If we can't define Christmas with snow, let's try food and football

By Kevin Nielsen

December 9, 2005 | A white Christmas seems ideal, but why let weather determine how things will turn out for the holidays? It could be better to let that drunk uncle or what is under the tree determine your mood come Christmas morning and the following week of time off.

It might be that the white Christmases I grew up with were disasters. They didn't make things better but worse, since there were runs on the grocery store's milk and bread and both towns might as well have shut down for the days. For 15 years I sat tucked away from the snow currents. Growing up in Georgia and Florida, snow wasn't common. In Georgia, snow would come about as often as Christmas -- once a year. Snow in the first place was a rarity and as such the odds of it falling on Christmas Day and sticking were quite slim.

A white Christmas never came in those 15 years. There was a close call one Christmas afternoon in Georgia. It involved a flurry which lasted five, maybe 10 minutes and didn't leave even a frosting on the ground. Since it flurried in the afternoon it was gone seconds after each individual flake hit the ground. Frost leaves a better covering and at least gives an illusion of white. The flurry left mud and anything else any normal rain storm would have.

Years earlier in Florida, 1989 to be exact, it wasn't snow but ice that coated everything for Christmas time. Unfortunately a fair amount of Florida's infrastructure, namely telephone poles and electric lines, wasn't up to the task. As ice coated eves, trees and anything else a water particle can rest on, power lines were going down just like the temperature. The mall in Gainesville was without power for an entire day of the busy week before Christmas. Effectively leaving hundreds of men without a one-stop shop for all their last minute gifts they had to buy.

All around the neighborhoods the children were out in force exploring the wonderful world of ice. Kids would fall down since the ice was something completely new. It was like a fantasy, thousands of popsicles to be broken off the roof, trees or even the underside of cars. In short it was a sickening Wonka-like wonderland; thankfully I was smart enough not to grab icicles hanging from the undersides of any vehicles.

Both instances in Florida and Georgia were close to the "perfect" white Christmas in those moderate climates. As for the odds of things actually working out those may be the only times in my lifetime they'll get to see.

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) put together a study in 1995 of the probability of there being a white Christmas in cities in the United States. They used snow depth of 1, 5 and 10 inches as the sole definition of a white Christmas.

Atlanta, Ga., has a 0 percent chance of having a white Christmas involving even 1 inch. So I could consider the Christmas flurry the best they'll ever see. That makes me feel better since I spent the day inside and not playing basketball in my driveway like I had the rest of the week. As for Florida, not a single city has anything but a 0 percent chance.

The Christmases I have spent in Utah I believe have always been white. The chance of having just one inch on the ground for Christmas day in Salt Lake City is a nice 53 percent, according to the NCDC. So when there was snow on the ground just about every Christmas day it wasn't anything different. Christmas Day was the same as all the other monochromatic white, black and grey days that preceded and would follow.

It wasn't a big problem, there is always something to do, but that all changed when old trusty football was caught up in changing things.

The final Aloha Bowl was played on Christmas Day 2000. There wasn't a football game to be watched the afternoon of Dec. 25, 2001. The Hawaii Bowl started up the next year and the inaugural game was played in 2002. In 2004, the same happened again as the game was played on Christmas Eve leaving Christmas Day alone and bored in the afternoon.

The problem was that the many years of Christmas weren't defined by snow so they had to be defined by something else. Presents, ham and football all entered the equation.

As a teenager toys aren't lying around to be played with all day on Christmas and if they were they quickly became boring. Similarly, there was plenty of food during the holiday season making Christmas Day like any other. So football became a big part of Christmas Day. It was the way to get away from the family and the younger siblings and cousins and just not worry about things. In 2001 the game wasn't there to take my mind off the doldrums that inevitably came the afternoon of Christmas. Its kind of like Thanksgiving, without football there wouldn't be as much fun on guy's faces because they would have to talk about things other than sports or who ate the most food.

So when Christmas comes around there is always plenty of reason to celebrate it, but the day itself shouldn't be defined by weather patterns or football games it should be defined by the family, the food and the presents. Let football wait for New Years and let the weather wait because let's face it, there is still another three good months of cold and snow.

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