CHRISTMAS Cheer in 2015

The past few Christmases here at my place have been mostly sedate affairs. Living alone with a small extended family doesn't really add up to rip-roaring holidays. My previous post on Christmas ("The Man Out Of Dickens") sort of sums up the way many Christmases have been in my life.

The Piazza Christmas lights in Renton, December 2015.

But the past two or three Christmases I've sort of rediscovered the beauty of the holiday. I've made sure to put up my decorations, even though I sometimes don't really feel like Christmas. I have to lock my cat away from the living room because she loves to attack the ornaments on the Christmas tree.

This year I bought some inexpensive Christmas ornaments to use on my hawthorn tree outside. They are made of plastic -- rain won't bother them, and they are unbreakable. Really nice Chinese made glass ornaments, that were readily available in the 2000's, are getting rarer and rarer.

This year I got a new decoration: a Julbock. The Yule Goat. It's apparently a tradition in Sweden to have a straw goat under your tree. I saw one -- brand new -- at a local thrift store and grabbed it. Now, I'm not Swedish (Scottish & Irish here), and the only thing I really know about Sweden is it's a land of nice looking women and terrific holiday traditions. But the Julbock seems like a nice thing to have under your tree. A couple days after Christmas, I found a "Julnisse" -- a Norwegian Christmas Elf, for sale at the same thrift store. In the box, never used. $3. Not bad.

A Julenisse and Julbock. I'm not Scandinavian (I'm Scottish/Irish) but I've always thought their decorations and Christmas customs were cool.

This gradual renovation of my own Christmas spirit started during the Christmas before last (Christmas 2013), when I wrote and finished my children's Christmas eBook, "Woody The Woodchuck Saves Christmas". It's a story where Woody (a stuffed animal puppet) and his puppet friends (who live in the woods near a big farm) save Christmas from the mean, grinchy Green Pigs From Mars.

One of the better local Christmas displays this year.

Earlier that year I had wanted to do a Woody children's story after I discovered I could draw him and his puppet friends. But I was clueless as to what sort of story to write for him. However, that December, a former Facebook friend of mine was posting tirade after tirade of anti-Christmas memes and posts, saying it was a phony, pagan, anti-Christian holiday -- a time when people "lie" to their children about that evil, pagan Santa Claus and his elves and the like.

One of the local Christmas displays, with a brightly lit polar bear.

I decided then and there to make my children's book support Christmas. While I was writing the story and drawing the illustrations, I realised that Christmas is a really magical time of year, and by that, I mean it is a time that people feel nostalgic as well as hopeful about the oncoming year, and it's a time of year they at least try to think about others -- and for those with children, it's an opportunity to give them happy memories they will carry throughout their lifetime.

A couple of my outdoor Christmas ornaments on New Year's Eve morning.

If you're alone, you may be depressed because you feel you're missing out: but that is a sign of the importance of being connected with other people, as well as the importance of family and social connections, many of which are fragmented in today's world. But Christmas gives us the opportunity to reach out, give someone a gift, a donation, a Christmas card, say "Merry Christmas". To think more of others than ourselves.

The half moon on New Year's Eve morning. The big tree is a cottonwood. The moon came out quite well on my Nikon L32 Coolpix snapshot camera, showing that it can take decent low light pictures -- hand held -- when you use the "night" setting.

My Christmas this year was much like the previous two years. Low key. On Christmas Eve my family (mother, aunt & uncle and a friend of my mother's) had dinner at a local diner. Then my mother came over to my place and we watched a version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", the excellent one starring Patrick Stewart. I have four versions of A Christmas Carol on DVD: Patrick Stewart's, George C. Scott's, the black and white Alaister Sim one, and Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol. The last two Christmases I also have read the Charles Dickens story, which still has a certain magic about it 150 years after it was first published.

My mother and I also watched "Cowboys and Aliens", just for fun.

A neighbor had a small, but nice Nativity scene out in front of their house, its colors matching the frost on a cold, -2C New Year's Eve morning.

Right now, as I write this, it is New Year's Day. I'm not a huge fan of New Year's, as the vast majority of them haven't exactly been memorable. One New Year's I played the bagpipes at a pub and nearly caused a fight -- a woman wanted to pay me to quit playing, while the ones who requested I play the pipes wanted to pay me to keep playing.

Last night, on New Year's Eve, I was at a local karaoke pub. I sang once, had a couple Cokes and ate a bit of popcorn. Before I went down to the pub there were a few fireworks lit off in the neighborhood, which was nice. New Year's fireworks did not used to be a tradition here in Washington, but over the past couple of years you hear them more and more on New Year's Eve. I'm sure the killjoys will figure out a way to try to stop that tradition from continuing. :-)

The closest thing I had to Christmas candles were inexpensive votives, which still gave off a Christmassy cheer early Christmas morning.

I will make another blog post soon with some Winter pictures I took over New Year's and the days right after it. Until then, here's hoping you had a great holiday season, and have a healthy and great 2016.

C.C. 1-1-2016 and 1-10-2016