Christmas Eve

Christmas has arrived already. It is hard to believe and so is all the snow that is lying around on the ground and also piled up in huge mounds next to all the urban parking lots. With each passing winter, the snow seems to arrive later and later. But this year Mother Nature decided to turn back the clock a few decades and give us a white Christmas. I don't know if Christmases in Maine 40 years ago were all that white, but it is nice to think that they were. I can remember my first winter in Maine, which occurred about twelve years ago. It snowed like the Dickens all through the month of December, and kept on doing so for the entire winter.

Since then we might have a few inches on December 25, and then even more likely we might not. This year we got hammered early, but I have no idea of winters were more snowy in the past or not. The more likely scenario is that every ten years or so, we get hammered with the white stuff, early. This year we even got a rain storm just before the Noel, which is real blessing, for that means snowplow operators get to spend their Christmas with families and loved ones, and the average Joe does not have to spend Christmas Day shoveling snow. People in the Midwest may not be so lucky.

I am grateful because I get to take long walks in the white landscape with my camera. This Christmas season I have really gotten into photographing night lights and city skylines just after sunset. The world looks so peaceful in this northern latitude in the early evening nightfall. The picture above is a Christmas light, one of many that hangs in Deering Park, to help light up the dark, winter sky.

Merry Christmas