Santa sucks (or, the miracle of snow)

Oh, not really. I suppose the jolly old fat man's okay.

It's the whole Christmas thing I'm not too crazy about. I have a Grinch t-shirt around here somewhere ... need to go find it and wear it the rest of the day.

A couple of Christmases stand out as memorable, for better or worse ....

The "miracle" Christmas Eve snowfall in the Coastal Bend, back in 2004, for instance. That was a good one. The novelty of snow in South Texas saved the day.

Christmas 1998 was something different: sand provided solace. I spent half the day at the rim of a volcanic crater, the other half I spent playing a pick-up game of coconut football with my buddy Danny and a couple of Navy guys on a Pacific beach near La Libertad, El Salvador.

The first Christmas my son, Patrick, was old enough to really understand what was going on ... that one was pretty cool.

Back in 1996, I spent the day of Christmas -- and I mean, starting at about 06:30 -- touring the northeastern part of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

I recall I was in a foul mood. It was cold and bleak ... well below freezing, but barren. The landscape was all black, leafless trees and frozen, muddy ruts.

The kind of weather where if you were stupid enough to touch your tongue to the barrel of your rifle, it would stick.

I can't actually think of why anyone would do that, but anyhow ....

I had been assigned to accompany the Chief of Chaplains on his round of base camps.

What that meant in practice was something like 10 hours mostly spent jouncing about in an up-armored Humvee, cracking my ass on the "ballistic blanket" (fitted kevlar inserts, supposed to protect us from mine strikes), trying not to succumb to hypothermia.

Chaplain (Maj. Gen.) Don Shea was a short, stocky Irishman with a shock of white hair. Not too bad a guy for a two-star, and not to bad a fellow for a priest either. By the time I met him, Shea had done tours in Vietnam (about the time I was born), in Desert Storm and in lots of other places.

He wore the Master Parachutist badge, and -- on his Class As -- the Silver Star and Purple Heart. At least that's what his bio said, as I recall.

Pretty "hooah" for a padre.

Anyway, so off we go in a four-vehicle convoy, some poor schmuck in the trail vehicle manning a .50 cal. I think we made five stops that day, Shea hearing confessions and offering Christmas mass at each checkpoint and forward operating base.

I was a newlywed at the time and had been stuck in Bosnia for more than half a year and I was angry to still be there. I missed my family, missed my wife, missed the comforts of home.

To tell the truth, I was the sole reveler at my own private pity party. I was just pretty pissed all the way around.

At every stop, Shea turned to me and asked if I'd be hearing mass (he'd established early-on that I was Catholic).

"No, thanks Father. Maybe at the next stop," I'd reply, then hang out with the grunts providing vehicle security while the general ducked into another tent to offer a little spiritual solace to the troops.

Finally, we were waved through Checkpoint Charlie at the zone-of-separation, the no-man's land between mostly Muslim BiH and the self-proclaimed, mostly Orthodox Republika Srpska.

The tan GP medium tent there, with a white plywood steeple afixed to the peak, was our last stop.

Again, I shrugged-off Shea's invitation.

Something, though, made me reconsider, and I slipped past the flap, removing my helmet and taking a seat in the last row of folding chairs.

I don't remember the padre's homily that day, though I remember thinking it wasn't all that bad. I do remember that as I knelt, I felt a loss at what to pray for, what to even say to a God I was having trouble anymore believing existed.

Finally, I prayed this: "Father, take care of my family on this day. Keep them safe, and allow me to return home to them ... And, God, so long as I'm stuck in this hell-hole, could we at least have a white Christmas?"

At the conclusion of the mass, Shea bade us -- the peacekeepers -- go in peace.

I swung my helmet onto my head, and rifle in hand ducked through the tent flap.

As I did, something soft and wet landed on my cheek. I looked up, and a flurry of white swirled around the steeple.

It snowed, and snowed and snowed.