Christmas is almost here and I have to vent, just for a moment.  I am not a Grinch or a Scrooge but I have to say that I would be fine if it is a long, long time before I hear White Christmas by Bing Crosby or anyone else for that matter. 

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas – Just like the ones I used to know”

JUST like the ones I used to know?

My usual Christmas during my life spent in Ohio, Kentucky, Texas and Alabama has been snow free many, many more times than it has been snowy.

“Where the tree tops glisten – And children listen -To hear sleigh bells in the snow”

I have never in my life heard sleigh bells in the snow.

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas – With every Christmas card I write”

These days I write only a few Christmas cards, does that translate into dreaming less about a White Christmas?

According to a NOAA National Climatic Data Center based on weather data collected from 1981 to 2010, there is only one large city in America that consistently more than a 70% chance of a White Christmas and that is Minneapolis. In fact, in the Lower 48 states only 24.8% have a White Christmas.

So, we end up having sentimental “memories” that perhaps never existed and we set up Christmas to be this sentimental experience that has high odds of disappointment for most of us and obviously the further South you live, the more likely that the sentimentality of the song makes no sense to your personal history.

Let me suggest that we listen a little less to White Christmas and a little more to Do You Hear What I Hear?

Pray for peace, people everywhere!
Listen to what I say!
The Child, the Child, sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light

Instead of dreaming for something that we have absolutely no control over and is very likely to disappoint us, let’s pray and work for peace for people everywhere and to bring light to a world that seems to be getting darker all the time.

Perhaps old Mr. Scrooge would say, even AFTER the encounters with the three Spirits, “every idiot who goes about with a ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas ‘ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”