Christmas 2015

In the movie, "White Christmas"  released in 1954, two couples arrive in Vermont, expecting to find a winter wonderland only to discover temperatures approaching 70. This poses problems for the innkeeper and for the two women who were hired to sing and dance at the inn's showroom because with no snow, the inn is empty.

All this before global warming.

Today, walking around Hampton with the dog, no such dismay registered despite the near 70 degree temperature.  Driveways and neighborhood streets were packed with cars bearing license plates from Massachusetts and even further afield. People were visiting, presumably families getting together, not perhaps returning home to Bethlehem for the census, but the town did have a social feel. 

Oddly, this communion was far more pronounced in the more modest parts of town.  In Glen Hill, which has two to three bedroom homes, often one level, with HVAC trucks and F-150's in many driveways, the homes were hopping and people spilled outside onto decks and patios and lawns; but along  Rockrimmon Road, where stately mansions are set on huge lots with forest between them, long driveways and stone masons have been finding work for long walls and landscaping, the homes were quiet, dark, lifeless.  It is possible the visitors here parked their cars out of sight or the owners may be spending their Christmas in the Caribbean. 

In the movie, snow arrives in the last scene, and we are relieved that the natural order has been restored. Of course, in this movie, the natural order includes not a single Black face, not even among the train porters. There are no Jews identifiable and certainly no Muslims.  This is the America of Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, of night clubs with big bands and songs which never allude to desire.  The closest thing to a torch song is song by Rosemary Clooney who expresses disappoint in her song, but no real passion.  What a light year away 1954 seems from current day America. 1954 was the year the Brown vs Board of Education was handed down, which desegregated public schools (at least for a while.)

It's a different America now, at least outside of Hampton, New Hampshire.Walking past Marston School, the Hampton Academy and Winnacunnet High, I thought about the kids I have seen flowing in and out of these schools. They would look right at home on the sets of White Christmas.  In some ways, Hampton is a sort of Brigadoon, a place out of time, untouched by changes around it.  The people here, though, are not unaware of the changes in the nation which surrounds them. 

What I don't know is what the people here think about those changes.