Home for the Holidays
I’m back in Illinois for Christmas, and it’s cold. According to weather forecast, New Jersey was supposed to get up to fifty the day after I left. It’s around ten degrees here, windchill of thirty below. Sitting near a window requires a blanket overtop a sweater. My hair is flat and stringy, partly from wearing a hat, partly from atmospheric dryness. My hands and face are chapped. Shaving is uncomfortable. My lower lip has split. It’s only a matter of time before I get a bloody nose; my boogers are starting to shade into pink.
It’s glorious.
New Jersey makes it hard for me to feel any Christmas at all, and I think it’s all because of the weather. We tend to get the same ups and downs, three days after Illinois, but the temperature is five to ten degrees warmer, and the air is always moist. Snow by Christmas is a rarity; we hardly get a good, hard frost. By the time I finish my Christmas shopping, my physiological thermometer is telling me it’s time to bring in the pumpkins after Halloween.
There’s no place like home for the holidays. For Americans, I suspect this has as much to do with climate as family. I can't feel the Christmas spirit until I'm shivering.