One of my favorite Christmas memories is the year a white Christmas turned black. It all started out on Christmas Eve day in Riis Park, a square-block-sized patch of recreational outlets plunked in the middle of our Chicago neighborhood. I tagged along with my two older brothers to go ice-skating in the portion of the park that was flooded each year to create a sort of ice rink. While my brothers played hockey, I was left to work out the rudiments of ice skating on my own. Being only 5 or so years old, that wasn’t easy. What made it …