If truth be told I never really met a ski day I did not like.
Okay the time I popped my ACL was not the greatest, but the experience heli-skiing in beautiful British Columbia, at least, was checked off my bucket list.
When giving it some thought, I realized that Christmas Day is my all-time favorite day to ski. In examining the “whys”, I came up with— my crystal clear memories, a sense of belonging and over-all happiness. The season and, in particular, the day, are called magical. Probably true if it is your holiday and a Christmas tree and all the trimmings are in the picture. If it is not your holiday, which in my case is the truth, it is awkward. What to say, what to do, what to eat, even where to go are among the challenging questions. Luckily for me and our family we had Sugarbush. We came to the mountain and greeted the liftees with Merry Christmas exchanges, and had options most years for which terrain we wanted to ski. On uncrowded trails we met others who also were “Chanukah People” as our middle child years ago named us. We were not outsiders at all.
Even though I had no family with me on a recent Christmas,
I enjoyed seeing other young families out there—especially the dad in the middle of two young kids holding onto his extended ski pole and getting them down the beginner slope. My husband had tied ours to him with rope but the same idea was at work. And then there is the wonderful finding that people are happy on Christmas. Smiles are plentiful and gratitude is expressed. I heard a dad say, “Remember kids the most important thing is to have fun.” I liked him. They were out with their new skis Santa had left. Nice. Each chair ride I made it a point to share with different people. It turns out that in four of the five chairs, they were all here for the tradition that had been handed to them by their Jewish parents.
Come to Sugarbush pre-Christmas and ski on the holiday.
There was the bonus of no problem getting into restaurants. We all shared the custom of having Chinese food for dinner on Christmas night. Pretty special to have Sugarbush and a fortune cookie to look forward to each and every December 25th. My fifth ride was shared with a Christian man from the Waterbury area. He described his family tradition of celebrating Christmas in the morning followed up with skiing together here or at Stowe. I shared with him about losing my husband at Stowe too many years ago and he said to me before getting off the lift, that he thought my husband would be very happy with me out skiing at Sugarbush today. How could this not be a the best day? The last group of skiers I met on the way down all celebrated Christmas. I told them they had wrecked my statistics supporting four out of five skiers out today were non Christian. We shared a good laugh as they apologized and said I should just pretend I had not met them. “Oh no. I am really happy you are here and the only important thing is that we keep meeting like this.” It truly is magical.
*Essay submitted by Cherri Sherman to Sugarbush.com
Cherri, now a Warren local, remembers fondly of her first visit to Sugarbush. When Cherri arrived in Vermont that snowy Friday night, she rented a car and drove straight to the Blue Tooth on the Sugarbush Access Road, which was, as she says, “bumping . . . singles galore!” Cherri’s family often visited their Warren home, which they kept when they moved to Stamford, Connecticut, in 1972. For twenty-nine years traveled to Sugarbush on the weekends, with a family that grew to include five daughters. When Cherri’s husband died, she left Stamford and “came home.” Today, Cherri lives in the same Warren house she and her family shared, and manages to ski more than seventy days a season while also volunteering at the Warren Elementary School.