Snow days ain’t what they used to be. Global warming has made snow scarce, and even when schools close a lot of kids don’t go education-free, because remote learning didn’t disappear with the pandemic.
Kids don’t know the difference, of course. They’re just happy to have a day mostly off with snow to play in. But because they learn about it via internet, they’ll never know the thrill of anticipation recalled by anyone Gen X or older.
Back in the day, kidz, they didn’t cancel school the night before unless an all-out blizzard was coming. So we woke up and listened to the radio to hear if our district had granted us one of the precious snow days built into the calendar. There were five, IIRC, and if a district went over the limit they had to extend the school year come June. Nobody, least of all the teachers, wanted that.
So on a day like today, when snowfall totals were in doubt, officials waited until morning to make a decision – and kids who had long since gotten wise to Santa Claus became like tots on Christmas Eve, especially if there was a test scheduled.
Matt Pond built this song around that feeling of hopeful suspense. For any kids home on a snow day, it’s called a metaphor.
The people we have become
still lay awake hoping to hear airwaves
say snow day
Pond, a New Hampshire native who started his music career in Philadelphia in the ’90s before moving to New York in 2003, released this song 20 years ago on his “Winter Songs” EP. It gave him his career’s broadest exposure when it was used in a Starbucks commercial in 2005.
Pond records under the band name Matt Pond PA, which he has ditched a couple of times only to repeatedly come back to it. He’s released more than a dozen LPs and as many EPs over the years, in styles that have varied with the times. This song is from his last major-label release, 2013’s “The Lives Inside the Lines in Your Hand.”
