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January 22, 2008

Snow Day Rituals?

It seems a good time to introduce a more light-hearted subject around here. So here goes...

Listening to NPR's "Talk of the Nation" today I heard them close out the show with a segment with guest Mark Dursin, author of "The Secret Power of Pajamas" and had the best belly-laugh I've had in a very long time.

Dursin teaches highschool English and wrote the piece in the Hartford Courant about Snow Day... um... rituals practiced by his students. Intrigued by what his students told him (and his kids too), he did some research and found that with only minor variations there is a single Snow Day ritual practiced by students up and down the East Coast and as far inland as Tennessee - the "Pajamas-Inside-Out, Spoon-Under-the-Pillow-Snow-Day Ritual." The point of course being that if students faithfully practice this ritual then the following day with be declared a Snow Day and they won't have to go to school.

The ritual involves basically what it's name implies: The student has to go to bed wearing his or her pajamas inside-out and place a spoon under their pillow. Some regional variations require licking the spoon first or eating an oatmeal cookie first. A few even involve wearing the pajamas both inside-out and backwards. But the essentials remain the same. Oddly, though... when told of a different Snow Day ritual tradition involving throwing ice cubes into a toilet, these kids thought that was just silly!

That got me to wondering about any Snow Day rituals here on the Left Coast. Although my family moved four different times between when I was in first grade and when I graduated from highschool, I don't remember any Snow Day rituals. But I attended private parochial schools the whole time and maybe that explains why I was never exposed to this. Both of my daughters have attended public schools and to my knowledge they've never practiced any Snow Day rituals.

So I figured I'd ask the readers here what, if any, kind of Snow Day rituals were you raised with? Do your kids have any?

Posted by Kevin at January 22, 2008 03:39 PM