Silent Night, Snowy Perfect Night

(Photo: Alicia Ross, 2017on Facebook. View from the Overlook)

I wrote this piece in 2021, back when I had less than 50 free subscribers. Three years later in 2024, I have almost 700 paid and free subscribers. Thank you all!! Because few people go back and read old stuff, I’m reposting this piece, because it IS Christmas for me. If you read it originally or if it’s new, I hope you enjoy. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

We don’t seem to get good winters anymore, not the clean, deep snow kind. Even here in Troy, NY, notorious for historically snowy winters, we’ve had very mild winters for most of the years I’ve lived here. They’ve certainly not been the legendary winters that have prompted just about everyone I’ve met to comment, “You moved to Troy? How have you handled your awful winters and all that snow?” Climate change has shifted weather patterns over the last couple of years so that NYC has been the place of crippling snow storms, while we, 150 miles to the north, have had much less, at least in the city. But this is not a story about Troy and snow.

The winters of my childhood in Gilbertsville were full of snow. They were the classic winters portrayed in children’s books and nostalgic movies, filled with deep snowfalls, sledding down hills, and snowball fights with my brother and romping through the snow with my dog. Winter in Gilbertsville was made for children.

At that time, we had the classic upstate weather, on the edge of the same snowbelt that makes living in Syracuse in the winter a snowy hell. Was the snow worse in Otsego County because it is on the edge of the Catskills? Or did it get residual lake effect snow from the Great Lakes? I don’t know, all I know is that when I was a child, we often had snow from Thanksgiving through Easter. Maybe our parents were pretty sick of it by February, but we kids loved every minute of it.

Our house was at the top of a hill, above the village, with a gorgeous view of the valley below. Behind our house rose another decently steep hill. It was level at the top, and held a corn field, but between the cornfield and our house was perhaps a quarter mile of lightly wooded areas, scrub pine trees, patches of grasslands, and a few large outcroppings of stone. During the summer and fall, my brother and I roamed the hill, picked wild blackberries, apples and pears, but during the winter, we carved an awesome sledding run.

During the summer months, a natural path used by both people and deer meandered up the hill. When we had a heavy rain, or spring snow melt, that path had water running down the center of it, draining into a larger trench we dug to divert the water away from the house. After a big snowfall it was the basis of our sledding path.

Back in these Jurassic days, parents bundled their kids in their one-piece snowsuits and sturdy boots, made sure their hats and mittens were firmly attached to heads and hands and sent kids out to play all day. No one supervised us, and parents didn’t overly worry that you would get yourself injured or killed, or get kidnapped, or even get sick. My brother and I didn’t live near any other kids, so we played together all day, and had a great time. When we got too cold, we’d shake the snow from our suits and hats, go inside, have some lunch, or hot chocolate, put the snowsuits back on, and go out again until it started to get dark.

We played seriously and hard. We both had our wooden sleds, which we pulled halfway up the hill, and then we’d zoom down towards the house, racing down the pathway, and ending up on our lawn. Sometimes we’d crash and roll, sometimes we’d plow into a snowdrift and come to an abrupt halt. When the melted snow stream froze over, our sled run was even faster, and more fun.

One year, we got those aluminum snow saucers, which were basically giant concave pans with handles on each side. You sat cross-legged on the pan and pushed off. They were much faster than the sleds. They skimmed over the surface of the snow without cutting tracks through it, but you had less control over your speed or steering ability. I distinctly remember one snowy day. We had been using the saucers the day before, and that night there was a drop in temperature. The next day, the snow was crispy with a thick coating of ice, and our saucer path looked like a bobsled run with icy curved sides.

My brother Mark, who has always been fearless, did his first saucer run. He came zooming down the hill, shot over our garden space, and was still speeding across the lawn. We had a pretty big lawn. He was headed for edge of the lawn, and had to ditch at the last minute, or he would have gone right into the road. I tried it and steered myself into a big snow pile. It was too  fast and scary for me. Unfortunately for Mark, my mother happened to see what was going on, and that was the end of saucering until the ice crust melted and the path was much less speedy.

Even as a child, I was one of those curious and introspective little kids who noticed everything. I remember sledding through patches of burdock, and the sprigs of frozen vegetation poking up through the deep snow. I remember the specific color of brown that looked so stark and beautiful against the white snow. One of the rock outcroppings near our house jutted out on top, creating its own little open cave underneath. In the winter, water dripped down and froze, the icicles both big and small shining in the sun as they melted. There was so much simple beauty around us, enriching our lives.

Christmas was the heart of winter. Christmas in Gilbertsville was a good as it got, for both adults and children. Every Christmas season, the Presbyterian church presented a holiday cantata, a sacred musical piece with a large volunteer choir and the church’s magnificent organ. My Mom had been recruited to sing alto, and regularly went to rehearsals, and then the rest of the family attended the performance.

The village of Gilbertsville has three churches. The Presbyterian church is the largest, a beautiful stone late-Victorian building with gorgeous stained-glass windows. The Baptist church is a couple of blocks away, a red brick 19th century church. On the outskirts of town is the third and smallest church, a classic New England-style wood-framed Episcopal church.

All the churches decorated for the Christmas holidays. With the concerts as a seasonal event, the Presbyterian church was beautifully decorated, with garlands and wreaths of fresh pine, with red ribbons and pine cones, and decorative poinsettia plants. The Christmas cantata was a beautifully presented piece, with the choir arranged in the apse, with the organ rising behind them. The lights were low in the church, the choir sang about the birth of Jesus, and the gifts of the Magi, and the angelic choir.

