There’s something about the first snow fall of the year that makes you act like a kid no matter how old you are. I’ve lived in snowy places for nearly all of my life, but that doesn’t mean like I don’t act like a giddy nincompoop every time I see those flurries sticking to the ground.

There’s something about snow that brings out the kid in everyone. I think it reminds them of the excitement of waiting up all night to see if schools will close, making snow forts with their friends, stamping off boots and drinking hot cocoa with mom. For those of us who hoped for snow days all year long, the first snow fall felt like freedom.

When I was a kid, we’d usually have about three or four snow days a year. I would meet up with friends and we would sled down the hill. I would talk to my friends in other neighborhoods while sitting under a pile of blankets, something I wasn’t allowed to do when my mother was home. I would make snow cones out of snow and honey. I would watch The Simpsons, something I wasn’t allowed to do, either.

Snow holds with it so many memories of childhood, but somehow, when it snows, adults don’t feel restricted by entirely adult behavior. Instead, they can sled with their kids, bundle up under the covers watching movies because they aren’t leaving the house or make snow angels in the backyard.

This weekend, during the first snow fall of the year, I watched plenty of twenty-somethings and older making snow men around wherever they were. Nobody judged them. Most passersby just laughed.

There’s something pure about the first snow fall. It makes the landscape interesting again. Where there were bare tree branches, there are now spindly snow branches that light up in the snow. Everything looks cleaner.

This love of snow grows weary as the season continues. Snow turns into grey and dingy piles as drivers exhume exhaust onto them. Scraping ice and shoveling driveways becomes tedious. The cold seeps into the house and into our bones and makes everything achy. Hot cocoa even becomes too sweet.

But as the winter stretches into spring and summer and fall again, by the next winter, we’re ready for it again, at least for a while.

What is your favorite part about the first snow fall of winter?