The attraction, billed as “North Mississippi’s #1 Best Kept Secret,” is quickly becoming well known. I found out about it via word of mouth.

Thursday night I convinced several family members to accompany me to see the “Christmas in Cottonplant” holiday display. We loaded into the car and settled in for the hour-long drive from my mother’s house to Cottonplant, Miss.

We went through Ripley, then Blue Mountain, after which we spotted our destination just off the left side of the highway. The bright lights and varied colors, along with a string of traffic waiting to turn in to the driveway, was the tipoff.

I have never seen so many inflatables in one place in my life. That’s the point, of course. According to the Mississippi Christmas website, which features information on various holiday displays throughout the state, the Cottonplant display has over 450 inflatables and over 20,000 lights. All of the classic Christmas icons are represented: Charlie Brown, Frosty, Grinch, Santa Claus, and the Nativity—along with some not so traditional Christmas figures, including Homer Simpson and Winnie the Pooh sporting Christmas attire.

How did it all begin? The Paul family, who run the display on the grounds of their private residence, say, “What started out as a decoration for our boys to name at the back of our house has grown into a hobby/collection. You will see inflatables here that are retired, one of a kinds that were never mass produced, one from Europe, one from Mexico, and others that were only sold in large cities in the United States.”

The trail through the decorations, which spans 13 acres, is roped off with lights, which require two to five miles of wire to run. In various locations, projectors cast classic Christmas cartoons and clips from holiday movies onto screens. Other unique attractions await visitors, including a video window projection that looks to be Santa Claus moving around inside the owner’s house on the property. At the end of one path on the far side of the display stands a gargantuan inflated Santa, who must be around 25 feet tall.

The family runs the Elk Café on the grounds, selling hot chocolate and other warm treats, and visitors may also opt to have photographs made with costumed characters such as Frosty or the Grinch. All of this merriment is synchronized to the accompaniment of classic holiday music broadcast over the airwaves from a local FM radio station.

According to further information on the Mississippi Christmas website, two people begin assembling the display from July to October for four to five hours daily. In November, two to six people work about four or five hours daily to get the display ready for its opening Thanksgiving weekend. The display then runs until the day after Christmas—except for Christmas Eve. After the holiday, it requires about four or five hours daily for one or two people to disassemble the display from December until the end of March.

Some observers, I’m sure, think the design is gaudy or overwrought. I tried to imagine how I would have enjoyed it if I had been a child strolling through the display of lights and characters, and I observed the youngsters who were captivated by what seemed to them a magical landscape. They led parents and grandparents through the maze of displays, pointing out particular characters.

After less than half an hour, my party collectively decided it was time to go. I had originally envisioned a drive-thru spectacle, and so our accoutrements were not quite adequate for the winter weather.

Upon return following the roughly 90-mile round trip, after having been sated with holiday lights and music, we stopped to refuel the car. As the trip was my idea, I offered to pay. With prices holding just under $3 a gallon, I realized the Grinch had taken over at the gas pump. I thought we had left him behind with all of the other costumed characters. Nevertheless, our holiday visit to Cottonplant was still well worth it.

Lately, I’ve realized that my own temperate South has the ability to mimic the Arctic Tundra. In reality, it started last winter with the pattern of winter weather that seemed to make its weekly appearance, generally each Monday. Our school system missed 20 days of instruction because of those weather patterns. I hadn’t recalled quite so much snow since I was a child, when it seemed that we got more snow, although this last year the accumulation was not as great as the regularity.

Already this approaching winter season has offered to “live out the true meaning of its creed,” as temperatures hovered near the single digits last week and wind chills dipped into negative numbers at times.

Begin thrust into this bout of cold weather before we’ve officially entered the winter season makes me wonder whether I’ve planned my vacation venue appropriately.

It began last fall when I went to New York City for the first time to view the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I had never experienced a city so alive with cultural venues and great cuisine—a city that teemed and pulsed with excitement. It was a never-ending cornucopia of theater, jazz, museums, or almost any sort of art for which one could desire exposure. The gargantuan pizza slices and meaty delicatessen sandwiches weren’t too bad, either.

