When I was young, December rolled in on a blanket of fog. Thick, wet and gray. It clung to the ground. If it let go, it would die. It would become as lifeless and indistinct as the barren ash trees it surrounded. It had the ability to reduce the power of the sun so that, during the day, the world was hidden in a single, ashen tone. Night brought blackness. No stars, no moon. Nothing.

The fog dulled your ability to see or hear. It dampened your ability to feel. It left a smell and taste of dankness that could only be equaled in my grandmother’s Minnesota basement. That smell permeated everything. Like the gray of those long-ago days when you feared the ghosts in that basement.

But the fog couldn’t dampen the childhood excitement of a “BIG DAY”. Like celebrations of magnitude all over the world, of any faith…