Good Morning 2010 - Nice to See You!

I've survived my first holiday season in England! There were a few notable differences between this year's holiday fun and what I normally experience at home in California:

1. Opening crackers (not the Saltine variety, but the strange parcels that nobody loves and everyone buys for the Christmas dinner table) and wearing paper crowns during our Christmas meal. For you Americans out there, a "cracker" is a small Christmas parcel containing a paper crown, a joke and a small, cheap trinket (like a dice or nail clippers) which is tied at both ends like a Tootsie Roll, and it opened by two people simultaneously pulling on either end of the parcel--whoever ends up with the largest section of the cracker wins the goods inside. Someone asked me why this long-standing English tradition didn't make it over to America with the Pilgrims, and I have a feeling it's got something to do with the whole "crown = king" thing, which the early Americans weren't too keen on. Just a guess....

2. Snow in the backyard instead of palm trees. On December mornings in L.A. I used to wear my Ugg boots occasionally to walk the dog because they were easy to slip on and marked the trend started by celebs a few years ago. I've had the same pair of Uggs since I was 18 years old, and until this year they still looked brand new because I rarely wore them. Now I wear them everywhere--to the movies, to the mall, to the gym, to dinner at a local restaurant--and they are practically falling apart. The snow and cold weather really added a special element to the Christmas Day atmosphere, but my feet have not actually been warm since September.

3. An extra national holiday for Boxing Day on which there is neither a boxing match, nor the boxing up of any particular items. I have yet to find an English citizen who can give me a clear explanation of why December 26th is a holiday and how it came into being. Not that I'm complaining about the additional day off, but think about it--shouldn't we just be honest with ourselves and call it Shopping Day (as a nod to the post-Christmas sales which create an even bigger consumption frenzy than Christmas itself), or Sleeping-It-Off Day (an indication of what everyone who's not hitting the sales is doing after the Christmas dinner food and alcohol binge)?

It's not the first time I have spent Christmas away from my family, but it is the first time in many years that I didn't do any travelling over the holiday period. During the past 5 years I have spent the holidays driving down Mexico's Baja Peninsula, roaming the jungles of Costa Rica, lying on the beach in Cabo San Lucas (Mexico), skiing fresh powder in Idaho, and trekking in Nepal & India. I do miss the excitement that travel brings, and the escape from all the holiday nostalgia and/or inevitable family drama, but this year there were no bags to pack, planes to catch, freeways to navigate, or airports to run through, and I have to say that on the whole this made the experience MUCH more relaxing.

Happy New Year! Here's to all that 2010 has in store!

Sunsets in the afternoon?

I've never experienced a sunset before 4:00 pm before--except for, well, yesterday--when the sun set at 3:54 at our home here in Birmingham. Today the sun is scheduled to set at 3:53pm in England, which means it will be nearly dark by 3:45 or so. It's the Winter Solstice--the shortest day of the year for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, which means that our minutes and seconds of daylight will gradually begin to increase again after today (thank god!). Although it's not really speeding towards summer-time's gloriously long days; tomorrow is only longer by a mere 2 seconds, and Wednesday will be a scant 7 seconds longer than that!

Equally strange is the late sunrise, which today occurred at 8:04am, and by a strange trick of science is still continuing to get later, even though the days are getting longer. By next weekend, the sunrise will occur at 8:07am. I feel terribly for D at this time of year. He gets up at 5:30am when it's still the dead-dark of night, and begins his workday at a reasonable 7:30am, when daylight has not yet even scratched the surface of the horizon. Meanwhile, I'm barely able to scrape myself out of bed at 8:00 when the light starts to peek through the windows. This photo was taken yesterday from our bedroom window--from the slant of the light, it looks like the early hours of morning, but I think it was actually taken closer to 10am.

Although we had snow this weekend for the first time this winter (beautiful!) and are having a terrible cold-snap, the sun has been shining for more hours of the day than in previous weeks, which has been great for taking quick runs and walking the dog. I'm trying to get outside for at least 30 minutes a day to make sure I get a vitamin D infusion from the sunlight and avoid the symptoms of Seasonal Affect Disorder (SAD) experienced by so many northern-dwellers. So far, I haven't felt too bad, and am looking forward to the sun rising on Friday at 8:06am over the first "White Christmas" I've ever had without leaving home.