The Miracle of the Christmas Snow
Another reflection of holidays past
When you get old like I am, Christmas tends to be more about reminiscing than it is about this year’s holiday. With Christmas almost here, I am going to post memories of Christmases past. This year has been a roller coaster. I shouldn’t be here typing on my laptop. When my Cardiologist came into the room to give me the results of my heart catheterization he said, “I don’t know how you are alive.” My cardiac arteries were almost completely blocked, and he was amazed I hadn’t died of a heart attack quite some time ago. I had open heart surgery within days of the test results and after only one brief complication, I have fully recovered.
It’s hard to explain the feeling of being blessed to be alive and the guilt that I didn’t die when people close to me lost their battles with cancer, illness, accidents, and age this year. This is a becoming “It’s A Wonderful Life” Christmas as God let me live again.
My second Christmas memory I’ll share is the miracle of the Christmas snow.
My hometown of Syracuse, New York averages almost one hundred and thirty inches of snow every winter. I never knew a Christmas without snow when Christmas 1978 began to get closer and there wasn’t a flake to be seen or even a hint of snow. Living in Syracuse you learn to look at the sky, day or night, and within seconds tell if its going to snow. You can feel it your bones, you can smell the approach of a storm.
To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Could it be Christmas without snow? Bing Crosby dreamt of one, you couldn’t dash through dead leaves and mud, and it began to snow when God let George Bailey live again.
I was in my senior year of high school which put me on the verge of so much change that it was beginning to accumulate like the snow I was wishing would dump on the rundown streets of my neighborhood.
It was also my last time serving Midnight Mass at Our Lady of Solace, the Catholic Church at the end of my street where I was baptized, received my First Communion, and where I told the priest that I had lied four times every single time I went to confession. I really didn’t know what to say so those were my go-to sins from first grade through the last time I went to confession in eight grade, before I graduated from Our Lady of Solace Grammar School.
Midnight Mass was my favorite Mass to serve. I had been an altar boy at the service since I became an altar boy in fifth grade. I’d never sat in the congregation for this one, I only knew it from the view of the altar. I would get to the church early because I loved the way it looked at night. The streetlights filtered through the stained-glass windows and the smell of the pine garland decorations with the splash of the red poinsettias, made our little church magical.
Before Mass I listened to the radio in our kitchen, listening vainly for the weather report to say that we could expect six inches of snow before sunrise, but all the announcer had were apologies that he had to read the bad news that it was clear without a cloud in the sky. He tried to make up for this by saying that Santa had great flying weather, but it was little consolation.
I went into the living room to see if the TV news at 11 had any better news. The best they could do is show the Santa radar from the B-52 base in Rome, New York where the Strategic Air Command took an hour off every Christmas Eve to stop watching for Soviet nukes and turn their tracking equipment north to follow Saint Nick.
I gave up any hope of a White Christmas and headed up the street to Mass. I took one last look at the sky before I went inside and saw nothing but stars and my frosted breath.
Mass turned out to be a sad occasion, it being my last and the fact that there wouldn’t be snow. The choir singing the Hallelujah chorus briefly brightened my spirit. Then it happened. I went to dump the incense charcoal in the parking lot. This was one of my favorite tasks because I loved the way the burning charcoal sizzled in the snow.
“Oh great,” I thought, “no sizzle.”
I opened the back door and took one step before sliding and almost falling.
It was snowing. Not only was it snowing, it was a blizzard. In the hour that we had been in Mass the cars in the parking lot were already covered. I dumped the censor and heard the great sizzle. I danced around before realizing I had to get back up to the altar.
My friend noticed that my cassock was wet when I took my seat next to him.
“What happened to you?” he whispered.
“It’s snowing,” I said trying my best to maintain a whisper.
He looked at me in disbelief.
“Actually, it’s a white out,” I added before letting a small laugh escape. I cringed and tried to look pious.
The Mass slowed down to a crawl as I looked at my watch in thirty second intervals because I couldn’t wait to get outside. When the Mass finally ended, and we walked down the main aisle of the church, I resisted the temptation to yell out to the congregation that it was snowing.
I ran to the basement when we were done, tore off my cassock and grabbed my coat. I went out into the parking lot where most people were brushing off their cars while others stared up at the sky in wonder.
I ran to my house overwhelmed with joy, it was a miracle, snow on Christmas Eve just when I had given up hope. I started to open the front door, but I realized I didn’t want to go inside. I began running again, down the hill toward the Super Duper where I had worked the past four years to pay my tuition at Bishop Grimes High School.
I wanted to bang on the windows like George Bailey did to Mr. Potter.
“Merry Christmas Mr. Gordon,” I would shout to my miserly boss who also gave me angry looks all the time. It was a great plan with two flaws. Mr. Gordon was home because the store was long closed and if I banged on the windows, I would set off the alarm, the police would be called, and I would spend the rest of Christmas in the Syracuse Public Safety Building jail.
So, I just ran through the streets of my neighborhood, quietly yelling “Merry Christmas” to the darkened houses. I ran for blocks, my boundless energy buoyed by the miracle snowfall.
The neighborhood had been transformed. The snow had covered up the signs of decay. The drab was now dazzling, the occasional decorated houses shone like holiday beacons. I did not have to worry about any groups of teenagers waiting to harass and offer a beating for my being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I finally tired and headed home. I quickly got in bed to get warm, I hadn’t realized how cold I had become from my journey around the neighborhood. I pulled back the curtain so I could see our backyard and watched the snow until I finally fell asleep.
When I woke up, I ran downstairs, not to see the presents under the tree but to look outside and see how much snow had fallen. I looked out the picture window into the front yard and was stunned. The roads hadn’t been plowed and I could see the big lumps that were my neighbor’s cars buried in their driveways.
My father was in the kitchen listening to the radio news and I heard them say that the storm had brought over fifteen inches of snow. The city was completely unprepared because nothing was forecasted, and the Public Works had a skeleton staff because of the holiday. It would take most of the day to get the plows out and the streets cleared.
Somehow, we still made it to Christmas dinner at my Aunt Eva’s house as we did every year, where the house was crammed with my aunts, uncles and fifty cousins. I didn’t mind having to hug and kiss all eight of my father’s sisters because I was still elated by the snow and I got to tell them I had been accepted at Syracuse University. I also didn’t mind being told to eat something because I was too skinny. I did enjoy having the envelopes with money being discreetly handed to me. I don’t know why it was a secret, but all of my aunts did it the same way.
I now live on the beach in Florida where the chances of a white Christmas are a negative fifteen percent. The snow is gone as well as almost all of my aunts and uncles, but I still hear them in Aunt Eva’s basement laughing and saying the occasional swear word in Italian because of the kids. I do miss Christmas snow, trudging through the fields with snow up to my knees at the tree farm looking for the perfect tree and Midnight Mass in the little church where I grew up. But those memories will last as long as I’m still here because the part of my heart that didn’t need to be fixed was the place kept for special remembrances like the Christmas in 1978.