Priscilla M. Jensen

I must have seen it in a movie, one of the old black and white ones: jovial carolers coming into the manor, brushing the snow off their shoulders and stamping their feet. Or rosy-cheeked sledders whacking their boots against the doorstep as the fluffy stuff obligingly disperses. That’s not the way it works in north Georgia, where I remember about four or five childhood snows. Soggy, 35-degree snows. Snows that bring down pine trees onto every powerline in ten counties. Snows that nevertheless thrill the hearts of schoolchildren, who almost instantly find that they’re not equipped for their Alpine fantasies. That was not mitten country, or sweater country, or even often warm hat country.

On Christmas Eve it began to snow. No one believed it at first; Christmas snow is very rare here and usually the hot air from our nation’s capital a few miles away keeps it too warm. But it was Christmas Eve and it was snowing, late in the afternoon before all the light was gone, a snowglobe snow that stopped us in our bustlings and meltdowns and general atmosphere of excited dread. It was just magical. The children were old enough not to count on snow and young enough to think of it as entirely fitting. And they were old enough to know some songs and young enough not to be embarrassed all that much by their parents. “Let’s go caroling,” I said. We’d unpacked the Santa hats; they and various wreaths of those silver sleigh bells were already lost around the house.