Malicious Christmas

One of Southern California’s greatest pleasures has been the genteel art of gloating. Our letters, photographs and, especially, postcards have reveled in the warm winter weather--not for itself alone, but for the sly joy of lording it over snowbound, frostbitten friends and relatives in the East and Midwest.

Postcards often showed winter contrasts--picking oranges versus trudging through snow--and printed verses conveyed the point: “In the land where oranges grow and Christmas comes without any snow . . . “

Even affectionate Christmas notes exuded a tinge of triumph: “Suppose you are all froze up while we have beautiful flowers blooming everywhere,” says one. “All sitting on the piazza now with the thermometer over 70 & not a bit of wind,” brags another. The prose may be more elegant than today’s, but the sentiments haven’t changed in a century.