First Snow — A Lost Holiday

Daily writing prompt

Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.

I’ve already invented a holiday, although I don’t really celebrate it any more, because as I’ve gotten older, it’s become harder to get anyone to buy into it. Also, some years I don’t get to celebrate it at all, or not until late, for reasons you will see in a bit.

My holiday is called First Snow. And it’s exactly what it sounds like — it celebrates the first substantial snow of the season. That’s defined as enough snowfall that the grass is mostly obscured and it will still be there in the morning. Flurries aren’t enough if they don’t cover the ground.

To celebrate it, one must have snow. The celebrants can do this either indoors with a bowl of snow or outdoors. When I was younger and more durable, my friends and I would sit outside in the snow.

One must also have a mug of something to drink. This has varied over the years from hot chocolate to blackberry brandy. The idea is to pass around the mug and drink toasts, and the first toast is always “To the snow”. As the toasts go on, it’s harder to find things to drink toasts to, and that’s part of the point, to get creative with the toasts. When the mug is empty, it’s refilled until the participants run out of toasts. The last swallow of each mug is emptied into the ground. The idea is not to get drunk, so generally alcoholic first snows don’t last as long.

Like I said, I don’t celebrate this anymore. As an older adult, I have grown impatient with the need to figure out whether there’s enough snow, and too shy to ask others to inconvenience themselves on a busy evening. It’s an ill-advised holiday when one is no longer a student with the semi-communal life of unmarried friends. But while it lasted, it was a bonding experience with my friends.

A Green Christmas

Christmas rituals

Every year, my husband and I hold our Christmas rituals dear. Decking the living room with lit garlands, decking the porch as well, setting out the creche that I grew up with, playing Christmas songs, editing the next Christmas romance, watching Christmas movies, turning on the Christmas tree.¹

The one ritual we’re missing

It hasn’t snowed appreciably here in northwest Missouri, and this means we haven’t celebrated one of our yearly rituals. For 35 years (give or take a few), I have celebrated the first snow. There has been no snow this year, and no snow in the forseeable forecast.

Whether alone or with friends, I have performed the ritual of First Snow:

Wait till at least one inch of fresh snow has fallen and it’s night out
Gather a bowl full of snow (or, alternatively, sit out in the snow)²
Grab a cup of preferred beverage³
Drink toasts to various things as your imagination grabs you⁴
Pass the cup around (pre-COVID)⁵
Always begin and end with “To the Snow”
When done, dump the last bit of the cup into the snow

First Snow, by its climatological nature, is impromptu. Generally, there’s not more than a few hours of warning. This has meant that anywhere from one (myself) to eight (friends) have met up for it.

But, as far as I know, it’s not happening this year according to the weather forecast. I guess I will have to enjoy my green Christmas

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The Christmas tree hides in the parlor. We literally just turn the lights on in the Christmas season. During the worst of COVID, we turned the lights back on all summer.
When I was younger, I sat out in the snow. Not anymore.
This beverage has ranged from blackberry brandy drunk out of a mug in a city park to hot chocolate with brandy on my balcony to plain hot chocolate in my living room.
The later in the round of toasts it is, the stranger and funnier the toasts grow. Especially if the contents of the cup are high-proof. For examples of toasts, click here.
Under COVID, it’s just me and my husband.

First Snow

To the snow.
To those who have gone before us.
To a warm house.
To work, which warms our house.
To our friends, and to our pets.
To our family, near and far.
To laughter, may we have it in abundance.
To the snow.

— First Snow, 11/18/18, Maryville MO

First Snow — postscript

We received four inches of snow here in Maryville, Missouri to give us a white Christmas. Because it didn’t fall until after 10 PM, we could not celebrate First Snow last night, and so we celebrated it this afternoon with a big festive bowl of snow in the living room and a small mug of mighty Irish coffee to share.

It was Richard’s first First Snow, and as he’s the first one I’ve initiated into the mysteries of First Snow in over 20 years, it was fun to hear his toasts. His toasts addressed very concrete realities of our political and social environment, which is not surprising, given his Master’s degree in History. My toasts addressed more creative/mystical/connectedness themes (those of you who have ever known me, your ears should be burning!)

While Richard poured the last sip of the Irish coffee out into the snow, I followed him out with a snowball in my hands and pelted him with it. I guess we have a new part to the tradition 🙂

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Merry Christmas, Joyous Yule, Happy Hanukkah (late, right?), Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Birthday to all you Christmas babies. Can you say “Happy Festivus”, or is that a contradiction of terms? Happy Holidays to all.

As always, I invite you to write back. If you want to do so by Twitter, I’m lleachie on Twitter. I’m also lleachie on Instagram.

Let there be peace on Earth.

First Snow Lives On.

