We in the South have been dreaming of a white Christmas since the song hit the air. We'll be waiting till the cows come home I guess. White Christmases in the South are few and far between. Maybe some places here have them. On top of Monteagle Mountain, maybe (Tennessee), or Old Grassy, here in Georgia. Even they are more prone to get their snows in March or April. Here, we have rain. It's raining buckets right now. And maybe it will actually turn cold. "We might be gonna get us a cold spell," Daddy would say. I never had a sled. I once asked Mama why I never got a sled for Christmas, and she just looked at me and laughed. I might as well've been from another planet, the way that woman looked at me.
And yet, we did once get a snow. I don't mean a snow, snow. We get those sometimes, the stray flurry. Or once in a blue moon, the actual snow that "lays." (A laying snow, around here, is one that makes maybe a half inch; or, every in awhile, that luxurious, deep, lovely layer of a foot of snow. I've seen about three of those in my lifetime. But no, I mean once we got a SNOW. A blizzard. The Blizzard of '93 crippled the South. Remind me to tell you sometime about my experience of the Blizzard of '93. I lived to tell about it. Some didn't. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I remain in awe at the thought of it. But it was in March. Not December. I'm still dreaming of a white Christmas.
Need more humor about snow in the South?
An Inch of Snow and Southern Schools is my essay on our reaction to snow:
http://www.southernmuse.com/southern/snowclass.html
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