2024.12 Candle in the Cold

The smell of Christmas in Eastern Europe is the cold and smoky bite of wet in your nose. The chill of river mist mixed with the low-hanging smoke of a thousand town chimneys. Winters are not what they used to be. I remember rime and snow, and temperatures falling to -10 degrees Celsius (14 Fahrenheit). Scratching frost off the windshields of the family car turned into a daily routine for months,…