Tradition has its lovers.  And people love nothing quite so much as the traditions of celebration and glitter, particularly during a season of darkness, cold and gloom.  It is why, during this period, pagan pre-Christians had ceremonies to woo the gods, so human need would not be forgotten, treating themselves and those above to spectacles of bright colour and musical treats and words of grace.

Our neighbours take advantage of the days now growing increasingly scarce of weather mild enough to encourage them to go out and loop strings of lights around their homes in preparation for the celebration of the Christmas season.  Many of these displays are tastefully done and add the splendour of their bright, vibrant colour to the dark night hours, presenting a scene of human resistance against all the coping difficulties in ice, freezing rain, icefog, snow events and chill winds that nature exposes us to during the winter months leading up to the new year.

Each year enticing new products come on the market to elevate peoples' fancies to brief fantasy as a break from reality, hoping to make their displays the envy of their neighbours.  And the greater number of those items represent awkward kitsch that, unaccountably, appeals to the child in us all, invoking memories of the past, real or imagined, of happy times and good days and nights.

We can admire peoples' efforts, some worthy of admiration, without ourselves becoming involved, for these displays do not entice us; we are well outside the religion that emphasizes this period of commemoration and celebration.  We watch while our closest neighbours set up displays in their front lawn, draping lights over their large beautiful spruce tree, trailing them over the outline of the house roof, and setting up creches, plastic deer, lighted Disney-inspired forms, and more Christmas decorations than we could imagine might be crammed within a modest outdoor space.

They give themselves over wholly to this enterprise.  For them any holiday recognized as a widespread, public one is a reason to celebrate, to decorate, to busy themselves outdoing their efforts from the year before.  And every year, as winter approaches we watch as they frantically rush outdoors to set to rights the displays that the cold Arctic wind makes a shambles of, rudely disinterested in the futile attempts of humankind to impress its aesthetic values upon nature's landscape.