Our collective vision of Christmas landscapes is so immersed in snow that the very phrase 鈥淚t鈥檚 beginning to look a lot like Christmas鈥� conjures up imagery that is nearly all frosted, sparkling and white. This even though a snow-covered Christmas is the exception rather than the rule for the majority of the world.
Despite what the song 鈥淲hite Christmas鈥� would make you think, for more than half the continental U.S., there is of a white Christmas occurring. Snow on December 25th is and not even as common in the as you may expect! So why do we pine for a pearly white holiday time?
Maybe Bing Crosby crooning, 鈥淚'm dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know,鈥� has given you the impression that climate change is to blame for the seeming lack of modern-day snowy holidays. Global warming certainly in decreasing the chances of frosty festivities and will continue to do so. But the real reason behind our widespread association of Christmas and snow is less to do with changing weather patterns and more to do with our media.
Charles Dickens鈥� classic tale 鈥淎 Christmas Carol鈥� was written and published in England during the Victorian era. Where nowadays, you see than real, during Dickens鈥� early life, winters in the U.K. were snow-filled times of 鈥溾�� The 16th to the 19th century was a climatic period known as the . As a result, most of Europe saw colder, longer, and more snowy winters than previously known. Winters cold enough to allow the to occur on a frozen-solid Thames鈥攕omething that hasn鈥檛 happened since 1814.
While familiar to us in much of Canada, the lasting snowy landscapes and beauty created by ice and frost were novelties to many artists, and Father Winter served as a muse for many. The Little Ice Age period gave birth to the vast majority of European and inspired numerous enduring works of art.
Charles Dickens the man who invented Christmas鈥攁 definite exaggeration. But we can thank him, Jacob Marley, and Ebenezer Scrooge for helping to cement a Christmas aesthetic that has persisted with impressive consistency. Christmas is a time of nostalgia for many of us, and it was no different for Dickens. His stories contain to the snowy cold winters of his childhood, making it ironic, in a sense, that we should now feel a sort of nostalgia for Dickens鈥� childhood winters too.
Our views that Christmases should be snowy don鈥檛 exclusively come from the England of yore. New media and art through the years have iterated upon Dickens鈥� Christmas setting and only further enshrined our association of Christmastime as snow filled. The United States have contributed their fair share to the frost-filled Christmas media. From 鈥攂etter known as 鈥�'Twas the night before Christmas鈥濃�攄iscussing newly fallen snow to stories like 鈥淗ow the Grinch Stole Christmas鈥� by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, to the and the Christmas scenes of Norman Rockwell. The classic Christmas movie 鈥淚t鈥檚 a Wonderful Life鈥� even won an award for developing a to replace the painted cornflakes used previously!
While Bing Crosby sings less about the white Christmases he personally knew and more about the ones we as a society used to know, the man who wrote the lyrics for 鈥淲hite Christmas,鈥� Irving Berlin, was likely talking about both. a Jewish immigrant to the U.S., Berlin was born in Tyumen in modern-day Russia. With average daily December temperatures of , he very well may have been referencing both his childhood Christmases and the historic Victorian ones enshrined in our holiday ideals.
