It's beginning to look as though this will not be a visual Christmas in Ottawa, this year. Unusual, but not rare. I can recall, about twelve years ago, something similar happening. From a recent Environment Canada update, it seems we've had a number of these snowless Christmases in the past fifty years.

For a geography that is renowned for its cold temperatures and immense snowfalls creating an overwintering snowpack of truly sizeable proportions, this is a real departure from our natural atmospheric conditions. And for those who will be disappointed, it's a shame. Those who enjoy gambolling in thick, new snow, skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, will most certainly miss its celebratory-seasonal appearance.

But it's merely temporary; cold weather will inevitably set in, and with it snow aplenty, satisfying the needs of all the winter enthusiasts. It's just the Christmas season will remain bereft of its pristine white blanket covering the landscape, adding to the beauty of the sparkle and colour, music and gaiety associated with Christmas.

This is not, of course, the Christmas of the celebration of Christ's birth for Christian stalwarts, but another one culturally overlaid with a more open, inclusive celebration, replete with its commercial overtones. And non-Christians like us, though we are self-excluded from the religious-exultation aspects of the season, enjoy nonetheless the public, celebratory side of it; much of the music, the music both sacred and popular, the bustle-about, the anticipation, the spectacle of lovely ornamentation that appears in the public and the private arena.

And in the homes of those who enjoy the appearance of small ornamental pieces cheekily and fantastically playing their little part in cheering us in these emerging dark winter days.