Christmas is my favourite holiday. Maybe it is the unreasonable amount of American movies and TV shows I have watched over my life but I love the imagery, songs and emotions attached to Christmas. The things that come to mind when you say Christmas are family, the Christmas tree, gifts and wonderful white snow! I was planning to spend Xmas in Italy until my cousin from Copenhagen sent me a picture of his snow covered driveway. I had never seen snow and immediately switched plans to spend a white Christmas in Denmark.
Unfortunately, there would be no snow in the week that I spent in Copenhagen. Let alone snow, my Danish friend told me she felt like it was summer! She told me that in summer, the temperature would only be higher than maybe by a degree from what it was currently. My friend in Paris told me it was 16 degrees there!! 16 degrees in winter! Thanks to climate change and global warming, there will not be a white Christmas for me. But I am far from alone. This has been the hottest Christmas in years. This is the warmest Christmas of the warmest year ever. Winter temperatures in New York are the same as Sydney, which has summer right now. Scotland has spring flowers in full bloom instead of snow. Even in Lapland, Santa’s workshop, temperatures are Balmy. While a stronger than usual El-nino may be blamed for high temperatures in the western hemisphere, it is difficult to explain why temperatures are rising globally without the consideration of global warming. 2015 is the warmest year since temperatures were first recorded in 1880. It seems like unless the planet takes steps soon, we will not have many white Christmases in the future.