Christmas in California is Kinda Lame

ever since I was a kid my favorite holiday has always been Christmas having grown up in the East Coast I associate winter and the holidays with my childhood I'd always look forward to the snow and the jingles and the lights every single year and then I moved to Southern California and discovered that Christmas kind of sexier all the snow-capped pine trees are replaced with palm trees charred by fires from the previous summer and I don't know if you've noticed but we're on fire a lot there weren't nearly as many Christmas lights illuminating the neighborhoods and the Christmas jingles just didn't hit the same anymore now I know these are all trivial firstworldproblems but I've been living here for almost a whole decade and I can't remember a single California Christmas I've had I remember the summers because the summers were always a blast but every December I'd miss the cozy and fester feeling of Christmas and winter back in college when I used to work part-time as a sushi cashier every December the plaza I worked at would do this thing where they place these snow machines in the trees and at 6:00 p.m. every night they'd release a flurry of fake snow to make it look like it was snowing for like ten minutes this was mostly for the children to enjoy but I remember being excited for it every time if it was a particularly slow night I'd occasionally step outside to watch and I felt like I was back to being 12 years old again it's like my holiday spirit and cheer has been stuck in this a nostalgic time capsule you know that scene in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe when Lucy discovers Narnia and everything is just covered in snow with cute little street lamps and she's like got this like a Wonder in her eyes as she's walking around that was me every winter as a kid and I just want to be able to experience that again at some point back in elementary middle and even high school there was something really magical about waking up and just seeing nothing but white outside my window and getting that automated voice message on the house phone about how school was closed for the day my best friend up the street would call me up from her house phone and ask if I wanted to go sledding we would end up bruised and sore from crashing into ice and snow for hours but we wouldn't even notice because we were numb from the cold and from all the fun we were having and then finally when we'd back to her house with our gloves off and our hand steaming we'd be greeted with the smell of hot chocolate and cinnamon then maybe we'd see it start to flurry and hope that school would be closed again the next morning in the mornings where I did end up having to go to school I'd wake up and spend a good 20 minutes sitting in front of this box-shaped electric heater that we had just soaking in that warm toasty goodness and if my shoes and socks got all wet from the snow on the way home from school I'd head straight to the bathroom to fill the tub up with hot water and dip my icy cold feet in and it feel like a mini spa for a couple minutes I feel like the cold just made everything smell and taste better to that feeling of your body slowly warming up as you eat warm soup and buttered biscuits and then falling asleep and a warm pile of fuzzy blankets right afterwards to the sound of classic Christmas songs in an eight-hour loop of crackling fire that someone put on the TV and who could forget the presence of course presents are one of the few Christmas activities I still do and I really enjoy wrapping presents although I'm not very good at it but as a kid I really liked watching my mom wrap presents because she did everything so quickly neatly and she'd do that thing where she'd cut through wrapping paper like it was butter which I've still yet to figure out how to master okay so these are the presents that Christine wrapped and put together we've got cute little decorations on them they're elegant they're gorgeous they're neatly put together they look like something off of Pinterest honestly and then on the other side you have the presents I wrapped which are kind of sloppy but you know an attempt was made especially on this one where the bottom looks like this and I know it looks like I didn't try but this was actually my fourth attempt at trying to wrap this object so you can only imagine how awful the first three attempts must reflect and and then you have the present Sun Moon raft um they're very straightforward just like he is I'm still not that great at wrapping presents so usually for birthdays or something I'll just throw it in a gift bag with some tissue paper on top and call it a day but Christmas time is when you bring out all the effort in wrapping gift boxes that's when you bust out the glittery at a holographic wrapping paper and ribbons and the cute name labels doesn't matter if it's like sixty degrees outside and there's no tree to put the presents under whatever holiday spirit I can muster up is put into gift shopping and gift wrapping but the winter memory I look back on most fondly would have to be when it snowed during the evening let me set the scene for you after the Sun went down the whole sky was that cloudy dark blue color that made everything looked like it had a blue filter over it nobody was outside at this time and there were also no passing cars just the snow being faintly illuminated by the Christmas lights on people's houses I wanted the sweet satisfaction of taking the first steps in the fresh snow so I got all bundled up and walked out into my front yard there wasn't any wind and there were no birds or animals or even people it was so still and quiet that the only thing I could hear was the sound of my own breathing and the sound of the snow crunching under my feet I thought it'd be interesting to lay down in the snow on my back and stare up at the sky until it quickly changed from dark blue to pitch-black I couldn't see the clouds so it looked as though the snow is just spawning out of nowhere for a moment it felt like time had stopped and the only thing in motion were the snowflakes the cushiony feeling of the snow felt so comfortable and relaxing and with my coat keeping me warm I felt like I could just fall asleep right then and there you know up until what a my parents inevitably busted out of the house worried that I'd fainted in the snow or something I'm not saying you can't enjoy hot cocoa or Christmas music or wrapping presents in California I still do those things of course but ever since I moved here Christmas has just always felt kinda off like something was missing maybe it's the lack of pine trees the lack of snow the fact that there isn't really a need for scarves or coats because the weather's always like 60 degrees here or it just feels like any other day in the year because the seasons don't change very much so you don't even notice Christmas creeping up on you and then I wonder do I only have a fondness for it because I never had to deal with the winter as an adult I moved to California at age 15 before I had to deal with the strug of driving on icy roads or having to wake up early and go to work in freezing weather or having to scrape ice off of my car maybe because I've only ever really experienced a winter as a child that's why I've never really lost that childlike wonder for it and maybe I wouldn't feel the same if I'd never moved away from it as they say the grass is always greener on the other side and I'm sure a lot of people would argue that having sunny non humid weather for the majority of the year is way better than dealing with the annoyances that come with each passing season but whether you're spending the holidays in a winter wonderland or not at the end of the day what matters the most is that you're spending it with people you love or at the very least enjoying yourself however you like not to sound like a cheesy hallmark movie or anything I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and if not then a wonderful start to 2020 see you then [Music]

Channel: Emirichu

Views: 2,216,187

Keywords: christmas, california christmas, winter

Id: N20bMsFqv0o

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019