Crunch!  Crunch!  Crunch!  Every footstep made another loud crunch.  As Sarah and I took a long walk in the icy woods on the day after Christmas, we clung to each other to avoid falling on the solid sheet of ice covering the forest floor.

The beauty of an ice storm can take your breath away, but this was the ice storm that almost stole our Christmas.  For the first time in almost thirty years, our family did not gather at my folks' house in Crossett on Christmas Eve for the traditional meal and exchange of gifts.  We almost missed Christmas altogether.

On Wednesday, the ice storm spread across southern Arkansas with a mixture of sleet, freezing rain, and ice.  Accustomed to the vagaries of rural electric service, my mother began the Christmas cooking early in the morning.  True to her predictions, the electricity went off about in mid-afternoon.  The phone still worked, so she called to warn us not to travel yet.

All day Thursday we waited, but the storm worsened as we followed news reports of 37-mile-long traffic jams on the freeways going south.  On Friday, the temperatures warmed.  The roads were clearing, but the electric crews had not made it far enough out into the country to reach my parents home.  Finally, at 4 p.m. on Christmas Day, she called to proclaim the good news that Entergy had saved the Christmas that almost wasn't.  We bundled our gifts into the car and headed south.

Our Christmas traditions were modified some because several family members didn't make it this year. But there were enough of the faithful remnant to observe the key rituals that make the season – the shared meal, the exchanged gifts, and the family photo.

To put one's feet under my mother's table is to experience one of the finest joys of life. Every trip home is an gastronomic delight, but Christmas always features the very best she has to offer.  My mother's cornbread dressing is to die for.  Her potato salad will make you swoon, and her pecan pie is so good it will make you want to slap your grandmother. After the meal, real family togetherness grows around the kitchen table as animated (and sometimes exaggerated) stories are swapped about work at the paper mill, deer hunting trips of days gone by, and vacations out West.

Even though my children are now teenagers, they gladly fulfill their appointed role by hinting that it is time to move to the living room and open presents.  That's my dad's cue to insist that we have some more dessert or maybe take a walk before opening presents.  The kids protest and finally my dad relents.

We observe two religious moments of the evening – saying the grace and reading the Christmas story.  Both tasks are assigned to the family patriarch - my dad.  My dad's grace at meal time is always the same, short and sweet.  And he always prays that God will forgive us for all our "sins and wrong-doings."  Then as the kids impatiently wait at the foot of the Christmas tree eyeing bright colored packages, the Bible is opened to Luke.  My dad's cracking and gravelly voice reminds us all of the real beauty of the season.

After the gifts are exchanged and mountains of wrapping paper lie scattered around the room, it's time for the annual photograph.  For almost thirty years, we have taken a picture with all those present piled around the living room couch.  A look through our photo album shows the Christmas pictures side by side.  It's easy to note the growth spurts of my boys, the disappearance of family members through marriage or death, and even the aging process taking its toll on my parents.

Those traditions we repeat in exactly the same way every year.  But this year, the ice storm that almost stole Christmas  beckoned us to walk in the woods to observe the incredible beauty.

Arching pine trees bent far over as if worshipping the Child of Christmas.  The barren white oak branches were surrounded with a half-inch tube of clear ice.  A black squirrel scampered across the pipeline in front of us.  Blades of green grass were overlaid with crystal making them look like ice-worms poking their heads several inches out of the ground.  As the sun warmed the tops of the trees, sheets of ice slipped from the branches and crashed to the ground.  Tubes of broken ice scattered over the solid sheet beneath the trees.  The water oak limbs, which have still not lost their leaves, gathered so much ice that whole limbs fell to the ground.  The colored leaves formed a patchwork quilt plastered against the white expanse beneath.

By afternoon, the warming sun brought temperatures back above freezing and the winter wonderland was gone.  And so was Christmas.  We returned to Jacksonville thankful that we had once again observed the Christmas rituals and remembering the words of Psalm 147:15-18: "As soon as God speaks, the earth obeys.  He covers the ground with snow like a blanket of wool, and he scatters frost like ashes on the ground.  God sends down hailstones like chips of rocks.  Who can stand the cold?  At his command the ice melts, the wind blows, and streams begin to flow."