The Theology of Snow Days

A Minnesotan's meditation on taking an unscheduled winter break

Twenty years into my career, I’m still nervous on the first day of a new class. But even if I could have calmed my mind and returned to sleep at 5:30 this morning, one look out the window let me know that I had work to do if I wanted to get to work. Someone had to shovel us out after a storm yesterday that left the Twin Cities near its average snowfall total for a typical winter… only a few days into January.

I was steeling myself to tackle the worst of the job — the heavy, salty stuff our city’s snow plows had pushed off our street into our driveway — when my wife stuck her head out of the door and shouted, “It’s a snow day!”

It took my university and my wife’s preschool longer than our kids’ school district to make that call, but by the time I started my second cup of coffee, we all knew that we wouldn’t be going anywhere today.

So rather than write a post about the start of my January term course on World War II — that’ll hold until next week — I thought I’d share a brief meditation on what you might call the theology of snow days.