February 1: Winter

Winter in ancient Greece was short and usually mild, but every now and again, snow would fall. This would be the doing of the snow goddess Chione, daughter of the Nile god and an ocean nymph. As a young maiden, Chione would play with her friends alongside her father’s riverbanks. She was blissfully unaware of the hungry eyes, that followed her wherever she went. But one day, she strolled just a little too far from the river that had always protected her. The farmer boy, who had been spying on her for years, took his chance, and assaulted her violently. Her world was shattered, she felt humiliated and ashamed, and she couldn’t bear to see herself in the shining surface of her father’s stream. So, the Nile god turned to supreme god Zeus for help. Zeus instructed Hermes to turn her into a snow cloud. And until this day, when Chione feels overwhelmed, and can’t bear to see the reality of the brutal world that we live in, she covers it with a layer of snow.