black Christmas

plural black Christmases

1. A Christmas Day or Christmas Eve on which there is no snowfall or no ground covering of snow.

   D. A black Christmas makes a fat churchyard. D. This is, in effect, the same as A green winter makes, &c., as a 'black Christmas is of course a Christmas without snow.

   1882, William Carew Hazlitt, English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases: Collected from the Most Authentic Sources, Alphabetically Arranged, and Annotated, page 3

   4 more examples

   We didn't have any snow up here, that stayed until this year (1918) thus giving us a black Christmas, as they say, but the spirit was anything but black. Colored and white packages prevailed.

   1917, The Journal of Electrical Workers and Operators, page 287

   We supposed that we were going to have a black Christmas, but we had snow and cold weather. The week before a storm had swept across the country to the northeastward, which just missed Albany and Boston, but […]

   1928, John Van Schaick, Nature Cruisings to the Old Home Town and the Little Hill Farm

   “It was a black Christmas last year. It takes a white Christmas for a good crop year .” (Jesse Stuart, Beyond Dark Hills, 1938) (Snow adds nitrogen to the soil and is widely called “poor man's manure” because it fertilizes the soil, producing better crops.)

   2000, Robert Hendrickson, The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms, Infobase Publishing, →ISBN, page 345

   ... the danger to her of travelling at that particular time of the year, the weather and the holiday crowds combined, Dorothy had written. Mrs. Fairlands turned sadly from the fireplace and walked slowly to the window. A black Christmas this year, the wireless report had [forecast].

   2017, Martin Edwards, Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries, Sourcebooks, Inc., →ISBN

   Synonyms: green Christmas · Antonyms: white Christmas