partially man-made, and yet we continue to spew gases [and lots more, frankly] in the atmosphere. Soon, winter will be nothing but a memory lingering in the recollections of those who experienced it, all those years ago. If we are complaining that summers are becoming longer and unsustainably hot in so many parts of the world, with dire consequences for all of our ecosystems, yet at the first whiff of northern wind we travel 10,000 miles to the Maldives are not really displaying cognitive dissonance as well as a lack of thought and care towards future generations and what they will inherit?
Funny I should say these things because when I’m gone, I’m gone. I won’t leave a biological legacy, yet I am the one who actively consumes a lot less, I am a veg [and have been for close to thirty years], and don’t even have a car. Go figure.