What’s better than a white Christmas?

Well, nothing.

At least that’s how Susan Lee sees it.

“Are you kidding? It’s the best gift anybody could ever ask for,” said Lee, taking a break Monday from shopping at the local outlet mall.

Lee said when she and husband Thomas first saw the snow falling Saturday they were “jumping through the roof.” The couple immediately went outside to build a snowman. A snowball fight followed.

Lee and many other Dawson County residents took advantage of the unusually beautiful Christmas weather in northeast Georgia over the weekend.

According to the National Weather Service in Peachtree City, Dawson and other counties received 1 to 4 inches of snow over the weekend. It was the first measurable snowfall on Christmas Day since 1881.

Some folks continued to take advantage of the frozen precipitation beyond Christmas day.

Jeremy Knight, 13, and Max Hanniger, 12, went sledding Monday, when the high temperature barely topped 30 degrees.

The cold weather was rough, but not unbearable, Knight said.

“We go inside and play video games when our hands get too cold,” he said. “Then, we’ll go back outside and hop on the sleds for a while.”

But there was plenty to do besides sledding, Hanniger said.

“We’ve thrown snowballs at people, and we put snowmen in the middle of people’s driveways and stuff like that,” Hanniger said, smiling.

The young man speculated that snow is “a big deal around here because it doesn’t happen that much.”

“We get it two or three times a year, and that’s it,” he said. “... So it’s fun to come out and enjoy it while it’s here.”

Despite potentially dangerous travel conditions, Dawson County Emergency Services Director Billy Thurmond said it was a pretty quiet weekend for public safety officials.

“We just had a couple calls that were snow-related, people falling down ... and we had one wreck on Dawson Forest on Saturday just after the snow started falling,” Thurmond said. “Other than that, pretty calm. Nothing major.”

Thurmond added that “people stayed off the roads for the most part.”

“Luckily, it was a holiday weekend, and people were already at home and they pretty much stayed there,” he said.