Blogger: Sensitizing Ourselves to the Colors of the Season

Holiday songs yearn for the first snows that will blanket the landscape in crystalline white. But as a die-hard gardener, I want to protest — not so fast! I have come to appreciate more and more how subtle nature becomes as it greets the New Year. Especially I find myself drawn to the vivid rust reds and evergreens that pop up together amid the unrelenting grays and faded straw tones of the landscape.

Unfortunately, some folks with a particular form of colorblindness, deuteranopia, will see only nasty mustard yellows when the two colors are viewed side by side. But for rest of us, natural red-green color combinations can be a subtle yet compelling wake-up call to our senses. Green is the signal to go ahead; red is the color to stop. Maybe that accounts for some of the emotional impact of red and green in Holiday decorations — subliminal and contradictory messages the two evoke in our brains.

One thing I discovered as I broke out my trusty camera, those riveting bursts of red and green that break the monochrome of our December are everywhere. We need to take the time to enjoy them now, before all that white stuff takes over.