Christmas – Page 2 – Me on the net

The lull after Christmas

expenses-2011 (Photo credit: Kyle McDonald)

I’m going to describe a graph, but I’m uncertain what to label the vertical axis. Probably labelling it “energy” would be the closest. The horizontal axis is definitely time, measured in days. The graph as a whole describes the Christmas – New Year period.

Starting on the day before Christmas Eve, the “energy” is high as people rush around preparing for Christmas. The mood is generally on the up, looking forward to the Christmas break. This year, as Christmas Day fell on a Wednesday, most people would have been off work, many until after the New Year holiday, so the Monday (the day before Christmas Eve) and the Tuesday (Christmas Eve) become part of the holiday.

Christmas Eve itself is an up day as everyone makes final preparations for the big day. Last minute shopping, cleaning, tidying have to be fitted around present wrapping and ensuring that the menu for the next day is in place. Some people prepare all the vegetables for Christmas day and nearly everyone remembers to get the turkey out of the freezer. Parents with children often face the twin task of preparing stockings and making the kids go to bed with the hope that they will finally drop off. Sometimes the duties extend well beyond midnight.

sleeping kids = clean house (Photo credit: RAPACIBLE)

Christmas Day itself is a day of at least two parts. No matter how late they went to be the kids will wake up early, no doubt rousing their parents from some hastily snatched hours of sleep, then the day continues from there. Many families still go to church in the morning though this practise is declining.

The rest of the morning goes into cooking, eating, and no doubt drinking, as well as unwrapping presents, stopping kids (and older people) squabbling about trivialities. All this peaks when lunch is served. In the southern hemisphere, if it doesn’t rain, this may be eaten outside.

Christmas barbeque (Photo credit: QuinnDombrowski)

In the afternoon, the mood declines to the point where some people may become comatose. Granny always sleeps in the afternoon, but so will Uncle Bill, who ate too much pudding and drank too much alcohol. Parents with kids might not be able to relax completely and may be arm-twisted into games of backyard cricket, at least in this hemisphere. In the northern hemisphere parents will no doubt be required to help with those construction toys or technical gadgets that the kids have been given. Nevertheless the mood is definitely down on the peak of the Christmas meal.

Julie's New Toy — Julie’s New Toy (Photo credit: camknows)

Boxing is interesting. It may be a down day, if for instance you have over-indulged the day before. Or it may be an up day if you are interested in the ‘traditional’ Boxing Day sales. This year I had to make a small purchase so I went to the local mall. The place was crowded, but unfortunately for the retailers there was a glitch with the EFTPOS systems and all purchases had to be strictly cash. I believe that spending on Boxing Day 2013 still broke records.

After Boxing Day comes the lull. I’m writing this halfway through the lull, which extends from the day after boxing day to the day before New Year’s Eve. Most people celebrate the New Year, even if it is at a much less energetic level than Christmas Day. I generally stay up on New Year’s Eve to ‘see the new year in’ for no very good reason, I admit. Some people choose New Year as the chance to drink and eat more than usual, as a sort of full stop/period to mark the end of the holiday, even though they may not be returning to work until the beginning of the next week.

new year mice (Photo credit: Natasha Fadeeva)

But back to the lull. The lull does not have to be an emotional down period, but it is probably, for most people, an energetic down period. People have survived Christmas and have a lesser celebration to look forward to in a week. It is a time for relaxing, taking the kids to the beach or the movies, visiting Granny, or merely settling down with that book that someone gave you for Christmas.

It’s a time for eating increasingly stale mince pies, trying to find leftovers interesting, and generally tidying up the loose ends of Christmas. Maybe a trip to the mall with that token someone gave you. Maybe watching the England – Australia test match.

Boxing day test cricket, mate! (Photo credit: simonhn)

It’s a period with intrinsically no pressures, though for some people their circumstances may override this – from those who are about to give birth to those about to depart this life and those experiencing all life’s dramas in between, this period can be highly emotionally or energetically charged. But in general, it is a lull.

