Earlier this month, Regis enjoyed a “snow day,” albeit with no snow. As temperatures plunged, emails and text messages began to come in, wondering whether we planned to close in anticipation of a hard freeze here in the city of Houston. I must admit that as I started to ponder my next move, I had to chuckle at the prospect of closing school for “cold” weather. As a native of the great state of New Jersey who attended high school in Manhattan, I spent half of each winter in the temperatures we were anticipating, and as you might imagine, it took a great deal to see school close. Friends and former colleagues of mine began to send me messages of disbelief, reading in the news that many schools across Texas were announcing school closures for Tuesday, January 17—a snow day with no predicted snow. I explained the difference in Texas infrastructure and the likelihood of freezing pipes, dying plants, and roads icy due to lack of the customary northeastern pre-storm road treatment. Still, my friends and colleagues from up north were chuckling; where I am from, it takes a couple of feet of snow to get in the way of a regular school day. As long as New York City public transit is still running, there’s really no reason to close.

Then, my oldest son started upon his work of convincing me that a closure would be necessary. Knowing that a day off might be necessary due to the aforementioned infrastructure, pipes, and untreated roads, I did my best to hold him off. But why?

For him to know well in advance that school would be closed for the day would deprive him of something I viewed as very special when I was a boy. What I remember most about snow days is not what I did with the day off—what video games I played on my old-school Nintendo, sledding down the hill in my neighborhood, or even having a cup of hot chocolate with my mother—no, what I remember is that feeling of joy I got when I first learned of an unexpected day off. So even as I made preparations for an announcement to go out, I gave neither Hudson nor his younger brothers any advance warning. I wanted to delay his finding out for as long as I could so that he could experience that same feeling of spontaneous and unexpected joy.

In our busy lives, we thrive to a degree on a certain predictability and routine. Each day, we expect to wake up and get ready for work or school, to have meetings or math tests, to meet deadlines or turn in homework, and then to come back home. Disruption of this routine can be unsettling and unnerving. Order becomes chaos. Predictability becomes a loathing of the unknown. Unless it’s a snow day, because snow days are joyful occasions—I think for both children and adults alike.

When everything shuts down, and there’s not a thing one can do about it, these are moments of spontaneous joy. Quick! Go have fun! Stay in your pajamas all day! It’s one thing when one knows this is coming; we all know when the scheduled days off are, and we generally look forward to them, but when it is unanticipated, the joy is doubled. In short, “found” free time beats “expected” free time every time.

St. Madeleine Sophie Barat understood this well. At Sacred Heart schools, we have the tradition of celebrating Congé, which is a French word that means something like “dismissal” or “leave-taking.” The concept is that this is supposed to be a complete surprise; one shows up at school expecting a social studies test and gets a carnival. Not all are aware that this tradition has its origins in the mind of a 19th-century French nun. Sophie is the originator of Congé, which, if you think about it, must have been a pretty progressive idea for her time. At least when I think of a 19th-century education in France after the Reign of Terror, the concept of spontaneous joy is not the first thing that comes to mind. But this is likely why Sophie instituted Congé in the first place. Not only did her students have the regular routines and predictable lives noted above, but they also lived in a society where unexpected events most likely involved sorrow or fear. Why not put joy on the list of things that are unanticipated? Surely, God’s will is not that we’re always just wondering when something bad is going to happen, right?

At Regis, we recently celebrated our “Blizzard Bash” Congé, and I have to tell you, it was epic. Unlike on our unpredicted cold-weather day, we did actually have snow on the playground despite it being 61 degrees. Snowball fights were had, faces were painted, diminutive animals were petted, and the annual colored chalk battle raged. The boys had a stellar time.

It used to be the case around here that faculty and staff knew it was coming. Even the spontaneous joy for adults in our community was not so spontaneous. That filtered down to the boys as well; as they would see every faculty member dressed comfortably and wearing tennis shoes at Morning Prayer, they would know it was coming before it was announced. For the past two years, I have insisted that this be a complete surprise for the adults in our community as well. I have suggested that all faculty and staff keep a pair of tennis shoes in their cars just in case Congé happens to occur on a day when the most uncomfortable shoes look best with one’s chosen attire.

This year, the few of us involved with planning Congé really did surprise everyone, including the adults. Veteran teachers told me that they had predicted every year when Congé was going to happen, but they were caught completely off guard this year. They followed these statements by sharing that, despite the fatigue that comes with supervising students in an unexpected and carnival-like setting, not knowing it was coming made it more fun, just like a snow day.