It’s almost Christmas ... Duh!

It’s winter. The days are shorter. The weather is cooler. The holidays are here. ‘Tis the season to wrap oneself in woolly clothes, and look fluffy like balls of fur. Cuteness is all the rage during the festive season, and every human being tall or short, looks like a walking cat or dog waiting to be cuddled.

But wait.

It’s the mildest December in 70 years. Forget about the dreams of snow. Even a Christmas jumper is proving to be somewhat of an excess. Wearing anything more than a sweatshirt with Santa’s face printed on it seems like an ordeal. Even the North Pole is melting. By ‘North Pole’ I mean the makeshift ice skating rink on Parker’s Piece, which also happens to be a hideous replica of London’s Winter Wonderland, and dubbed by many as a Nazi prison camp.

At this rate we might as well stop visiting Sao Paolo to avoid the ‘harsh’ winter, and save money instead for the next iphone.

But life goes on, among fields of daffodils and bees and middle-aged skinny dippers in London. This is getting quite boring actually, not because it’s winter but not winter, but because summer season just got extended to Christmas! Usually by this time there are a few days of frost when the leaves of trees turn white at the edges like the lips turn after a good night’s sleep. There are usually also a couple of days of light snow ever so lightly dusting the autumnal flowers with its transient beauty that we momentarily forget that it’s the same snow and frost which will strip the vegetation naked till next spring.

It’s these reminders of winter’s approach that build the festive spirit, so that soon for no apparent reasons comes out the colourful beanies, gloves with Nordic patterns, and Christmas jumpers. Even though the temperature does not dip to below freezing and there is seldom any snow on Christmas, yet the colourful attire of the festive season brings a spring to the step during the dark months. All this is lacking this year unfortunately, and though people are still wearing jumpers of Rudolph with a blinking LED in his nose, they are not clutching onto colourful mittens while sipping on a cup of hot chocolate.

It also seems sad that while the trees have shed their leaves with clockwork precision, the fallen leaves have been turned to filthy mush due to incessant rain, instead of being frozen to a crisp by the onslaught of frost. When cycling, the latter sounds like running over a bag of crisps, while the former is just disgustingly mushy and smells a bit like poo.

The winter experience has, in short, been dampened, literally.

But I will not despair (for now), as January is next month, which always brings promise of lots of snow. Don’t know the last time I have so looked forward for December to end. Probably never.

Till then, the pine trees stand redundant in train stations, office corners and sitting rooms, the fairy lights threatening to interfere with our wifi. Shame on Mother Nature that it’s still warm enough to delay our annual hibernation while the yuletide season just passes by like a comet. Mulled wine is supposed to lull us to sweet dreams every night in front of a fake fireplace or some other spirit is supposed to make us dance till our bones grow a life of their own and walk like an Egyptian till one by one they slip into the comfort of a warm blanket and room heater. And, everybody should have then gone to sleep while there’ll be some Christmas carols or rehashed pop songs playing from a radio at someone’s bedroom window long into the next morning.