Being in NZ I will get to experience the events of the holiday season well before you folks in North America: be it Christmas morning, eating too much junk and having an extra helping at dinner time. Then there will be the inevitable Boxing Day madness, the lull until New Year, and then realization we have a whole year to go to do it all again.
My best wishes to all the team at Canon, and all the other contributers to this site for a safe, relaxing and happy holiday season, wherever and however you spend it.
Taken with the venerable EOS 650D and the even older EF 28-90
Happy Holidays everyone.
@adamsc wrote:For interest, I would like to see it in a learning view! For composition, I would like to say something about the quality, It is great. The ones where the dark ends close to the fuzzy red ball does appeal to me as much.
Hi Adam, and welcome to the forum! 
Not sure by what you mean as a "learning view". I am guessing you mean with all of the EXIF data. If the photo is meant to be presented as a work art or skill I would normally do that. People take photos for many reasons and I like to consider those when evaluating an image. When looking at an image I like to know both the settings and the context: i.e. the purpose and constraints to get it.
In this case the purpose was simply to wish my fellow forum members a happy holiday season, taken on a whim and thus not conceived as a work of merit. Constraints - it was taken in rush hour, taken in a relatively dark location in the main train station, where the tree was further obscured by passers-by and small, carbon-base life-forms checking it out. It was, frankly, a snapshot, taken with one of the oldest and most humble lenses available from Canon. You are right though, it does not compare with the carefully chosen image that followed - which of course is the better composition. But different circumstances, different contexts. Sometimes it's the thought that counts. 
For more considered, yet still not too serious images from me on the same subject, see the thread on this group "Photo Challenge, What is Christmas Like Where You Are?".
I hope you will contribute to the forum and this thread and look forward to enjoying your posts.
