Snow Day Superstitions: Spoon Under the Pillow, Inside-Out Pajamas and Why Kids Do It

The rituals, one by one

The details vary from school to school, but the core is remarkably stable from Connecticut to Ohio to Tennessee. Most kids learn it from classmates, not parents, and most do several steps at once.

A spoon under the pillow. The best known step. Some versions require the spoon to be facing up, some say lick it first, some put a spoon in every bedroom or even in the closets.

Pajamas inside out. Often inside out and backwards for extra force. The seams on the outside are the point.

Ice cubes down the toilet. One cube for each snow day wanted is a common rule. Some households throw the ice out of a window instead.

A white crayon in the freezer. A later addition that spread through classrooms and social media in the 2010s.

The extras. Eating ice cream or an oatmeal cookie before bed, brushing teeth with the other hand, shouting "snow day" into the freezer, wearing mismatched socks, taping a coin to the window, or doing a snow dance in the living room.

Where the spoon and the pajamas come from

No one can name the first child who slept on a spoon. What can be traced are the older ideas the rituals use.

Inside-out clothing is one of the oldest luck customs in English-speaking folklore. British collections record that putting on a garment inside out by accident is lucky, and that you should leave it that way for the day. English rural lore also used a coat turned inside out to break the spell of being "pixie-led" in the fields. Turning clothes inside out reverses something; children use it to reverse the normal school morning.

Ice and cold objects follow what the anthropologist James George Frazer, writing in The Golden Bough in 1890, called homoeopathic or imitative magic: the belief that like produces like. Put something cold into the plumbing or the freezer and you invite cold into the world. The white crayon works the same way, its color standing in for snow.

The spoon is the hardest to explain. Kids sometimes say it looks like a little shovel, or that it scoops up snow overnight. It may simply be the most available object in any house. In children's folklore the logic often comes after the habit.

Folklorists recorded these customs as living practice long before they went viral. The University of Southern California's digital folklore archive holds several entries from students who learned the spoon and the pajamas in elementary school in New England. A Connecticut teacher told NPR in the late 2000s that the ritual was common along the East Coast, and the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote it up in December 2010.

Why it feels like it works

Snow day rituals have a built-in reward system. They are only performed when snow is already forecast. That means that whenever school is canceled, the ritual was done, and the ritual gets the credit. When school stays open, the forecast gets the blame. A Connecticut teacher put it neatly: nobody turns their pajamas inside out in May.

Psychologists call this pattern a mix of confirmation bias and illusory correlation. Children are not foolish for falling into it; adults do exactly the same thing with lucky shirts on game day.

There is also a simpler reason. The night before a snow day is suspenseful, and suspense is hard to sit through with nothing to do. A ritual gives anticipation a shape. You did your part, now you wait. As children learn how closures are actually decided, most drop the ritual, often with some fondness. Folklorists who collect it note that the custom tends to fade exactly when the mystery does.

How snow days are actually decided

In most US districts the call is made by the superintendent, usually very early in the morning. Transportation staff drive bus routes in the dark to check roads, the district reads the National Weather Service forecast and talks to neighboring districts and local road crews, and a decision is often announced between about 5 and 6 a.m.

What matters is not inches of snow alone. Ice, wind chill, unplowed rural roads, the timing of the storm against the bus schedule, and whether buses can safely stop on narrow roads all count. A district in Buffalo and one in Atlanta will close for very different amounts of snow, because they have very different numbers of plows.

Since 2020 the calculation has a new option. Many districts, including New York City's public schools, now turn some storm days into remote learning days instead of canceling class outright. The old-fashioned snow day has become rarer in those places, which may be one reason the rituals still feel precious.

A ritual that grew up with the internet

For a long time the snow day ritual was purely oral: one kid tells another on the bus. That changed in the 2010s. Morning shows, local TV meteorologists, school newspapers and social media posts turned the private list into a national one, and the rituals multiplied. The crayon, the coin on the window and the socks mostly arrive through this route.

Folklorists see nothing odd in this. Children's lore has always borrowed from print and broadcast, and the internet simply speeds up the borrowing. What stays the same is the core: a spoon, the pajamas, something cold. The extras come and go with each winter's viral post.