I didn’t want to leave, and when I did, I missed it and yearned to go back. I dreamed of going back before I had unpacked my suitcase. This city, it felt, was made just for me.

I got my chance in March after I opted out of an overbooked flight and took another flight home from a trip to L.A., obtaining a $300 credit voucher from the airline. I knew immediately where I wanted to use my voucher to go within the next year. Already, visions of tall buildings and bustling streets danced in my head like those sugar plums in the classic Christmas tale.

A few weeks ago, I booked my return trip to NYC for New Year’s Eve, another spectacle I’ve always wanted to witness. The airfare credit was almost enough to cover the flight, and I paid the remainder. I found a great hotel deal in Long Island City, just across the Queensboro Bridge in Queens, a short 15 minute subway ride to Manhattan. It was a new extended stay hotel with kitchenettes and a balcony view of the city for a meager $100 a night, not a great sum to spend on a night in the Big Apple.

The excitement built, and all was well until this week, when I received a message from the hotel notifying me that the water pipes had frozen. They weren’t sure if they would be able to repair them in time for visitors within a week and a half. So it would be best, the representative informed me, if I would kindly seek habitation elsewhere and settle for a prompt refund.

I was crushed. I knew that some hotels in close proximity to Times Square were going for $499 a night. I was hoping not to spend much more than that for the entire week.

However, I love searching for travel deals and didn’t give up hope. Later that evening, I found another hotel deal for $99 a night at a quirky hotel in a fashionable, hip section of Chelsea. It was almost too good to be true, and I booked it.

Now I’m looking for good deals on cold weather accoutrements, including a down-filled jacket to help me in my quest of braving the elements in watching a new year arrive in the optimal place to do so. I’m also thinking I’ll need ski socks and thermal underwear, considering those frozen pipes and the latest temperatures I’ve been seeing forecasted for New York City. The highs are slated to be in the 30s.

I’m still looking forward to the trip, even though I’m a bit like Parrothead Jimmy Buffett in his song “Boat Drinks,” where he proclaims “I gotta go where it's warm.” I do prefer warm weather, but for a few days, I’ll have to make do while I’m having fun in the “city that never sleeps.” This time, though, no one will be sleeping because their feet will be frostbitten.

 

Almost a decade has passed since Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz left us at age 77, although it doesn’t seem like that long at all. However, every year during the holiday season, his memory is evoked when his half-hour television specials begin their annual run.

The fall season is ushered in at Halloween, when “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” airs. Originally broadcast October 27, 1966, the cartoon special has endured over four decades. The precursor to the winter holiday season happens, of course, when Schulz’s “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” airs. Its debut occurred November 20, 1973.

The winter holiday season begins in earnest when we get “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which aired December 9, 1965, actually the first of the three shows mentioned to appear on television. When it first aired, I wouldn’t be born for another eight years—in November 1973—so I am one of those youngsters who grew up watching it ever year.

What is it about Charles Schulz that has made him so enduring?

His work was simple and good-hearted. His main character, known as Charlie Brown to all the gang—except Peppermint Patty, who calls him “Chuck,” and Marcie, who calls him the more formal “Charles”—was supposedly based on his own personal experience of feeling inadequate.

The Peanuts gang includes a diverse range of characters that often harbor their own personal weaknesses and faults. Consider Linus, who never quite outgrows his “trusty blanket.” Consider Lucy, who is an overwhelming narcissist. Consider Pigpen, a walking dust storm.

Charles Schulz was certainly progressive. I never thought about it when I was a child, but his inclusion of Franklin, a black character introduced to the strip in 1968, was quite radical in a society just on the brink of racial desegregation.

Schulz’s publisher told him he didn’t “mind [him] having a black character, but please don’t show them in school together.” Charles Schulz’s response was straightforward: “I finally sighed and said, 'Well, Larry, let’s put it this way: Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How’s that?'”

He didn’t quit, though, thankfully, for posterity’s sake. Although not everyone may be familiar with his work in comic strip format now, we still have those enduring holiday television classics.

The standout, of course, is “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

Interestingly, the annual cartoon almost didn’t make it. It was sponsored by the Coca-Cola Corporation after an ad agent saw the Peanuts gang featured on the cover of Time magazine and asked producer Lee Mendelson if a Peanuts Christmas special had been proposed.

