Summary
What is it about snow? Why am I still dreaming of a white Christmas? Perhaps it's the sentimentalist in me that still craves the Christmas card look (entirely fabricated by the Victorians) and a bleak midwinter that, during my Dorset childhood, existed only in carols. "I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was 12 or whether it snowed for 12 days and 12 nights when I was six," wrote Dylan Thomas in A Child's Christmas in Wales. As it happens, I do remember, because it was such a rare treat. It snowed for three days when I was 11, in January 1963. The local newspaper was filled with exotic stories of hedge-high snow and my brother and I discovered an interesting paradox: snow defrosts relationships.
Though we lived in adjoining wings of the same Victorian house, our neighbours' two convent-school educated daughters weren't allowed to speak to us ... until the world turned white. As the snow had obliterated the boundary between the two properties, the four of us simply gravitated together and within a few minutes were laughing and joking like bosom buddies, as we constructed the biggest, best snowman in the neighbourhood. Their parents were powerless to stop us and the ice between us was broken for good.See the full content of this document
Extract
Big Freeze Shows Why Season's to Be Cheerful
Something similar has been happening recently. Like putting on a brand new outfit, a fall of snow lends an illusion of renewal that obli...
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