As a child growing up in the American South, every winter was met with an eager anticipation that there could possibly, maybe, with divine providence, be a snow day.

The kind of day where actual snowflakes fall on the ground and gather into a collection of white fluffy snow.

I remember waiting all morning, after praying all night, for the school district to finally agree we should all stay home and alert the media. Some of y’all remember having to watch with painful nerve-ridden angst for your school district’s name to finally crawl across the banner at the bottom of the TV screen.

If you were unlucky enough to have a sister county in the other Carolina state, as I was being from Union, N.C., you might even have to wait for it to come by a second time to make sure it was really your school district out for the day.

My family moved around a lot when I was younger because of my dad’s job and one of the houses we stayed in the longest set atop a very steep hill. The kind of steep that when I “rolled” the garbage can down the driveway to the street below as a child my feet usually went air born at least once during the trip.

On our very first snow day in our new house, we awoke to at least half the neighborhood camped out on our front lawn riding down it in sleds and building snowmen and making snow angels off to a relatively flat side of our yard.

I’m sure we can all picture the rapturous joy my father, who never even allowed us so much as the entertainment of the idea of a slip-in-slide [Kids, just ask your parents], felt when he was awoken, early, to the sight.

Yep, that didn’t go well. Needless to say, that neighborhood “habit” slowly petered away over time.

In some fairness to my dad, we found out over the summer that the neighborhood kids also enjoyed careening down our driveway on their bikes. The glaring problem for my dad here was the significant ditch and lake across the street. So, yes, that “habit” died out too.

Back to the snow, my husband, who is originally from the great white north, loves to tell the tale of his first southern snow day.

Picture it: a young Yankee teen enduring his first winter in North Carolina, standing resiliently at the bus stop in an inch of snow in his shorts, not to prove a point, but because it was not cold, when his neighbor comes out and tells him there’s no school.

In disbelief and shock, not from the cold mind you, but from his neighbor’s announcement, my husband trudged inside to tell his parents, who emphatically did not believe him. Adamant he wasn’t going to be missing the bus that morning, his mother sent him right back out to the stop to wait while she verified his little “snow day” story. A few minutes later, with disbelief in her voice, his mother called him back inside.

And, thus, my husband’s love and admiration for a southern snow day was born.

Now that I have kids, I love taking them out sledding or making snow angels. When we briefly lived in a place my husband and I like to call Redbud, N.Y., we taught the locals there about making snow cream, and my daughter and I were introduced to snow mobiling. The latter due to the fact that my husband ran out and bought one on our second day there.

So, what is your favorite way to celebrate a rare southern snow day?