The Enchantment of Snow

One of my favorite quotes about snow comes from J. B. Priestley. I think I first read it in a Green Tiger Press calendar, which was filled with vintage illustrations from children's books. Until last week, I never knew where the quotation first appeared. A recent snowfall made me remember the quotation, and thanks to the magic of the web, I was not only able to find the full quote, but was also able to purchase a copy of the book of essays in which it was originally published. As crabby as I can be about the inaccuracy of quotations on the web, this was the magic of the web at work. And so below, the paragraph which includes that original quotation about the enchantment of snow.

“The first fall of snow is not only an event but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment, then where is it to be found? The very stealth, the eerie quietness, of the thing makes it more magical. If all the snow fell at once in one shattering crash, awakening us in the middle of the night, the event would be robbed of its wonder. But it flutters down, soundlessly, hour after hour while we are asleep. Outside the closed curtains of the bedroom, a vast transformation scene is taking place, just as if a myriad elves and brownies were at work, and we turn and yawn and stretch and know nothing about it. And then, what an extraordinary change it is! It is as if the house you are in had been dropped down in another continent. Even the inside, which has not been touched, seems different, every room appearing smaller and cosier, just as if some power were trying to turn it into a woodcutter’s hut or a snug log-cabin. Outside, where the garden was yesterday, there is now a white and glistening level, and the village beyond is no longer your own familiar cluster of roofs but a village in an old German fairy-tale. You would not be surprised to learn that all the people there, the spectacled postmistress, the cobbler, the retired schoolmaster, and the rest, had suffered a change too and had become queer elvish beings, purveyors of invisible caps and magic shoes. You yourselves do not feel quite the same people you were yesterday. How could you when so much has been changed? There is a curious stir, a little shiver of excitement, troubling the house, not unlike the feeling there is abroad when a journey has to be made. The children, of course, are all excitement, but even the adults hang about and talk to one another longer than usual before settling down to the day’s work. Nobody can resist the windows. It is like being on board ship.”

From FIRST SNOW by J. B. Priestley as published in APES AND ANGELS: A BOOK OF ESSAYS (1928)