Overdose of winter festivals gives me the chills
November marks the proper commencement of the off-season, when the shutters go down on whale spotting and open-top bus tours, and the Scottish tourist industry considers hibernation.
We check out until march – even April if we can get away with it.
Winter ushers in three months of coldness and endless soup, perhaps with the breaking news that your boiler is on its last legs.
Summer is over and we’re now into bummer. Yet this is also the season that makes me bristle with pride at being Scottish because this is when we delve into personal resources.
Just to be clear: I am no fan of snow or ice but at least we’re not as bad as other places on the same latitude – hot spots of gaiety such as Latvia and Newfoundland.
I once went to an Ice Hotel in Scandinavia and got so cold that I checked out to a hotel with nonfrozen walls and sat under the hot shower for an hour, a bit like that weird bond girl did in Casino royale.
ANd when I say ‘a bit’, candidly the only resemblance was that my mascara was also a bit of a mess and I was a bit weepy. Nor do I see any point in skiing: you might as well strap doors to your feet and throw yourself down a mountain while shouting, ‘No!’.
We live in a land where winters are long, skint, dull and damp, and no amount of pretending that Samhuinn is an ancient fire festival will convince me that organised fun is what is needed right now.
during one Thanksgiving in Chicago, I witnessed the insanity of pretending a winter parade after dark in sub-zero temperatures could pass as fun.
Thousands of dollars and man hours had been spent building and decorating floats with winter themes, and on importing 80s star debbie Gibson to sing the Sleigh ride song against a bank of gigantic speakers. Yet most of the children around me were not watching the parade. Instead, they were taking turns pouring hot coffee on to the pavement and watching it freeze over.
Winter is a time when we can overdose on festivals – of lights, of pumpkins, dressing up as sexy devils, or fireworks followed by the wail and flashing lights of blues and twos.
At some point, however, we should simply admit that it is winter and instead of trying to fend it off with over-organised fun, perhaps embrace its more basic pleasures.
At least winter stews and mulled wine signal an end to barbecues where you eat someone’s black and bloodied chicken while casually Googling the symptoms of food poisoning.
Winter is also good for sunrises and sunsets because normally you only see dawn if you are a night worker, have a paper round, or have to drive to the centre of edinburgh before 9am.
by the end of this month, some eccentric within 15 miles of your house will be preparing to welcome december by transforming their home with a winter light tableau featuring Santa, two polar bears, three kings and donald duck. And I’m cool with that.