Christmas Eve...

[fajrdrako]

A momentary pause between finishing housework and going out with my friends. It's been a great day - any day that starts with writing a story has to be good, right? And I got to listen to John Barrowman: A Musical Christmas while doing the housework, and that made it a pleasure.

I think my little budgie Logan is tired from just watching me!

Can't believe it's Christmas Eve, with no snow. Usually it's thick on the ground by now, and snowing heavily on Christmas Eve itself. Many's the time I've gone to carol services trudging through heavy snowfall.... As one of my friends said yesterday, "It's December but it looks and feels like April."

Merry Christmas!

Comments

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Bear with me; I just mistakenly deleted my entire almost-completed reply, so... sigh.

Snow. Talking about snow. Snow and Christmas...

When I was little, it was keenly important to me that -- even if there was no snow on the ground -- it had to be cold enough that it could snow after I'd gone to bed, so that there would be snow for Santa's sleigh to land on. I didn't have to see the snow myself; it was enough that my mother assured me that it was cold enough for it, and there you go. You see, there was something about the snow that made the sleigh possible -- this is highly intrinsic physics.

Earlier this week, it was 62 degrees F here in SW Pennsylvania, which was near a record for this time of year. The news types did mention that the actual record high had been 64, and it had happened in 1964.

This clarified a memory for me. I distinctly remember one Christmas Eve, in the early evening, when I was concerned enough that it was clearly too warm for any possibility of snow that night, so I approached my mother as she sat having a Grown-Up conversation with her father, my Bappy, who lived with us till I was nearly eight. I had a serious topic to broach: how was Santa's sleigh going to land? I am (now, at my current angle of view, all these years later) not sure she caught my unstated reference to the necessary factor of the snow making possible the full functionality of the sleigh. To my question, my Bappy answered, "On the roof," politely enough to a five-year-old, and then they kept on with their conversation. This didn't entirely satisfy my worries, but I could not figure out how to ask the question again; and, I was troubled enough by the cognitive dissonance of the moment that I have remembered this exchange as clearly as if it happened only last year. Thanks to the near-record high temperature from earlier this week, I now am pretty sure that that exchange happened in 1964, when I was less than a month away from turning six. I'm glad to know this, as both Bappy and Mother are celebrating Christmas away from me (but together) now, and I cannot ask either of them.

No snow on the ground here, either, right now, but it's plenty cold -- the sleigh will have no trouble, I'm sure.

Merry Christmas to you and Logan!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Snow and sleigh. There's a logic to that. I mean, a sleigh was invented just to travel on snow. So it stands to reason that even a flying sleigh would need snow just to exist.

I certainly remember the Christmas of 1955, when I got a toy truck for Christmas and was able to play in the sand in the back yard with it - no snow in sight. Not very cold, either, as I remember, though not nearly as warm as 62F.

I don't remember 1964 so well...

From me: Merry Christmas! From Logan: Chirp!