You know what I love? Christmas. And lucky for us, Christmas has always been a big part of Thomas the Tank Engine in both the Railway Series and the television series, and that's no surprise as the Railway Series itself was penned by an Anglican vicar. Thomas' Christmas history started back in 1952 in the book Toby The Tram Engine with the story "Mrs. Kyndley's Christmas". Interestingly enough, this was the only Christmas story to ever be featured in a Railway Series book. Then, the television series came along, and Britt Allcroft asked the Reverend W. Awdry to write a Christmas story for the final episode of the first season set to air on Christmas Day. The result was "Thomas' Christmas Party". The tradition of the Railway Series spin-offs to coincide with the television series continued into the second season with "Thomas and the Missing Christmas Tree", this time written by Christopher Awdry. After Season Two, the episodes were written by the writing staff and remained fairly good for the most part...that is, except for one thing.
Starting in Season 6 with "It's Only Snow", the term Christmas was dropped and so began Thomas' long dance with political correctness. "It's Only Snow" coined the term 'winter holidays' to create a more inclusive holiday that all denominations could relate to. Except they can't, because the holiday being celebrated was very obviously Christmas. Just to clear one thing up, political correctness doesn't bother me in appropriate context like what an ethnic group refers to be called. But when it's trying to hide the fact that Christmas is in a children's television show, it's just plain ridiculous. Ironically, 'winter holidays' offended more people than it comforted for the reasons that I previously stated including the Reverend W. Awdry's late daughter Hilary Fortnam. She publicly called out HIT Entertainment on the ridiculousness of 'winter holidays' and even got them to change it back to Christmas for the UK release of "Merry Winter Wish" and all future Christmas themed episodes. For that, we all owe Hilary our thanks and praise. Your father would be proud of you.
So, when looking into the episode that started this march into the world of political correctness that Thomas The Tank Engine took for nearly a decade, I will admit that I really liked "It's Only Snow" as a kid. But nowadays, it's not really one of my personal favorites. The big reason for why being that it's starting to get a bit repetitive with the idea of Thomas complaining about his snowplow even though he knows now to wear it in bad weather. Don't get me wrong, I still kind of like this one as it is still handled very well and it does have its good points like the big thing I need to point out and that is the sequence of Thomas carrying on without his snowplow after what some see as one of the most underrated crashes of the entire series with the water tower being knocked over. That alone took a lot of courage which is exactly the character trait that we all like and what we want out of Thomas. Also, I will admit that the music is nice to listen to. Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell really know how to outdo themselves when it comes to the winter themes, so I can at least give the episode that much. Season 6 has one of the most underrated scores of the entire series and it does not get much credit in my opinion.
And even if the set design and visuals of Season 6 are ones that most people would say are dull, I still say that the snowy sets are beautiful to look at. The snowy sets always satisfied me as a kid and looked very soft to me whenever I watched this particular episode. However, the one thing that always confused me was why this was the only episode that had Thomas wearing a different snowplough.
Like, what is this thing? Why didn't they just use his regular blue one? But overall, I don't really hate "It's Only Snow". It's just that it's not one of my preferred favorites. But as I said, it does have its good points and for that gets this episode a rating of a 4/5.
