From Cruel Winter to Winter Wonderland

I was crunching through the snow towards the garage this morning, admiring the stray snowflakes drifting down and the white, clean look of the morning, when it occured to me to wonder how much of our cultural tendency to see winter as a picturesque season relates to the fact that we have furnaces and down blankets and heavy jackets and reliable food supplies. I would imagine that the transformation of winter from a cruel, bitter, impersonal force to a source of bland holiday cards has a lot to do with the fact we can usually watch winter without having to worry about being to stuck in it. Something our ancestors of a few centuries ago, much less a few millenia ago, did not share.

Not ours, just pretty.