The Complete History of Snow, Ice, and Christmas

Despite such a strong association of snow with Christmas, many Americans haven’t experienced a white Christmas even once in their lives.

Our perception of this holiday as a white wonderland was, for the most part, influenced by the culture of the 19th century. At that time, the entire world was going through a so-called Little Ice Age.

Over time, the climate changed, and snowfalls became rare. Still, singers of the 20th century commonly indulged in nostalgia, dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones they used to know.

Yule Festival

Long before people started celebrating Christmas, Norse pagans used to celebrate the winter solstice festival known as Yule on about the same dates.

Despite being a pagan holiday, Yule has influenced numerous modern Christmas traditions, and Scandinavians call the Christmas season Yuletide, translating as “Yule time.”

Some of the customs and symbols we adopted from Yule are the Yule goat, Yule log, decorating homes with evergreen plants, and portraying Santa Claus with a long white beard (yes, this image wasn’t invented by Coca-Cola!).

And the connection between snow and Christmas also stems from pagan times. Snow isn’t uncommon in Nordic regions in wintertime; that’s not a secret. For this reason, any artwork or piece of literature dedicated to the Yule festival features snow.

One of the latest cultural references to mention is the popular game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The story takes place in ancient Scandinavia. Unsurprisingly, one of the quests involves wandering through the snow during the Yule festival.

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” written in 1843, remains one of the best-known literature pieces dedicated to Christmas to this day.

It has majorly influenced the popularity of many Christmas customs, such as drinking eggnog or eating turkey. Dickens is also accountable for our perception of Christmas as a snowy season – even if no snow ever falls out in our area.

Dickens mentions the severe, snowy winter of 1843 in many parts of the book. For example: “And they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings […]”

The carol’s main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, was portrayed as a cold-hearted miser, and snow is once again mentioned in his description: “No wind that blew was bitterer than he; no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose; no pelting rain less open to entreaty.”

In other words, Dickens didn’t describe snowy winter as wonderful and fluffy but rather as harsh and challenging.

Snowy Europe

The fact that Charles Dickens mentions snowfalls so often in his Christmas carol is no surprise. The time it was written, the mid-19th century is known as the Little Ice Age.

Although some historians define the period as extending from the 16th to the end of the 19th century, the 1840s were particularly severe.

Snow isn’t common in modern-day Britain and Central Europe. But for Dickens’ contemporaries, the generation that created the modern perception of the holiday, a white Christmas was customary.

Endless artworks and works of literature from the Little Ice Age portray European cities covered in ice and snow.

Some of them feature winter fairs on the frozen river Thames, others – winter skating on the main canal in Rotterdam or kids throwing snowballs on the market square. In Jane Austin’s Emma, characters go to a Christmas Eve party through a flurry of snow.

But not only did Europe experience heavy snowfalls in the 19th century – in American author Washington Irving’s 1819 tale Squire of Bracebridge Hall, the main character’s country estate is also sheeted with snow.

Another factor that may have influenced the strong links between snow and Christmas in Britain is Queen Victoria’s marriage with Prince Albert, who was born in Germany.

Snow is common in Germany even today, and at that time, the temperature used to fall below −28.8 °F.

British newspapers published pictures of the Christmas tree in the Royal Palace, decorated with artificial snow, and Victoria’s and Albert’s children riding a sleigh. Such idyllic images further rooted the nation’s obsession with snowy Christmas.

When the weather started to get warmer at the end of the century, Illustrated London News lamented: “Christmas may be gone through as a duty under the tropics, but it is only in a land of snow and ice – and pine trees, if they can be got – that a real Christmas can be celebrated.”

Dreaming of a White Christmas

A century after Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol” was published, when winters started to get warmer, snow acquired an even stronger connection with Christmas.

The reason for this was numerous holiday songs referencing snowy weather, such as “Let It Snow,” “Winter Wonderland,” and “White Christmas.”

These songs portrayed Christmas in a romanticized and atmospheric way. They were awaking images of silent streets covered in a white blanket of snow, sparkling in the warm lantern light.

According to Guinness World Records, Bing Crosby’s version of “White Christmas” became the best-selling single of all time. This clearly indicates how important the song was in making snow the iconic symbol of the Christmas holidays.

Santa & North Pole

If you ask any child, “where does Santa Claus live?” they will most likely answer “at the North Pole.”

You may wonder, how did Santa’s origin, Saint Nicholas, travel all the way from Myra to the North Pole? Well, he had centuries to do this.

The truth is, Santa moved to the North Pole only in the 19th century, under the influence of Thomas Nast, a famous American cartoonist.

He created dozens of Christmas drawings for the Harper’s Weekly throughout the 1860s-1880s, one of which portrayed a snowy village called “Santa Claussville, N.P.” As you may have guessed, “N.P.” stands for the North Pole.

One of the reasons Nast chose the North Pole as Santa’s home was the surging awareness about this, at the time mostly unexplored, region. The public interest was booming due to highly publicized Arctic expeditions in the 1850s.

Another factor was the peak of the Little Ice Age, which, as you already know, created strong links between snow and Christmas.

As Santa is the main symbol of Christmas and the North Pole is the snowiest place on Earth, the choice was apparent. Lastly, reindeer, known to drag Santa’s sleigh, are native to the Arctic.

Snowmen

Building snowmen is among the most-favored winter activities for kids living in snowy regions. The first historical record of a snowman dates to 1380.

Perhaps, the world’s most famous snowman is Frosty, originating from a Christmas song “Frosty the Snowman,” written in 1950 by Steve Nelson. Later, a film with the same name came out, helping to popularize snowmen as a Christmas symbol.

Snowmen are widely associated with miracles. For example, the British movie “The Snowman,” made in 1982, narrates about a snowman who came to life and flew to see Father Christmas with his little friend boy.

However, modern kids are likely more familiar with another alive snowman – Olaf from Disney’s “Frozen.”

Ice Carvings

Ice carving is a real form of art – unfortunately, short-lived art, but due to this, even more fascinating. Snow and ice carving festivals are held in Scandinavian countries, Canada, Russia, the northern states of the US, and Japan.

The history of ice carvings dates to 600 BC China, where people harvested ice to cut it in blocks used for storing fish.

Centuries later, in the 1600s, Chinese hunters from the province Heilongjiang, located on the border with Siberia, started crafting ice lanterns.

The first well-documented ice palace, however, was crafted in Russia in 1740 on a frozen river Neva for Prince Mikhail Golitsyn’s wedding. The bride and groom spent the whole night in the frozen mansion, perhaps, to entertain the people during a harsh winter.

Snow Records

The world’s largest snow sculpture was created at the annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival in China in 2007. Named “Romantic Feelings,” it was 656 feet tall and took 120,000 cubic feet of snow to make.

The tallest snowman, in turn, was created in Maine, USA, in 2008, measuring over 122 feet.

The thickest ice, unsurprisingly, is found in Antarctica, sometimes exceeding 2.9 miles in depth. For comparison, the deepest snow layer Washington DC has ever seen was seven inches back in 1962.

Sources