Colors Elsewhere: Holidays in North America

Today, I thought I'd take you outside of Montreal for a bit and show you holiday celebrations in different parts of North America.

A few years ago, Mitya was lucky enough to be in Hawai'i during December.

What do Santa and Mrs. Claus do in Hawai'i on Christmas? Why, sit by the pool, of course!

A snowman family is out to surf for the holidays.

I love the palm trees in this Christmas tree picture. Classic tropical Christmas.

We were also in New Orleans two years ago, where all you needed to stay warm on New Year's Eve was a t-shirt and a light cardigan.

This is a house in the French Quarter:

I love the decorating touch on this holly tree in the Garden District.

Many of the houses in New Orleans have these wonderful floor to ceiling shutters - and they actually use them!

When we were in North Carolina for the holidays, it snowed, creating a beautiful effect over the outdoors Christmas lights.

We took these photos in my parents' neighborhood. We were driving around in my mom's car, and I turned off the lights whenever we stopped so that they wouldn't bother our neighbors. The next day, my mom got an email from our neighborhood mailing list saying that they had seen a "suspicious black car cruising around the neighborhood around 10 p.m." and that it was parked at one corner for five minutes with the lights turned off. My mom had to tell them that it was us!

New York is a great place to visit at Christmas (although if you actually live there, it's just additional stress).

Some nights they light up the Empire State Building in Christmas colors.

Mitya doesn't remember where he took this photo, but I'm almost certain that it was in Park Slope (my old neighborhood). The brownstones look very familiar.

Christmas ornaments on outdoor trees can be seen all throughout the city (and, in fact, in other urban areas outside of New York too!). This one was taken in Brooklyn Heights.

For a truly spectacular lights experience, I recommend going to Dyker Heights. It's easiest to get there if you have a car, but we took the R train down to Bay Ridge and then the bus over (unfortunately, I can't remember which bus, but this guide should tell you). There are also tour buses that go to the neighborhood.

Brilliant Christmas presents (no pun intended).

A choir of Angels.

This larger-than-life Santa is the main star attraction of the Dyker Heights Christmas Lights display.

But my favorite was this little deer wandering out on the lawn.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

When I was living in Brooklyn, our next door neighbors would have huge inflatable decorations outside their building for a month preceding every major holiday. So, at the end of the year, they'd have a huge inflatable green witch for October, a giant inflatable turkey for November, and an inflatable Santa for Christmas (although this was sometimes interchanged with a Snowman some years. I lived there for six years, so I saw quite a lot of these).

Our neighbors up north in Montreal haven't adopted Christmas inflatables, but there's no doubt that the city is lit up for the holidays. Let's take a look at some Quebecois traditions.

Some people deck out their iconic stairs in Christmas lights.

Our neighborhood balcony Santa has made a return this year, keeping on eye on who's being naughty or nice on Rue Ontario (and checking for impostors!).

The bûche de Noël, or Christmas log, is a Christmas tradition that comes from France. Traditionally, families would burn a log in their home from Christmas to New Year's Day or the day of Epiphany (January 6). This tradition comes from an even older pagan tradition where logs would be thrown in the ancient fire-festival during the winter solstice.

Here are a few more bûches de Noël. These are more suitable for the size of our family.

Walking around our neighborhood, you can see a few crèches de Noël. These are Nativity scenes that people leave on their lawns, and is another tradition from France.

Wishing you happy holidays, from our home to yours!

Subway performers

There are special labeled places for musicians in Montreal Subway.

Every morning I see musicians who play on Guy-Concordia station. They are usually very interesting. I've noticed that most of them I have seen only once or twice. My favorite musician is this old Asian man who plays on accordion. Very often he plays "Katyusha" a Soviet war-time song. We had to sing this song every day during a month of my military trainings in Russia. Even I hated being there that time, listening to it in Montreal subway now makes me feel good.

Today I've seen a small puppet show that attracted a lot of people. 

However, the most unusual musician I've seen so far in Montreal Subway was playing on his banjo sitting in a boat. 

Staircases of Montreal

One of the things that I love about Montreal are the spiral staircases that wind around many townhouses in the residential neighborhoods. They have the aura of a different time and place.

Here, three birds perched upon one of the steps watch a falling leaf.

A staircase draped in ivy in the St-Henri neighborhood.

Here's one in our neighborhood. It was perfect timing!

The staircases look positively enchanting in the winter, with white pillows of snow resting on each step.
As beautiful as they look, though, they're quite treacherous in the winter. I've slipped twice in the rain and ice, and Mitya fell down our spiral staircase once when it was snowing. Our mail-lady even refused to go up our stairs to deliver the mail earlier this year, which resulted in this scandal!

A shot of our stairs in winter. All photos, except this last one (taken by me), were taken by Dmitry Gimon.