Let There Be Snow
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"When the snow comes down in Tinseltown, we'll be dancing in Hollywood..." |
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A character wants a white Christmas where it doesn't usually snow, so he asks Santa Claus, or sometimes God, for snow in an unlikely location: the tropics, California, the desert, etc.
At the end of the episode, it miraculously starts snowing, thus verifying the existence of the jolly fat man (or the Man Upstairs).
A Snowball Fight is likely, to show them appreciating it. For some characters, it will be a First Snow.
Examples of Let There Be Snow include:
Anime and Manga
- Guu does this in Haré+Guu, giving the jungle kids a taste of pleasant winter activities. And then a taste of what freezing to death feels like. She decides to call it a "gift from God".
Comics
- While it wasn't exactly asked for, during Duke's time as the Governor of American Samoa back in the 70's in Doonesbury, he's standing on a beach dictating a letter to Washington listing the various natural disasters that have hit the island, with a note wondering what could happen next. Which leads to this exchange:
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Duke: I'm a reasonable man, Macarthur, so I know this isn't snow. |
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Fan Fics
- In the Iron Man fic White Christmas, Tony decided to give Pepper a white Christmas in Malibu. Hilarity ensues.
- It actually snowed in Malibu in January 2007 and in December 2008.
Film
- There's a film called Wide Awake, which is about a young boy named Josh who is struggling with his Christian faith. One of the more mind-boggling elements of the film is the fact that whether it snows or not (when he wants it to) is one of the biggest factors in regards to whether or not he believes God exists.
- In the Whoopi Goldberg film Call Me Claus, her character's decision to assume the mantle of Santa not only ends the record December heat wave, but causes it to snow in Los Angeles.
- Similarly, at the end of the Kelsey Grammer vehicle Mr. St. Nick, his assumption of his Santa Claus powers causes it to snow in Miami.
- The first present that the new Santa Claus gives at the end of Ernest Saves Christmas is to let a man who'd moved to Florida for work related reasons have snow on Christmas for the first time in years.
Literature
- If you read enough "real-life inspirational stories", you are bound to get the impression that one of the first things to do when you die is to make it snow for your friends and relatives on Christmas (or sometimes birthdays).
- One of the things that caused the Witchhunters to realize there was something odd about Lower Tadfield in Good Omens was that for ten years, it had always snowed on Christmas Eve there, no matter what the weather was like in the rest of the country.
Live-Action TV
- The Doctor does this in "The Runaway Bride" episode of Doctor Who, but he's not God or Santa, even if he sometimes thinks he is ("red bicycle when you were 12"). It also snows in "The Christmas Invasion" but it's not snow: it's falling ash from an exploded spaceship. Urgh.
- And in "Voyage of the Damned" it snows again, but this time it's the ash from the Titanic.
- So when he lands on earth at the end of "Waters of Mars", he's pleased to see "real proper snow at last!" (He got some real snow in "Planet of the Ood" too, but that wasn't Christmas-related, so...)
- Except then he's lost his mind, so it's not exactly happy fun times.
- In the original script, even the "Waters of Mars" snow was fake—it was a "carbon wash" cleaning up pollution, and Doctor's mistaking it for snow made the surviving humans even more suspicious of him. But apparently the creators felt that a fourth installment of the most macabre Running Gag ever would be a little much on top of the events of the episode.
- The Doctor finally provides real proper snow, at Christmas, without any subversion in "A Christmas Carol", when he shuts down the forcefield suppressing the cloud of ice-crystals.
- There's no specific request for it, but a miraculous snowstorm saves Angel's life in a 3rd season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Averted in an episode of Full House. Becky loves California but is really missing the snow of her hometown. Her husband gives her a pair of mittens for Christmas, and when she gives him a WTF look, takes her outside, to where the backyard has been transformed into a winter wonderland... He says something about buying about a thousand snowcones...
- In Thunderbirds, the Techno Wizard Brains makes it snow on their tropical island home for Christmas. It's sickeningly sweet.
- Another example where no one asked for it is a holiday episode of The Golden Girls (set in Miami Beach).
- Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh subverts this, a little girl wishes for snow at Christmas in her tropical home and Drake and Josh deliver on this via a wood chipper... eventually. It wasn't working until "Crazy Steve" loaded it up with hard cheese instead of Drake and Josh's original plan, ice, which didn't go to well for them - smashing windows and causing other massive property damage.
- The Disney Channel Original Movie The Ultimate Christmas Present Allie Thompson needs a snow day to complete a homework assignment, she and her friend ride their bikes through the woods, steal Santa Claus' weather making machine, and use it to create a snow storm in Los Angeles. the machine malfunctions and causes an out-of-control snowstorm and threatens to cancel christmas for everyone in Los Angeles
- In one episode of Grey's Anatomy, an army doctor formerly stationed in Iraq mentions that their unit somehow obtained a snow machine so a homesick soldier from Minnesota could have a white Christmas. Awwww.
- Leverage, "The Ho Ho Ho Job": Parker seems to believe that Hardison can make it snow. It does snow at the end of the episode, of course.
- Used in Las Vegas, even though nobody'd actually wished for snow.
Theatre
- Hair (theatre) uses this trope in a particularly heartbreaking way—Claude prays and shouts at the sky for snow early in the musical, and his wish is granted. But only after he's died, and can see the snow only as a ghost.
Music
- The quoted song. I got it for Christmas from my brother, okay?
- Not the one from Frosty Returns, apparently...
- Also, the full version of the song "White Christmas". Most versions, from its original singer Bing Crosby on, leave out the opening verse:
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The sun is shining, the grass is green, |
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- Bing Crosby joked about this with Fred Astaire on the radio show Philco Radio Time (April 7, 1948):
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Fred Astaire: Say, Bing, how about a little "White Christmas" from Holiday Inn? |
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Newspaper Comics
- Subverted many a time in Calvin and Hobbes, in which Calvin often begs, yells, prays, chants and on one occasion, even dressed as a snowman as part of a decoy, to get snow but is always disappointed. Then again, it may be because he keeps praying to "snow demons" instead of God...
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Calvin's Dad: I don't know if your grasp of meteorology or theology is more appalling. |
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- Then there's the time Calvin was standing at the bus stop alone, and pleaded with the Powers That Be for snow. He got a torrential downpour.
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Calvin: So close... and yet, so far. |
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Western Animation
- In "Jolly Molly Christmas", the Christmas Episode of Disney's Tale Spin, Molly's Christmas wish gets it to snow in the tropics.
- Santa Claus himself does this in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
- Parodied in an episode of The Simpsons, in which Bart asks God for some extra time to study for his finals so he can pass his grade. The next morning, school is canceled for a freak snowstorm in late spring. And then he actually studies.
- In an episode of Rugrats, the adults set up to take their Christmas pictures in the middle of July or something because they never get it right, and the babies start worrying that since they didn't know it was Christmas, Santa wouldn't know, either. They end up trying to ask the weatherman on TV to make it snow (because he controls the weather, right?). It does end up "snowing", but it's a washer with too much laundry soap.
- The Recess Christmas Episode begins with the characters mentioning how warm it is for the time of year. Guess what the weather is by the end...
- This is essentially the entire plot of The Year Without a Santa Claus.
- Happens on Jimmy Two-Shoes, thanks to Heloise. Since Miseryville is essentially Hell, this quite an accomplishment.
- The Rocko's Modern Life Christmas episode features an elf trying to make it snow in O-Town, where it hadn't snowed in decades (O-Town is almost certainly based on Orlando, Florida).