Debunked – the myth of the “White Christmas”

Do you know people who are quite old and swear every year that they always experienced white Christmases

Sorry, but that's not true, just as it's not true that everything was better in the past. Perhaps it was better in terms of interpersonal relationships and family cohesion, but that was precisely because not everything was better back then – historically, it's proven that people stick together best when things are really tough. So, when people complain about a lack of solidarity, it's also a sign that we're actually doing quite well and that individual lifestyles are taking center stage.

A “white Christmas” is definitely a rather rare phenomenon on the normal German land area – it occurs on average every seven to ten years in the lowlands, as scientists have calculated from an average of all weather records.

Thus, we have been spoiled in recent years; in 2012, all three Christmas holidays in Germany were completely white, and December as a whole was very snowy; in 2010, fresh snow fell punctually on Christmas Eve, which then remained in most places over the holidays.

Before that, Christmas looked rather bleak for a long time; the old folks were quite right when they spoke of "snowy winters"—between 1939 and 1974 there were so many cold winters with abundant snow that scientists even saw an ice age approaching. But even during this period, Christmas mostly looked green or gray. The last time there was a guaranteed white Christmas was in the mid-modern era, in the 17th and 18th centuries, during the Baroque period, and this interglacial phase is also known as the "Little Ice Age .

As is well known, we are experiencing the opposite trend; our spring begins one to two weeks earlier, and plants keep their leaves about a week longer than in the last century; the growing season for plants has become considerably longer.

You could find out when regular weather records started in your hometown (it started in 1781, but in a different year in each town) and how many Christmases there was snow, then you could calculate your own statistics.

If we calculate using the average of the aforementioned figures, the probability of a white Christmas has been 25 times every 8.5 years since 1800 – a period spanning generations. Put another way: A person has roughly 11 chances of experiencing a white Christmas if they live to be 100.

So, a “white Christmas” is usually just a beautiful dream – unless you go to the mountains, where the probability of a “white Christmas” is between 30 and 60 percent depending on the altitude, and even over 90 percent near the peaks…

The “White Christmas” – an invention of imaginative, ambitious businesspeople

Near these peaks, perhaps in thin air that made us feel like we're living in a world of illusion, a postcard producer apparently stayed whom scientists have now identified as the true creator of the "White Christmas".

This excursion to the high ground must have taken place around 1860. Previous Christmas cards showed Santa Clauses laden with gifts, making their way across snowless roofs, or a cheerful group of people enjoying their Christmas drinks amidst a magnificent display of grapes; there was no snow, and incidentally, no Christmas tree either.

In 1860, the Christmas tree was far from being a common sight in ordinary German households. It was, in fact, just in the midst of its rise to popularity – by the mid-19th century, it had become fashionable in some aristocratic households (a trend opposed by church officials) and then spread to the wealthiest households, as even then the rich liked to emulate celebrities.

At that time, the “common people” could not yet afford a Christmas tree, but instead put a few leftover branches in their living room; in order to make the new decoration trend accessible to them as well, fir and spruce forests were planted en masse from the second half of the 19th century onwards.

A celebrity-driven decorating trend is partly to blame for the fact that Germany is no longer full of beautiful, healthy mixed forests, but rather, in some regions, mostly coniferous trees. And the forest dieback of the 1980s might not have occurred without this trend – coniferous trees acidify the soil.

The first postcard depicting a wintery snowscape is said to have appeared in 1863 , and from that time on, other postcard producers readily adopted the sales hit, and the postcards underwent a significant transformation: Santa Clauses now sat on snow-covered roofs, with white-snow-covered village idylls in the background, above which the full moon shone.

The new, romantic snowscapes on postcards became incredibly popular. This was partly because winter suddenly no longer seemed threatening, but rather bright and sparkling, peaceful and tidy. Even Australian Christmas cards featured snowy landscapes, despite the fact that Christmas is celebrated there in the middle of summer.

You can buy “White Christmas”

Because of this, you can buy "White Christmas" online today.

Postcards are a very charming old tradition, and that's why they have always been collected; today they are sold and exchanged in numerous internet forums around the world.

You can get a “White Christmas” postcard, for example, from the company Mau-AK, postcards from all over the world, at www.mau-ak.de .

If you enter “snow” as a search term there, dozens of beautifully snowy postcards will appear, from the elephant family as a snow sculpture in Davos to the snow avalanche in the Garmisch Höllentalklamm and the greeting card with lady and snowman to the Italian artist card “snowballs”, all about a century old.

In the AK-Pool of the company Ansichtskartenpool , accessible at www.akpool.de , you can choose your “White Christmas” from 1,439 postcards, including numerous offers for 1 euro.

What you will find there is partly truly unique and partly wonderfully crazy; if you contribute imagination and a picture frame, you can put together a very extraordinary “White Christmas”.

The story of the “White Christmas” carries within it the magic of new ideas

The idea of ​​acquiring one's own "White Christmas" via postcard can be expanded, providing inspiration for "family art" that can become a tradition.

If you have looked at the beautiful to quirky postcards that convey the myth of a "White Christmas", older people will surely have become aware again (and younger people perhaps for the first time) of what a lovely piece of everyday art the postcard embodies.

If this leads to you replacing your holiday text message with a postcard again, that's a good thing – literally, surveys consistently show that people are happier with a postcard from their holiday than with a digital message and that they feel more valued by a postcard.

But postcards offer even more – the second occasion for sending many postcards is the end-of-year holidays, whether Christmas cards or New Year's greetings. What's sent is often a small work of art, and many of these little works of art can be combined to create one large artwork. True family art that changes a little each year.

ways to combine selected decorative greeting cards into a complete work of art : punching holes in them and tying them into a chain with silk ribbons, arranging them on a large board to create a patchwork picture, sticking them in a window with removable adhesive tape, mosaic-like or like a frame along the edge…

Lina Sahne

Passionate author with a keen interest in art

www.kunstplaza.de