not complaining

It's a beautiful, sunny day in my corner of Georgia. 

As I drove home from the library after storytime today, my carful of children sang along with the radio, "In the meadow we can build a snowman..." and "Sleigh bells ring..."  The Santa who had been giving out books at the library wore his typical fur hat, but he was in short sleeves.  I wondered over this little incongruity that we perpetuate every year around this time.

Here's a picture I took for you as we stopped to get the mail on the way in today: 

(Please excuse the gaping garage. My boys discovered that the electronic eye that trips the garage door has a circuit board in it.  Anything with a circuit board in it must be torn apart, examined, and left in dying pieces all over the floor.  I blame their father.)

Standing on the running board of my SUV, songs about snow and hot chocolate blaring out the open door, I took this picture.  Today.  One week before Christmas Eve.  Are you seeing the disconnect here?  Sleigh bells?  Snowmen?  We need some Georgia Christmas songs!

We are apparently just south of the part of the world that tilts so far away from the sun each year that the precipitation becomes solid, coating the ground and giving rise to all those images of rosy cheeks, mittens, fireplaces, and snowmen.  Because we certainly get enough precipitation, it just doesn't stick around long enough for anybody to write songs about it.  

As a child in the mountains of North Carolina, I stood inside the porch door every Christmas Eve, my breath making cloudy circles on the glass as I looked up at the sky, hoping for the one thing that makes or breaks Christmas in all the songs. Snow. It did snow there sometimes, but it was over in late January or so, when it couldn't possibly be mistaken for a belated Christmas gift.  Now that we're farther south than that, I don't even bother to look up. And, honestly, we chose this.  We lived in the snow and ice for six winters, and when it was time to leave, we drove straight south without looking back.  We very much enjoy the mild winters to which we've quickly become accustomed.

But my children.  My poor children, none of whom remember ever having lived above the 33rd parallel, wait and watch every year.  "When it snows, den it will be Christmas!" says my four year old confidently. 

Poor baby.  There's really nothing wrong with the type of Christmas you'll have.  It's just...somebody else wrote your Christmas songs. 

~Mother Bird~