Every year I promise myself not to get caught up in the frantic rush of Christmas and each year I find myself ensnared. Not unpleasantly, you understand. I've actually grown to enjoy it. ("Grown to" is an interesting phrase. I first "grew out of" and now I've "grown to".) It has become fun. When you have an eleven year old boy, how can it not be? I still grouse and complain about the commercialism and all that, but I do love Christmas. In my heart I love it. I just try not to let on.
It just occurred to me that I haven't heard
Bing Crosby sing
White Christmas this year. But wait.
Here's a link to
Elvis singing it.
When I was a kid, I dreamt a lot about a white Christmas. I don't recall that we ever had one, but it didn't matter. The dreaming was enough. Just imagining what I would do
if the snow came. I was always trying to find some definitive evidence that Santa Claus existed. Reason told me it was impossible for an overweight guy in a sleigh pulled by tiny, flying reindeer to cover so much territory in one night. Still, I had no real proof that he
didn't exist. A little snow on Christmas Eve would be all I needed. It would be impossible for him to get in and out of our house without leaving sleigh tracks, footprints, reindeer droppings. Some trace.
Now that I live in New York I do see a white Christmas now and then, but I've never think to check for footprints in the snow. Hmmm.
And so it was that tonight's theme became Christmas trees and lights. From Wales, Virginia, North Carolina and Louisiana.
