Jack Frost

I really believed Jack Frost painted the leaves in autumn. When my family moved to Iowa, to a town shaded by huge elms, shagbark hickories, and white ash trees, I thought I should probably quit believing the Jack Frost myth as I had stopped believing the myths of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. And in a way I did stop believing. But I still believed that frost caused the leaves to turn from green to amber and crimson.

Our belief in a myth may evaporate quickly—one moment intact, the next moment—shattered. Or a myth may decay slowly over time, be given a much longer half-life so some small innocent part of us persists in believing at least a little of the myth.

Those tiny, persistent beliefs give us portals to pass through so we may revisit our childhood and youth, to savor bittersweet memories of those times.

‘So What’ if the "truth" is that leaves turn color because the days get shorter and the light goes away? ‘So What’ if the leaves produce less and less chlorophyll as the season changes? And that in many parts of the country the first frost and the onset of autumn coincide on the calendar. It’s a happy coincidence.

The childhood myths of Jack Frost and Santa and what they represent to us—our need to love their beauty because they add color and joy and memories of innocence—are critical in our lives.
It’s not always wrong to perpetuate a myth—and maybe sometimes it’s even right to invent one.