Welcome to December! We’ll be winding down and reflecting on the year that has past and the year to come later this month, but for now, I wanted to make a bold statement:
Winter is the best season of all the seasons and December is the best month of the year and here are 3 important reasons why.
Reason #1: Snow
Snow is beautiful and special. It’s soft and pretty and scientifically interesting as it is an example of a fractal, and fractals in general are amazing.
“In mathematics, a fractal is a self-similar subset of Euclidean space whose fractal dimension strictly exceeds its topological dimension. Fractals appear the same at different levels, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set.” – Wikipedia.com
As a non-scientist who failed math multiple times in high school, I don’t exactly know what that means. But to me, fractals are stunningly artistic.
And I’m not alone.
“The more I looked at fractal patterns, the more I was reminded of [Jackson] Pollock’s poured paintings,” recounts physicist Richard Taylor in an essay for The Atlantic. “And when I looked at his paintings, I noticed that the paint splatters seemed to spread across his canvases like the flow of electricity through our devices.”
Of course, Pollock never knew what fractals were. The concept was formed by Benoit Mandelbrot in 1975, nearly two decades after Pollock died of in a car crash at the age of 44. To me, that’s the cool thing about fractals: they are so fundamental to the Universe that we create them without even knowing it.
And that’s why snow is so amazing! A bunch of teeny tiny fractals falling from the sky and onto the ground, like miniature Pollock paintings. Beautiful.
Reason #2: Two Back-to-Back Stat Holidays
You know you’re old when statutory holidays are an exciting topic of conversation for you. At our latest board meeting, we recently passed a motion that in 2021, we will observe Remembrance Day as a stat, and we are all thrilled.
A stat day is like a mini-vacation, a blissful day where you can tidy up all the loose ends of your life before heading back out into the world. For me, this typically involves doing chores I’ve been putting off, like cleaning the litterbox.
One stat is nice, but two in a row is nicer. And that’s what we get in December, which is great for catching up on even more chores, like cleaning the litter-box two days in a row, which the cat owners on Reddit tell me I should be doing anyway.
Reason #3: Christmas Carols
Look, I know not everyone celebrates Christmas, and I’m not here to proselytize that everyone should. I am, however, here to invite you all to listen to Christmas music and not judge it, because you might find it’s actually good.
The tradition of Christmas Carols harkens back to the winter solstice. Carols, that is, songs of praise or joy, were historically sung throughout the year to mark multiple occasions, but Christmas is the holiday that has really taken Carols to a whole new level. Possibly because of capitalism, but that is a conversation for a different day.
Frankly, I could write a lot about how much I love Christmas Carols as well as the history, but for this post in particular I want to focus on one thing I particularly love about them: the evocative lyrics. Whether it’s Silent Night, O Holy Night, The First Noel, Good King Wenceslas, The Little Drummer Boy or Hark the Herald Angels Sing, you cannot look me in the eye and tell me those lyrics are not giving you all the feels.
So, do you agree or disagree? Is December your favourite month too? What is your favourite Christmas Carol? Comment below!
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