So my graph starts off low on the eve of Christmas Eve, and climbs through Christmas Eve. I originally wrote ‘climbs steadily’, but it may climb erratically but will trend upwards until the end of lunchtime Christmas Day. Then it drops dramatically, during the afternoon, as people relax after the exertions and excitements of the morning. Even washing up, while a chore, is still at a lower level than the peak of Christmas lunch.

Times Square on New Year's Day — Times Square on New Year’s Day (Photo credit: davehunt82)

On Boxing Day the graph may rise a little (for the shoppers) or drop (for those ‘tired’ from the exertions and consumption of the day before). And then comes the lull, a tranquil period between Boxing Day and the eve of New Year’s Eve, a relaxed period for most, I’d say. The graph remains low and level with maybe a lift as New Year gets closer.

On New Year’s Eve the graph may rise again. Some people like to party on the turn of the year, but the intensity of the celebration may not in most cases match Christmas. With the exception of the celebration of the year 2000, there is no real drive to make New Year an intense experience, though people do gather in the likes of Times Square to ‘see in the New Year’.

So, there you have my graph of the Christmas/New Year period. The rise from the foothills of pre-Christmas to the Everest of Christmas Day, followed by the valley of the lull before New Year and the minor peak of New Year itself. It remains to mention the lowlands of the period before those who work return to it at the beginning of January.

I hope that all of you who celebrate Christmas had a good one and are looking forward to a pleasant New Year, and best wishes to those who do not celebrate this season either because of religion or conviction and those whose calendar does not align with the one to which I am accustomed.

Happy New Year (white camelia) (Photo credit: tanakawho)

…for Christmas comes but once a year (Southern Style)

The Examination and Trial of Father Christmas,... — The Examination and Trial of Father Christmas, (1686), published shortly after Christmas was reinstated as a holy day in England. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year” said Tomas Tusser. Many people would rather it didn’t. Christmas is a time when stress levels go through the roof. People eat too much, drink too much and spend too much, meaning that January, a time when people traditionally go on summer holidays in this part of the world, is a time of dieting and financial restriction. Without careful planning the later part of the year around Christmas and the New Year can get very messy.

Another area of stress is in the receiving and giving of presents. Trying to decide who to buy for and what to buy for them is always difficult and many people resort to providing cash or vouchers or gift cards, and it still doesn’t remove all the issues. A card for a department store may be just what someone wanted, or it might languish in a drawer until it expires. Apparently by some estimates $2 billion of credit on gift cards goes unredeemed. But then again, a tie or socks might also be banished to the back of someone’s wardrobe.

20091226 - Christmas presents - misc - gift ca... — 20091226 – Christmas presents – misc – gift cards – GEDC1240 (Photo credit: Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL))

The religious aspects of the holiday (“Holy Day”) are often ignored, and though thousands may gather for the “Carols in the Park”, few of those attending will go to church during the holiday. These aspects also exclude those of different religions, nominally, but many non-Christians celebrate some aspects of the holiday anyway, and gather for family time and exchange presents.

Christmas parties are a feature of the period before Christmas, and again, while one might think that those of other religions than Christianity would be excluded, office and private parties do not exclude non-Christians. In fact parties around this time of year are an opportunity for people to eat and drink and socialize and religion seldom figures.

The secularisation of Christmas is both good and bad. Good, because it is not exclusive, but inclusive, and bad because it hides the traditional reasons for Christmas. But even within Christianity the reasons for Christmas are being lost – Christians buy Christmas trees and Christmas lights, and exchange presents, eat turkey and drink alcohol, all of which hark back to times before Christianity, to times often loosely called pagan.

Indeed it is often said that Christmas is when it is simply to align with the so-called pagan festivals of mid-winter that celebrate the solstice. The winter solstice marks the time of year when the sun reaches its lowest point of the year and is closely related to the shortest day. Of course in this hemisphere the solstice is the summer one, and the sun is at its highest, so the day is the longest one. This usually happens around 21st of December.

