Why do we dream of a White Christmas?

A lot of us don't come from places where you'd expect them. There's a very interesting history lesson over at The Air Vent that traces the climate history of London winters during the childhood of Charles Dickens. It turns out that this period was astonishingly cold, and set the tone for much of his best known fiction - which in turn set our expectations of a "proper Victorian Christmas":

Charles Dickens. Victorian winters. A Christmas Carol. Ice fairs on the Frozen Thames. Cold Cold Cold Cold Cold. Dickens has irrevocably moulded the climate views of generations of Anglo Saxon peoples as TV, Films and plays all promote his image of icy winters in that era. Is this view of Dickens winters correct? We take a look at his life through the prism of climate.

You'll learn a lot from this. While I knew about the "Ice Fairs" that used to be held on the frozen river Thames, I didn't know that they displayed an elephant there in 1814.