It belongs to a family of American weather lore that adults practice too, from reading the woolly bear caterpillar for a hard winter to the old farm custom of reading a goose breastbone. Kids simply skipped the forecasting and went straight to requesting the outcome.

Snow day rituals compared

The common snow day rituals and the idea behind each

Ritual	Idea behind it	Where it comes from	Practical note
Spoon under the pillow	A tool to scoop snow overnight	Children's lore, US Northeast and Midwest	A teaspoon is enough; skip sharp utensils
Pajamas inside out	Reverse the normal day	Old inside-out luck customs	Harmless; often also backwards
Ice cubes down the toilet	Cold invites cold	Imitative magic	One cube per hoped-for day
White crayon in the freezer	White stands for snow	Classroom and social media, 2010s	Take it out before it gets used for art
Snow dance	Ask the sky directly	Family invention	Good for burning energy before bed
Ice cream before bed	Eat something cold	Imitative magic, plus dessert	Parents' discretion

Quiz: which snow-night ritual is yours?

Five questions. The result suggests the snow-night ritual that fits your household.

Voices from practice

Parents often report that the night-before ritual becomes one of the few winter evenings when the whole household is in one room, looking at the same window.

Teachers frequently say they did the spoon and the pajamas as kids and now hear their students describe the very same steps, sometimes with a new extra added that year.

Adults who grew up with the custom commonly describe dropping it in middle school and picking it up again years later, for their own children or simply for the fun of it.

What we don't promise

We do not promise that a spoon, a crayon or a stone will bring snow or close a school. Weather follows physics, and closures follow road conditions and a superintendent's judgment.

We also do not recommend anything that puts a child at risk for the sake of the ritual: no going outside in pajamas, no ice on the stairs, no snow dances near the stove.

What we can say is that the custom is real American folklore, and that a shared ritual before a storm can turn waiting into something a family enjoys.

Practically: how to work with this

If you want to keep the custom without overpromising, these steps help.

1. Wait for a real forecast. The tradition only runs when snow is predicted. That keeps it special and keeps disappointment rare.
2. Choose three steps, not ten. A spoon, inside-out pajamas and one cold thing is plenty.
3. Do it together. One shared moment at the window or the kitchen table matters more than any single step.
4. Say it plainly. Tell kids it is a game you play for luck, the way people break a wishbone at Thanksgiving.
5. Plan for both mornings. Agree on a small treat whether school is canceled or not.
6. Retire the spoon in spring. Put it back in the drawer when the season ends. Knowing when a ritual stops is part of the ritual.

More in obsidian and tumbled and pocket stones.

Frequently asked questions

Why do you put a spoon under your pillow for a snow day?

It is a children's superstition: the spoon is said to scoop snow overnight or simply to bring luck. It is usually combined with wearing pajamas inside out. No one has traced its first use.

Why wear pajamas inside out for snow?

Turning clothes inside out is an old luck custom in English-speaking folklore. In the snow day version it is meant to reverse the normal school morning.

How many ice cubes do you flush for a snow day?

A common rule is one ice cube for each snow day you want. Some families throw ice out the window instead.

What does the white crayon in the freezer do?

The white crayon stands for snow, following the old idea that like produces like. It spread through classrooms and social media in the 2010s.

Do snow day rituals work?

No. They are performed only when snow is already forecast, which makes them feel successful. Closures are decided by district officials based on roads and forecasts.

Who decides if there is a snow day?

Usually the school superintendent, early in the morning, after staff check road conditions and review the National Weather Service forecast.

Sources & further reading

• Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion. Macmillan, 1890 (abridged edition 1922).
• Opie, Iona, and Moira Tatem (eds.). A Dictionary of Superstitions. Oxford University Press, 1989.
• Opie, Iona, and Peter Opie. The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. Oxford University Press, 1959.
• Bronner, Simon J. American Children's Folklore. August House, 1988.
• Philadelphia Inquirer staff. Snow-day rituals: Inside-out PJs, spoons under pillows. Philadelphia Inquirer, December 6, 2010.
• USC Digital Folklore Archives. Spoon Under Pillow for Snow (informant entry, Connecticut). University of Southern California.
• Brighton, Brooke. Snow day folklores. Spectrum News 1, January 23, 2024.