Stories of December

And with the end of December, this year closes to an end. One of the gifts I got last Christmas was a five-year journal and it feels so weird to come to its end, even if I’ll revisit it tomorrow already. I actively try not to do too much reflecting on the past year since I tend to do that all year long anyway. It gets a bit exhausting and I’d rather try to take it day by day. So let’s just get onto what happened in December.

One place we discovered this month was Musée d’Ixelles where they hosted a marvelous exhibition of Robert Doisneau’s work. The second I heard there was an exhibition about his photography, I knew I had to go and marvel at those perfectly captured images. Of course, there’s so much more to him but those are the photographs that draw you in. Including the famous Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville (The Kiss) that you can see on my right. After the exhibition, we went to our favorite tea room in Brussels and enjoyed the most delicious tea ever.

I spent the first half of the month tracking down all the different Christmas presents for Grégory. Since I purchased most of them online, I avoided all the crowds, the stress, and the cliché Christmas songs played in shops. I literally spent most of the Christmas shopping season tucked away in the countryside. My only source of some Christmas spirit came from black and white Christmas movies, which you might have read about here.

By far the best thing about this December was the insane amount of snow we got! This is my fourth winter here and this is the first time December was this snowy. Over the course of the month, the snowflakes grew bigger and thicker. By the end of it, everything was covered in snow. Unfortunately, everything melted away on this last day of the year so I’ll just pretend the snow is still here. Those bare tree branches look a lot less depressing if there’s snow on them. In fact, this December has been the darkest one since 1934. The sun shone for 10,5 hours compared to the average of 45 hours. Frankly, I didn’t notice it due to excitement over the snow!

I know it sounds like an oxymoron to call December a slow month but overall it felt exactly like that. I rewatched so many of my favorite black and white movies (one at the cinema even!), there was no rush around the holidays and spending them together was nice and cozy. Lots of things happened but my fondest memories are the ones of snowy days. My heart warms up as I look at all the snowy photos we gathered this month. I can’t wait for more of them in the next month!