Is It Two Days After Christmas?

I caved in to a pre-New-Year's resolution and took the dog for a long walk up the hill behind the house.  I have been SUCH a couch potato the last six weeks, I feel like I'm losing all the residual muscle tone I possessed.  I've vowed to walk with the dog every day...she needs it, and I need it.  So far, we've managed one in a row.  Gotta start somewhere, I guess.

It was a lovely winter day in the Columbia Valley.  I enjoyed one of the spectacular views I get to see when "the mountains are out..." (a term, I'm told, that only die-hard Pacific Northwesterners understand.)  Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Adams were all out this afternoon.  An occasion, really; we can go weeks in the fall and winter without seeing them at all. 

Okay, so it's December 27th.  Two days after Christmas.  Already, at least 50% of the outdoor Christmas lights I enjoyed three days ago have been stripped down and packed away.  What's up with that?  When I was a kid, we used to leave our decorations, outdoor lights, tree, the whole nine yards, up until January 6th.  Christmas wasn't just the day.  All that time between Christmas and Epiphany was "the Christmas season."  These days, we're in such a rush to dive into the next thing, whatever it is, that we ditch Christmas forty-eight hours after crooning "Silent Night." 

I don't know...maybe the season has simply shifted.  We didn't put our decorations up the day after Thanksgiving in the old days.  So maybe the season is STILL a month long, it's just shifted ahead by two weeks.  Our attention span can only be so long, I guess.

Another phenomenon I witnessed today was Oregonians' fascination with washing their cars.  When the sun comes out in the winter, it doesn't matter if it's 35 degrees outside, fastidious car-owners of Oregon WILL wash their cars.  Today, on my three-mile walk around town, I encountered this ritual being played out no less than half a dozen times.  The sun was out, but it was surely no more than 45 degrees outside.  One young twenty-something couple was bustling around their driveway literally half-dressed:  He, shirtless and with his pants half down his butt, revealing his designer boxers, and she in short shorts, a lingerie tank top, and no shoes...cavorting around for all the world as if it was the middle of summer.  Meanwhile, I was trotting past with my dog, wearing a hoodie, my leather jacket, gloves, and wishing I hadn't let vanity talk me out of wearing my hat.

I'm sorry...I don't feel the need to wash my car in the middle of winter.  Too many years of living in the midwest, where that idea was so completely unthinkable, one would have been laughed out of the neighborhood had one attempted it.  Here in western Oregon, you KNOW if it's clear today, it's sure as hell gonna rain tomorrow.  So what, exactly, is the point?

I have to laugh sometimes at the Oregonian psyche.  Many of us are convinced we live just slightly north of Orange County.  Shorts, Birkenstocks, tank tops, t-shirts, and car-washing are as appropriate in mid-December as mid-July.  I'm convinced that less than 50% of the population owns a winter coat.  Me?  I come from Chicago. My native state imparted some basic knowledge that I look upon as necessary to survival---for instance, that goose bumps so large you could sand concrete with them indicate the need for a coat.   That when your hands freeze into the shape of T-Rex claws, this would be the time to put on gloves. And perhaps when your be-sandaled toes turn blue, with a slightly black tinge, you should think about putting on real shoes.  With socks, if possible. 

I attribute Oregonians' lack of common sense about winter clothing to the chronic ingestion of various intoxicants (past or present. ) Seems a likely explanation to me...