16 December 2003
What are the odds on a white christmas? Why does it matter so damned much, anyway?
Anna saysAccording to one BBC article:
Bookmakers have slashed the odds on a white Christmas to the shortest price for 20 years....So there we are....Coral is now offering odds of 6/5 for snow on 25 December, and some bookmakers face a six-figure payout if there is a white Christmas...
...William Hill has cut the odds on snowfall in Glasgow from 11/4 to 6/4 and London and Manchester are now quoted at 11/4, with Cardiff the 7/2 outsider...
With the exciting news that it seems to be socially acceptable and not barking at all to bet on the fucking weather.
For goodness sake.
Apparently it happens every year, and although I've never met anyone that has actually placed a bet on the weather, it would seem that it is accepted as quite a normal thing to do.
Perhaps people do it all year and I don't know.
Perhaps if I sauntered into William Hill and told them that I wanted to place a bet on whether it would be sunny on the second thursday of April, in Glasgow, they would be fine with that.
Actually, they probably would. They'd know I'd lose.
I have a feeling though that it's more acceptable to place a bet on a white Christmas than it is a sunny day in Glasgow.
Because there's this great expectation that Christmas should be white. That we should wake up on Christmas morning to find snowdrifts pearched artistically on our windowsills, icicles hanging from our guttering, soft flakes, fluttering down, creating a perfect amount of snow for sledging, snowpeople and throwing at each other.
Why do we expect Christmas to be white?
Because we're told it should be, that it used to be, that whether the weather in this country agrees or not, snow is just what is meant to happen on Christmas Day.
Well, the films tell us so, don't they?
The cartoons too?
It must be true.
It said so in a book? A comic? A painting?
Then obviously it must be true.
It has to be true. I heard it in a song.
"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas... Just like the ones we used to know..."
Well, I'm sorry to point this out, but the ones I used to know were grey, bitter cold and usually piss-wet to boot.
Perhaps when he sang of 'the ones he used to know', he wasn't thinking of Britain, I don't know.
Perhaps he was brought up in Siberia.
Or if not, I can bet anything that he was singing about some scenic place in North America, where snow all winter is pretty much guaranteed. Montana, Alaska, the Yukon, wherever.
Probably not West London, that's all.
So you can see how I may have found the sing disappointing as I was growing up.
The problem was, I was taught the same by carols;
See amid the winter's snow....
or
In the deep midwinter...(blahblah blah)... snow was falling, snow on snow, snow-oh-oh on snow...
As far as I was concerned, the Baby Jesus was born in a snowdrift, and Mary would have been better off with a skidoo or a pack of huskies than a donkey.
Or at least a donkey in snowshoes.
So we've been taught to expect it, and while it may be true that of my 25 years of experience, I have more legs than I do White Christmasses (I have two legs), I will still be thoroughly expecting my Christmas to be romantic and snow-covered.
Why is it so very important? Why is it so very nice?
I love snow. I have no shame in saying it. I love snow. It makes me bounce.
It does that 'world looking clean and new like an unwritten page thing' that I like.
And I suppose any other day but Christmas, that one day of the year when I don't feel like I should be doing something else, anything serious or worky, I'm given license to bounce and sledge, and make angels and just enjoy being childish or silly or alive or cold or whatever.
On other days snow would become 'something to trudge through in order to get somewhere else'. Two days after Christmas it might be that.
But on Christmas day, snow is just Snow.
It just is. It's something to look at and something to play in.
And that's got to be a good thing.
I imagine.
I'm imagining that that would be a good thing.
Obviously, I wouldn't know, because it never fucking happens.
Maybe it will.
I'm not going to take a bet. Of course not, that would be something like insanity.
But I don't mind if you do.
And I hope you win.
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