At this time of year I hear a lot about snow and sleet and the need for egg nogs to get through winter cold and gloom, and it\u2019s very tempting to counter this with stories of the flooding in Northern Queensland and the heat and the incoming storms. The incoming storms today might mean we have a tolerable weekend, which is very important for those who are having big parties over said weekend. The storms, when they\u2019re over, will be good for me because I am not a summer heat kind of person.<\/p>\n
I want to talk about the weather for about two hours, because I\u2019m in the mood for it, but I shall stop here, because I\u2019m so very kind. Also because I would like people to give me merely a paragraph on the state of winter darkness before moving on to more interesting topics in their own writings in this season. If I would like this then I should give you a mere paragraph on summer heat before moving on.<\/p>\n
So\u2026 let me talk about the weekend. Weekends are always good to talk about.
\nI\u2019ve been advised to avoid all the places where there are marches for this whole season, because there is often a component of people in those marches who are not entirely safe for anyone Jewish, so I have already done most things for the next week. I do not need to go to shops or near big streets where folks demonstrate politically.<\/p>\n
This time of year is mostly a period of intense work for me, with a few really, really nice exceptions. 2023 is classic for me in this regard.<\/p>\n
School and university (except for research students who don\u2019t do Christmas) have already finished for the year. Both the calendar year and the academic year, in fact. We\u2019re about to get the annual shutdown of most things. Everyone\u2019s frantically preparing or on a plane to somewhere cool \u2013 I mean the latter literally. So many of my friends are heading north into winter.<\/p>\n
This year, because I can see friends if we\u2019re all careful (I\u2019m COVID-vulnerable) I will have visits from friends who are on holiday but not headed north. I have chocolate to feed them, in case it\u2019s too hot to cook. Much chocolate will be consumed. I\u2019m thinking of getting some mint and making big jugs of iced tea (without sugar, because Australians are not so big on sweet things, on the whole) but that will have to start next week. I refuse to encounter crowds just for mint.<\/p>\n
I celebrate Christmas for the same friends who celebrate my New Year. We\u2019re kinda extended family for each other. I\u2019ve already made sure that two lots of presents and some very nice port is at their place, because while they cook, I will finish a chapter. My personal race with time is that chapter \u2013 if I complete it I get the afternoon and evening of 24 December off.<\/p>\n
That morning is the last market day in the year and I\u2019m going to the market with one of my friends to make sure we have all the things needed both for the dinner and for the few days after. Me, I\u2019m making sure there are lots of cherries. Cherries are so important for the whole end-of-year period. When I was in Canada for Christmas\/New Year people had poinsettias, which weren\u2019t the same at all. Mind you, they also had snow. Which was, of course, exotic.<\/p>\n
If the weather is nice, we\u2019ll be outside. If it\u2019s not, we\u2019ll be inside with air monitoring and tiny portable air purifiers. It\u2019s perfectly possible to have nice events with the COVID-vulnerable. We proved it last year and we\u2019re doing it again this. I\u2019m hoping for outside for most of it, however, because a summer day with children is better outdoors. I like the years we go down to the lake and picnic and the black swans come to investigate all the presents, but this year we\u2019re staying home. This means that when I am nicely relaxed and have eaten too much I can wander home and do some work, so that is good, too.<\/p>\n
Unlike much of the US, Canberra does a pretty thorough shut-down over Christmas. This means no tradition of Chinese restaurants for anyone Jewish.<\/p>\n
What I sometimes do in its stead these days is host an online chat with friends about the Toledoth Yeshuah. 25 December then is a big working day for me, except for an occasional detour via that really interesting by-product of antisemitism. The Toledoth came into being because of other times like this, and it\u2019s interesting to see how we dealt with this stuff (culturally) in times past. So I will be exploring it, but unless anyone asks, I\u2019ll explore it alone. It\u2019s not a comfortable text, nor a comfortable tradition. Hate hurts.<\/p>\n
Boxing Day is different. This year it will be my father\u2019s 100th<\/sup> birthday. He died when I was 26, but I miss him and want to celebrate anyhow. I\u2019m just 2 years younger now than he was when he died, which is, I admit, sobering. Friends are coming round to toast him during the day, but only a few friends. I shall watch a really bad comedy he enjoyed, or maybe one of his favourite Doctor Who sequences\u2026 I\u2019ll decide on the day.<\/p>\n In my evening, which is morning in Europe and the day before in the US and Canada, I\u2019ll open up a Zoom room where anyone who is at a loose end can drop in and tell bad jokes in honour of my father and generally catch up. If you would like a link to the room, contact me in the next few days and I\u2019ll send it the moment it\u2019s live. Waiting til the last minute means if I am unwell, which happens, I can sneak in some rest and start a bit later. I\u2019m looking at beginning around 8 pm AEST (Australian Eastern Summer Time, which is UTC\/GMT+11) and continuing for as long as there are friends who want to hang out.<\/p>\n Let me know if you\u2019d like to be part of anything I do online during this time.<\/p>\n Also, I\u2019d love to know what other people do over the long weekend, if they don\u2019t have a regular Christmas for whatever reason. I\u2019d love to hear about other kinds of Christmas!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At this time of year I hear a lot about snow and sleet and the need for egg nogs to get through winter cold and gloom, and it\u2019s very tempting to counter this with stories of the flooding in Northern Queensland and the heat and the incoming storms. The incoming storms today might mean we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,406,636,56],"tags":[112,371],"class_list":["post-3116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-life","category-food","category-life","category-life-experiences","tag-australia","tag-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3117,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions\/3117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}