I'm Dreaming Of A Weird Christmas (1/2) By Maurice Fairfield

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I spent roughly half my life in Hull and the North of England and I could count the number of White Christmases on one hand. Cold, yes. Wet, yes. Bitterly cold, yes, but rarely white. Yet most of the cards featured gabled houses with icicles dangling from the eaves. Horses pulling sleighs, and always masses of that frigid white stuff. Most of the yuletide snow I have seen is artificial and used for decorating business premises during the annual retail feeding frenzy, which we associate with the celebration of the birth of our Saviour if you think along those lines.

The myth of the White Christmas may survive as a folk memory of the 'Little Ice Age' from the 17th to the 19th Centuries. Between 1761 and 1814 the Thames often froze sufficiently for the populace to frolic on the ice, and glaciers extended and increased their mass in Northern Europe. A general freeze up and heavy snowfalls right through January were regular events. There are indications of a mediaeval warm period and stories of Roman settlers in Britain planting vines and making wine. (Global warming is not a new thing). They would probably have left the place alone if they had checked it out during a cold period.

The remains of Iron Age dwellings dot parts of the Yorkshire moors even today left to the hardy moorland sheep for centuries.

Anyway there is a rarely satisfied nostalgic longing for snow in midwinter. It may look pretty from a warm interior but it soon gets into your shoes where it melts and chills the feet even if your footwear is sound, as it sometimes wasn't in my childhood and young manhood in the Thirties and Forties. On the whole I feel that snow in aerosol cans to decorate the windows and mirrors is the better alternative. The oddity of celebrating a bygone event of little value in England is only surpassed by the practice of duplicating it in Australia where the climate in mid summer which happens in December, and where the heat can be in the 100 plus range.

My personal hottest Christmas was 111 degrees Fahrenheit with gusty winds carrying the smell of bush fire smoke into the heart of the city of three million people which is Melbourne.

I have an (artificial) tree lit up in a corner for my younger grandchildren and my wife who has happier memories than me of childhood Christmasses, avoiding the sad task of getting rid of a small dead fir tree and its brown, dried needles and out of place outside the pine forests of Europe where their green boughs were a reminder of the coming rebirth of green life in the Spring. Every year most Aussies and Pommies alike eat a big roast dinner and a heavy pudding in sweltering heat (unless they have air conditioning.) often with a hot, gusty north wind rattling the doors and windows.

Continued ...next page(2/2),

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