In the spirit of the Holiday Season that is almost upon us, I offer a few polarized images...some of which even contain the red and greens...with hope they may provide some visual refreshment.

(While testing my home-made polarization filters with potassium acetate (Micscape, November 2006), I also trotted out that old favorite, ascorbic acid. I made no particular effort to prepare these slides. I placed a tiny amount of the acid crystals on a clean slide, added a drop or two of water and ground the chemical until it dissolved.  Then I placed the slide under a heat lamp and allowed it to quickly evaporate. Voilá, I had a slide ready to be viewed under polarizing filters. Perhaps not the purest method but it did give me the following.)