Christmas in Connecticut

It is never like the movie. We go every three or four years & I do not remember the last time it snowed. It has been pretty damn cold though!

Also my parents' house is nothing like that one (or the one in Bringing up Baby, which is the same house). The truth is, I have never managed to sit through Christmas in Connecticut, but I love Bringing up Baby, so I feel qualified to comment on the house.

I doubt my mother has made it through Bringing up Baby because of her antipathy for all things Katherine Hepburn. As it happens, one of my two favorite christmas movies stars Katherine Hepburn. I watch The Desk Set every year, often more than once. My other favorite christmas movie is Comfort & Joy. Mostly, these movies take place at christmastime, christmas happening is the background, but that is the whole christmas involvement.

This year, we were planning to spend christmas in CT & a white christmas was expected. After multiple days of snow & more on the horizon, all our flights were canceled & we will spend the holiday here, uselessly. I know my mother is very disappointed. & we are sorry not to see people. But I was genuinely dreading a white christmas. I have lost my taste for all things cold: I drink hot tea in summer, I do not even like ice cream unless it is on a plate with a warm piece of pie. It is 54F right moment & that is plenty chilly for me.

So far, I have planned a small holiday dinner for christmas day. On christmas eve we are going to Stephen Foster to see the light display. Previous new years days have been spent at Homasassa Springs (where my mother saw her first bald eagle in the wild). Maybe it is time that we stopped putting plastic snowmen in front yards that will never see snow & start observing this season not as a shadow of what our great-great-grandparents may have had in the old country but what it is now, right where we are.