The traditional northern hemisphere Christmas is in mid-winter, more or less, and the traditional fare is heavy mid-winter fuel of turkey with stuffing, vegetables including potatoes, with gravy and followed by heavy fruit pudding and mince pies. In the southern hemisphere the solstice is, as I said, the summer one, and, really, the traditional fare is probably unsuited to the climate. The southern hemisphere is developing a tradition of holding a barbecue for Christmas dinner, thereby replacing the turkey with steak and the heavy root vegetables of the northern hemisphere with salad and the Christmas pudding with ice cream. The heavy room temperature ales favoured north of the Equator are often replaced by lighter chilled beer and lager.

New Years 2010-2011 (Photo credit: russelljsmith)

Some of the more modern symbols of Christmas northern hemisphere style have received a southern hemisphere make-over. Santa is still a fat old man with a beard, but his clothing is often changed to, more suitable for the climate, board shorts, though they will still be in the “traditional” Coca-Cola red, and even on the surfboard he will likely retain the floppy hat. The reindeer are, at least in Australia, replaced by kangaroos.

Santa Claus, Christmas Parade, Lambton Quay (Photo credit: Velvet Android)

Southern hemisphere cities tend to put on “Santa Parades”. I don’t know if this happens much in northern cities, though I do see a website for a Santa parade in Toronto. It seems to me that the weather would be better in the southern cities! Strangely the big man, who always brings the end to the parade in the last float, usually wears the full regalia of red suit, boots, and cap. He must swelter!

This has been a rather unstructured look at Christmas with an emphasis on the southern hemisphere celebrations where they differ from the northern version of the same. All that remains is for me to wish anyone who stumbles across my blog a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Ngā mihi o te wā me te Tau Hou.

Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring

Revolving earth at winter solstice on the nort... — Northern winter solstice

On 21st June we in the Southern Hemisphere get our shortest day of the year. This corresponds to the longest day in the Northern Hemisphere of course, and my wall calendar, which originates from the Northern half of the planet says that 21st June is the start of summer. I believe that the official start of winter, here in New Zealand, is 1st June.

That started me thinking. One would expect that 21st June, the southern winter solstice, would be the middle on winter, since the earth is tilted furthest away from the sun in southern latitudes at that date, and that the seasons would change mid way between the solstices and the equinoxes in both hemispheres for similar reasons. The equinoxes are the days when the night and days are the same length in both the northern and southern hemispheres. (Pedants will notice that I’m not being precisely correct in my explanations of equinoxes and solstices, but that doesn’t matter for my purposes.)

English: Two equinoxes are shown as the inters... — Equinoxes

It is obvious to anyone who has reached a sufficient age that the warmest and coldest parts of the year don’t correspond to the solstices and that the change from higher than average temperatures to lower than average temperatures and vice versa don’t happen at the equinoxes, though these latter events are probably not that noticeable. There is obviously some seasonal lag.

So I browsed to Wikipedia, which is a useful place to start, even if some people question its accuracy and veracity. I’ve not found it too bad, myself. Sure enough, there is an article on seasonal lag, and I’ve no reason to doubt the information there. To summarise, the authors of the article attribute the lag to the oceans which, because of the latent heat of their water absorb heat energy and release energy as the seasons change. I’m not sure that I completely understand the reasons for this, but there are undoubtedly deeper analyses on the Internet. The Wikipedia article contains one reference.

Apparently the seasonal lag is different in each half of the year. I believe that means that the four seasons are not all equal in length. Hmm, summer does seem shorter than the other seasons, but that may be only subjective. However, our shortest day is only four weeks away, so we will at least be seeing more daylight each day from then on. We will be on the upwards slide to Spring and Summer, even though Winter will not have bottomed out, and we can look forward to barbecues and a summertime Christmas!