WE didn't need a calendar to tell us that December 1 was the start of winter - Mother Nature did that on her own!

Not that she sprinkled the ground with a blanket of snow or hung sparkling garlands of frost on the trees. Nothing so romantic!

She just made sure that December 1 was one of the greyest, coldest days yet - and it is probably from now on that our power bills will become a real worry!

Thank goodness for Christmas - something to look forward too.

This is one of several festivals that Christians got right. Instead of going to foreign climes and telling people how to dress, how to pray and how wrong their own customes and clothing were, this is an example of running with a Pagan festival and turning it into a Christian event.

Nobody quite knows the date of Jesus's birth, but Christians do talk about the Light coming into the world.

December 25 was the day Pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice - the light coming back into the world.

December was also a time of festival for the Romans.

So we took it and now it is a worldwide celebration - even in places like Malaysia where you can't walk without tripping over an extravagantly decorated Christmas tree - but purely for commercial purposes.

It is a time for buying gifts and Christmas Day is not even a holiday.

So it is winter and there is already snow forecast. It is so exciting to wake up and see the ground blanketed in white. Not quite so exciting if you have to go out in it!

Anyway, it appears, from the photos we found in our archives, that winter can be fun.

Well, unless you are Dean and Danny Dougherty. When I looked at the photo of them, I thought they were playing in the snow but they were in the sea and it looks positively Arctic!

Showing the beauty of winter is the photo from the Whitehaven Rambling club with a memorial stone in the background, red and silver decorations and a sprinkling of snow.

And I love the picture of the lights switch-on with a snow cannon blasting artificial snow around. That's the best kind! No slipping, no mush, just magical snow flakes that don't even really feel cold.

I am not exactly model-like in frame and have a horror of someone having to try and lift me when I slip and fall on snow or ice.

I'm sending the county council a 'do not resuscitate' notice - well, not exactly, but give me a banket and leave me 'til spring, when I will get up on my own!

Happy winter everybody.