But, as long as you love me so,
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!
(Let it Snow)

For some of you, buried underneath a couple of different drifts already, this song makes sense. Snow, for you, doesn’t mean caroling and wassailing, it means scraping and shoveling. So knowing you’re loved can make all the difference while you’re both sweating and freezing inside your parka.

For those of us who live in warmer climates, however, we so rarely see snow we might even trade the love of our lives for a day just to play in the white stuff.

But there’s a larger meaning here, of course. Just as love can cover a great many sins, it can also relativize any weather conditions at all. I try to remember this whenever I travel to a place so cold I can’t imagine people even surviving, much less building big, beautiful cities (like Moscow, or Anchorage, or Minneapolis). Considering how it can motivate us to do just about anything, love must be an element of the universe, as real and effectual as gravity, or matter, or weather.

What’s surprising is that when the weather is perfect, we can easily forget how precious and motivating love really is. We can all be lured into thinking money, or success, or fame, or validation is the end-all, be-all of our existence. But when the weather brings our basic survival into question, we tend to remember—love is all we really want.

Peace begins with pause,

The three best versions of “Let It Snow” are as follows, IMHO (and no, Dean Martin’s version is not on here; he sounds way too drunk):

1. Harry Connick, Jr
2. Seth MacFarlane (That’s right, the crude Family Guy creator has a Christmas album—turns out he’s a heckova crooner!)
3. Sufjan Stevens (This one’s a little out there, but I love it, as I love most of Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas albums)