Hello, this is Richard Taylor, from Denver, Colorado. I am doing this podcast on a cold day here in Denver, where we have gray skies today and have had some snow flurries. First, I want to wish all of you a very happy and prosperous new year.
The holidays have been great, but I have to say that I'm glad they are over. I say this because there is always so much packed into so little time around the holidays.
The traffic is just crazy this time of year, the roads are always crowed and it seems that people are not really careful about their driving because they have so much else on their minds. In Colorado, we really need to watch our driving, because it is quite common for drivers to talk on their cell phone while they are driving. This is very common. Personally, I feel it is dangerous, but nevertheless it is very common to see drivers talking on their cell phones here while driving, and it is not against the law in this state. In some states it is against the law, such as in California where they have passed a law making it illegal to use a hand-held wireless phone while operating a motor vehicle.
During the holiday season, everyone is out shopping and running errands, buying food for parties at work, maybe even buying gifts for gift exchanges at work too. Not every place has gift exchanges at work, but some places do. My wife, for example, works at a hospital and she and her co-workers exchange gifts and holiday cards, which we also refer to simply as Christmas cards, with each other, though the gifts are never anything too expensive. Usually the gifts are simple things, sometimes just a gift card, perhaps a gift card to Starbucks or to Target, which is a large department store where you can buy almost anything.
I will say a little about the department store, Target. It is a well know fact that women in America just love to shop at Target (www.target.com) and which they commonly pronounce as if it were French, saying it as if it were a French work, instead of the correct pronunciation, which is of course Target. If you were to ask many women were they love to shop the most, they very likely would say Target. Of course, this is for most average women, and not necessarily for the people who are very wealthy, because we think of Target as being a store more for the average person who is not rich or very wealthy.
In the United States, the holiday season really begins at Thanksgiving which this year was on November 27th.
A little while before Thanksgiving, some stores, not all, but some, start putting out their Christmas stock and begin to decorate their stores for Christmas by putting up special displays, decorating with colored lights for Christmas and putting out all the holiday goods which the stores hope to sell for Christmas. Some stores begin doing this even before Thanksgiving, but after the Thanksgiving holiday virtually all the stores are decorating and getting ready for the Christmas holiday.
For almost an entire month one can hear Christmas music playing in all the stores, over and over again. It is nice at first, but hearing the same Christmas songs over and over again can get old pretty fast. After a while one can get pretty tired of hearing the same songs played constantly on the radio and in the stores. It is beautiful music, but maybe too much of a good thing.
It is good to have the holidays over and to start the new year. Everyone is ready to get back to normal after the hectic holiday season.
