ESCH-SUR-ALZETTE — Saying that she doesn’t know if it’s climate change or something else that has altered weather patterns, a local grandmother has expressed a deep longing to once again wake up on Christmas morning and see the ground covered with a thick layer of slush, just as when she was a girl.
“I grew up in Bettembourg, and I remember many times on Christmas Eve when we’d look out the window and see the snow-rain falling,” said Annick Tissen, 74. “We knew that by morning, it would be a big puddle of beautiful grey slush.”
Tissen says that she and her siblings would wake up early, and their mother would have them put on coats and rain boots so they go outside and play in the slush.
“There’s something magical about splashing in cold muck that’s somewhere between a solid and liquid state, but slightly more on the liquid side,” she said. “Nowadays, all we ever get for Christmas is rain, rain, and more rain.”
“How are you supposed to build a drooping slushman without slush?” she added. “And what about slushball fights? You can’t make a slushball out of rain.”