# Why SNOW at Christmas?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [December 28, 2013, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350 "2013-12-28T11:08:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/21 "2013-12-28T15:15:33Z")
> [@Donna\_Lange](#):
>
> Being a Christmas topic, I would assume she means Jesus?
Probably. But I was talking to a guy about how much he wishes they’d bring back _Firefly_.
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/22 "2013-12-28T15:19:14Z")
> [@Donna\_Lange](#):
>
> I never said it didn’t snow. I said that the image she used is fake.
2 minutes for Roughing? … C’mon ref … it was a love tap is all. [grin] It’s still a beautiful image, and … I want to believe it’s true … do I get a point for style?
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### Author:  [@Riga\_Marole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riga_Marole)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/23 "2013-12-28T15:35:05Z")
> [@Donna\_Lange](#):
>
> Being a Christmas topic, I would assume she means Jesus?
Let’s hope! 😃
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### Author:  [@Riga\_Marole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riga_Marole)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/24 "2013-12-28T15:51:04Z")
Anyway, with snow in Giza (both faked and otherwise) I think I’m convinced that it could - and most likely has - snowed in Bethlehem - sometime. So, stretching imagination and fantasy it isn’t entirely impossible that it did snow in Bethlehem when the prince of peace was born to the virgin Maria … and that it was such a spectacular extravaganza (the snow that is) that a tradition was born. Any bets? 🆒
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/25 "2013-12-28T15:59:30Z")
> [@Riga\_Marole](#):
>
> Let’s hope! 😃
I wasn’t going to answer, but no, I dig up corpses and drag them down to the local power station … but it’s more of a hobby that a faith I suppose. But I digress …
Matthew says one could see the stars on that night, so I think it fair to say it was not actively snowing at the time. Fleeing to Egypt … probably not ten foot on the ground.
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### Author:  [@Riga\_Marole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riga_Marole)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/26 "2013-12-28T16:24:42Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#):
>
> Matthew says one could see the stars on that night, so I think it fair to say it was not actively snowing at the time.
Good point. That doesn’t say there was no snow upon the ground, however.
Ps. This is odd. I started this thread by mocking the idea of snow on Christmas, yet here I am now defending it! :D:p:D
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/27 "2013-12-28T16:44:02Z")
It snows from time to time. It also snowed last winter in Jerusalem, but then, the world has been cooling a bit in in the last 12 years. 🙂
The sphinx picture is obviously fake, that’s not at all what the sphinx looks like - it’s not so much in a pit, as there’s a paved walkway up to the middle pyramid with a wall beside it that runs along the left of the sphinx. On the right is the road from the pyramid area. Plus, the photo would need to be taken from a helicopter, there are no buildings overlooking the sphinx like that. The tallest viewpoint just across the road would be the roof of the KFC (Kentucky Fried Camel?) only two stories tall. If someone had run a helicopter around the pyramids (never saw anything in the skies when I was there) we would have been flooded with high quality news photos. I have yet to see even amateur footage of the pyramids during a significant snowfall.
As a side note, may of the buildings don’t have insulation or roofs designed to shed heavy rain, since it rarely even rains in Cairo. It will be a mess in some buildings there as the snow melted.
I’ll go with the second post. Most of the original settlers of the 13 states were from England and northern Europe. Christmas as a tradition is English and north European Christmas, as canonized by Dickens, imported into North America, churned by Hollywood and Coke ads into a frothy mix of lube and whatever, and re-exported to the rest of the world. Rhodesia (or at least the white icing on the dark holiday cake) would probably have been influenced mostly by the British tradition, but even then Hollywood would also have had some influence.
Christmas as a feast, it is alleged, co-opted the feasts of the winter solstice in northern Europe. These celebrated the death of one year and the birth of another. Yule logs and evergreen (ever green, get it?) celebrated return of life that was coming when the damn snow stopped falling in a few months.
BTW, St. Nick was a generous bishop from Turkey (although it’s been several different countries before Turkey). He became famous as one who gave secret gifts, and that piece of the Christian / Orthodox litany of saints eventually became morphed into the guy who leaves secret gifts at the right time. I guess the Scandinavians had nothing better to do than adopt and embellish the stories about St. Nick while huddling around the winter fires.
(As someone pointed out once upon a time, if shepherds were watching their flocks by night, it was lambing season and that would put Christ Mass at the springtime, not the winter solstice).
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/28 "2013-12-28T16:56:11Z")
Just another side note, the pyramids are stepped; the blocks are about 4 feet high. The original smooth sides are all gone except near the top of the middle pyramid. So a picture of the pyramids would be alternating lines of khaki and white, not pure white. I have to admit the picture is well done, the overhead shot looks very convincing. But the pyramids are too much all white. There’s a vehicle on the tourist road on the middle left. If there were tourists there, where are the spectacular 18-mp pictures?
I suspect the pyramids were warm enough the snow did not stay.
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### Author:  [@Riga\_Marole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riga_Marole)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/29 "2013-12-28T17:06:32Z")
> [@md2000](#):
>
> If there were tourists there, where are the spectacular 18-mp pictures?
… and most importantly … where are the exasperating, blood-sucking, touts???
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/30 "2013-12-28T17:11:36Z")
> [@Riga\_Marole](#):
>
> … and most importantly … where are the exasperating, blood-sucking, touts???
Either right at the entrance, or down by the front of the sphinx.
