Snowbirds

TLOML's mother joined us for Christmas in New York. She was definitely going against traffic, on her trip up here from sunny West Palm Beach, Florida. Most people go in the other direction.

In Florida they call them 'snowbirds' - the wealthy New Yorkers who flee the snow and sleet of the chily North East for a holiday season in the sunshine. What's strange to me is that once they get to Palm Beach these snowbirds still want to feel a little Christmassy. Which requires, apparently, some snow.

City Place, an upmarket shopping and eating place in West Palm, has the perfect solution. Twice daily 'snow falls', on a little Christmas tree scene in the centre of the shopping arcade.

There's something distinctly odd about standing in summer clothes, beneath palm trees, in the snow. Personally I think those snowbirds are just wimping out. Maybe it's the Northerner in me, but I really think it's appropriate to be somewhere cold at Christmas.

We didn't have any snow this Christmas but we had a good festive, biting/ bracing wind and a frosty chill in the air. It made perfect sense to be wrapped up in puffas and woolly hats in the crush at Rockefeller Plaza and window gazing on Fifth Avenue. Or best of all, tucked up with a turkey sandwich and slowly decaying gingerbread house in Rabbit Hutch Towers.