Does anyone have a favorite White Christmas story?

I was wondering who out there has a favorite White Christmas memory.

Mine would probably be the Christmas of '89.  At the time I still lived with my parents (going to college) and we left Bloomington Illinois, right smack dab in the center of the state and headed north to my grandparents in Minnesota.  As we started out the temperature was probably about 35 degrees and it was raining.  It was definitely one of those cold, gray, soak-to-the-bone miserable kind of rains.  By the time we reached the Wisconsin state line the rain turned to freezing rain and driving was treacherous.  That freezing rain quickly turned over to snow which only lasted until about Madison, Wisconsin.  By this time the temperature was about 25 degrees and the sky was starting to clear but the temperatures were starting to drop.

We had a new vehicle that year and for the first time we had an outdoor thermometer in the van.  We entertained ourselves by watching the thermometer count down--20 degrees, 10 degrees, 0 degrees by about noon.  Then the temperatures really dropped as we lost sunlight.  -5 degrees, -10 degrees, -15 degrees at about sunset.  It was cold enough that we once got out to gas up the van, fully dressed ourselves for the cold (boots, winter coats and all), went in to use the bathroom and by the time we got back the fan was already fully cold soaked and did not warm up until moments before we stopped to grab a bite to eat--maybe 45 minutes later!  Again we donned our winter gear and headed inside, ate and returned to a freezing car.  We drove on another several hours to my grandparents farm on the far west-central side of Minnesota.  The van did eventually warm up a bit inside, but we watched the outside temperature continue to drop -20, -25, and finally bottoming out at -35 as we pulled in to the farm.

This was just in time for a good Minnesota blizzard to hit.  If this sounds like miserable weather, well at the time I was absolutely loving it!  This was like an adventure.  And when the blizzard was gone on Christmas day, the drifted snow left behind was completely untouched and absolutely beautiful!

Personally I love snow and blizzards and where I live now, snow is a rarity and what snow we do get is wet snow that simply falls vertically--none of my students raised in the region even know what a snowdrift is.  I miss wind-driven snow and for me there was nothing like waking up to a Christmas with a good layer of fresh, cold, dry snow on the ground.

So does anyone else have a favorite White Christmas Story/Memory?

Eric

You are reminding me how different the world is in the north country.  I used to love to lay awake at night and listen to the wolf packs hunting.  It was in believable that it could get so cold that lakes and trees could explode. It sounded like cannon.  I agree, while I do appreciate living where 32 degrees is considered cold. I do miss the Christmases where every tree is decked out in white and glistening ice.  It was hauntingly beautiful.

Hey John,

That family farm where I have so many memories is sadly no longer in my family.  I have a lot of memories there and the winter memories were some of the greatest.  Some people would shudder at the thought of the bitter cold, but to me it was always like a friend.  In the evenings we would go down to the basement of the farmhouse and play pool next to a wood stove that pumped out the heat.  Those pool marathons would last hours and go late into the night yet no-one ever got tired or remotely fatigued.  Being an old farmhouse, it was a bit drafty so for bedtime we just piled on the blankets.  That house had no shortage of blankets!  I would sleep under 6-8 inches of blankets in a cold and drafty room depending on the night.  It did not matter as under those covers I was always plenty warm.  And in the morning by sunrise we were always greeted by a beautiful sunrise over fresh snowdrifts that blew in over night.  One of the nice parts of the dry and windy snow was that we could go outside, go snowmobiling, and generally make a mess of the virgin snow, only to have nighttime winds erase any evidence we were ever there.

One rather spectacular memory was watching my grandfather clear the driveway.  Being a farmer, naturally he had a combine.  But in winter he would take off the harvesting headers and instead replace them with a truly world-class snow-blower!  That combine could clear a wide path through deep snow in absolutely no time.  He lived a little over a mile from the main road and his road rarely if ever got plowed so it was really up to him if he wanted to get out of his home and onto the road.  The combine-turned-snow blower was amazing for this application.  But it did not last long as the winds would drift right back in--sometimes very quickly.

A part of me will always miss Minnesota and especially that farm.  It was a great place for childhood memories and I feel a little bad that my own kids won't be able to have the same memories.  I have no regrets at all about where I chose to settle down, but Minnesota is a special place to me and made for wonderful White Christmas's.

