And Then it Snowed: My Christmas Memory

Looking back on my childhood, I realize how much of a brat I really was. If Santa only gave gifts to the good boys and girls, I would never have received a present until I was about nine years old, just lumps of coal each year. I honestly do not think that I became a decent person until I was on the verge of puberty. Maybe that's why I always suspected that Santa Clause was not real.

We had just moved to Switzerland that summer from the warm summer of the Philippines and I was fascinated by the promise of a snowy white Christmas.

"When will it snow?" I asked.

"Maybe tomorrow" my parents assured me.

"When will it snow?" I persisted day after day every morning until I was disappointed by the lack of frozen crystals outside my window. September passed, October passed, November passed and we rolled into December. I persisted the way only a six year old could until I finally lost hope. Was snow just another fairy tale fabrication?

As Christmas approached I became more and more disheartened.

"It's never going to snow!" I said definitively before I stormed to bed and screamed into my pillow. I fell asleep to the angry chorus in my head. 'It's never going to snow! This is so stupid. Why don't we go back to the Philippines! I hate this country!' I was determined to be angry, to be bratty, to punish my parents for not delivering the snow that they had promised me.

The next morning, when the sun peaked through my shutters I looked out to see a glassy finish over the plants on our apartment's balcony. Frost. Hmm. Frost isn't snow. I stormed out to the living room for breakfast, grumpy again that the day had not given me my promised snow. My parents, tired of my tantrums simply ignored me, determined not to appease my bad behavior further. My sisters shook their heads and lamented how spoiled their youngest sibling had become.

I spent that day watching Christmas specials of people bundled up in heavy coats frolicking in this white powder that blanketed the ground. I allowed it to fuel my righteous indignation until I began to fall asleep on the floral patterned sofa.

I was exhausted! Being petulant was tiring, after all.

"Kitty!" My father called me. "Kitty! Come here!"

My father had called me from the balcony where the family had already gathered. I trudged outside, a blanket clung tightly to my shoulders.

"What?" I snapped.

"Brat!" One of my sisters screamed "Look up!"

I turned my eyes skyward and saw the fluttering of what looked like far off powder falling towards me. Snow?

My sisters drew me near, my childishness and all and softly began to sing the first French Christmas song we had learned.

"Il est ne le divin enfants..." the eldest began.

We giggled and argued about the questionable chorus as none of us had attained fluency in French.

But it was snow. For the first time, I experienced a white Christmas. Snow began as slush, then turned into a light sprinkling of white powder, then it turned into blankets covering the Alps in the distance. I spent that season fascinated by this weather phenomena, lured by it's diamond shine.

"You see, Kitty?" my sister teased "Our parents turned on the snow!"