Text: “Did you have any snow day traditions or superstitions when you were growing up?”

“I remember when my brother and I were little, I’m not sure where we heard it from, but we believed that if you saw the first snowflake fall, and wished for a snow day, we would get one … I remember one year my brother and I were playing outside over the weekend when it started snowing. We wished for the snow day and it came. I remember we couldn’t wait to tell our parents about it, and that we totally believed it was because of us.”

Context: My informant is a friend of mine who grew up in Michigan. Growing up in a state that gets regular snow, he says snow day traditions were pretty popular, and that he had heard of and tried a bunch of different traditions, but this one was his favorite.

Analysis: My informant’s tradition is pretty different from most snow day superstitions, which mostly involve the person going out of their way to do something, such as wearing pajamas inside out and backwards or flushing ice down the toilet to cause a snow day. My informant’s tradition however is somewhat based on luck, in that if you have to be watching when the snow starts. I think this adds something special to the snow day traditions, in that because you can’t do it every time snow is predicted, if the snow day comes, it’s pretty convincing to a young kid that it was because of them.