I woke early this morning to a blizzard. I decided to leave my bike at home and walked into work. Suddenly, there was a biblical air to the world and it felt like Christmas and seasonal carols such as In the Bleak Midwinter started to come back to my mind. Why is it that we associate snow with Christmas? I know Christmas was grafted onto old winter festivals but why the snow? Could it be because of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol? Or is it because of Breughel’s paintings? Or is it more to do with the fact that the celebration of Christmas as a major feast day coincided with the arrival of a mini ice age in Europe?