A CHRISTMAS CAROL (...I mean, a bit of snow fell last Christmas here where I live, that's all)
Snow is a fairly unusual thing here where I live, especially at Christmas. A bit of snow usually falls once or twice a decade at the end of January or in March. Before the unusual 2025 event this post is about, I could easily remember a snowy winter in my hometown, but a white Christmas-nope.
This opening photograph shows the oldest buildings in my neiberhood. The only one made of local stone. There is no facade coating, so the intricate stony texture is on display. The building on the right was a stall, and the building on the left, the one partially rebuilt in bricks, was an actual house where people lived once upon a time, not so long ago.
There is plenty of stone in the poor, calcareous soil of my Mediterranean area. That's good for preserving history. Things made of stone can retain at least part of their shape not only through centuries, but through millennia.
The snow here looks a lot like frost, but it's real snow, believe me.
Some of it had already melted around 9 AM, when these photographs were taken. You could see more the night before, when the snow started falling. The footage for the following video...
... was recorded around midnight. I took a walk to the main square of my hometown, a place designed to carry most of the local Christmas spirit. On my way back, I stopped to take some bread from the recently installed bread machine. You'll see all that stuff in the video.
This was the Christmas view from my balcony back then in 2025. Not too bad...not too bad.
In combination with snow, even the grass in my relatively unkempt yard looked kinda cool.
Yep, one of those things that only the magic of Christmas can achieve, a Christmas miracle of sorts.
I don't think I would have photographed this grass if it hadn't snowed.
Here you can see the snow-covered leaves of my tangerine tree. They look fairly good in their white Christmas version, but...
...but the last remaining red rose in my yard was the real star of the show.
The shape of the tiles in the part of the yard where I usually park my car was nicely accentuated by the snow. The pattern looked too good to ignore.
The orange house shown in this photograph was recently renovated.
When I came out of my house that Christmas morning...
...the moon looked great in the clear blue sky. Everything felt so fresh, crisp, and clean. The air was a joy to breathe.
In this photograph, especially if you enlarge the picture by clicking on it, you can admire some interesting details of the bright side of the moon.
Down on the ground, the sidewalks were nicely decorated with footprints.
They look a bit like stamps of approval.
I saw quite a few different footprints in my neiberhood on that occasion.
Here you can see another stone house from my neighborhood.
This is a scene from my yard. Crutches and slippers are covered with snow. I don't know...the thing somehow carries a certain type of Christmas spirit...you know, like in those books and movies when someone is miserable while people are singing and overeating.
Here you can see something else covered with snow. Don't ask me what it is; I have no idea. It looks like a piece of something that has to be put into something else, and then you can do something with that something. It's a thing, that's for sure. I have also determined that it is mostly yellow. I came to that through sheer power of casual observation. Casual observation is just a power; most people have it. An intense, penetrative gaze, on the other hand, is a superpower; you have to be a psycho or something to have it.
I think that this is a good place to establish one more universal truth: you don't have to be a superhero to have a superpower. Don't believe everything you see in the movies. Superheroes are bulshit; they don't exist, but superpowers are real. My superpower is the ability to write tons of silly crap that makes my shitposts look long and elaborate. And now...
... it's time to take a few steps back in time and visit the night before, the night when it started snowing. This photograph was taken exactly twenty minutes and thirty-six seconds after the last snowflake reached the asphalt on the main square of my hometown.
As you can see, we didn't skimp on decorations.
There were more lamps on the town square than the stars up there in the pitch-black winter sky.
I was alone in the square at 3 AM...
...and I felt like a king. It was like all that glitter and electricity was there specifically for me, the king, or me, the messiah, or me, God's close relative and his right hand, or something like that. I almost became a religious person that night.
Some hours later, in the morning, I was alone in the street again, but that epiphany, that magic feeling, had completely disappeared.
The snow was still there, though. It looked a lot like a thick frost, but that was good enough for me.
And that's it. I told you everything I had in mind.
The post ends here. As always on Hive, the photographs are my work.