View From a Height

It's almost Thanksgiving, and the lights are coming out for the month. Office buildings and government buildings have started with the displays, and it does actually add some cheer to the month. The Denver City and County Building has the gaudiest display in town. Although they don't have a sound and light show.

Even the sunset cooperated. There were high clouds, but not the wispy cirrus kind. Serious stratus-types. The wind had pushed them out away from the mountains, clearing the way for the sunset, and sculpting them into the wildest shapes, the kind of thing you'd see in a 1960s version of Mars. So with the setting sun, you got the edges of the clouds highlighted in the descending rainbow: white to yellow to orange to pink to purple. With the city lights starting to poke through the dusk, the whole show was worth twice the price of admission.

I remain convinced that our holiday schedule is badly out of whack. New Year's comes barely a week after the solstice, which isn't accidental, but still leaves about 8-10 weeks of cold, dark, and wet before the wildflowers start to peek through. The lights have been taken down, and the whole months of January and February have the air of a hangover. Some of the smaller towns have winter festivals of various kinds, but these are highly localized, tightly contained by the surrounding mountains.

If you're Jewish, you get the relief of Tu B'Shevat and Purim (with a hangover of its own), and unless you're in Israel or certain sections of New York, it's not like it spills out into the streets, or has weeks' worth of buildup of its own. Chinese New Year comes in January as well, but outside of New York and San Francisco it barely registers, and even there, for most people who aren't Chinese it just signifies a one-day interruption in the sale of cheap electronics.

There are holidays in January and February: Washington's Birthday, MLK Day, Valentine's Day, Lee-Jackson Day, but they're all either too private or too earnest, first-rank people, but second-rank holidays trying a little too hard.