‘t is the Season

When is Christmas?  The longest night of the year has passed and I am looking forward to February 2nd when our way back ancestors were finally certain the days were getting longer and they would quite possibly survive winter. 

I have noticed our small City of Bozeman is suffering a smattering of robberies.  The bank we use at our local grocery store/flower shop/post office/pharmacy, was robbed.  No cameras covered the get-away car and driver and eye witness retelling is unreliable.  Loyal customers at this combo store have lost some of their small town innocence. 

I think crime rates go up during the longest, hottest days of the year and again during our shortest and coldest days. 

The worst crime I remember unpinned me a bit.  I was in Junior High, during Christmas Vacation, a classmate, in foster care was reunited with his parents and siblings under the supervision of social workers at a court house.  His father showed up in the hallway, grabbed his son and shot him in the neck.  He proclaimed that if he couldn’t have them, no one would. 

My classmate’s father shot all of his children, but one infant sleeping among the coats.  He shot the case workers, his wife and then left the scene.  At home, on a stump in the back yard, this man shot himself. 

My classmate and his infant sibling survived.  Being a kid in the foster care system I thereafter feared any family gatherings.  For some reason, the boy from my class moved into another home.  I hope he was adopted and became a very successful human being. 

I see I have gone from bank robbery to murder in one giant ramble. 

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There are pleasant things about the longest nights of the year. 

In our town in southwest Montana, we celebrate a Christmas Stroll, it might be the Winter Stroll, these days but a Stroll down Main Street in December is always going to be best described as bustling. 

We put on layers of clothing, hats, gloves, mufflers and stuff tissues in our pockets.  Then we set off with our cameras drawn down the middle of the street.  Booths with scones, hot chocolate, pizza, turkey drumsticks and other strange foods crowd the sidewalks. 

We start in the middle and head to one end, then back several blocks to the other end.  I ride in my purple wheel chair for everyone’s convenience and when one of us can no longer feel our feet or the backs of our hands, we turn toward the car and head for home.

This year marked our family’s 17th year in a row.  While we shiver and take photos and pet alpacas, no one is thinking about robberies and family massacres, everyone seems to be in the moment and the moment is still innocent, year after year.

What is your innocence rendering event?  How do you find shelter from our shortest and longest days?  Leave a comment about a pleasant Holliday experience and thank you all for dropping by Life is a Story.  Tell it Big in times to come.