We normally celebrate Christmas twice.
The Gregorian calendar Christmas we’ve been spending with my side of the family in recent years. We used to alternate years with Kim’s side of the family, but then my parents’ health started to get precarious and then the plague hit and the bottom line of it is that pretty much for the last decade or so the Gregorian Christmas has either been in Tennessee with my aunt and uncle, in Philadelphia with my parents, or at home with just the four of us. And since both of my parents are gone now and the pandemic is officially over regardless of the actual situation on the ground, this past December we were in Tennessee and it worked out well.
The Julian calendar Christmas we spend with Kim’s side of the family, since they’re Ukrainian and that’s how they roll or at least that’s how they’ve been rolling of late. Apparently Ukraine itself has decided to switch to the Gregorian Christmas because of the Russian invasion, but that shift hasn’t made it out this far west yet. This Christmas should have happened on the 6th, but since we were out of town that day (a series of blog posts that I’m still working on), we ended up scheduling our Julian Christmas for this past Saturday.
And then winter hit.
It has been late October here in Wisconsin since, well, late October. Relatively mild temperatures, fairly dry, the sort of weather that makes you think of bonfires and tailgating rather than Christmas. We had the occasional dusting of light snow but nothing that would make anyone in Wisconsin suspect that it might actually be getting toward winter.
Last Monday night it started snowing in earnest, however, though it was warm enough that we ended up with about three inches of slush instead of the avalanche of snow we were expecting. That’s okay. We raced the storm from O’Hare back to Our Little Town and won, so it worked out pretty well.
Friday, however, the forecasters got it pretty much right. It started to snow in the wee hours of the morning and all day the winds kicked up enough to make it a white-out for long stretches of time. It was a good day to stay home and watch the weather. By the time it was over we had about a foot of new snow on the ground.
The person who laughs at someone clearing six inches of snow in the middle of a snowstorm has never cleared twelve inches of snow at the end of a snowstorm. I ended up clearing the driveway four separate times, but each time was easier than the one before so that worked out well. And then the hind end fell of the thermometer and we’ve been below 0F (which is Damned Cold in Celsius) pretty much ever since. We may see a Fahrenheit temperature with a real square root by Wednesday.
It was in this context that we decided to make the two-hour drive to Kim’s parents’ house for Ukrainian Christmas. The roads were mostly but not entirely plowed, and we had blankets in the car just in case. We picked up Lauren and Max along the way and after some rather slow going on the back roads we made it there just fine.
There was much food and conversation, a veritable feast of pierogies and sausages and related East European foods (and a small stack of pizzelles: Italians, represent!) and a grand time was had by all. Kim’s side of the family is much less stationary than mine so there was a constant swirl of motion throughout, and it worked out just fine.
The Gregorian calendar Christmas we’ve been spending with my side of the family in recent years. We used to alternate years with Kim’s side of the family, but then my parents’ health started to get precarious and then the plague hit and the bottom line of it is that pretty much for the last decade or so the Gregorian Christmas has either been in Tennessee with my aunt and uncle, in Philadelphia with my parents, or at home with just the four of us. And since both of my parents are gone now and the pandemic is officially over regardless of the actual situation on the ground, this past December we were in Tennessee and it worked out well.
The Julian calendar Christmas we spend with Kim’s side of the family, since they’re Ukrainian and that’s how they roll or at least that’s how they’ve been rolling of late. Apparently Ukraine itself has decided to switch to the Gregorian Christmas because of the Russian invasion, but that shift hasn’t made it out this far west yet. This Christmas should have happened on the 6th, but since we were out of town that day (a series of blog posts that I’m still working on), we ended up scheduling our Julian Christmas for this past Saturday.
And then winter hit.
It has been late October here in Wisconsin since, well, late October. Relatively mild temperatures, fairly dry, the sort of weather that makes you think of bonfires and tailgating rather than Christmas. We had the occasional dusting of light snow but nothing that would make anyone in Wisconsin suspect that it might actually be getting toward winter.
Last Monday night it started snowing in earnest, however, though it was warm enough that we ended up with about three inches of slush instead of the avalanche of snow we were expecting. That’s okay. We raced the storm from O’Hare back to Our Little Town and won, so it worked out pretty well.
Friday, however, the forecasters got it pretty much right. It started to snow in the wee hours of the morning and all day the winds kicked up enough to make it a white-out for long stretches of time. It was a good day to stay home and watch the weather. By the time it was over we had about a foot of new snow on the ground.
The person who laughs at someone clearing six inches of snow in the middle of a snowstorm has never cleared twelve inches of snow at the end of a snowstorm. I ended up clearing the driveway four separate times, but each time was easier than the one before so that worked out well. And then the hind end fell of the thermometer and we’ve been below 0F (which is Damned Cold in Celsius) pretty much ever since. We may see a Fahrenheit temperature with a real square root by Wednesday.
It was in this context that we decided to make the two-hour drive to Kim’s parents’ house for Ukrainian Christmas. The roads were mostly but not entirely plowed, and we had blankets in the car just in case. We picked up Lauren and Max along the way and after some rather slow going on the back roads we made it there just fine.
There was much food and conversation, a veritable feast of pierogies and sausages and related East European foods (and a small stack of pizzelles: Italians, represent!) and a grand time was had by all. Kim’s side of the family is much less stationary than mine so there was a constant swirl of motion throughout, and it worked out just fine.
Then came the Dice Game, which we play on both sides of the family these days. This year we had more of the younger kids age into it, and it was a fairly raucous good time though we all agreed that next year there will be No Kitchen Goods as there was definitely a theme among the gifts on the table.
And then there was the ride home, which took much longer than usual since the roads had not magically cleared in the interval, but we made it back safely and then hung out a bit while we worked up the energy to go to bed. You don’t think that takes energy, but it does.
Today we took down our Christmas tree and packed up the decorations so the holiday is officially over for another year, but it has to be said that we got our money’s worth out of the season, yes we did.
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