For the first time in my lifetime, it looks like Canada is being given the gift of a white Christmas across the entire country!!!! Despite having to listen to masses of Vancouverites complain about this on twitter, I think it is a beautifully magical gift. Thank you Merry Old Kris Kringle! Snow slows us all down a little. Rather than chasing about the countryside after that ‘perfect gift’, we stop running about and do what is really important, which is actually spending some quality time with the people we love.
Snow pulls us together in another sense too – it causes strangers on the streets and subways to smile, laugh and talk with one another. We remember to play and be young again as we are all taken in by the snows magic and have a snowball fight, make a snow angel or slide down a hill on a makeshift toboggan. We meet our neighbours as we dig our homes and our cars out of the snow. We help our neighbours and for once the young actually remember to help the elderly. And we pull together and share as we take on the hardships that snow poises on our lives.
I make fun of Vancouverites in snow, because they seem so overly dramatic about even the littlest bit of snow, but the reality is they live in a city thats unprepared for the snow – whether it is planes being able to take off from the airport or the many people that unlike myself don’t have a home or warm clothes and live on the streets in Vancouver.
Enjoy the snow this Christmas, but take a moment this holiday season and see if there is something you can do to help those less fortunate. Whether it is donating warm clothes you no longer need, helping to bring safety and communication to others by donating old cell phones through campaigns like Fearless City, or spreading a bit of holiday joy with organizations like Beauty Nights. And for those of you that are sitting in airports trying to get home to loved one, I do hope that you are indeed able to get to your destination.
Wishing you all a happy, safe holiday season filled with love, warmth and beauty!
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