Will we have a White Christmas? Where I live, it looks like rain.
There was a time when I remembered snow at Christmas.
There’s a saying you hear from a certain age group — “We had proper winters back then.”
It’s usually said after a light dusting of snow causes the entire country to come to a standstill, or the occasional road hasn’t been gritted by the council de-icing trucks. And the telly weather forecaster on 24-hour news gets overexcited about “the possibility of flurries on higher ground”.
Whatever Happened To Snow?
But if you grew up in the 1960s or 70s, you’ll remember that we didn’t need to be warned about flurries. Snow arrived with confidence, and it was expected — the possibility of a white Christmas was high — years before Bing Crosby had told us so.
Christmas snow was a given. It didn’t tiptoe in overnight like it does now. It marched in, dumped itself in great heaps across every road, garden and playground, and hung around for weeks. It was nice until after a few days it turned to ice, and you spent a week or two looking like a candidate for Britain’s ice skating Winter Olympics team.
Of course, back then, we didn’t have the 24-hour weather news or apps sending red alerts to our phones on the hour. We had the local milkman. I think his name was Stan, whose arrival at the doorstep was the first sign of how serious things were.
“Cold today, I’ve had to put my gloves on. You won’t need to put these in the fridge.” He said, as the snow fell, covering the top of his hat.
Which was good, because I can’t remember whether we had a fridge back in the 1960s. Many of those mod cons didn’t arrive for us until the 1970s onwards.
Proper Snow
For us, when it snowed, it changed the whole rhythm of life, especially if you were a kid. We wanted snow, as it meant building snowmen and snowball fighting. It was the usual romantic thinking: waking up to a world made soft and silent, other than the crunch of boots on fresh white powder and the breath clouds forming in front of your face.
If you were a child, the sudden transformation of the local park into a field of snow was nothing short of magical. Until you got hit in the face with a snowball, that is.
It was like a war zone by mid-morning.
We would also desperately search for a hill so we could use our improvised sledges. We didn’t have the real deal, sleek plastic sledges, or anything like that. Most of us made do with whatever we could find, like an old tea tray, biscuit-tin lid, or a sturdy bit of hardboard.
You’d sit on the metal tray, push off, and immediately realise two things: it went far faster than expected, and you had no steering. We’d fly down the hill screaming with delight, and as the run continued, a little fear. We wondered if it would slow down in time as the wall or trees got closer to the bottom. We’d usually end up in a heap of snow, fingers numb, cheeks red, ready for another go.
But winters could be freezing and snowy. Like the winter of 1963. With temperatures so cold, the sea froze in places. Temperatures were lower than -20 °C. It was colder than the winter of 1947 and the coldest recorded since 1740 — although you have to wonder how they could even record such temperatures back then.
Meanwhile, the adults faced the reality behind the romance. Roads disappeared under a carpet of white. Cars became mysterious white bumps in the road. Buses didn’t so much run as occasionally glide past, if they turned up at all.
School Closures
And then there was the great national obsession of school closures. Well, it was for kids. Just the thought of it was thrilling. I remember that my school would often have an issue with its boiler. And then there was the industrial action and strikes in response to runaway inflation that might close the school — we hoped.
The local radio station would keep us informed of the schools affected. The tension was unbearable. It was like waiting for the Top 40, only with higher stakes. Would we get a day off, or maybe two if we were lucky?
“St Mary’s Primary… closed.”
“Elm Grove Juniors… closed.”
And then silence, as the announcer moved on to something about bin collections being cancelled. Just when you thought your school was next, they’d mention a school three miles away that you’d never heard of.
Sometimes, when you thought there was no way the school could be open, there was silence, and the announcement that it was closed never came.
“Open as usual. You better be on your way then.” Mam would say, no doubt relieved that she wouldn’t have me under her feet all day, getting in the way.
Most of us did our duty and set off, the warmest coat on, scarves on, gloves soaked within minutes from making snowballs for the fight on the way to school. We slipped along ungritted streets while the teachers took lessons and tried to pretend everything was normal. We’d look out the window, watch the clock, and wait for the final bell of the day.
Back home, the cold, and snow attacked the old house as if it had been waiting all year. We had no central heating, with the coal fire burning away in one room, perhaps a paraffin heater elsewhere. Frozen pipes were common. Condensation turned windows into miniature waterfalls, and icing on the inside of the glass was not unknown.
Coal fires — there was nothing quite like parking yourself as close as possible to it. The front of you felt like toast, while the back was like Antarctica. The smell of coal smoke, the slow crackle as the fire got going, and the occasional moments when it got angry and spat a burning spark in your direction.
You don’t get that with central heating.
Amidst all of this, every year without fail, came the same question.
“Do you think we’ll get a white Christmas?”
I think we took it for granted that it would arrive, even when it didn’t.
Like now, the bookies always had their odds of it happening, and the newspapers made predictions. And someone would always say, “You know, winters were colder when I was young.”
Perhaps they were
And now I wonder, is my memory selective?
I remember winters that gave us stories — of sledges and hills, the radio notification of school closures, cold windows, coal fires and frozen fingertips.
And somewhere in those long-ago winters, long before talk of climate change and global warming, it felt like we got “proper snow” around Christmastime, maybe even every year. It felt like that, even if it didn’t happen.
In the past, Christmas and snow always seemed to go hand in hand.
Image by Nanne Tiggelman from Pixabay
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