Eric

I think it's time for you guys to consider a move up north

It's amazing the difference between Madison (southern WI) and northern WI, MI, MN.  When I was a kid there was always a white Christmas down there but it seemed to be a dreary kind of winter.  All the grey tree trunks and  dirty snow became monotonous.  Now that I live a bit further north it is snowy much more of the winter and the pine/spruce/fir trees that intermingle with the other trees bring a lot of color and life to the snowy woods.  Below is a pic from my front door this morning.

When I was a kid, Dad would snow blow as much snow as he could into one pile so us kids could tunnel into it to make a snow cave.

Mike,

I am pretty well settled in my region and in fact I love the area—I fell in love with the area back when I was in college.

It would be absolutely perfect for me if only it got more snow.

But I can count my blessings that I had all that winter experience—I learned to drive on snow, a skill that locals born around here do not have for lack of practice.  I know what real cold weather is.  I have students who think of cold weather as being anything below freezing.  I remember growing up when we would get at least two nights a year that dropped below -20.  I generally learned to love and embrace winter when it came.

Southern Illinois is a truly beautiful place.  There is a mostly unknown national forest just to my South that enhances the rural character.  It would be perfect were it not for the lack of snow—in my opinion.

Mike, I am sure I would love your region as well.  I have family that live near there so I am familiar and you have wonderful winters—again, in my opinion.  But I suppose that my area makes me appreciate snow that much more.

By the way, we do get snow, but it tends to not last as long.

Eric

I don't know about past, but this year is like a storybook white Christmas here at the edge of the smokies.
it rained all day yesterday's and the night before, at about 4pm ice started falling from the sky, if I had some blue or red flavoring and some straws  I could have made a whole bunch of slushies,
just fore sun was wanting to set the slush turned to a blizzard like white out snowstorm, could hardly see 50 yards outside.
then the power went out and the only sounds were the wood crackiling in the fire
a little reading by the light of the laptop and off to dreamland. waking a few times to stoke the fire, when the sun came out and sleep wiped from the eyes
everything covered in a 6" blanket of white fluffy cold stuff.
called all my friends to wish them a merry merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Bruce!  Your story reminds me of our first snowfall at this house.

The construction was mostly finished—still a couple of outside projects to do.  We moved in on Thanksgiving Day 2004.  The day before we were going to leave for Christmas holidays with family, all was normal outside.

At 3:00 my wife woke me up.  10” of snow had fallen and it was still snowing heavily.  I got to work right away clearing snow, but our driveway is almost 500’ long and the snow was wet and heavy.  I did have a garden tractor/riding mower with a snowplow attached but I had never used it before I started out and pushed about 6” before getting stuck!  I shoveled out with a grain scoop and tried again with similar results.  Eventually I realized that the snowplow was not angled.  Angling the plow gave me several feet before getting stuck.  I managed to clear most of the pad by the garage before heading down the driveway.

Once heading down the driveway, a few feet at a time was not sufficient.  The snow was now about 12” deep and the mower made less and less distance with each pass.  Eventually I used the grain scoop to lower the snow level so the plow could clear the rest.  At this rate I could clear about 25’ at a time before coming to a halt.  Eventually I made it to the end of the driveway.  3 hours had passed and I just barely cleared open a pathway to get the van out.

This was a long, difficult operation, but on the bright side, it was the perfect opportunity to insist that we needed a real tractor!

I will try to get pictures attached in a bit.

Eric

Pictures from our first White Christmas in our then new home.

It may not look like much to some, but for that little riding mower, I was at my max.  It took me 3 hours to get through all the snow.  The last picture is taken a week later after we got back and some melting had taken place.

Eric

Oh yea, speaking of the north country  .....the air!  It just seems fresher with all the odors of the spruce, pine and fir mixed in.  It seems that once we cross midpoint in Wisconsin..say the Dells, the air makes a change for the positive. In MN that would be about Little Falls, and MI would be, say, north of Traverse City.  My wife and I missed our annual trip to MI to get Cherries.  Obviously,  those turn out to be pretty pricey cherries....but not when the fresh air is factored in.