Snow Covered Tree by Magnera, on Flickr
If you live in a place with four seasons or somewhere that can get extremely cold that it snows, then you are no stranger to the color white. The first few snowfalls during wintertime are always enchanting, as tiny, white flakes fall out of nowhere and blanket a whole area with snow. This is probably how the term “winter wonderland” was coined. Of course, if you do not see anything else but snow, you will slowly begin to resent not being able to experience other colors.
White is a predominant color in nature. Snow and ice are just the best representations of it. The clouds on a clear day are also white. Some flowers like roses, jasmine, chrysanthemums and daisies have their white varieties. Animals such as the polar bears are white, which enables them to camouflage themselves because the place where they live has nothing but ice and snow, all white. Ordinary cats and dogs may also be white and countless other animals have patches of white in their bodies.
It is interesting to note, however, that white is actually not a color. White, like black, is a tone. People often make the mistake of thinking that white is the absence of color, when this is really the characteristic of black. Strange as it may sound, white is actually the combination of every perceivable color. It sounds quite philosophical, in a way.
Perhaps due to the way nature uses this color, white has become popularly perceived as the color of purity, goodness and innocence. When everything is covered in several inches of thick snow, and you see nothing else but snow, it becomes easy to see how everything around you is immaterial.
Because of this perception of white, the color is commonly used in religion. Gods and their followers are, more often than not, clad in white clothing. That is, unless they are the evil gods. To express the holiness of someone or something, they are usually portrayed as basking in the glow of a white light.
To enhance further the perception of goodness in white, it is commonly used in combination with black. These two colors are the complete opposite of each other and this best represented in the Chinese culture of Yin and Yang. In the western culture, heroes are usually portrayed as pure, good and clad in dazzling white. White knights always save the day and white witches (with some exceptions) only cast spells for the common good.
However, white does not always give a good aura. It can also sometimes give the feeling of sterility, coldness or blandness. Hospitals, with their walls, doctors and nursing staff all in white, cannot seem to shake off that dreadful feeling. If you find yourself in a room painted in plain white and decorated with plain white furniture, how would you feel? People would usually feel uncomfortable because they would be too on-the-spot or afraid they might soil something. White is also the color of death in Chinese culture. That irritating, static-like sound that the television gives off when it can’t find a signal is also called “white noise” and most people can’t listen to it for very long.