Actually, other than that they were pretty calm.
Apparently the worst are on the street leading up to the entrance. We had to take a detour to get to our hotel one day, the road was closed while they fought a pitched battle with police who came and arrested them all. (There had been complaints of severe harassment, like jumping on the hoods of cars) We did not know this until the next day. We decided to walk down the main street that night, and were amazed at how peaceful it was.
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### Author:  [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/31 "2013-12-28T17:18:58Z")
Dickens Christmas depictions are a huge factor (A Christmas Carol 1843) but also Clement Clark Moore’s “Night Before Christmas” (1823) has snow and Little Women starts with a snowy Christmas. (1868)
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/32 "2013-12-28T17:20:00Z")
> [@Riga\_Marole](#):
>
> Yes, I think Santa Klaus originated in Holland but I don’t know how the reindeer got into the picture. Most of the Slavic people have something similar to Santa Klaus (I’ve forgotten the name) that keep to orthodox traditions and well … lots of snow in the Russian wilderness.
Santa was based on the fourth-century Greek bishop St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. The modern American Santa Claus is based on a version filtered through Dutch culture and separated from the original St. Nick at some point, probably 200 years ago or so.
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/33 "2013-12-28T17:23:10Z")
> [@Riga\_Marole](#):
>
> Being a Swede myself, I can say that Jesus was no Scandinavian…
Actually, it looks like Jesus was actually Puerto Rican. How do I know?
His name was Jesus!
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### Author:  [@Riga\_Marole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riga_Marole)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/34 "2013-12-28T17:27:36Z")
> [@md2000](#):
>
> Either right at the entrance, or down by the front of the sphinx.
> Actually, other than that they were pretty calm.
>
> Apparently the worst are on the street leading up to the entrance. We had to take a detour to get to our hotel one day, the road was closed while they fought a pitched battle with police who came and arrested them all. (There had been complaints of severe harassment, like jumping on the hoods of cars) We did not know this until the next day. We decided to walk down the main street that night, and were amazed at how peaceful it was.
I know we’re digressing but I don’t care. It’s my thread anyway!
Renting push-bikes in Luxour, several foreigners took them across the Nile (more comfortable than sitting on the boney backs of the asses) to the Valley of the Kings. Upon arrival young boys offered to guard the bikes for a fee while we were in the bowels of the great resting places of the Holy. _ **“No thanks!”** _ Big mistake. Re-emerging from the tombs we found that there wasn’t a single tyre “unflattened”. Take a guess who had an air pump. Give up?
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### Author:  [@Riga\_Marole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riga_Marole)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/35 "2013-12-28T17:30:25Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#):
>
> Actually, it looks like Jesus was actually Puerto Rican. How do I know?
>
> His name was Jesus!
Ha-ha! But I wonder what his name is in Hebrew?
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/36 "2013-12-28T17:38:18Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#):
>
> Santa was based on the fourth-century Greek bishop St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. The modern American Santa Claus is based on a version filtered through Dutch culture and separated from the original St. Nick at some point, probably 200 years ago or so.
Coca-Cola claims they invented the modern American Satan Claws … to sell more soda pop … which is bad for you.
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/37 "2013-12-28T17:48:04Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#):
>
> Coca-Cola claims they invented the modern American Satan Claws … to sell more soda pop … which is bad for you.
Actually, I think they’d like people to forget that detail.
Plus, where do you think he got that large stomach - it’s not one night of milk and cookies…
\< HIJACK \>
Yeah, I feel sorry for those guys in Egypt, though. It was pretty close to deserted when we were there this year and last. Great for pictures without people in the way, no lineups for anything, but slim pickings for the people who live there. Since the recent coup things must be even worse - and these guys don’t have unemployment pay, or welfare.
(I heard there used to be half-hour lineups for each tomb in Valley of the Kings - when we were there, half the time we were the only ones in a tomb. )
Also, more on topic, even at Passover (about Easter) when Peter and them were waiting out the crucifixion, they were warming themselves around a communal fire in the courtyard. It can get cold.
Plus the Christmas tradition also brings in the wise men and their camels, even though most of northern Europe hadn’t seen a camel…
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/38 "2013-12-28T17:57:00Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#):
>
> Second, Christianity actually took off in Europe, not the Middle East
Er, no, not really. Anyway, much of southern Europe sees little snow except on mountains. As I have already mentioned, even here in Britain, to the north of most of Europe, we very rarely see snow until well after Xmas these days.
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/39 "2013-12-28T18:02:17Z")
> [@Zebra](#):
>
> Dickens Christmas depictions are a huge factor (A Christmas Carol 1843) but also Clement Clark Moore’s “Night Before Christmas” (1823) has snow and Little Women starts with a snowy Christmas. (1868)
Fair point, although Little Women may well have been influenced by Dickens. I believe both the poem and the novel come from the snowy north eastern USA.
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [December 28, 2013, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-snow-at-christmas/677350/40 "2013-12-28T18:03:33Z")
> [@njtt](#):
>
> Er, no, not really. Anyway, much of southern Europe sees little snow except on mountains. As I have already mentioned, even here in Britain, to the north of most of Europe, we very rarely see snow until well after Xmas these days.
But didn’t it snow more 200 years ago? Maybe not? But didn’t it snow more 2,000 years ago? Ah, perhaps snow was common then in the Levant, didn’t need mentioning in the Bible.
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