”Christmas in Bethlehem. The ancient dream: a cold clear night made brilliant by a glorious star….”
Sorry about yesterday. It was late afternoon when I got home, and I needed to decorate my tree. I’m happy to say it is ready for ornaments. The lights and tinsel are on the tree. It took me a while to get the tinsel just right. I also added popcorn and cranberries strings, stars and a strand of colorful balls of yarn. The tree is perfect.
It started raining around two this morning. It is gone now, but the rain left the day dark and damp; however it does have a saving factor. Right now it is 53°.
When I was a kid, I always wanted a white Christmas. Snow at Christmas seemed magical. After all, Santa had a sleigh. How could we build Frosty without snow? Even Scrooge had snow. I’d look out the window hoping for a miracle. Sometimes I got one.
In Ghana, where I lived, Christmas was harmattan time when hot, dry winds carried sand from the Sahara. The days were often hazy, and the sun was hidden. The dryness chapped my lips and my heels cracked. I slathered everything with lotion, but I had to walk on my tiptoes for a while. One good part of the harmattan was the bugs disappeared. Another was the dry heat during the day which made the, sometimes, 100° more bearable, but the best parts were the nights. The temperature dropped sometimes as low as the 60’s, and I swear it got down to the 50’s a few nights. I was cold. It was the most wonderful feeling. I bought a wool blanket, still have it.
When I had a party on Christmas Eve my first year in Ghana, my house was filled with Peace Corps volunteers going north. They had stopped in Bolgatanga, where I lived, to get transport as Bolga was close to the northern border of Ghana and what was Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso. Toward the end of the party, some of us went outside behind my house and sat and talked. The night was magnificent. The sky was so filled with stars the darkness had disappeared. The air was chilly, a wonderful feeling after the heat of the day. It was then we realized that this night filled with stars and a bit of a chill might just be the same as that night in Bethlehem. We sat quietly for a bit then went back into the house.
That first Christmas so far from home was unexpectedly amazing.
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December 17, 2024 at 6:24 pm
Hi Kat,
Today was sunny with a predicted high of 74°. This is nuts even for North Texas. A typical temperature should be in the 50° range. Obviously, we can’t blame it on global warming because the new administration doesn’t believe in it. Unfortunately, the climate doesn’t give a damn about what Trump or anyone else thinks.
Thanks to Irving Berlin, the song writer of White Christmas, millions of people are wishing for snow on Christmas. Also, the movie of the same name didn’t help. After all, it never snows in the entire southern hemisphere, except in the Andes Mountains, because it’s summer there. I guess Australians and South Africans go to the beach on Christmas Day and think nothing of it.
Did the people you met in Ghana, who probably never saw snow, still sing Mr. Berlin’s song on December 25th? How did you explain snow to them, assuming they asked. 🙂
December 17, 2024 at 9:13 pm
Hi Bob,
We were warm for this time of year, upper 40’s, which it is supposed to be tomorrow as well, but we are being warned that cold weather is coming.
there was snow on the mountains when I was in South America. The US ski team was in they same hotel where we were staying. They had been skiing in Chile so they could still train during our summer.
You could also swim in Ghana in December. Nowhere near me was a place for swimming, but the ocean was on the southern border, and there were some nice beaches. Now, where I lived, has hotels with pools.
I did try to explain snow, but the concept was so foreign they had trouble understanding it. I used shaved ice cubes which helped. I heard carols in different Ghanaian languages and religious ones in English.