Cabinet of Curiosities: Where Do Snow Day Rituals Come From?

'Tis the season for flakes! Now, we've all resigned ourselves to the fact that the weather is something we cannot control. Or can we? Kids in the northeast who are superstitious about snow seem to think so. The night before flurries are forecasted, there are schoolchildren who wear their pajamas inside out, put spoons underneath their pillow and/or flush ice cubes down the toilet or throw them out the window in hopes that school will be canceled the next morning. It's a widely-known fact that snow days are absolutely revered by students. They automatically mean a day of play, hot cocoa, movies and sledding. We don't make the rules here, OK?

NPR host Neal Conan interviewed Connecticut English teacher Mark Dursin on the magical measures his students would take to go "ensure" a snow day. Not to mention, "You can only do it when they're actually predicting snow," Dursin said.

As to whether or not the rituals really work, you can imagine that there are mixed results. But one mother called into NPR to say, "I just want to let you know that I have an 11-year-old who truly subscribes to this. We have five children and this has been passed down from each of them to the next. And the last child -- the last snowstorm we had, my daughter scoured the house for a spoon, teaspoons, put them under everybody's pillows, had everybody in the house wearing their pajamas inside out and backwards and sure enough, we had a snow day."

The superstitious traditions are similar to dances and rituals performed to control the weather by Native American, Chinese, Slavic and Romanian descendants. According to The Buffalo News, the first reference to kids attempting to invoke a snow day by wearing their pajamas inside out was in 1994, in the New Jersey paper The Asbury Park Press. But did you know that the act of turning your apparel inside out for good luck has been around since the '30s? And placing a spoon under your pillow is supposed to help you dig your way out of the blizzard you've conjured once you wake up the next morning, which screams preparedness if you ask me. As for ice cubes down the toilet, The Associated Press printed an article in 2006 about two sisters in Virginia who flushed ice cubes down the toilet to pray for powder. One little girl claimed that if enough kids flushed enough ice cubes, they would go into the ocean, thus making the water cold and snow fall.

There ya have it, folks. Might as well have some ice cream for dinner to seal the deal, too.

Cabinet of Curiosities: Where Do Snow Day Rituals Come From?

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