Where’s My White Christmas?

I know we’re to blame
With our stockings full of plastic tat.
Wagyu burgers, fast cars,
and bargain EasyJet flights.

But where’s my White Christmas?

My childhood Christmas was icy and cold.
We pelted each other with snowballs, built forts,
skated precariously across half-frozen lakes.
Thought The Snowman was a documentary.

But now Christmas is all drizzle and mizzle,
raining cats and dogs, good weather for ducks.
Washing steaming on radiators,
safe from showers and dreich.

Glove and scarf makers must be going out of business,
and who wears a coat when an umbrella will do?

I want to believe them
when they say there’ll be snow at Christmas.
I want to walk in a winter wonderland,
where snow is falling and treetops glisten.
I want to hear sleigh bells
in the frosty air.

Where’s my White Christmas?

It feels easier to time-travel
back to the 1980s
than to stop climate change.

I close my eyes and there’s my White Christmas.

Waking up to that fairy-tale white landscape,
blue skies and a hazy sun.
Bobble hat pulled low over a too-short fringe cut by Mum,
woollen gloves useless for gathering snow,
cheap anorak that let in all the cold,
hoping Ready Brek for breakfast would keep me glowing.

Running out to roll and pirouette, revelling in the frosty powder,
before the cold hit and we retreated inside
for hot chocolate and The Dukes of Hazzard.

The snow had gone when we drew back
the curtains on Boxing Day morning.
Such a shame.
It was okay really: we knew
Christmas would always be white.

It never was again.
But maybe this year?