KEY POINTS:
Christmas snow is starting to fall in Canada and America as conditions quickly go downhill into winter. It was just a few weeks ago that some parts were still basking in highs over 20, now they're lucky to reach 3.
A major Arctic blast will move down from Canada and into central and eastern USA later this week bringing bitterly cold temperatures and plenty of snow. Of course most will be praying for a white Christmas (which is actually the amount of snow on the ground on Christmas day - not whether or not it actually snows on December 25th).
In New Zealand a white Christmas is unlikely especially this year with temperatures frequently reaching the mid to late 20s already!
I think I've mentioned before that I have family living in both Toronto and Vancouver. Christmas decorations and Christmas lights look stunning over there when there's snow everywhere, trees are bare and even sunny days look grey with a low sun and temperatures around -20!
In New Zealand I can't help but feel that Santa looks odd wearing a thick woolly outfit in Christmas Parades when it's almost 30 degrees in the shade!
My mother, who was born and raised in England, still finds Christmas a little strange in New Zealand due to the fact that it's usually hot and sunny here - and not cold and cosy indoors with a fire burning!
As a Kiwi I love Christmas in NZ. I appreciated it more during my last visit to Canada. While snow, short days and rum tainted eggnog are all magical I longed for my afternoon in the sun with a glass of white wine or a nice cold beer and a full stomach! There is something so relaxing about a New Zealand Christmas. The hot, sunny (hopefully!) weather makes for a longer, more relaxing, day. You have more time to do the things you need to do. Christmas day, after all, is only a couple days after our longest day.
One recent memory I have, which really sums up Christmas in New Zealand, was going away camping on Christmas Day afternoon. We had our big lunch then set off to one of the most remote places that I know of in the North Island - Port Jackson, which is at the very tip of the Coromandel Peninsula (to me it was great, to others it's a hell hole with no hot water or electricity!).
The weather was sunny, the day was old, and the drive on a dusty, bumpy, road was made all the better by tens of kilometres of flowering Pohutakawa. Newstalk ZB was playing Nostalgia with old Christmas songs and the dusty old road, run down bachs and families enjoying BBQs made with drift wood on the beach made me think of a time almost forgotten these days.
No cellphones (or coverage for that matter!), no laptops, no computer games - just nature and the good ol' kiwi basics. Just a long, sunny, Christmas afternoon at the kiwi bach on the beach.
So while the weather might make Santa shed a little weight due to sweating, and while tinsel looks tacky when strung up on a window near a beautiful flowering hibiscus, I have to admit I certainly love a sunny, hot, long Christmas Day in New Zealand. Here's hoping we'll get one this year! I'll see if I can talk Santa into spreading that gift to us all - with maybe a dash of rain overnight for the dry farms.
Philip Duncan
Pictured above: A diver in Santa's costume feeds moray and spotted eagle ray as part of a Christmas event at Sunshine International aquarium in Tokyo. AP Photo / Junji Kurokawa
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