Strange Christmas Revisited

Last night I took the Christmas tree down. In a normal year I would take it out and stick it upright in the snow near our bird feeders to give the birds a place to roost out of the wind while eating the seed we put out for them. This year there is no snow. Not even one flake.

In fact I put up and took down our outside holiday lights in weather more characteristic or late March/early April than Dec/Jan. I remember one other mild Christmas in my life time. It was 1957. I remember it well because that was the year I got a new sled for Christmas and had to wait several weeks for enough snow to use it. Fortunately I also got two books I had seen in a catalog and wanted badly. They were make-it-yourself projects for boys. Those books went to shop class with me several times and quite a few of the projects from them were built that winter.

So is this Global Warming? Even those scientists who are warning of the prospects of Global Warming are saying that this warm winter in the Northeast has more to do with El'Nino than Global Warming and a few are saying that we may have weather like this all winter. One thing I know it isn't... It isn't much like what I think of as Christmas. I don't suppose the birds will mind not having the tree near the feeder for shelter though.