Visitors Bask in the Warmth of L.A. Christmas

Clutching unneeded fur coats, gloves, scarfs and ear muffs, pale-faced refugees from the Big Chill back East arrived in sultry Southern California on Sunday with delight, sun-tan oil and dread of going back.

On the beaches, meanwhile, bare-chested natives frolicked in unseasonably warm temperatures as weather forecasters predicted possible record highs for Christmas.

The high Sunday in downtown Los Angeles was 81 degrees, a bit shy of the 87-degree record for Christmas Eve set in 1985, but still well above the normal high of 67. On Saturday, the downtown temperature did break a record as it reached 86 degrees. That broke the old high of 82 set for the date in 1907.

In San Diego, the temperature reached 79, breaking the 78-degree record set in 1929. The temperature in Santa Ana was 84 Sunday, one degree short of the record.

Fallbrook in San Diego County was the warmest city in the nation with a high of 89.

If little in Southern California conjured up the traditional Christmas vision of sleigh bells, snowballs and skidding temperatures Sunday, some were frankly glad of it.

“I am really happy to be in L.A.,” Lufthansa stewardess Christina Giourdas, who lives in West Berlin, said as she sat outside in a beachfront cafe in Venice. “We don’t have a lot of palms.”

“All I want to do,” declared Linda Kinsey, a Xerox saleswoman from Chicago who had just gotten off the plane at Los International Airport, “is swim and enjoy the heat.”

With the windchill factor ranging from 10 below to zero in her hometown, Kinsey had been wearing an array of warm weather gear as she began her trip, including the fur coat that now sat atop her luggage.

“It was snowing as we were leaving,” she said. “There were flakes all over the place. As soon as I boarded the plane, I went to the washroom and took off some of that stuff.”

Others had the same idea.

“It was fairly busy” back by the washroom, she said.

A parade of people entered the airplane lavatories, only to emerge a few minutes later looking thinner and carrying bags of unneeded long johns, sweaters and woolen socks, she said.

Contentedly enjoying the balmy weather she found in Los Angeles, she flashed a wide smile when asked when she planned to return home. “I don’t want to go back,” she said.

She added she would like to stay here forever, except that her fiance lives in Chicago. He, too, is flying here in a few days for a vacation.

“I couldn’t have him suffering back in Chicago,” she explained.

When Gail Palmer of Long Island, sales director for a medical software firm, started her flight to Los Angeles on Sunday, the windchill factor was a frigid minus 35.

Not surprisingly, she’s looking forward to spending as much time as she can in the sun.

“I brought four bathing suits, two pairs of shorts and five bottles of suntan lotion,” she said.

The walkways at Venice Beach, meanwhile, were crowded with a summertime melange of roller skaters, bike riders, strollers and homeless people.

A few even went down to the sea itself.

One who did was a trumpet player who jokingly identified himself as Joe Incognito.

Stretched out on a blanket just above the high water mark, he propped himself up on his trumpet case and blew the Count Basie rendition of “Sweethearts on Parade” to an audience of sandpipers and sea gulls.

Pausing from his music for a moment, he mused about the scene.

“No, it doesn’t feel like Christmas in terms of what most people think of Christmas--cold, sleigh rides,” he said. “If you were brought up in the East, you think of snowballs. But I’ll take it any time; I’ll take this Christmas.”

The most visible sign of the Christmas season at Venice was provided by Sally Lucas, 37, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. She was sailing down the sidewalk in a motorized wheelchair, decked out in a red Santa cap. Around her neck was a wreath that sparkled with electric lights. Her dog, Buddy, wearing fake antlers, trotted beside her.

“There’s no snow,” she said. “That’s why I have to do this.”

The warm temperatures are expected to linger through today, with a slight cooling trend forecast for Tuesday. Moderate Santa Ana conditions, which made for clear skies and scenic views Sunday, are to die down today and Tuesday, but are expected to return late Thursday and Friday.