Television executives criticized it almost immediately for several reasons, primarily because it didn’t contain the usual laugh track, employed actual children for the voices, featured contemporary jazz, and delivered a religious message. From the time it aired in 1965, however, the special was a hit with viewers and critics. Schulz said of it: “There will always be an audience for innocence in this country.”

It is ironic that a show focusing on such an anti-commercial message originally included overt advertising at the end. Watch closely at the end to see the children’s singing fade, a segment later edited to cut the sponsor’s message: “Brought to you by the people in your town who bottle Coca-Cola.” Some earlier versions of the ending still survive on YouTube.

No matter. I still get a little misty every year just watching it, and I’m not sure if it’s the simplicity of the message, the sentimentality, or the sheer childhood nostalgia—or perhaps a combination of all three. Although TV execs scoffed at first, what Linus says of the shabby little tree Charlie Brown chooses in the story might be said of the entire show: “I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It's not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.” It’s a show that has received, over the years, plenty of love and will continue to do so by generations to come.

I turned 37 Tuesday. Even though I’m not really “old,” I will say, as Dr. Seuss once wrote, “How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it’s afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness, how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”

I had a good day most of the day. One of my English classes even sang “Happy Birthday” to me at the beginning of class—just before I chastised the brunt of them for not having already completed an assignment due the day before.

My greatest anticipation, however, all day long was going out to dinner with a good friend, one I have known for 20 years. Our outing had been planned for a couple of weeks.

It was supposedly pre-arranged that I would attend a professional workshop after school and then we’d meet at a restaurant. The logistics were set.

After my meeting, however, a phone call revealed he had changed his mind. It was almost 6:00—already dark, and It was too late, he said, even after an offer to pick him up. I was crushed. Mind you, this was the same friend whose birthday I celebrated last year by taking him out for Chinese, despite the fact that Chinese is my very least favored cuisine. But I digress. No one’s keeping score.

I went ahead and continued dinner plans. I stopped by my mother’s house on the way to pick up the birthday card she had for me. She could tell I was visibly disappointed.

“Don’t be sad on your birthday,” she told me. “Life’s full of disappointments.” She then gave me a beautiful card, which read in part: “I loved teaching you things when you were a little girl, but did you know how much I was learning from you at the same time? Seeing your reactions to the world, listening to your fresh, new outlooks, and sharing in things that were important to you taught me a lot about the responsibilities—and joys—of being a parent..."

As for me, I was still learning, it seemed, which is, how it should be, I suppose. Sometimes, though, the learning hurts, as one of the lessons of life is that nothing is ever perfect. Sometimes friends disappoint you—just hopefully not on your birthday.

To exacerbate matters, my brother had not called me. Every year, my brother Greg, the younger of my two brothers, calls me—generally at 6:18 p.m., the moment of my birth. He recalls it well because my mother’s went into labor in the middle of the day, and 11-year-old Greg had to go call Dad at work.

My father, driving at speeds of up to 110 miles per hour, rushed my mother and brother to Baptist Hospital in Memphis. Perpetually late, I kept them waiting until evening, after which Greg and Dad were quite hungry. My sister Cathy delivered a fast food meal of hamburgers and French fries, which Greg remembers very deliciously.

But at after 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, he had not called. Although I had received numerous birthday wishes during the day, when one of your best friends backs out of birthday dinner, and your brother fails to extend the normal phone call, the mood becomes diminished.

So I called my brother. I discovered he had been oppressively sick—so sick he could hardly speak and had not attended work the past two days. I didn’t feel as slighted.

Nevertheless, I returned home, settled into comfortable sweats, coiled under a throw on the couch, and proceeded to soothe my woes. I vowed I would never again take out my friend who backed out on my birthday for his birthday, and I would never invite him over for dinner and conversation, which I do regularly.

I’m sure with time, those wounds will heal. They always do. I just have to learn that, as my mother reminded me, others don’t always behave in ways you expect. And my friend, in turn, will have to learn that one of the consequences of making friends with a writer is that you are always fair game, always potential fodder, for future writing. Like birthdays and disappointment, it, too, is inevitable.