I’ve missed only one Christmas with some sort of family.
Even today I can remember the pangs of loneliness while trying to steel myself with a cavalier attitude. I was 20 and attending school in the north of England. A dorm mate invited me to spend the day with her family down south.
At the time I was sharing a house with two older gentlemen who kept rigid control of a thermostat that never allowed your clothing to get drier than damp.
Eager for warmth on all levels, I hopped a series of trains to my friend Carol’s house. Their hospitality remains with me to this day. We pulled the traditional Christmas crackers, wearing the flimsy paper hats the rest of the day. We played games. Carol’s younger sisters found everything I said absolutely hilarious.
The next day I took a boat across the Irish Sea to Dublin where I met a classmate from Colorado to spend the rest of the holiday touring the southern coast. I don’t think I dried out until March, the cold and wet were so pervasive.
It also didn’t help that everything we wore — this was the 1970s — was denim. My shoes were likely tennis shoes with cotton tops.
Americans disproportionately talk about the weather, according to my Salvadoran daughter-in-law Violeta, where the temperature generally ranges from 70 to 90 degrees year-round. Salvadorans can best distinguish the seasons in their Camelot by an increase in the night-time rains.
Earthquakes are their primary concern, which is no small thing, but don’t occur enough to bring up in casual conversations.
Which is the point of talking about the weather. It’s a universal launch pad when greeting others because in most parts of the world it changes from day to day, and the older you get it oddly takes on more significance; which I can’t explain. Perhaps it’s an escape mechanism.
Increasingly, at day’s end I find myself looking at the world’s weather patterns. Thursday evening I noted how little rain the world in general was receiving, with only Brisbane, Australia, the United Kingdom, California and the Midwest registering any significant rainfall.
Earlier that day, I had held off sending the newspaper to press until the last minute with the hope we could update the news that the United Nations Security Council had passed a resolution to send desperately needed aid to the Gaza Strip. It didn’t happen.
For five days, representatives have been debating the terms of the relief while an estimated 2.22 million Palestinians are on the brink of starvation due to the horrific war between Israel and Hamas.
Christmas has a way of bringing up long-repressed memories. And unattainable hopes.
But I’ll never stop praying for world peace.
