These snow day superstitions were our best shot at getting a day full of sledding followed by hot chocolate and a cartoon binge
The 10 Silliest Snow Day Superstitions You Believed as a Kid
Ah, snow. That beautiful, magical and often unpredictable present from Mother Nature. While adults may think of it as a menace, kids see this natural phenomenon as a saving grace during the long winter months. It’s not surprising that over the years, countless children have experimented with different rituals to invoke the white stuff. You may have heard of these funny snow day superstitions—or believed them yourself as a kid.
If your little ones (or you) believe school should be periodically replaced with sledding, snowmen and hot cocoa, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to learn some of the silliest, snow-inducing superstitions. Go ahead and try them too. We won’t judge you!
Get Reader’s Digest’s Read Up newsletter for more parenting, humor, cleaning, travel, tech and fun facts all week long.
Snow day superstitions for hopeful kids
When we want something really bad, we’ll do all sorts of wacky stuff to get it. That’s especially true when the thing we want is out of our control (like, say, a weather event). Of course, snow day superstitions are nothing new—ancient cultures also engaged in performative dances to invoke the weather gods.
Whether you call it superstition or simply manifestation, you can’t deny the draw of these rituals. Even nonbelievers can get on board with silly actions that help them express their hope and excitement for snowtime fun, the iconic snowy smell and (most important) a day off from school.
Here are the goofiest snow day superstitions we’ve ever heard:
Wear your PJs inside out
For more than 50 years, kids have been wearing their pajamas inside out and backwards in the hopes that Mother Nature will reward them with a snowstorm.
Put a spoon under your pillow
Sleep with a spoon under your pillow, and Frosty the Snowman may pay a visit instead of the Tooth Fairy. For extra insurance, put the spoon in the freezer for an hour first.
Flush an ice cube
Flush an ice cube down the toilet for every inch you’d like it to snow.
Keep a crayon on the window
Place a white crayon on the windowsill to conjure snow for the morning. Of course, that begs the question of what happens if you put a pink crayon on the windowsill. Pink snow?
Wear a plastic sock
Wear plastic bags over your socks and in your shoes the day before. It’s sort of like saying,”If you build it, they will come.”
Sleep backward
Sleep backward, with your feet at the top of your bed and your head at the bottom. Then drift off to dreams of building a snowman the very next day.
Slurp on ice cream
Just eat some ice cream. That’s a win-win even if it doesn’t work.
Shake a leg
Perform a snow dance next to the freezer. Perhaps because of the proximity to the ice cream?
Have a day of opposites
Brush your teeth with your opposite hand—and sleep backward while you’re at it.
Ask for divine intervention
When in doubt, pray. Hey, it’s old school, but there’s no harm in tacking the request on to the end of your nightly prayers.
Should you believe snow day superstitions?
Let’s just say inside-out pajamas aren’t going to change the weather forecast. Your local meteorologist has a better chance of predicting a covering of snow.
But even though today’s kids can pull up the weather app or use a snow day calculator, there’s still a place for silly snow day superstitions. Admit it: Flushing ice cubes down the toilet while wearing your backward PJs is a lot more fun.
Why trust us
Reader’s Digest has been telling jokes for more than 100 years, curated and reviewed over the last 20 years by Senior Features Editor Andy Simmons, a humor editor formerly of National Lampoon and the author of Now That’s Funny. We’ve earned prestigious ASME awards for our humor—including comical quips, pranks, puns, cartoons, one-liners, knock-knock jokes, riddles, memes, tweets and stories in laugh-out-loud magazine columns such as “Life in These United States,” “All in a Day’s Work,” “Laughter, the Best Medicine” and “Humor in Uniform,” as well as online collections such as short jokes, dad jokes and bad jokes so bad, they’re great. You can find a century of humor in our 2022 compendium, Reader’s Digest: Laughter, the Best Medicine. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- The Weather Channel: “Wintertime Superstitions For Southerners Wishing For Snow”
- Snow Day Calculator: “Calculator”
