Christmas in Tucson, Such As It Is

I spent the last ten days in Tucson, Arizona with my family, and one of the events we went to with my niece and nephew was the "Snowfall."  At a high-end mall in the north of town, they have a scheduled snowfall every Friday and Saturday night for about twenty minutes.  "You should come," said my sister.  "I think you'll find it hilarious."

It was hilarious indeed.  They had carolers.  The place was littered with kids, some of them actually bundled up against the snowy cold.  (It was about 60 degrees the night I went.)  I thought they were actually going to break out the snowblowers or whatever it is they use up on Mount Lemmon to add snow when there isn't enough.  But--although it's very hard to tell with my shitty camera-phone--that light mist you can see near the lights isn't actually snow at all.  It's soap foam, drifting down in appropriately sized bubbles, shooting out of some sort of cannons.  From a distance, it actually doesn't look too bad in the air.  But it's soap and water.  It doesn't collect on the ground, you can't make it into snowballs or catch it on your tongue, and aside from the visual it's basically useless.  It was a huge hit.

The saddest thing for me was when I saw two children lying supine on a patch of dirt--which was now muddy dirt, of course--flailing their arms in imitation of a snow angel.  It was too dark to capture, alas, but the image is burned in my brain as a symbol of the most depressing kind of wishful thinking.  As a desert rat myself, I never thought I'd miss snow, but I was happy when I returned to New York and found it already on the ground, officially Christmaslike.  

Anyway, enjoy the dark video, and snark away if you like.