'Tis the Season?

   The temperatures here at the bottom of the world are now just getting warmer, not colder. Friends back home bellyache about icy roads and blowing snow and I melt in envy. Australians naturally have their own connections with this time of year: beach, barbecue, cherries, mangoes, school ending for the summer.  I understand it.  I just don't feel it.  The calendar says --to me-- it's December , winter is coming!  January, a long dreary month of gray cold. February, still cold but somehow a happier month.

   As I sit here writing, I have the music from a Columbus, Ohio radio station streaming through their website and out of the monitor speaker.  They have Christmas carols playing round the clock between Thanksgiving and Christmas with an online option of non-Christmas music.  I love Christmas music, never tire of it. Never hear it here on Perth radio.  The 24/7 Ho Ho Ho and Ra Pa Pa Pum from the Columbus station lessens the disconnect I feel in December.

    TV provides only a marginal salve to the seasonal rash.  Contemporary holiday movies can be found in the TV guide and video shelf of the libraries.  But what of the classics I grew up with?   The ancient technology used in the stop-action animation staples of the season --Rudolph ["Let's be independent together"] , Frosty , Santa Claus is Coming to Town--are nonexistent.  "It's a Wonderful Life", "A Christmas Story" and Charlie Brown are also MIA.  They have no connect here. The British remember snow but don't have the American cultural connection.   And that whole winter thing just doesn't register with long time Australians.

   So this day will find me baking gingerbread cookies for various parties to be attended, listening to Kev plan the prawns (shrimp) he plans to flip on the barbie, dreaming of shoveling snow and pretending Gene Autry is singing to me. It's an odd life.

   A touch of irony here.  The tag line for  the Columbus radio station  is : "WSNY...where it's always sunny and 95."