Why winter needs snow
Every holiday season should be filled with visions both “merry and bright”
Enchanting — Christmas is not the celebration it should be if it does not include frosty window panes, snow-covered trees, Christmas lights, holiday carols and traditions. Google Images
More than just Bing Crosby’s claim to fame and a 20-year chart-topping hit, “White Christmas” is iconic for one very important reason — there is no Christmas like a white Christmas.
However, many do not know the story behind the song. Though Crosby made “White Christmas” famous, it was Irving Berlin, a Jewish man, who wrote the wintry ballad.
You see, Berlin wrote the holiday hit after the death of his infant son on Christmas Day in 1928, according to the Chicago Tribune.
I cannot imagine anyone dreaming of a “merry and bright” white Christmas more than him. While I am unable to relate to such a tragedy, I can relate to the comfort and joy that comes with a freshly fallen snow.
Ever since I was little, my family and I have traveled to Smugglers’ Notch, Vermont, for the week of Christmas. Tucked in between New England’s snowy mountains, Smugglers’ Notch is a Thomas Kinkade Christmas painting come to life.
“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event,” English novelist and playwright J. B. Priestley said. “You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment, then where is it to be found?”
A snowy Christmas is an enchantment I believe everyone should experience.
“It’s December the 24th, and I am longing to be up north,” Berlin wrote in the song’s often-forgotten first verse.
Snow is both calming and stunning at the same time. The ground becomes a bed for a blanket of snow, and the trees become shelves on which
flurries can rest. All at once, what was harsh and dreary becomes peaceful and magnificent.
There is nothing greater than heading north for the holidays. From Virginia to Vermont, Christmas carols and conversations fill the air in the car, and, before we know it, snowflakes are glistening in front of the headlights.
Driving into the mountains and walking down streets paved by snow, it truly is a winter wonderland.
“I love snow for the same reason I love Christmas,” author Rachel Cohn said. “It brings people together while time stands still.”
I, like Berlin, dream of a white Christmas, where time stands still, snow crunches under my feet and frosty breath dances with snowflakes in the sparkling winter air.
So, in the words of the dreaming songsmith, “May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white.”
GOINS-PHILLIPS is the opinion editor.