The only thing wrong with Christmas today is that it takes place so early in winter.
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I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.
But there’s almost snow chance of that.
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Our downtown streets were as rainy as Vancouver’s last week and the only danger was flooding, not frostbite.
People have been shopping for Christmas gifts in sneakers and occasionally sandals, while the forecast for Christmas Day as I write is — yup, more rain.
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Halloween felt much more Christmas-y than this week. Even St. Patrick’s Day did.
Christmas is supposed to come gift-wrapped in swirling snowdrifts, frost-crusted windshields and emergency tow trucks pulling cars out of snowbanks. We’re supposed to feel like:
The weather outside is frightful.
But the fire is so delightful.
But it looks like yet another icky, brown Christmas, where you’re praying, not dreaming of a white Christmas.
I’m not putting down Christmas. There are enough Grinchy anti-consumer groups attacking “Satan Claus” for his shopping “presence.”
Others think we should exchange the Christmas tree for something more inclusive during holiday season, like a Christmas-Kwanzaa-Hanukkah-Makar-Sankranti-Shogatsu-Bodhi-Day bush.
But I say: Bah, humbug! I’m not Christian but I’ve always loved Christmas.
Like most Montreal Jews, I went to the Protestant School Board where I belted out Christmas carols like “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “Deck the Halls!”, singing both with more enthusiasm than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
I’ve watched Miracle on 34th Street 34 times. I once played the shepherd in my school’s Nativity play, though they wouldn’t let me play the angel Gabriel.
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For me, there’s only one thing wrong with Christmas today: It takes place at the wrong time of year.
With climate change getting steadily worse it’s obvious that a white Christmas is soon going to be as rare as red-nosed reindeer and one-horse open sleighs.
But there’s an obvious solution. It’s time to move Christmas to a more Christmas-y date. I mean: why does it have to be on Dec. 25 anyway?
That wasn’t necessarily even Jesus’s birthday, according to many biblical scholars. They say Jesus couldn’t have been born in December, partly because Bethlehem was way too cold for “Shepherds (to) watch their flocks by night.”
It’s quite likely his birthday was actually in June. However the ancient Romans didn’t need a big holiday at that time of year, because they already had lots of other seasonal festivals, like Maul-the-Gauls Day, and Slaughter-the-Saracens long weekend.
Instead, the Romans combined Christmas with an old pagan holiday called Saturnalia, and celebrated it during the coldest, shortest days of the year — late December — when everyone needed a break and an excuse to drink massive amounts of mead.
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But times have changed, and so has December. With climate change, everything about the holiday is getting out of sync, especially songs about Frosty the Snowman, or sleigh bells jingling in the snow.
Santa himself is already under scrutiny for being an unhealthy looking, overweight guy who breaks into strangers’ homes through their chimney at night and prowls around while the kids are asleep.
Now with our fast-warming weather, he also looks like an overdressed homeless guy in an outfit so warm he’d die of heat stroke.
Yet we live in Montreal, one of the snowiest, coldest big cities in the Western world, probably the last place where Dec. 25 still makes the slightest Christmas sense.
It’s even more off-kilter elsewhere in North America, where the only white Christmases left during holiday season are atop mountain peaks in Whistler or Mount Washington.
If we don’t act soon, Christmas could soon feel so seasonally inappropriate its bough may break, its cradle get rocked and its spirit broken.
It’s time to save Christmas by moving it, but to when?
The simplest solution is to postpone the holiday until early February, when ice and snow are pretty much guaranteed. That’s also when we’re all getting winter fatigue and SAD and desperately in need of family, parties, presents and all the eggnog we can drink.
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The alternative is to make Christmas a movable feast, that we keep postponing one day at a time, until whenever the first big snowstorm finally hits after Dec. 24.
We could station a weatherman on top of Canada’s tallest Christmas tree on full-time storm watch and when he thinks the first big snow front is in sight, he’d holler: “Only three more shopping days till Christmas!” — and then everyone could get their trees and turkeys ready.
Stores would love this idea because even if the first blizzard didn’t happen till Jan. 15, they’d get 20 more days of Christmas advertising, on top of the interminable days they already get.
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The big downside would be the never-ending Christmas tunes we’d have to endure if the first big storm didn’t hit until March. But it’s a small price to pay to put those sleigh bells back into Christmas, while the treetops glisten and children listen.
So let’s stop decking the halls with boughs of folly and save Christmas from the weather. Until then:
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Happy holidays to all.
Santa Josh
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