This is a very personally felt theme for me - I grew up in South America, and essentially, every Christmas for me felt like July! For me personally the contrast was heightened when I moved up here and found Christmas in winter, after all. But I will never forget the bizarre retailing fiction so elaborately set up to hoodwink people into buying into a climatological condition they would NEVER, most likely, come to know - commodity fetish at its best.
Shop sales and Christmas retail decorations - including fake pasted snowflakes, styrofoam snowy covers, green conifers and Arctic Santas - all showed up in the context of 90 degree heat and summer vacation! A typical Christmas celebration included opening up presents, then heading for the beach.
This seemed an odd incongruity that the commodities market imposed on us south of the Equator dwellers - this fixation on winter weather in the height of summer - and all attendant imagery - and it's a form of cultural schizophrenia which has, if anything, gotten worse. But you know, when you're a kid, all you care about is loot so we didn't mind too much :D
So that's why I chose to draw what i drew - a memory of a typical storefront in a context of summer haze. As well am trying out a loose form quick sketching style - I have always admired those who can quickly (like newspaper or magazine cartoonists - draw something quick. So am trying it out.
On another note, I actually participated in a crafts/flea market fair titled 'Christmas in July' this past weekend!
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