winter wonderland

As a reader and great lover of fairy tales, ancient to re-told, I wonder why most of the ones--perhaps all--I grew up listening to involve summertime, walks in the woods, green fields of wild flowers, babbling brooks and children eating candy or young women eating forbidden fruit.  Nobody is wearing winter wool. Nobody is shoveling snow; not even as a punishment.  It's true that they live in ranshacle houses down by the river and are forever sending children off to forage for food, sell their only cow or just fend for themselves....but nobody is freezing, like in real life---at least where I come from. Not one kid, pig, goat or even big,bad wolf I ever read about had to cut a damn path through 6 feet of snow to get to grandma's house like I did when I was a kid in Vermont. There was no talk of outhouse runs at sub zero weather through the dark, scary woodshed with actual coyotes howling at the moon up on the ridge behind the house. Those fairy tale kids never even slept under woolen patchwork blankets their mothers made out of raggedy wool coats and hand-me-down kilts from their wealthy cousins. True there was a great dichotomy between the kings and the serfs, but there were knights  (Note: read Winter Wonderland, Continued)