Parent life / A Massachusetts childhood, understood at eighteen
The Snow Day Rituals, as Recorded by Folklore Students
Spoons under pillows, pajamas inside out, ice cubes out the window. A university folklore archive collected the rituals children use to summon snow days. One teacher had a secret.
The University of Southern California keeps a Digital Folklore Archive of interviews collected by its students. In 2018, a student interviewed an eighteen-year-old who grew up in Newburyport, Massachusetts. In first grade, or maybe another early grade, the informant's teacher had explained how to make it snow: throw ice outside your window at night, and the next day it will snow.
Did it work? "Yes, actually. Everytime." Then the grown-up afterthought: whenever the teacher suggested it, snow was already in the forecast.
The teacher was not controlling the weather. She was watching it, which in a first-grade classroom is the same thing.
The informant said it felt powerful at the time, like controlling the weather by throwing ice cubes out a window. Now it just seemed silly. The other kids believed it too.
In 2023, another student told the archive about growing up in Connecticut. The night before a predicted snow day, he would put a spoon under his pillow and wear his pajamas inside out, rituals he learned from classmates. He stopped around age eight or nine, he said, once he understood that the weather, and the school board, decide snow days.
A third entry describes a New Jersey version with pajamas inside out, ice cubes flushed down the toilet and a spoon under the pillow, and the belief that the more children who did it, the better the chance. One child asked a group of friends to send pictures of their inside-out pajamas to their mothers, to forward to her mother, as proof.
Proof of compliance, routed through the mothers. That is a better-run campaign than most school fundraisers.
Snow days almost disappeared with remote learning. In March 2026, the head of the Park School in Brookline, Massachusetts, wrote that during the pandemic Upper Division students had petitioned him: "Snow days are a rite of childhood. They bring joy. Please don't take them away." He agreed. Park keeps its snow days.
Last winter the youngest heard about the spoon at school. Before the first big storm she put a spoon under her pillow, turned her pajamas inside out and, for good measure, put a second spoon under her brother's pillow without telling him. It snowed. School closed.
The middle one found the spoon at breakfast. He asked what it was for. She said, "You're welcome."
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- USC Digital Folklore Archives: Throwing Ice Cubes, May 6, 2018 folklore.usc.edu
- USC Digital Folklore Archives: Spoon Under Pillow for Snow, May 14, 2023 folklore.usc.edu
- USC Digital Folklore Archives: Snow Traditions 2 folklore.usc.edu
- Scott Young, Park School: Snow Days are Still Magical, March 11, 2026 parkschool.org