I was nine when I experienced my first white Christmas. My memory may be a little rose-tinted but we’d set off to walk to midnight mass at Our Lady of the Annunciation in Addiscombe – probably a mile or so. It was cold but not snowing and about 9.30 in the evening as we were serving so had to get everything ready for what would be the full on smells and bells service.
During mass – almost perfectly – it snowed and when we set out home the roads were covered with a pristine layer of snow. We walked the old organist home (he was over eighty and a little wobbly) and set out home. And it started to snow again. Perfect.
Today our relationship with snow seems angry – we don’t seem to take in its beauty. To look in awe at the way in which it covers blemished places making them fine and grand again. We run headlines saying: “Fury of the travellers grounded by snow storms” or “Transport chaos: blizzards bring Britain to standstill as more snow on way” and “Snow-hit Britain: another day of chaos as roads and airports are closed”. Snow is an obstacle to our lives, it interrupts our frantic scuttling about doing important things…we care more about whether the bookies will pay out on a white Christmas than we do about seeing a stunning white blanket out the window on the morning of 25th December.
I like snow and worry that our anger with the inconvenience of the white stuff takes away from the magic it brings. The pleasure of the “snow day”, the excitement of sledging, giggling while we throw snowballs or building the biggest snowman in the village. Pleasures that shouldn’t go away just because we’ve grown up a bit. And to those pleasures us old folk can add a glass of mulled cider or Christmas ale, a log fire and “White Christmas” on the telly. What could be better?
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