“Just Like the Ones We Used to Know”

My Christmas wish for you, dear Reader, is that you are reading this Christmas post (prepared and scheduled a day or two before Christmas day) on December 26 or later. If you celebrate Christmas at all, I hope you’re too busy enjoying the day to be on line, reading our blog!

A white Christmas! Not just a skiff of snow, but about a foot of the real thing. We’ve had snow over much of the last week. As is to be expected, there’s some rain mixed in, and forecast for more of the same through Christmas afternoon, but it is a White Christmas, “just like the ones we used to know.” Further, this Christmas will be just us two, Michelle and I, as Aly will spend the season with her cousins down south.

Our baby girl came to us after 10 years of marriage. We spent some of those Christmases with family, when we either traveled to be with them, or they traveled to be with us. But I pursued a professional radio career, a profession not known for its generous time off; most years proved difficult to get away at Christmas time. Most of our Christmas celebrations in those years involved just the two of us.

Sing it, Bing! (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

My personal Christmas fantasy back then involved us celebrating the day snug and cozy, bound ’round by deep Christmas snows. This didn’t happen often. My jobs took us to California and Texas, where Christmas day sometimes meant closing all the drapes to keep out the sunshine so that we could pretend we had snow.

One year, in Amarillo, Texas, we really did get a white Christmas. As Program Director of the radio station I worked for at the time, I’d set a rock solid schedule of staffers who were single, and welcomed the chance to have something to do on Christmas day. This assured that I’d be free of work duties for one day, and could focus on celebrating Christmas.

Unfortunately, that White Christmas, freighted down from Canada on a “blue norther,” shut down the Texas panhandle. None of the staff could get to work! I lived close enough to the station that I could walk, and, as an Alaskan, I had the experience to make the hike through 4 feet of snow. Michelle and I scooped up some candles, Christmas cookies, and a few other items, and headed to the station, where we spent our Christmas evening. To add insult to injury, our audience were the type of people who barely tolerated Christmas music. They had decided that we were allowed to play it until noon on Christmas day, after which it must cease. Not on my watch!

This is not a cherished Christmas memory for me! I look back on many other of those Christmases for pleasant memories. A small handful even had snow in more manageable amounts.

Now, we live the dream, keeping our cozy little Christmases in our forest cabin, on the edge of what Dylan Thomas might recognize as his “carol-singing sea.” And, while not all of them are white, some, like this one, are.

Merry Christmas from the Zeiger Family Homestead.