When I was a kid I used to enjoy winter quite a lot. I remember snow sometimes started to fall even as early as late November. We used to go to school, have snowball fights in the school’s courtyard during breaks and go sledging or creating snowmen in the afternoons. Depending on the temperature we sometimes were even able to use the lake as a free skating rink (whether we had skates or not…).

You might be starting to get the picture.

The only time in primary school we got a day off in the winter was because only 3 or 5 (can’t remember exactly) kids showed up, with the rest being absent due to some flu outbreak.

Imagine then my bewilderment when during my first winter in England we had a whole day of snow, which resulted in a almost national day off for school kids. Quite strange if you ask me. Although considering snow is such a rare occurrence, especially in the south, well maybe the kids do deserve a couple of hours extra to enjoy real winter weather.

However it is not the schools or kids that are the big shock.

Maybe the snowfall at the beginning of the week was the worst in the last 18 years, however I can quite well recall two years ago the country had a small panic attack as well. It seems like Britain is living in some sort of denial.

The winters are mild and winter tires seem to be a novel concept to English people. Yet, just because there is no snow, it does not mean you can be excused for not being prepared for bad weather.

We had snow on Monday, nice big flakes nearly all day. Admittedly it did pile up a little bit. However it looked nowhere near the disaster it turned into… From my perspective it was just a bit of snow, not much more than we would see in my home country on a very generic snowy winter day.

Not in Britain though… The buses stopped, trains ceased to function, London underground was paralysed. The brave crusaders on the motorway ended up in numerous collisions, or if they were lucky enough snailed their way to work. The panic, the disorganisation, people frantically callying their workplaces. This in turn meant that around ninish in the morining mobile networks got slightly overloaded, and train websites like nationalrail.co.uk just died due to the ‘unforseen’ spike in traffic.

My own workplace ended up in slight chaos. Most people worked from home. The few that came were confronted with the lack of keys, as it just so happened that all keyholders got delayed or stranded by the weather. Just as I was going to leave for work I got a call telling me about the key situation which was the only reason I ended up working from home.

It is so shocking to see a country that sets an example on how to deal with really big catastrophes like the London bombings, fall apart due to a little bit of snow. When those happened a lot of people in countries like mine were shocked, positively mind you, at how quickly and swiftly the order was restored, the situation dealt with and life was back to normal.

It isn’t a fair comparison but it does remind me of an elephant scared of a mouse when it comes to the winter issue. The weather is changing, even if we are not getting daily snow, frost does seem to come and go. The arguments seem to be that the measures needed for situations like this are not worth the cost when it happens every 18 years. But there s fault in such thinking, as firstly you cannot forsee if the next event like this will happen the following year or in the next decade. Secondly maybe it doesn’t get as extreme as this, but this things do seem to be happening even if it is with less severity.

Christmas cards, Birthday cards, Easter cards, etc. With Christmas coming there are tons of cards available in all sizes, colours and shapes. England seems to be a card crazy country. And if you have not been born in this card-land it might seem a little bit insane to you.

In Poland, where I come from, we also have cards for various occasions. Admittedly probably not whole shops devoted to them, but nevertheless there is a choice. The major difference however is that of to whom and when cards are presented.

The popularity contest

It seems like holiday cards are a way of showing off - look, I have so many friends, people who care, etc. The more the better. To the point, that the whole experience of choosing a card and sending it to a person, has been reduced to a chore that you are forced to obliged.

Well, that is if you send the card at all. Personally I was used to viewing holiday cards more as postcards, and a means to say to people I care about, but will not be seeing over a particular holiday or occasion, that I remember them and hope there will have a lovely time even despite the fact we cannot meet.

And in that sense it was very strange at first to buy cards for not only someone you WILL be seeing during Christmas, but who you actually live under the same roof with! For people both close to you and almost strangers.

Alternatively you could say in Poland cards are “little presents” given to people you might not have a close enough relationship to warrant gifts (or where gifts would even be inappropriate). This way you can still show you remembered about that person, and that they are more than a stranger.

Who gets the card?

Every year nearly all families in England (and probably in places like the US, that inherited some of the British traditions) go out and mass shop for Christmas cards. Numbers running above a hundred or two, would not be terribly uncommon. UK citizens frantically tick of their lists starting from close relations, through third cousins, to end up on neighbours, co-workers, local postman and the corner shop staff…

This approach to Christmas cards leads to their depreciation. If you are going to buy 150 cards, you are not going to pick each and every one of them by hand. You will probably grab a ready pack, which also has the advantage of a reasonable (cheap?) price.

Even if you start out with the earnest intentions of writing a witty personalized message for most of these cards, quite possible after going through half of them you’ll just run out of ideas… Not to mention all that writing.

At the office last year we have only put our signatures on the mass of corporate Christmas cards. And that was enough to make your wrist hurt.

What about the environment?

With such huge amounts of paper circulated around it does beg the question, why not cut down on cards? If you really want to send Christmas cards to a huge number of relatives, neighbours and friends, why not use email? Leave paper for closer relatives, and hand-pick those special cards.

This way you will not only help save probably quite a substantial number of trees, but also help your pocket. And money savings definitely cannot be overlooked in the current economic situation, no matter how small they might seem.