Houston is an amazing place! Hot, humid, buggy, takes up a large....really large land mass.
I was raised in Houston and I have a love/hate relationship with it. When I was growing up the people were wonderful and there was so much for a child to do. Back then most people considered Houston as redneck central but school children were taken to the Houston Symphony several times a year. I remember going to the opera too. I'm old enough to have gone to baseball games at Colt 45 stadium before the Astrodome was built. Now the Astrodome is no longer used for baseball.
On the other hand there was always something strange about wearing shorts on Christmas Day. I live in Oklahoma now and I like having seasons. I don't miss the traffic. I don't miss it taking an hour and more to get across town when traffic was running smoothly.
Sounds like Phoenix, and I have some experience there with the weirdness of wearing shorts on Christmas day.
Even weirder to be spraying fake snow on the front window displays ;~D