The church smelled like the local forests from which the boughs came, mixed with beeswax from the polished pews and the arrays of candles.  It was beautiful and peaceful, the only other sounds besides the choir was an occasional muffled cough, and the sound of restless children squirming on the seats.

Christmas Eve was the night that Santa Claus came to Gilbertsville. They still have Santa to this day, as they’ve done for a hundred years. Every Christmas Eve they had an event at the Overlook, the park directly opposite the Major’s Inn. Parents, kids and people from all over the village would gather, sing Christmas carols around the town Christmas tree, and then Santa would rush in with his ho-ho-hoes, with a huge bag of stockings for every child. In the middle of the small park was some high ground with a paved balcony space, with a sturdy stone wall, where you could see down the main commercial street and into the village, hence the “Overlook.”

With his back to the balcony wall, Santa and his village helpers would distribute a mesh stocking to every child, filled with candy canes and other sweets and a large orange. He knew all of us by name, and where we lived. I remember the first time my brother and I stood in that line, the first Christmas we had in Gilbertsville. When Santa got to us, he said, “Ho, ho, it’s Mark and Suzanne Spellen, from up this very hill!” We were gobsmacked. How did he know that? He said that he would be coming up the road to our house in a few hours. He knew exactly where we lived, and described the house, and named our parents. He knew everything!! We were in awe.

As Mark and I got older, we learned that Santa had been played by Mr. Stebbins, the grandfather of one of my brother’s classmates. It was a role he had played with great gusto for many years before and after that Christmas. Gilbertsville was small enough that he, like many people in town, knew where everyone lived, and between his own knowledge of the local kids, and being filled in by his “helpers,” he could indeed name every child. Still, that knowledge takes nothing away from the joy and awe that the children of Gilbertsville felt on Christmas Eve. It was a beautiful tradition.

But after Christmas at the Overlook, we still had to go to Mass. Since Mom was the organist at our Catholic church, there was no chance we were going to miss Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, one of the most important services in the church year. There were lots of carols, lots of liturgical singing, and lots of organ and choir music to play. Midnight Mass has always been a misnomer. It doesn’t take place at midnight, but generally at 10pm. Carols started at 9:30.

One Christmas Eve was so special that it’s a memory that I still cherish. I was probably around 10 years old.

We set out for Midnight Mass around 9pm, after the Santa event and caroling was long over. It was snowing and started to snow even harder. We drove to the Catholic church in Morris, about 7 miles away, a trip that usually took about 15 minutes. Dad had to drive slowly, as the roads were snowy and slippery, and the plows were few and far between. But we got there, and the service got out around 11pm.

When we left the church, the entire world was covered in snow. It had snowed almost a foot since we had gone inside. We had to clean off the car, and slowly head home. The plows had not been able to keep up with the snowfall, and the roads were covered with the white stuff and were treacherous. Fortunately, the road between Morris and Gilbertsville does not have steep hills. We were pretty much alone on the road, because almost all our parish lived in the town of Morris and didn’t have far to go. No one else was crazy enough to be out that night.

When we finally got back to Gilbertsville, we inched past the Major’s Inn and the Overlook and its Christmas tree, the lights still shining in the dark. We turned onto the Academy Hill road leading out of the village and up to our house. We got about as far as the old Gilbertsville Free Academy building, still technically in town, barely up the hill, but where the road took a turn and started to get steep. We couldn’t do it. The tires were spinning in the foot-deep snow, as the road underneath became icy. My father backed down the hill, got a good head start from the other direction and tried again. He got to about the same spot and could go no further. We were not getting up that hill in the car that night.

So, he backed down once again and parked the car on the street. We were all bundled up in our coats, boots, hats and gloves, and we started to walk up the hill.

It was a gorgeous, perfect night. The air was crisp, but it wasn’t especially cold, perhaps just at 32 degrees, and there was no wind. The snow fell around us in fat, wet flakes. It was almost midnight, and there seemed to be no one else on earth. There were no plows or vehicles. It was so quiet, all we could hear was the snow crunching under our feet. There were a couple of streetlights at the beginning of our trip up the hill, but as soon as we rounded the corner just above the Academy, we were no longer in the village, and the streetlights ended.

Yet, the night was bright from the reflected snow, and although it was midnight, we had no problem seeing the road, or the surrounding roadside. There were only two other houses between the edge of the village and our house, none of us lived within shouting distance of each other. There was no need to call for help, we just kept walking, and about a quarter of a mile later, we reached our house, wet and tired, but safe and secure. The twinkling Christmas lights on our house welcomed us home.

It was so beautiful, I remember thinking it would have been a perfect time for angels to descend, or to see the Star of Bethlehem in the sky. The memory of that walk is indelibly carved into my mind, I’ll never forget the quiet, the crunch of our boots, and how bright the night was. I remember the cloudy puffs of breath rising in the air as we talked and huffed up the hill. Mark and I wondered what we were getting for Christmas, and if Santa was stuck in the snow, too. We were assured that Santa saw snowstorms worse than this at the North Pole. Besides, he had a sleigh.

We weren’t scared, my Mom started us singing Christmas carols as we walked, and in between bouts of holy silence, we kids laughed at the joy of something unexpected, adventurous and surprisingly beautiful. It was indeed a silent and holy night, when all the world was covered in a blanket of white, and a family walked in the snow towards the comfort of home and hearth and Christmas morning.