Having lived in North Texas for most of my life, I have grown accustomed to a few harsh but inevitable realities. One of those realities, of course, is the fact that, for several months of the year, the climate around these parts is like something out of Dante's Inferno, and stepping out of the front door during this time of year inevitably means stepping into a blast furnace. (I often find myself wondering why the people who founded Dallas didn't name it after the city of Dis instead of an obscure one-term vice-president). Another of those realities is that, as cold as it may get in these parts - and let's be honest, fellow Dallasites, it doesn't get that cold that often - the likelihood that we're going to get snow at all during any given winter is pretty slim. Ice or sleet are more common, and on the rare occasions when we do get snow, it usually melts not long after hitting the ground instead of sticking around long enough to create a pretty winter landscape.
Now, it hasn't always been like this. I'm old enough to remember when we had real winters down here, and would occasionally get enough snow to make snowmen with, or snow angels, or frozen projectiles with which to pelt our older brothers in the head. Of course, even in those days snow wasn't all that frequent, and when we did get it we weren't usually adequately prepared for it. I still recall that my mother, before allowing us to go outside and play in the snow, would make us tie bread sacks over our shoes since we didn't own snow boots. In any event, those days are now long gone, and with climate change doing its number on the planet, the days when we get snow here in the Metromess seem destined to be fewer and farther between with each passing year. I shudder sometimes to think about the world we're leaving to future generations, and wonder if kids 100 years from now will even know what snow is or the joys of playing in it. It should be no surprise, then, that in all my life I have yet to experience a white Christmas, and have grown accustomed to the idea that I would probably never get to.
You can imagine my pleasant surprise, then, at the fact that we got snow today, and that temperatures were low enough that some of it actually accumulated. Not much - we got maybe an inch or so at the most - but enough to make things pretty, and to put smiles on the faces of my nephew and niece. I wanted to make a snowman, my first in years, but unfortunately we didn't have enough of the frozen stuff to consider making anything beyond perhaps a snowfetus, so I settled for making what might charitably be referred to as the world's ugliest snowangel. And so it was that fun was had by adults and children alike on my very first white Christmas.
A week from now, we will be finally, thankfully closing out a decade that by any measure has been pretty horrible. The decade began with a weird sort of funk hanging over it, due to all the apocalyptic predictions that didn't play out as many expected they would - Y2K didn't cripple the world's electronics, Jesus didn't come back and kickstart the great tribulation, and 'N Sync's No Strings Attached didn't cause a mass epidemic of people bleeding out through their ears. And then, after everyone let their guards down, shit began hitting the fan. For me, the misery began early with the death of my mother. A few months later, terrorists would fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And it seemed that with every passing day, my life and the world I observed around me came more and more to resemble the plot line of a Roland Emmerich film - Afghanistan, Iraq, New Orleans, you name it.
As the decade concludes, we are left dealing with many of the same anxieties and problems that have been with us throughout most of the last 10 years. Many of us who saw hope in the outcome of the last election have had to deal with the reality that one election, by itself, isn't going to be nearly enough to undo all the damage that's been done. I've been plenty vocal enough in expressing my disappointment at how things have played out since last November, but putting that all aside I'd like to think that today's little miracle is a good omen of some sort, a sign that however the next decade unfolds, what we will be left with at its end is a better country and a better world than what we went into it with. On the news tonight, they said that this is the first white Christmas we've had here in North Texas since the 1920's. If we can get snow here on Christmas, teetering as we all are on the brink of impending environmental disaster, I believe that anything's possible.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, whatever holiday you choose to observe.