December '17

Supreme Sock Council devoted its December session to reconciling with the decreased levels of sunlight. At this time of year, the illumination of Mother Earth is at its yearly low. The Council found inspiration in an ancient northern European pagan tribe, who adorned their abodes with evergreen twigs, in order to keep up their hopes for the quick advent of better-lit (and warmer) days. We set out to test this method on one of the Sock Councilors. We have equipped this brave colleague with a sackful of spruce twigs and sent him out into the Krušné hory wilderness near Vejprty to examine the positive effect of evergreen needles on human morale. Our colleague returned in seventy-five minutes, claiming the method worked perfectly and testifying that, in spite of the cold, rain and scant clothing, he was experiencing tremendous euphoria. We feared this conclusion may have been too rash and voted in favor of sentencing our test subject to spending one night in a non-heated cellar, accompanied only by the European silver fir. Our colleague’s irritability the following morning took us by surprise at first. However, we soon realized that we mistakenly switched off not only the heating, by the lights as well, robbing him of the opportunity to admire the aforementioned evergreen. A sudden subsequent pneumonia-induced sick leave forced us to discontinue the experiment. Nevertheless, we reached the consensus that the positive effects evergreen needles produce on a person’s hibernal humor have been proven. To symbolize this scientific achievement, we depict a tree on your newest sock addition.