I think it is safe to say Christmas is the most important holiday in my family, especially for my mother. Every year on Thanksgiving night, after the meal has been cleared and we’re awake from our post-turkey naps and thinking about second helpings of pumpkin pie, the first viewing of White Christmas happens. When we were kids it was a marathon of all the stop-animation specials like Rudolph, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and our family’s all-time favorite, The Year Without a Santa Claus (“I’m Mister Heat Miser, I’m Mister Sun…”). White Christmas, though, along with the musical Scrooge, are my mom’s go-tos. And she’s infected her children with this strange movie obsession as I’ve watched White Christmas twice already this year and can practically recite the entire movie at this point in my life.
That’s one thing my mom asks for every year: a white Christmas. We had few growing up, Christmas Eve usually cold and dry, and if there were precipitation, it would be rain. Usually the first snow didn’t fall until the new year if we got any at all. In recent years we’ve had snow more often, including the recent Christmas blizzard. This year it looks like it’ll be cold and sunny, the snow having arrived a week early. As I’ve been watching the melt, and dodging dripping icicles, I thought of the crystal approximations of ice on my tree. One reminds me of a lizard tail, and has been around for as long as I can remember. And the others are three recent ornaments that arrived from my friend Sandra the other day. On the eve of the darkest day of the year, any substance that refracts light is a welcome sight.
