Here's today's Picture of the Day. I took it at our office in Palmares. Obviously, it's part of the Christmas decorations there. It's beginning to be that season, isn't it? Christmas brings mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, I hate, absolutely hate most Christmas music, especially anything that tries to be hip or rock-ish. On that note, it's great to be in Costa Rica, since the stores generally don't play Christmas music (if anything, it's just intrusive salsa or merengue music all year long).On the other hand, I do like Christmas lights, since they generally make ugly stuff look nicer. However, since they don't have Thanksgiving to act as a buffer here, people start putting up Christmas decorations before Halloween (which is another holiday they don't celebrate). Plus, they leave those decorations up longer after the New Year. I guess that's OK and all, but when the Christmas Season lasts as long as the Green (ie, Rainy) Season, then maybe it's just not as special.
Or maybe it's more special that way. I don't know. Who am I, Burl Ives?
365: Picture a Day Project 365 Leftovers All My Pictures Sitzbook
3 comments:
wow! what a great photo! Who guessed that that chintzy rope of lights i particularly dislike for being so awkward to turn off each night had it in it to look so pretty? (obviously; you did)
i think the way it works here in fact is that christmas and dry season are all rolled together in the heads of costa ricans - they feel the north winds of the dry and instantly associate with no-more-goddamn-rain/holidays/christmas/christmas paraphenalia. even I do that now, while resisting the urge to decorate for as long as possible . . .
(and for all any of us know, maybe you *are* Burl Ives, just pretending to be The Great Ryan Sitzman in this far off place where no one knows better. for that matter, who is Burl Ives???)
Lucy,
Ha ha, I think you're right about the associations with Christmas here, and maybe they just go whole hog or whatever when it comes to end-of-rainy-season enthusiasm.
Also, Burl Ives did the voice of the narrator Sam the Snowman on the animated version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Pretty obscure reference, I guess.
Interestingly enough, though, he seems to have been "blacklisted" as a Communist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl_Ives
Fun times.
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