Surprisingly, there are a handful of things I do like about winter.

For one, I no longer live in fear of pissing off the wrong wasp while I’m outside. I’ve had a pretty bad fear of wasps ever since I had a bad experience with them when I was little. Even though I wasn’t the one who got stung when my older brother, Ryder, thought it was a good idea to kick a small wasp nest that had been built underneath the grill, that was still a traumatizing experience for me. Even as an adult, I will instantly bolt if I see a living wasp anywhere near me, regardless of the situation. I don’t like much of anything that has more than four legs, but wasps are the only insects in Colorado that truly strike fear into my soul. Words cannot describe how glad I am that those fuckers will be stuck in their godforsaken hives or dead for the next six or seven months. 

Also, I do love the holidays! I spent this Thanksgiving with some distant relatives I haven’t seen in over a decade. I overstuffed myself with classic delicious Thanksgiving food, and ended up in a massive food coma no amount of caffeine in the world could get me through. I passed out on the couch for two hours while everyone else shouted at the TV. I think their favorite football team won, though I’m not sure since I didn’t wake up until after the game was over. 

Christmas is my favorite holiday by far, though! Not only is it basically round two of Thanksgiving dinner, but it’s also the one time my mom’s church actually has a sermon I don’t struggle to pay attention to (probably because they use that sermon to rope others into the church, so it has to be a little more intellectually engaging than usual). Plus, most of my family members don’t take the holiday too seriously.

My grandpa Lyle and grandma Connie kind of do, but they also attend ultra-conservative Lutheran churches and take Christianity very seriously, so I’m not surprised. They still host a delicious Christmas Day dinner, give and receive presents, and they don't expect me to dress formally, so they don’t go as far as some conservatives go. However, I've run into a handful of Lutherans who think I'm going to hell because I refuse to wear a dress (or anything formal) on Christmas or at church. The furthest I'm willing to go is take my hat off, but even that's not something I do unless my grandparents ask me to. I've been wearing hats everyday for several years now, so I just don't feel right if I'm not wearing a hat, and always find myself staring down at it longingly, just waiting for the sermon to end so I can put it back on, every time I attend a church that would probably kick me out if I didn't take it off. 

But my grandma Debbie and grandpa Shawn, who always host Christmas Eve dinner and presents, really don’t take Christmas all that seriously. I typically join them a few days before Christmas Eve to bake and decorate Christmas cookies. Only about half of the homemade sugar cookie dough actually gets turned into fully cooked sugar cookies, which is perfectly fine. Nobody’s gotten Salmonella from eating the raw egg dough, and even if we did, I doubt we’d stop eating that shit. It's fricken delicious!

When Christmas Eve finally arrives, I again come to my grandparents’ house in the early morning to help cook Christmas dinner and watch classic Christmas movies. My favorites are Christmas Vacation and Elf. If you’ve ever seen those movies, and understand my sense of humor, you can probably tell why I love them so much. 

By the afternoon, when the table is set, dinner is cooked, and all of my other close relatives arrive, we have a relatively civilized Christmas Eve dinner. While we don't get into fist-fights over politics or chuck huge helpings of cranberries across the table at each other, we still tend to throw each other under the bus a lot, and there are no shortage of very embarrassing and highly TMI stories that get thrown around in the conversation. There's no feeling quite like the one I get when I'm getting roasted by literally everyone for the stupid shit I did as a kid. 

But, the real fun doesn't begin until it's time for dessert and the whipped cream spray cans are taken from their hiding spots in the basement fridge. All hell breaks loose the second someone is armed with a spray can full of whipped cream. Personally, I’m not a fan of eating whipped cream, but I am a huge fan of getting into a whipped cream food fight with the rest of my family!

After every can is emptied, the tables are cleared, dishes are washed, and whipped cream is wiped off the walls or licked up off the floor...by the dogs of course (I know I had y'all for a second there), we finally sit down to exchange gifts. While most of the gifts are genuine, a handful of them are pranks. Most of the prank gifts are underwear, toilet paper, a literal lump of coal, or just an empty box. But, a few of the prank gifts are deliberately meant to scare the recipient.

Several years ago, my grandma wrapped up a realistic rat she got from the Halloween store and gave it to my mom. When Mom ripped off the wrapping paper and popped open the lid of the box, a furry, red-eyed rat jumped out at her, which caused her to scream bloody murder and instinctively throw the box containing the fake rat across the house, nearly taking out the leftover wine and sparkling juice on the kitchen table. That incident has become a family legend, and we were warned that sometime, when we’re least expecting it, one of us will end up with another scare prank as a gift. 

