At precisely 1:30 p.m. this afternoon we cycled out of the beachside condominium parking lot and immediately connected to the path adjacent South Sea Pines Drive.  This account is hardly news for we do it practically every day.  What however was novel was that overnight the ambient temperature had fallen from a midday high of about 75ºF to 57°F.  In preparation for the jaunt I resisted donning woollen gloves but I sported a large woollen cardigan over my thin cotton hoodie (under which I wore a white T-shirt).  Even thus clad in so many layers it was noticeably cool. Indeed very quickly I remarked that the weather resembled what in Ontario would qualify as an early autumn day though here it passed as a winter day. The dry fallen leaves on the path crackled under our wheels as we rolled along.  Within an instant I imagined a roaring fireplace in a cozy study, sipping a frozen martini and reading an improving Jane Austen book. I inhaled deeply and rejoiced in the uncommonly fresh sea air.

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Happy New Year! Welcome to 2016, a new year on the civil calendar (also known as the “Western calendar” or “Christian calendar”) commonly denominated the Gregorian calendar named after Pope Gregory XIII who introduced it by papal bull Inter gravissimas dated 24 February 1582.

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It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.

Walden (Life in the Woods), Henry David Thoreau (1854)

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Once one has alighted upon Hilton Head Island, South Carolina – howsoever briefly- it is impossible to ignore the pungency of privilege and entitlement. This is especially so if one roosts in one of the private gated communities such as Sea Pines or Palmetto Dunes whose history hearkens back to the original Sea Island Cotton trade or oyster plantations financed by Irish nationals and Wall Street tycoons and built upon the backs of the uneducated and the disadvantaged (primarily ex-slaves who flocked to Hilton Head Island once it fell to Union troops during the Civil War). Even today – a century and a half later – when the narrow-headed blond Patrician is being incrementally crowded by the stout, broad-faced descendant of the Incas, the Republican flavour of the Island is indisputable and unmistakeable. Everything contrives to sustain the preference for exclusivity – the mansions, the manicured lawns, the parade of high-end imported motor cars, the ubiquitous golf courses, tennis courts, country clubs, sailing yachts and swimming pools.

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How incongruous it is to suffer a torment of emotions and dispositions during this otherwise generous and bountiful Season! Yet a lifetime of inclinations are not swept away by the electricity of a moment. A Christmas card (or what is now more likely, an e-Card) can successfully reinvigorate months of animosity and disturbances in spite of its superficial magnanimity. The charity to dissolve the acrimony battles against the hardened reality of experience, at once thwarted and buoyed by liberal open-mindedness and cautious maturity. The safest default is ignorance, albeit a milquetoast response.

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It’s Christmas Day on Hilton Head Island. Christmas Day – like every other day – has passed remarkably quickly. Admittedly I slept until nine o’clock this morning so the day began somewhat later than usual and certainly far later than when I was a child and arose as early as three o’clock in the morning to see whether Santa Claus had come. Even though some of our neighbours celebrated late into the night on Christmas Eve, we retired at a reasonable hour last evening after having watched an old black and white Christmas movie. But my weary bones hadn’t any particular reason to bolt from the lair this morning. Continue reading →

It is Christmas Eve on Hilton Head Island. A tranquillity has descended upon the Island, a stillness which reflects the restful time of year as well as the dense early morning fog which has only now partially dissipated. I have quelled my daybreak effusiveness for Christmas greetings by systematic emails to almost every friend or acquaintance of stature on my Contact list. It is decidedly an occasion to share cheerfulness with others and in some instances to strengthen frayed ties. I  also telephoned my elderly mother and played for her some sorrowful Christmas carols on my electronic keyboard! Continue reading →

The Feast of Juul (where we get the term ‘Yule’ from at this time of year) was a pre-Christian festival observed in Scandinavia at the time of the December solstice.
People would light fires to symbolise the heat and light of the returning sun and a Juul (or Yule) log was brought in and dropped in the hearth as a tribute to the Norse god Thor.
The Yule Log often was an entire tree carefully chosen and brought into the house with great ceremony, and sometimes the largest end of the log would be placed into the fire hearth while the rest of the tree stuck out into the room. Continue reading →

Although I do not share the desolation, it is promoted by some that Christmas is perfectly wretched without two things: family and snow.  It perhaps illustrates how hardened I’ve become that my constancy for the Season survives in spite of being on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina sans famille and sans neige. I won’t discredit the desirability of these two elements and of the many other traditional icons of the festive season but neither will I diminish the allure of a Confederate Christmas. Continue reading →