Miami yule: I'm dreaming of a real Christmas tree

Here is Florida (Official State Motto: "I voted for WHOM??") we do not have what you would call a typical Christmas season.

For one thing, it never snows, at least not in Miami. Down here, we don't sing, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas." We sing, "I'm dreaming of a Christmas that is not so hot and humid that I need a coat hanger to un-bunch my underwear."

Actually, it's a good thing we don't get snow: People down here already have enough trouble driving.

For example, we have an inordinate number of accidents caused by people driving into buildings. And these are not buildings that have been carelessly left in the roadway: These are buildings carefully placed off to the side. Yet people drive into them!

I suspect that somewhere in the official Florida driver's manual, there's a picture of a building, with the words: "If you see one of these, aim straight for it!"

So if we ever had snow, it would be horrible. There would be cars on roofs, cars in the palm trees, cars in the Gulf Stream. The only safe place for a pedestrian to stand would be on an actual highway.

Since I've lived here, we did have one cold Christmas — cold for us, anyway — when the temperature briefly fell into the 30s. But snow did not fall from the sky. What fell from the sky was: lizards. Really. I went outside on Christmas morning, and lying on my lawn, looking stunned, were at least a dozen bright-green lizards that had fallen out of the trees. These were not small lizards. These things were the size of cocker spaniels, and they had TEETH. That is not a normal Christmas-morning sight. There is no Christmas carol that goes:

Good King Wenceslas looked out

On the feast of Stephen

Saw big green lizards all about

So he said, "I'm leavin'!"

Nevertheless, even in Miami, we do have our Christmas traditions. Traditions are an important part of Christmas. For example, when I was a boy, my mom and I had a wonderful tradition that went on for nearly 10 years, called: The Fruitcake Slam. I am not making this tradition up. Every year, some people we knew thoughtfully sent us a fruitcake that was approximately the same density as the Hoover Dam. And every year, my mom — who was, take my word for it, the funniest person who ever lived — would declare, in her brightest June Cleaver voice: "Look, Davey!" (She called me Davey.) "The fruitcake has arrived!"