by Hannah Russell

Created on: September 29, 2010   Last Updated: December 09, 2011

At first, the snow fell softly on the ground.  As it continued, however, the snow seemed less and less to kiss the ground, and more and more like it was beating and suppressing it.  Little Jill at first had jumped and whooped for joy.  She said that she loved snow.  She loved everything about it; everything from the snowball fights to snowmen to the hot spiced apple cider waiting on the stove when she came back in.  All of it excited every fiber of her seven-year-old self.

But as soon as the snow made it impossible for her family to go to her grandparents’ home, thirteen miles away, the snow was Jill’s greatest enemy.  She wanted it gone. There was nothing to be desired about it. 

A great tradition had been disregarded. Jill loved to go to her grandparents’ home each and every Christmas Eve.  There they would eat Christmas Eve ham and receive their gift from their grandparents—one orange for each grandchild.  It was sweet, juicy and tart and each segment of the orange offered an individual squirt of the pure juice straight into Jill’s mouth. But there would be no Christmas orange this year.

Jill turned to her father, “Dad, how come we can’t go to grandma and grandpa’s?”

Her father sighed.  He had answered the question so many times now, that he was running out of ways to explain it to Jill.  He didn’t look up from his newspaper as he responded, “Because the snow won’t let us.” 

The fire cracked a few times.  Jill looked into the fire, imagining a Christmas Eve without the oranges.  “Could we walk?”

“It’s an awfully long way, Jill,” her father said, once again, not removing his eyes from the New York Times.

Jill looked around the room again. She wanted that orange so terribly.  There was little else she wanted more.  Of course there were all the other parts of Christmas that would be exciting as well.  There was the tree, the presents, the nativity the night before.  There was still hot chocolate, candy canes, mittens and fires; but Christmas just wasn’t Christmas without the oranges.

There didn’t seem to be any resolution to the problem.  The snow didn’t look like it was going to stop, and even if it did, there was no guarantee that the snow would melt enough that they could go to their grandparents. But Jill had an idea.  She knew what

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