It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

“How can you have Christmas spirit when it’s so sunny out?” a skeptical Minnesotan asked me recently. That’s a question often posed to us Californians by people who have grown up with traditional white Christmases. But what they don’t understand is that right now prime California Christmas weather has settled in. It may not be white, but it’s merry out the wazoo.

At Christmastime, you can see straight from the city all the way up to the mountains and vice versa; from the mountains you can actually see out to the ocean. Being able to see the mountains may not seem very significant at first, so allow me to point out that it is really the only time of year when there is any visibility in Los Angeles. There are more or less four different seasonal stages in southern California: chilly and foggy in the spring; muggy and smoggy in the summer; dry and smoggy in autumn; and crisp, clear, and beautiful in winter. This is what I call California Christmas.


When December comes, the Santa Ana winds have blown all of our smog back into Orange County (whence only about 5% of it actually came). During the spring, you can’t see the mountains because of the fog; and during the summer and fall there is smog that obscures everything. Let me tell you, smog is quite effective at blocking out landmarks. If a person moved to Los Angeles in May or June they could live there for approximately five months without even realizing that there were mountains to the north. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that every winter someone down in the valley looks up one morning and exclaims, “My god, where on earth did those mountains come from?” And some passerby laughs knowingly, remembering his or her own first glimpse of the mountains when the smog had finally been blown out to sea.


So, Christmas. It is a time of exceptionally clean air. I find myself feeling festive whenever the air is crisp and allows for high visibility, no matter when or where. I was in Seattle a few years ago in July, and since it rains so frequently there the air is always clean; I stepped off the plane, looked around and remarked to my brother, “It’s like Christmas!” Of course, as a resident of Seattle, he just didn’t understand. Few people do.


But there is something so magical about Christmas here in LA. Our few deciduous trees have only just begun to turn yellow; every morning starts out crisp enough that you can see your breath on the air; at times it’s even cold enough to warrant a scarf! But most significantly to the Christmas spirit, the mountains stand out beautifully and clearly against the cloudless, fogless, smog-less blue sky, and the buildings downtown twinkle merrily and visibly. Indeed, a beautiful sight to behold.