Season’s Greetings!

Where I live in northern Canada, most people have a “love/not love” thing going on with winter. We don’t love the cold, at least not the extreme cold. We measure cold as “not bad,” “not too bad,” “cold,” and “really cold.” There’s also, “it wouldn’t be too bad if it wasn’t for the wind.” We worry about icy patches on sidewalks, driveways, and highways. We also cast anxious glances at the skies, reading the clouds like the experts we’ve become. A cloudless sky can mean a “really cold” night is upon us. This is winter.

 

Yet we can get pretty defensive about winter, too. Why? Because it truly is exquisitely beautiful! For all the harsh temperatures we endure, we are gifted sunrises and sunsets in strokes of the most delicate pastels. Our fresh-fallen snowscapes offer a cleaned-up perspective of our surroundings. We see more subtle hues and shades of pinks and blues and greys than you’ll find anywhere else on this precious planet. Hoar frost creates artistic masterpieces of entire forests, leaving us breathless, not just from the ice fog. On rare occasions, the snow can glitter and sparkle like a river of diamonds in the ditches alongside a road when the angle of the low sun catches the crystals just exactly right. Our northern lights (aurora borealis) are envied by those who cannot imagine what it is to look up and watch the rhythmic dances that cast ribbons of moving colours against a star-studded northern night sky. This, too, is winter!

The same—and I do mean the same—dot on the map looks entirely different in the winter than in the summer. And we’re okay with that. So, while this Christmas card offers a bit of colour whimsy, it’s not far off! (The card is, by the way, identified as”B6011, Litho’d in Canada.”)

We northern Canadian folks have been known to light up trees outside our homes to delight ourselves, our neighbours, and anyone else who might enjoy seeing the light of a single tree or many in a place that would otherwise fade into an early evening’s darkness. Might you share the light with those around you?

Season’s Greetings to all those
who know how to light up the lives
of those around them! 

© Carol Schafer 2019 (not including image)