Ever spent Christmas in tropical weather with no snow? No, Yarmouth doesn’t count.
When I finished high school I spent a year in Southern California and it was a year of firsts. Christmas was a major letdown. Christmas morning arrived bright, sunny and warm, same as the previous 180 days and we all went to the beach. It just felt wrong! After a few days my cousin and some of her friends took me up in the mountains around Big Bear on a quest for snow. As we climbed in elevation it started to look like fall, then it was just evergreens and finally near the summit some of the white stuff. After a quick snowball fight, I was ready for more Southern California sunshine and warm temps.
Then a few years ago I spent the week before Christmas in Barbados. The radio station blared all kinds of Christmas songs, most of them reggae, dub and dancehall and I have to admit I really liked hearing the stuff as we lounged by the pool. But honestly, it made me homesick for Nova Scotia. Arriving home just days before the big day, it was the most hectic and chaotic few days of my life trying to get the tree up, do Christmas shopping and put the holiday plans in place.
Looking back on Christmases in Nova Scotia, I’m pretty sure there were more “green” Christmases than “white” Christmases, and I now realize that what I was missing was home and family, not a blanket of snow.
