Let the game begin and winter end on Sunday

Don’t know about y’all, but we think Burke County needs a party.

A rip-roaring, high-stepping, swinging from the chandelier kind of party.

Why? Ah, let us count the ways.

The Christmas season ended a lifetime ago and all of its accompanying festive merriment has just about faded from memory. (Unlike the credit card bills.)

In Morganton, they’ve even gone so far as to take down the holiday decorations.

No Christmas tree on the Old Courthouse Square? How can we live?

The cold has gripped us for weeks.

We’re not talking low of 32 degrees, high of 55 degrees kind of cold. We’re talking about lows in the single digits and highs hovering around freezing kind of cold.

No good.

If we wanted to live on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we’d move there.

And then, of course, there’s the little matter of the ice… and the snow.

First, came the final weekend of January when a solid coat of ice — slick, dangerous, go ahead and call the ambulance kind of ice — covered every road, street, sidewalk, and front step in our county.

This ice was so thick and so solid that it was impervious to snowplows, snow shovels, pick axes, rock salt, flame throwers, dynamite, and dog urine.

We know; we tried them all.

Then, before any of the ice had a chance to melt, due to lingering, bone-chilling cold, the first weekend in February brought snow, 6 to 9 inches of the white stuff depending upon your location in the county.

“Oh, it’s so pretty!” cried the jobless who didn’t have to negotiate treacherous roads to get to work.

The rest of us enthusiastically agreed with Ben Franklin, who in the midst of a bitter Philadelphia winter once wrote, “Snow, like fish, begins to stink after three days.”

And finally, the end of public schools as we know them. Two weeks of locked doors and empty classrooms while parents scrambled to find childcare.

Ice … snow … slick roads … icy sidewalks … canceled school … crowded and stripped-bare grocery stores … short days … dark nights … and cold, cold, omnipresent and unrelenting cold.

Our response?

ENOUGH ALREADY!

Now about that party we all need, want, and deserve.

It’s Super Bowl weekend. Super Bowl 60 in fact.

Sunday at 6:30 p.m. the New England Patriots will square off against the Seattle Seahawks in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

A young North Carolina lad, Drake Maye, will be quarterbacking the Patriots. Veteran Sam Darnold will be leading the Seahawks. A close, exciting game is predicted by the sports scribes.

More importantly, the Super Bowl provides the excuse for a feast bigger than Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one: dips of every description, crackers and chips of every shape, size, and flavor, burgers off the grill, chili out of the crockpot, wings, both sauced and dry-rubbed, and dessert, dessert, and more dessert.

Woo Hoo!

Need food for thought as well as for the stomach? We got commercials. New commercials. Creative commercials. Million-dollar-a-minute commercials.

What will the Clydesdales do to touch our hearts? What movie previews will we label “Must Miss?” Dancing M&Ms? Monkeys driving rental cars? The possibilities are endless.

And finally, perhaps even better than the game itself, is the halftime show. A real extravaganza! Lights … costumes … choreography!

And this year we have a true Hollywood star, a blast from the past … the iconic, the inimitable … Bugs Bunny! That wascally wabbit is expected to sing, dance, and tell a joke or two with his friends Elmer and Daffy.

What? Hold on! Who? Seriously?

Turns out the star of the halftime show is not Bugs Bunny. It’s Bad Bunny.

Don’t know what he did to earn that label, but I reckon we’ll find out.

So … let’s enjoy the game … the food … the commercials … the halftime show … and, most importantly, the company of whomever we are with.

Let’s eat too much, drink too much, laugh til we cry, yell til our throats are sore, put all the bad stuff and the bad memories behind us, and kick winter to the curb.

And next week, we’ll be looking at high temps in the 50s and 60s with nary a snowflake in sight.

Might not be spring just yet, but that sounds mighty good to us.