Becoming a choir teacher was a wonderful career move. I get to enjoy making art everyday with students who learn to appreciate music of all styles and genres. That said, the one genre that has grown the least favorable over the years is the Christmas Carol. Before you start calling me a "Grinch", I still love the beautiful hymns we sing at church, but due to secularization it's not appropriate to sing those songs in schools anymore. So I'm left with the same tunes every year. Tunes that glorify snowy white Christmases, and cold winter afternoons. But how realistic is that anyways? Snowy Christmases mean delayed flights, burst water mains, traffic accidents and grumpy people who are trying to fit in a few last minute errands before the city workers stop clearing the roads (I'd like to see Irving Berlin write a song about that).
Christmas 2010 certainly fit this description perfectly. After a week of poor weather Dublin airport was paralyzed, and unable to accommodate flights. Ice and snow on the motorways made it impossible for people for travel via car, and many were stranded in their own homes as Ireland has few snow removal vehicles. So - we were understandably upset when the flight we had hoped would bring us to Ireland for our first Christmas is nearly 10 years was cancelled. To add insult to injury we hadn't fitted the house for a proper Christmas. We had no presents under the tree, and no groceries with which to make a Christmas meal. Thankfully most of the stores were open on Christmas Eve and we were able to pick up a few necessities to make our first Christmas in St. Louis comfortable. It was also lucky that after some clever Internet searching Andrew managed to find us a flight that got us to Northern Ireland on December 27 - in time to ring in the New Year with his family.
We are certainly very thankful for the time we shared with Andrew's family, but next holiday season I'll be a bit more wise when I start "dreaming of a White Christmas".
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