Feeling Hot hot hot!
It’s 38 degrees C out there and was hotter yesterday – summer has come blasting in, making it hard to think of Christmas. Baking and spicy scents of cinnamon pervading the house just don’t really work when you are melting in the shade. Candles, firelight and warming spiced food are so much part of the Christmas atmosphere to me that it is hard to get in the mood sometimes.
Christmas carols waft through the house, shimmering like snowflakes: ‘earth stood hard as iron, frosty wind made moan’. They demand huge leaps of the imagination, as we swelter in T-shirts trying to think of a Christmas present to make that does not involve sewing felt – just thinking about felt makes me hot.
Christmas as a hot weather festival hasn’t really made it into my sub-conscious – here people take off for the beach and have big barbeques for Christmas, but it just don’t feel right to me! I need turkey and ham, Christmas cake and mince pies, candles and frosty carols... here’s wishing for cooler weather, so I can restore the illusion of Christmas festivities for my inner child!
I have such a hard time with warm Christmases too! Last year we were in the US for the first time since 2000 and my inlaws wanted us to come to Southern California (read: hot, desert, a lot like where I'd been in Africa only with Walmart, which I hate) for CHristmas! NO WAY I screamed into the phone! (Ok, I was polite)
ReplyDeleteHope it cools down for you soon.
I guess I'm lucky then, having moved from the land of barbeques and swimming to the land that invented Christmas. I am quite the convert here - in love with swags of pine, gingerbread, Christmas biscuits, goose and other delights. I still can't love Gluehwein though - I'd rather have an ice-cold glass of sparkling wine to appease my inner African!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the Weleda tip - I shall try it, I bought manuka honey, echinacea and vit c today!
ReplyDeleteAs for the weather in dear old blighty - it's VERY cold, the lane is icy, and as you will remember of old, the roads don't appear to have been gritted!!!
I love christmas smells....but maybe not when it's that warm!
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Good Morning ! I stumbled upon your blog because I googled Malva pudding. I am English but was brought up in SOuth Africa. We lived for about ten years in Fish Hoek and then moved up the coast to East London. We moved back to the UK about 8 years ago. Your blog bought back some lovely memories of Africa - I do miss it and today is chilly already !!
ReplyDeleteI'll pray you get chillier weather for Christmas week. That must be hard for you this time of year because of all the nostalgic memories Christmas has attached with snow and fireplaces. I'm ready for a good blast of snow myself. It's unseasonable warm for central US right now. Southern, semi-tropical states have had snow! Very strange...Your cinnamony smells sound wonderful! Bread baking does it for me at Yuletime. I haven't had the time yet to bake bread. When do you put up your tree? We have a fake tree. I miss the fragrance of pine. Have a wonderful holiday!
ReplyDeletei am not surprised... i would find it very hard to get christmas feelings in the sweltering heat! it's tough enough not to get any snow, as i grew up with white christmasses and sometimes i wish i could experience a hot christmas - anything but that horrible "in-between" weather! maybe we should do a house swap some time ;-)
ReplyDeleteI, on the other had, can't get into this midwinter Christmas idea at all! I know all the imagery and traditional foods are designed for a midwinter celebration, but to me Christmas involves beaches, sunshine, swimming pools and a cold lunch. I guess whatever you grow up with is what you miss...
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