Snow upon the meadow

Christmas Eve is five days hence. I was replenished with a festive air as I drove into the City today throughout the length of the snowy white fields adjacent the Appleton Side Road and then along the undulating ribbon of highway bordering open farmlands to my mark. As I drove the breeziness was complemented by the sudden appearance of blue sky behind the vapours of cloud which serenely parted across the horizon.

The awakening scene was welcome. It rhymed pleasingly with the German classical music I was listening to in the car as I drove. Tiny plumes of white snow drifted to the ground. This indeed is what Christmas is all about and how I remember it, not with ornamented palm trees and Palmetto ferns to which we have been accustomed for the past decade. Honestly I hadn’t appreciated the deprivation until the sharpness of the season came into focus.

By accident upon my return to the apartment I smelled what I thought were Christmas cookies freshly baked from the oven.  I was mistaken.  It was the aroma of cocoanut from a body lotion recently applied in my absence. Nonetheless it was reminiscent of Christmas scents I once knew. For me reminiscence is what Christmas is all about, remembering Christmas as a child, seeing a blazing fireplace and a glistening ornamented Christmas tree when all the other lights are turned off, recalling family congregations, a large fir Christmas wreath upon the front door, holly and ivy hung about the house, Christmas cards, trudging in heavy snow to church for the midnight service and the gifts we shared with one another, touching upon moments as a child with my sister whether performing a Christmas pagent for our parents or lying beneath the Christmas tree mesmerized by the reflective bulbs and tangling tinsel; setting out cookies and milk for Santa Claus; tiptoeing down the staircase in our pyjamas and robes early on Christmas morning; tobogganing on a mountain of snow in the backyard or skating on a frozen stream in the country; and turkey dinners and flaming plum pudding; the eggnog too was delicious, decorated with grated cinnamon!