Christmas is its own Season

What makes Christmas its own season?  We are well into the Christmas season, with lots of shopping, decorations,  and lights. The weather seasons are what first come to mind. There are four seasons defined as divisions of the year marked by changes in weather, ecology and hours of daylight in our Northern Hemisphere.  In tropical climates there are two or three - rainy and dry are the common ones.   Some calendars in south Asia have a six-season method where there are from one to three seasons between summer and winter.  The two polar regions have two seasons - all sun and no sun. Wikipedia helps us understand  our current experience of the "Christmas season".  Also known as the festive season,the holiday season (mainly in the U.S. and Canada), or simply the holidays - an annually recurring period recognized in many Western and Western-influenced countries that is generally considered to run from late November to early January, defined as incorporating at least Christmas, and usually New Year, and sometimes various other holidays and festivals. Christmastide started as a season of the liturgical year in Christian religions. As you would intuitively know, it changed in the twentieth century with the rise of retail shopping.  The transition to the term 'holiday season' is a North American expression that has come about with increasing secularization.   We're looking at abstracts of birch bark today.  This one is at the Vineland Research Station where there is a little arboretum. We think of the birch as a smooth bark, like the first photo, but a close-up look reveals many different landscapes.