If there’s thunder during Christmas week, the winter will be anything but meek.
That’s just one bit of an abundance of weather folklore focused around Christmas, a holiday that has attracted more than its share of down-home sense.
Although weather folklore exists for every part of the year, and for nearly every type of weather phenomenon, much of the body of traditional lore surrounds snow,” notes the Farmer’s Almanac.
“Because of snow’s starring role in the lore or yore, many of the old weather sayings that have come down to us through the years are about December, the month when many of us expect to see the first snows of the year, and Christmas, the one day many of us hope to see snow, even if we don’t want it on any other day of the year.”
“Because of snow’s starring role in the lore or yore, many of the old weather sayings that have come down to us through the years are about December, the month when many of us expect to see the first snows of the year, and Christmas, the one day many of us hope to see snow, even if we don’t want it on any other day of the year.”
DAVID MCKEOWN / STAFF PHOTO
Snow blankets a tree decorated with Christmas lights in Port Carbon in 2014.
Some of the other bit of seasonal weather folklore the almanac has gathered includes:
- White Christmas, green Easter. Green Christmas, white Easter.
- If December is rainy, mild and unsettled, the winter will not be harsh.
- The nearer the New Moon to Christmas Day, the harder the winter. (New Moon was December 14.)
- If Christmas Day be bright and clear, there’ll be two winters in the year.
- So many hours of sun on Christmas Day, so many frosts in the month of May.
- The wind at the end of Midnight Mass will be the dominant wind in the coming year.
- If ice will bear a man at Christmas, it will not bear a mouse afterward.
- Beyond the folklore gathered by the almanac, a Christmas wind is said to portend a year ahead of relatively nice weather, while rain on Christmas signals a coming 12 months of dampness.
- The number of days from Christmas the first snowflakes fall forecast the number of times snow will fall that winter.
- The weather on each of the 12 days of Christmas, December 25 through January 6 (Epiphany), forecast how sunny and how wet the next 12 months will be.
- If Christmas on a Sunday be, a windy winter we will see.
- Clear star-filled night on Christmas Eve will bring a yield of good crops in next year’s harvest.
- If you can celebrate Christmas outdoors you will observe Easter indoors by the fire.
And here’s one for New Year’s Eve: “If New Year’s Eve night wind blow south, it betokeneth warmth and growth. If west, much milk and fish in the sea. If north, much cold and storms there will be. If east, the trees will bear much fruit. If northeast, flee it man and brute.”
— Marcus Schneck/PennLive via Associated Press
