If you’re like us, your office is freezing and your commute is worse, and you’re just about fed up with the “polar vortex”. With all this cold weather almost everyone is frankly, sick of winter. But did you ever stop to think about how poor Sir Winter himself feels? After all, he’s just doing his job (and doing it well this season) but he receives so much scorn.

So here’s a picture book story to warm your heart a little and perhaps remind you that Old Man Winter, for his part, has it bad too:

We’ll just have to wait and see what the groundhog says on Sunday about the arrival of the infant Spring (as if you won’t be watching the Super Bowl instead). Hopefully we’ll see him soon!

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Images and text from: “Sir Winter,” in Laughter Book for Little Folks (New York: James Miller, [ca 1880]), p. 11-13.  Cotsen 5847

Laughter Book consists of five publications, including reprints from earlier English editions of Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter and Konig Nussknacker.

The source for the images of “Sir Winter” is from the artist Moritz von Schwind’s “Denn Weihnachten hat der Winter gebracht,”published in Die Fliegende Blatter 6 (1847), nr. 124, s. 27.

Reference: Ruehle, Reiner, Boese Kinder (1999), 767.