I’m Dreaming of a Whiiiiiiiite Christmas
Christmas did actually used to be white back in the Jurassic Age U.P. I don’t think I can remember even one year when there wasn’t any snow.
Our holiday always officially started at the Methodist Church Christmas Eve service, my favorite time to go to church, mainly because there was a lot less talk and a lot more music than usual. We sang Christmas carols, accompanied by the big old pipe organ, ending with Silent Night by candlelight. After a tour around the town to look at lights, we got to open one present before we went to bed.
Christmas morning we got up early and worked our way through all the rest of the packages. Until sometime around mid-morning, when we traveled the five or six blocks to our grandparents’ house to meet up with our aunts, uncles, and cousins, open a few more presents, and eat bacon and eggs for breakfast.
I don’t much remember what kind of stuff happened after that except that I usually got pretty bored sometime in the middle of the day, which meant that I invented wonderfully constructive activities like picking fights with my brother. Bro’, wherever you are, if you’re reading this, sorry.
It seems like most years we had a big Christmas dinner at Don and Katie’s, maybe sometimes that was at the grandparents’ house too. My uncle was a popular, busy local doc whose holiday was often interrupted by calls to deliver babies and whatnot. One loverly Christmas Day, he diagnosed *me* with the mumps!
It is not a white Christmas here on The Planet Ann Arbor or even in the Yoop as near as I can tell. Actually, gray is the appropriate color around here. I don’t care. The last few weeks have felt like a three-legged race and it’s somewhat miraculous that I managed to pull something together at all.
If you celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas and what all do you remember from when you were a kid? Were there white Christmases?