Many Americans cherish the vision of a white Christmas, complete with sparkling snow, icicles, sleigh rides, frosty windows, cozy firelight, mittens, and even the North Pole. The holiday embodies a mixture of chilly scenes and warm feelings.

However, most Americans reside in areas where Christmas is rarely snowy.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), only around 40% of the contiguous United States typically receives snow by Christmas.

So, even though a white Christmas isn’t a reality for most, why does it remain such a cherished ideal?

Experts suggest that this longing is rooted in a mix of nostalgia, holiday music, popular literature, the growth of Victorian culture, and quite unexpectedly, the Little Ice Age.

The fascination dates back to Charles Dickens, the famous English writer known for his beloved story “A Christmas Carol,” published in 1843.

“He played a crucial role in shaping modern Christmas,” noted Thomas Ruys Smith, a Christmas literature professor at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

The tale was highly successful in the U.S. and quickly adapted into stage plays, capturing the public’s imagination. Dickens reinforced this connection during his 1867 reading tour in the U.S. around Christmas. “America fell in love with ‘A Christmas Carol’ all over again,” Smith remarked.

The story portrays a snowy London Christmas filled with cold and ice skating, even as London itself was experiencing less snowfall by that time.

“In ‘A Christmas Carol,’ Dickens achieves what we all do – reminisce about childhood memories when Christmas felt most enchanting,” said Smith.

Dickens’ childhood in the early 19th century occurred during the Little Ice Age, a period lasting from approximately 1300 to around 1850 that was characterized by notably cooler global temperatures, likely due to solar fluctuations and volcanic eruptions.

“During the mid-19th century, particularly as the Little Ice Age was nearing its end, very cold temperatures were more frequent in that region,” explained Dagomar Degroot, an environmental history professor at Georgetown University who has researched the Little Ice Age.

The association of snow with Christmas is so ingrained in England that Covent Garden in London creates artificial snow flurries every hour in December.

Another enduring literary connection is found in Little Women, published in 1868, which opens on a snowy day right before Christmas.

“Time and again, we are presented with literary and artistic representations of what Christmas should resemble. The stories that have survived from the 19th century often feature snow and ice skating,” Smith remarked.

This link between Christmas and cold weather was further emphasized by the emergence of mass commercial culture in the U.S. after the Civil War, leading to the rise of nationwide illustrated magazines. Many of these publications featured stories akin to today’s Hallmark movies during the Christmas season.

“Mary Wilkins Freeman was a pivotal writer of Christmas tales in America,” Smith added. “Her stories are almost entirely set in a snowy aesthetic.”

This era also saw a great fascination with affordable prints that often depicted nostalgic, snow-covered Christmas scenes, according to Smith.

For example, Currier and Ives prints are referenced in the 1948 holiday classic “Sleigh Ride,” notably with the line “It will nearly be like a picture-print by Currier and Ives.”

All these influences were occurring during a time of colder conditions, as noted by Degroot.

“The U.S., on average, was significantly colder during the Victorian era than it is now. Winter temperatures, especially, have risen faster than temperatures in other seasons, particularly in the Northeast, where the American Christmas ideal took shape in the 19th century,” he explained.

Why must Christmases be white?

The holiday season is deeply tied to nostalgic childhood memories, leading us to a classic Christmas tune that originally featured palm trees.

Irving Berlin’s legendary song White Christmas debuted in 1942, although it was penned in 1938 while he was in Beverly Hills, according to Nate Sloan, a musicology professor at the University of Southern California.

“The song expresses a longing for home and a white Christmas, reflecting his family’s roots in New York during the 1890s,” he explained.

The song originally included a verse that was later removed: “The sun is shining, the grass is green. The orange and palm trees sway. There’s never been such a day. In Beverly Hills, L.A. But it’s December 24th. And I’m longing to be up north.”

Sloan added, “This dream of a white Christmas reflects nostalgia for his childhood, representing a fondly remembered past.”

Now Christmas is just about cold weather

Christmas carols date back to at least the 1300s, but many of the religious songs sung today originated only in the 1700s. The trend of non-religious Christmas songs surged in the 20th century, especially from the 1990s onward as Christmas soundtracks became commercialized, noted Sloan.

Today, many tracks on these soundtracks don’t even reference Christmas—they’re just about winter. The Christmas music repertoire is filled with songs that lack any mention of Yuletide.

• “Let it Snow”
• “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”
• “Frosty the Snowman”
• “Jingle Bells”
• “I’ve Got my Love to Keep Me Warm”
• “Winter Wonderland”
• “Sleigh Ride”

“It seems as though if a song includes snow, people automatically associate it with Christmas,” Sloan remarked.

Despite the increase in snowy-themed Christmas songs, actual snowfall may become rarer in the future, according to Degroot.

The Earth’s temperature has varied naturally over thousands of years—this includes periods like the Medieval Warm Period, when grapes could grow in Britain, and the Little Ice Age, when the Thames froze solid and hosted Frost Fairs.

However, the warming trend observed in the last 50 years significantly deviates from the natural fluctuations seen over the past 2,000 years, as indicated by temperature records.

“If greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current trajectory, global temperatures could rise by about three degrees Celsius [5.4 degrees Fahrenheit] by the century’s end,” he explained.

In such a scenario, snow will be notably less common than today.

“If Earth’s climate is highly responsive to greenhouse gas emissions, which is a possibility, then a rapid escalation in global temperatures will likely make it impossible for many Americans to enjoy a white Christmas,” Degroot stated. “However, that would be just one of many pressing issues.”