January 6, 2014

You never see Old Man Winter anymore.

Whatever happened to the personification of winter that looked like this?



He doesn't even have a full Wikipedia article. Just a squib:
Old Man Winter is a personification of winter, sometimes also called Father Winter.

He may be an alternative older name for Father Christmas and has been identified with the Old English god Woden.[dubious – discuss]

Old Man Winter is referenced in several poems.
What poems? We're not told. Dubious — discuss... that's harsh. Let's go over to the "personificantion" link, which is an article titled "Anthropomorphism," a great topic. I'm especially interested in the personifications that were once common and have withered away, perhaps because we're overwhelmed by commercial advertising branding a product with a character. These old-fashioned folk personifications have been ousted from whatever niche in the human mind they once occupied.

The "Anthropomorphism" argument looks back to the art of the Upper Paleolithic period, to figurines that that seem to suggest that people were conceptualizing nature in human terms, perhaps as a way to understand or control it. This concept leads to thoughts of gods....
Some religions, scholars, and philosophers objected to anthropomorphic deities. The Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570–480 BCE) said that "the greatest god" resembles man "neither in form nor in mind." Both Judaism and Islam reject an anthropomorphic deity, believing that God is beyond human comprehension...

Hindus do not reject the concept of a deity in the abstract unmanifested, but note practical problems. Lord Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 12, Verse 5, that it is much more difficult for people to focus on a deity as the unmanifested than one with form, using anthropomorphic icons (murtis), because people need to perceive with their senses.

In Faces in the Clouds, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie proposes that all religions are anthropomorphisms that originate in the brain's tendency to detect the presence or vestiges of other humans in natural phenomena.
Speaking of Faces in the Clouds... Old Man Winter!

Anyway, I still want to know what the Old Man Winter poems are. I looked, but I got waylaid at "An Old Man’s Winter Night" by the aptly named Frost:         
One aged man—one man—can’t fill a house,  
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,  
It’s thus he does it of a winter night. 

30 comments:

David said...

Why a man, you sexist pigs? It could be old woman winter. And man or woman what is the sexual orientation? Is frigidity a sexual orientation?

madAsHell said...

It's strictly Germanic mythology from northern Europe, and fails the test of inclusion.

Oso Negro said...

I would consider Old Man Winter a casualty of the global warming hysteria. When the left eventually comes in from the cold, he will be back.

BarrySanders20 said...

Old Man Winter brings the kids Christmas gifts every year. Always something warm to wear. Like clockwork, Christmas morn, there are the soft packages with the tag identifying OMW as the gift-giver.

So he can't be dead yet.

SteveR said...

Climate Change takes another toll, winter is going away. Settled science.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

Who cares about a white male anyway.

kjbe said...

Old Man Winter is a casualty of the computer-generated models and weather maps on our tv's, computer screens and in our pockets. Who's got time for hand-drawn cold fronts and animations anymore?

Freeman Hunt said...

The weather icon on my phone this morning was an igloo with the sun over it.

rehajm said...

Regular contact with Jack Frost. Contracted especially virulent strain of flu. Weak immune system due to advanced age. Died.

Alex said...

Too heteronormative.

Gahrie said...

You know your culture has gone too far to the Left when words like "heteronormative", not only exist, but are generally understood and seen to have value.

Roger Sweeny said...

I don't know that "heteronormative" is Left at all. Communist regimes were anti-gay. And the idea that there are different people with different sexualities is pretty individualistic.

m stone said...

The Weather Channel (NBC-owned) started naming winter storms last year, the concept picked up by media and others.

And, yes, mostly men,all Roman---developed with the help of a Latin class at Bozeman High School in Bozeman, Mont.

Anonymous said...

Ahem, I believe that the appropriate name is Old Person Winter.

Joe said...

Because Winter's a bitch.

Larry J said...

David said...
Why a man, you sexist pigs? It could be old woman winter. And man or woman what is the sexual orientation? Is frigidity a sexual orientation?


Old Man Winter is a white man because the cold is bad and makes people unhappy. It isn't allowed to portray things that are bad and make people unhappy as a woman or a "person of color". As for frigidity being a sexual orientation, it depends on how long she has been married.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

He was frightened away by this.

3john2 said...

Mother Nature kicked him out.

CStanley said...

As a child of the seventies, this is the personification that lives forever in my head:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGRkNaMFp6w&sns=em

Bill Harshaw said...

You don't see a lot of such characters: Uncle Sam--I've not seen Uncle Sam in a few years; the New Year--whatever happened to the cartoonists drawing a stork carrying a baby labeled "2014", or the old man labeled "2013"? Whatever happened to the Russian Bear, used to show up regularly during the Cold War days.

Things aren't the way they used to be.

George M. Spencer said...

One does not hear much about "Old Man River" these days either.

"He don't plant taters.
He don't plant cotton,
And dem dat plants 'em
Is soon forgotten...

"I gets weary
And sick of trying'.
I'm tired of livin'
And skeered of dyin',
But ol' man river
He jes' keeps rollin' along....

"Don't look up
And don't look down.
You don' [dare] make
De white boss frown."

Will Cate said...

Bill Harshaw --

Uncle Sam has been appropriated by the anti-Obamacare forces. He's now known as Creepy Uncle Sam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7cRsfW0Jv8

kentuckyliz said...

Heteronormative? To me, it looks like an old gay man choosing to spit rather than swallow.

kentuckyliz said...

Maybe the icon has been suppressed in the interests of furthering the global warming cause.

traditionalguy said...

Old Man Winter was accused of being an early Denier of the Warmist Hoax. This destroyed his reputation as a collaborative author whose works included the USMC cadence about Eskimo pussy. He also co-wrote Winter our Discontent and several scenes for the film Doctor Zhivago, on which he was the onset advisor to authenticate Siberian weather.

After his death he was also credited with penning the phrase, "That will be the day that Hell that freezes over."

Roadkill said...

Up here in Minnesota, We don't necessarily buy into the "old man winter" idea, but we do think that it's colder than a witches tit.

Anonymous said...

Killed off by global warming.

cplschnapps said...

That's Boreas, the north wind. not old man winter

cplschnapps said...

That's Boreas, the north wind. not old man winter

Rusty said...

Oh, yeah?
He was at the end of my driveway this morning giving me the finger and laughing his ass off as I tried to start my car.