My husband read my passage on First Snow yesterday, and he asked a lot of questions:

“Did you get this ritual from somewhere?” I believe I invented it in December of 1984. There are friends of mine who now have their own rituals. Sometimes they post on Facebook and tell me they miss me. I miss them too.
“Do you celebrate it every year?” I’ve missed a lot of years. One time I was in the hospital and missed it. Some years we don’t get snow in November and December, and it seems too late if the first snow happens in February.
“What are the rules?” Funny you should ask:

There has to be enough snow expected to cover the grass outside — at least one inch.
You need one person minimum, and there’s no set maximum. However, as you can’t plan ahead of time, the number of participants is limited by who’s available. It’s harder to have guests as you get older or live in a small town.
You can either sit in the snow and cold, or bring a bowl of snow inside.
Participant(s) will toast with a beverage associated with wintertime. This includes, but is not limited to, eggnog, hot mulled cider, mulled wine, wassail, brandy, or blackberry brandy. Regardless of how many participants, there’s only one cup.You can fill the mug more than once. It’s a ritual; we don’t care about germs.
The cup is passed around in a circle. Each participant takes a sip of it and proposes a toast. The first toast is always “To the snow”. The last toast is usually very silly, as all the important things have been toasted to earlier. They get sillier more quickly if the mug contains an alcohol-based fortifying beverage.
The toasting ends when all the beverage is gone or all have run out of ideas for toasts. Or frozen to death.

Over the years, I’ve collected stories around First Snow. There was the year (ah! my college days!) when three of us decided to sit on the Old Stone Bridge in Champaign, a small arch over a creek, toasting the First Snow with a mug of blackberry brandy, swathed in an old sleeping bag — and in violation of park rules twice over, with the alcohol and the lateness of the hour. And then the cop showed up. I piped up and told him we were celebrating the first snow and this was hot cider. I babbled out the whole ritual to him. The cop looked down, likely incredulous, and instructed us to finish quickly. It makes me sad to think that if we had not been white college students, it could have ended badly.

The best toast ever was made by Jon Jay Obermark, on a balcony that bravely held eight people and a mug of cheap brandy (E&J, what else?). “To that star up there … and that star there … and that star over there!”

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It turns out there will be a snow tonight in Maryville. A first snow for the season.

Richard and I will bring in a bowl of snow as the honored guest, and drink a mug of Irish coffee, my only alcohol for the year. Outside, darkness will press on the windows, and in the First Snow ritual, we will find the light in fellowship. The first toast we will drink will be to the snow; the second, to the people from our past and present, scattered all over the world.

“Through the years, we all will be together,

if the fates allow … “

First Snow — a Christmas scene

Years ago, I wrote a story called “First Snow”. I searched my crypt of past writing for a copy so I could post it here, but I have no copy. The only copy of the story resided on a computer system/community that no longer exists called PLATO. (For those who spent time on PLATO before there was an internet to play with, I was lleach/pasrf, lleachie/pasrf, laurie/pasrf, and lauren/pasrf. Also mylovelifeis/cursed). If you’re interested in the system that had chat capabilities, advice notesfiles, and serious, unwashed gamers while the Internet slept in someone’s dreams, check out this book: The Friendly Orange Glow

I have the choice of lamenting the loss of a pretty little vignette, or I could try to rewrite it like I am doing with Whose Hearts are Mountains.

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Through the years we all will be together,
if the fates allow …

Snugging up my coat and tightening my scarf with mittened hands, I stepped out the door of the computer lab. I noticed it had started to snow while I stared at the terminal typing to wraithlike friends, sharing myself more freely than I did in real life.

The first snow of the season crunched underfoot as I walked under the streetlamp, surrounded by the old, settled buildings of the engineering campus. I had heard the rumor that the University would tear the old University Fire Department down for a shiny Public Safety complex. I shook my head; the squat, grimy beauty of the current building would be no more. Too many changes. I stepped forward, because there was no way to walk but forward.

The night seemed bereft of people, of noise; nothing except me and the silence. And my thoughts.

My best friends would graduate soon. First, Mike, who would be gone in three days before I could ask him what his family was like. Then Alex would graduate in spring. Others had already drifted away, and I would not hear their stories again. That was the problem with holding people to my heart — they drifted away, and I would let them go.

The snow fell in earnest, shrouding all familiar landmarks in a coat of white. Street lights and phone poles stood starkly against the billows. My footprints stood in stark relief as I turned around and viewed them, the only footprints marring the snow. Each step was into uncharted territory; each footprint showed that I had survived that part of the journey, but that I had survived it alone.

Alone — no, not alone. I held the memories of my friends; I held their stories. There would be no new stories when they left, no new memories made, but there would be what I held now.

As I crossed from the campus to the shady streets of Urbana, I stopped in front of the University High School, its Gothic hulk softened by snow. I glanced up at the streetlight — an old-fashioned globe light — to see the swirling snow fashion it into a star of sorts, close enough, and I let my husky voice rise:

… through the years, we all will be together,
if the Fates allow —
hang a shining star upon the highest bough …

And that was what I would do when I got home. I would decorate the tree in my tiny apartment, hanging the star at the top, and drink a toast to memories and to the first snow. Like snow, friendships could melt at a moment’s notice, but memories would last.

Rituals and word counts.

Thank you for keeping up, friends! I made the 20,000 mark today after swearing to write 3,000 words today despite not feeling well. I had time to write during my lunch hour, so I decided to stay on the goal. Specific, measurable, action-oriented, realistic, time-bound.

Honestly, I’m not a horribly organized person who drives toward goals except at NaNo time. I meander most of the year, play with words, set soft goals. NaNo time is different — it’s as NaNo is a ritual I satisfy yearly to belong to my tribe of creatives. It’s like my version of an all-night drumming circle at Midsummer or my First Snow ritual that I no longer hold because nobody’s calendars are clear on that random November night when we get our first inch of snow.

I have to go to class now — don’t tell anyone.

Do you want to read an excerpt tonight? Please let me know!