... or Glædelig Jul as we say in Danish. It's odd for me to be in Los Angeles around Christmas. The Christmas insanity is only really obvious in malls, homes of people I don't know and don't visit and possibly on TV which I don't watch.
In Denmark much of December is packed with Christmas parties. You drink special warm drinks. Eat special cookies. Maybe people does here too, but it's not the kind of Christmas things that I have been growing up with, so if they do I wouldn't register it as such.
There are no seasons here, so you mostly lose the feeling of time in the big scheme of things. Through most of my life each summer and each winter has been like a milestone. You identify and remember things by "last summer", "two winters ago". In Los Angeles the only sign of seasons is that the palms kinda, but not really, turn a bit brown. Time passes in a floating kind of way. Everything is just a while ago. Two years? 6 months? Who knows.
In Los Angeles there is no snow to identify the time of winter. When the smog clears after the rain, you can see snow on the stop of the mountains in the distance, but the smog will be back soon and the snow out of sight.
The picture of a big Santa Claus in thick, warm red clothing seems a bit absurd when you are still wearing t-shirts and tennis shoes outside.
The afternoons doesn't get dark. It does get a bit cold; but not wet and biting cold. You-can-wear-a-sweater cold, not you-must-wear-four-layers-to-go-out cold. You-can-turn-on-the-heater-at-night cold. But the latter mostly just because my apartment isn't insulated much at all. The summers are not long and bright here, so the change does not register massively on the internal timeline like it does when you are farther north.
Next summer Viridiana and I are planning to go to Denmark so we can get a bit of the long warm summer evenings and rainy summer weather. But for now it's a warm and very green Christmas in Los Angeles. Merry Christmas! :-)
