77-78, which was also an El Niño winter featured a December that was mostly a torch here. It was the type of pattern that would have brought tears to our warm weather fans. There was one storm that brought snow and ice to central and northern NE and rain here on Christmas. The pattern did not flip until the first week of January. That is a prototypical El Niño for you.
Regarding charts being shown for the projected pattern later in the month, a lot of them are showing a flow from off of the Pacific. You can trace the height lines from here back to that source region on these charts. That unfortunately is not going to get the cold air here that we are looking for. The height lines leading to this region have to be traced back to NE Alaska or the Yukon. I will provide a hint - look for forecasts of much above normal temperatures in Alaska. Without this I wouldn’t get too excited about cold weather here.