Tag: Martin Gardner

Happy first day of winter this week. It can be difficult to become excited about winter if one lives in a place with bitter cold weather and lots of snow. I wish we all could embrace the coming winter with child-like anticipation. But as we get older, we focus on the ice, the treacherous roads, and the cold. Still, it does not have to be that way.

One may find an example of discovering joy in the coming of winter in a Northern Exposure clip from the episode “First Snow” in Season 5 of the series. In the sequence, the residents of Cicely, Alaska emerge from their homes after the first snow to happily wish each other “bon hiver” (pronounced Bone-ee-VARE), which is French for “good winter.” [December 2015 Update: Unfortunately, the Northern Exposure video clip of the scene is not currently available on YouTube, although a detailed summary of the episode and the script for the episode are available online.]

I like the way the Northern Exposure characters in “First Snow” happily embrace the first snowfall, even knowing what pain the cold weather might bring later. It is a good lesson about life to enjoy the fleeting moments that we can.

As the characters celebrate the first snowfall, Chris Stevens (John Corbett) reads a poem where he focuses on the happy beginning of the poem “Beautiful Snow.”

O the snow, the beautiful snow,
Filling the sky and the earth below!
Over the house-tops, over the street,
Over the heads of the people you meet,
Dancing, flirting, skimming along.
Beautiful snow! It can do nothing wrong.

But the poem, “Beautiful Snow,” which is about a dying prostitute, has a sad ending. John Whitaker Watson (1824-1890) wrote the poem, which first appeared in Harper’s Weekly on November 27, 1858 and later appeared in Watson’s Beautiful Snow And Other Poems (1869).

In Martin Gardner’s Famous Poems from Bygone Days, he notes that in the 1800s it was not unusual for poets to write about the tragic deaths of prostitutes. Apparently at some point, someone added music to make a carol out of part of the poem. And “Beautiful Snow” was so popular that many writers composed parodies of the poem.

In Watson’s original poem, the prostitute begins by describing the “beautiful snow” as Chris quotes, but she also realizes the snow gets “trampled in mud by the crowd rushing by” and blends with the “horrible filth” on the street. The poem ends with her contemplating death with the knowledge she is a sinner: “For all that is on or about me, I know / There is nothing that’s pure but the beautiful snow.” Brrr!

From looking around the Internet, it is unclear whether anyone embraces the “bon hiver” greeting tradition you see in the Northern Exposure clip. But even if the television show was not inspired by real events, the episode in turn inspired viewers. In a previous post, we noted that musician Bon Iver took his performing name from the Northern Exposure episode as a result of an important experience in his life.

So, on the shortest day of the year, we wish you “bon hiver.” May you and yours be well throughout the winter, and may all your snows be beautiful. If nothing else, remember that starting this week, we will get a little more daylight every day until summer. Below, to help you get through the coming months, listen to Big Maceo Merriweather singing “Winter Time Blues,” recorded in 1945. Bon hiver.

Do you like winter or is another season your favorite? Deposit your two cents in the comments.

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