01/08/2025
Love it! Snow is still snow-
Snow calls to children, until it doesn’t anymore.
We have one last child who still hears it.
As I watched her from the window, and later walked outside with her, shin-deep in snow, I realized what we all eventually realize: even those adults who prefer the cold mostly prefer to be out of it.
It’s only the most adventurous of us who still run out, catching snowflakes on our hair, and shape a bulbous man out of snow despite frozen fingers and noses.
The snow doesn’t change: we do.
While the first snowfall is still special, and the mounds clinging to trees and fences, twinkling in the dark are all still magical, we’ve also become realistic about what snow really means.
We see a pool of wet shoes, flattened hair, and dripping children walking through the house.
Slick sidewalks and roads.
Salt trucks and saltier cars.
Higher electric or gas bill.
But snow has always been snow.
You see, the past is the same way.
What has happened doesn’t change: our perception does.
When we study the past at any given point in time, we are observing it from the stage that we are at—from a point in human history and as products of that particular period. Just like a toddler marvels at seeing snow for the first time, or an elementary school kid sees the possibilities of forts, or a middle school child sees the chance to prove to his peers that he “doesn’t need a coat, mom”, the stage of the child often dictates his reaction, response, and relationship to the environment.
That’s why when you ask a seven year old and a seventy year old about how they feel about snow, generally speaking, their answers usually differ wildly.
But snow is still snow.
Among historians there is a question some don’t even bother answering: can we ever come to a neutral, objective understanding about the past? Is neutrality the goal, or is the huge variety in interpretation the whole point? We could say the same about snow: facts are still facts regardless of how you feel about them, but sometimes our feelings can infuse or even manipulate our explanation of those facts, altering the original meaning, intention, or understanding of what the fact means in a particular setting or situation.
It can be complicated.
But at the end of the day, a historical fact is still a fact…..and snow is still snow.
And I hope it still calls to you and your children for a long, long time.