For some reason, I have a strong feeling I’ll be the next recipient of the scare prank gift in the very near future. The toilet paper and underwear are getting old. 

Speaking of stuff like that, I do enjoy the snow when it isn’t getting blown directly into my eyeballs or making driving treacherous, mostly because I do have a very mischievous side. My little brother knows to keep his distance when I’m shoveling or when the snow is just perfect for making snowballs. However, he is also very mischievous, so he’ll launch snowballs at me even though he knows I’m still much bigger and stronger than him, and have no problem picking him up and tossing him face-first into a snowdrift. I know it won’t be long before my little brother gets taller (and likely stronger) than me, so I have to have fun while I can. Soon, the tables will turn, and we both know it. Jack cannot wait. 

I’m also an avid sledder. I can’t ski or skate for shit, but I do love to go sledding, especially since I live so close to a giant hill called Sledding Hill Park. When I first moved to Littleton, I had a pretty bad experience one of the first times I went down that hill. I hit a prairie dog mound at just the right speed and angle to send me skidding down the rest of the hill on my face. Ever since then, I’ve refused to ride down that hill without wearing my motocross helmet. I do not care what people think. I do not want to end up skidding down that hill on my unprotected face ever again. It's totally worth the mocking stares I get whenever I wear my motocross helmet to the sledding hill. Maybe if I bring a can of WD-40 to attempt to recreate that sledding scene from Christmas Vacation, people won't ask me what I need the helmet for. 

People often act like I’d just broken all of my fingers without flinching whenever I tell them I can’t ski. I was born and raised in Colorado. How can I not know how to ski?! Trust me, I’ve tried. My ski trips have all ended badly in one way or another. The first time my dad took me skiing, I didn’t know how to stop and ended up running into an orange barrier thingy. The last time I went skiing was with Clarke during spring break in 2017, and I was so scared of losing control that I went down the entire mountain in the pizza position with my poles scraping the icy snow below. By the time I reached the bottom of the mountain, my legs were numb from being so tense for so long, and I couldn’t walk. I guess skiing just isn't for me, even though I was born and raised in Colorado my whole life. 

Anyway...

I really enjoy Christmas music and putting up Christmas decorations. Mom and I have a Christmas tree for nearly every room in the house, and enough strings of Christmas lights to line the perimeter of every room in our house, twice. If it wasn't illegal, I'd definitely outline my truck with Christmas lights, strap a Christmas deer on the hood, and keep a real Christmas tree strapped to the roof. If I didn't have a mild fear of heights, I'd definitely put strings of Christmas lights all over my roof, around every tree, outlining the trimming, and hang up a Christmas deer from the backyard oak tree with a red strand of lights on the ground below it, in full view of the street and park behind my house. But, because I'm a wuss who has watched Clark Griswold staple his sleeve to his gutter too many times, and can see myself doing that exact same thing, I've decided going crazy with the decorations indoors is good enough for me. 

Also, during the whole month of December, I listen to almost nothing but Christmas music. Personally, I think it's just obligatory to listen to hours of Christmas music everyday during the month of December. One's gotta get into and stay in that Holiday spirit, ya know? So, if you think I'm gonna be rocking out to Reverend Horton Heat's Christmas album while I'm driving through the snow, you're damn right!

And, Christmas is the one time of the year where my mom's church sings actual hymns instead of the garbage that is contemporary Christian music. Hymns like O Holy Night and Hark the Herald Angels Sing are genuinely inspired by the gospel of Jesus Christ. But, the shit most churches sing before every sermon today is just as repetitive and vapid as most of the sermons themselves. I really appreciate going to church on Christmas since I don't have to put up with Christian music that is very clearly just parodying modern secular music. Plus, you have no soul if those hymns don't give you serious chills. 

However, the one Christmas song I almost can't stand is It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Sure, I know that song's talking more about the holidays than winter itself. But that doesn't take away from the fact that the day after New Year's Day, the holiday cheer gets sucked out of the air by the return of the work week, and the realization that Winter only officially started two weeks before. Nothing is more depressing than the realization that we'll have to put up with air so cold it hurts to breathe it, howling winds, heavy snow, and dangerous ice for another five months without Christmas celebrations before June finally arrives, bringing with it temperatures that eventually have me begging for winter's return. I swear, there is no in-between.