January 22, 2025
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Why does snow bring joy to children?
The allure of snow is more than the pleasant nostalgia of childhood days away from school
Just a a few degrees difference A dreary rainy day can turn into a near magical scene out of a snow globe. “It’s more glorious and beautiful than anything else” in the weather, says Alan Stewart, a weather and climate psychologist at the University of Georgia. Of course, snow has its haters, but there are some powerful scientific reasons why so many people are in love with it gently falling ice crystals.
For people who grew up carefully turning their pajamas backwards and forwards to reveal flakes, snow can be a powerful reminder of childhood snow days: that happy surprise when another day expected to sit in school turned into one filled with snowballs. wrestling or sledding.
But there are also many reasons why snow attracts people who lack this nostalgia. In fact, says psychologist and author Kari Leibowitz, snow literally changes your physical experience of the world. For example, freshly fallen snow is porous enough to absorb sound well, silencing the world.
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And it plays even more powerfully with our vision. “There’s something very aesthetically pleasing about clean, fresh, white snow,” says Leibowitz, who wrote a book about winter mental health. One aspect of that visual appeal, he adds, is the way snow reflects light in the dark months “A lot of people really struggle with that. winter darkness as much as they struggle with the cold,” he says. “And so the snow glitter effect, I think, is very powerful.”
the snow It also changes the very shape of the world people see around them, Stewart says, pointing to the way its new cover hides and yet reveals our surroundings. “Things you look at every day can suddenly look very different,” he says. “Maybe you’ll see the place in a new way.”
Snow also often prompts people to interact with their surroundings differently, Leibowitz says. “I think snow and ice give us things to engage with in a sensory way that can be very playful and very childlike,” says Leibowitz. “You can do so much with it in touch.”
School canceled or not, snow shakes the routines of life. “When snow prevents you from going places and doing things, it’s a rule-breaker,” says Leibowitz, “which can be annoying and frustrating and uncomfortable, but also really fun and exciting.”
Perhaps most striking in our response to snow is this tension itself. In the right conditions, snow can be mesmerizing. But for certain people or in other situations, the weather itself can become quite the opposite: annoying, tiring or even depressing. “A bit of the traditional dark winter, even with the miracle of snow, can be experienced by a sensitive person really challenging emotionally” says Stewart.
Leibowitz advocates adopting a mindset that embraces the changing seasons, which can help people stay open to the potential charms of snow. “I think, in many parts of the U.S., we trick ourselves into thinking, ‘I’m just going to do everything the same and put on my coat and hat and call it a day,'” he says. . “We don’t adapt enough; we are not changing our behavior enough. Then all these things like cold and darkness are just a burden.’
Leibowitz recommends slowing down in winter, inspired by long nights and cold days, and says snow can be a helpful cue to do so. “It’s such a clear visual reminder that we’re in a different season that maybe it prompts people to respond more appropriately,” he says.
But as climate change continues to progress, some historically snowy areas will miss out on the most magical precipitation available—and face nothing but the cold rain. “There are many places in this world where the difference of a couple of degrees of warming is the difference between a white, snowy winter … and a gray, rainy winter,” says Leibowitz. “I think a lot is lost when we lose the cold and when we lose the snow.”
