Ho Ho NoCal Style

I am sitting in my sunny office/studio/spare room/.... in the sun listening to Christmas music and thinking about the season. It is very different having Christmas without boots and gloves and hats and parkas and shovels and.... well, you get the picture. Here in NoCal, we celebrate the season a bit differently. I live in a neighborhood of Buddhists and Muslims. So there are very few Christmas lights on the houses - see above. And most everybody is elderly and may not be able to PUT lights up. And then there is our house...... with wreath and Maine window candles and lights - of course the tasteful small white ones to show culture and good breeding. Also note - green grass freshly mowed and wet sidewalk from winter rain. Yes, we are still mowing and weeding and fertilizing the lawn which we can still see. And with the winter rain, the brown hills to the east are now the -slightly-less-brown-turning-a-bit-green hills. But back to Christmas. We weren't going to get a tree and do much decorating inside as we will be away for Christmas. But when shopping, we found a little "tree" that we just HAD to buy. So we have a ...... well..... it's a Christmas bush-cut-to-look-like-a-tree. AND it is rosemary. AND we can plant it in the gorilla hair after Christmas. So how environmentally friendly is that! AND it has a string of LED lights that look blue not tasteful white..... oh well. We still have LOADS of traffic at any place that sells anything and LONG lines at any post office. So we aren't all that different. But Mark and I walked down to the Farmers' Market to get fresh citrus - samsuta tangerines, 3 kinds of grapefruits, pumelos, grapes, apples, broccoli sold by the cutest girls and their mom who had a blanket tied around her head because she had to stand out in the cold for hours. We were informed that the market closes for 2 weeks during the holidays. We bought extra sourdough bread for our little freezer. And Japantown has very few Christmas decorations up. Just a LARGE shark wrapped up in rice and seaweed to look like sushi.... is that Christmas? We have been receiving Christmas cards and have even sent some out this year. But, just like in Maine, we have collected the goodies to take to the nephews and neices and sibs and in-laws. We have mailed all the stuff that had to go far away. And we are ready to enjoy the time with family and friends. Because.... after all.... isn't that what the season is REALLY about? Like the Whos down in Whoville - the tall and the small. The Whos who had nothing at all. They all joined hands and started singing........
And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!" 

And maybe it doesn't really matter where you are for Christmas. 
So to all of you both near and far
When you look up and see a star
Know that I am thinking of you
And wishing for peace the whole year through!