21

Yes, 21 - that's how many shopping days remain until Christmas. I suspect your local retailers are keeping you well informed of this. Here's a photo of one of our local malls, the Bay Centre, all dolled up for the season.

Mallshots

Deck the Malls....

The rain let up yesterday afternoon so I joined a lot of other Victorians Christmas shopping downtown. The DVBA (Downtown Victoria Businessmen's Association) provides wandering groups of carolers for music in the streets as in the photo above. In the Bay Centre mall the classy duo below rendered some smooth variations on Christmas themes for shoppers. Though it was a Sunday, many people were out trying to avoid that last minute rush.

Christmas Colours

Here's some Christmas colour from a recent trip to one of our local malls. All the red and green we see at this time of year has me wondering about the colours we associate with certain festive times. Christmas is clearly red and green. The poinsettias in these photos are a good example and branches of holly are another. This colour theme is further expressed by Santa's red suit and the evergreen Christmas tree and other green decorations that are so common at this time of year. Other holidays have other colours. Halloween is denoted by orange and black. Easter seems to be a little less defined but I always think of yellow and purple. For the techies: I am still shooting with the Super-Takumar 1:1.8 55 mm manual focus lens and grow fonder of it every day.

Malls

It was another gray and gloomy day today so I thought I'd visit our only downtown mall. This is the Bay Centre, a fairly modest mall by most standards since it lacks a water park, zoo, etc. There are other malls in Victoria but they tend to be on the outskirts of town and are one-level affairs surrounded by vast parking lots. It was quiet here today but on the weekend it will be crowded with people doing their Christmas shopping.