White Winter Hymnal lyrics

According to Jo Whiley Coyote, it's about a friend of theirs, Michael, who got caught up in gang culture.

"I was following the pack
All swallowed in their coats"

Kids in hoodies.

"With scarves of red tied 'round their throats
To keep their little heads
From fallin' in the snow"

Wearing their gang colours, so other gang members will recognise them and not 'blow their heads off'.

"And I turned 'round and there you go"

One minute you're my friend, the next you've gone and joined the gang.

"And, Michael, you would fall
And turn the white snow red as strawberries
In the summertime..."

Michael was stabbed/shot, his blood colouring the snow a bright red as he bled to death.

RIP Michael.

It seems to have a much more ordinary meaning to me - I picture a class of small school children, who have been watching the snow fall from the classroom. Break time arrives and, in their excitement, they all go charging out, with the narrator "following the pack". "Swallowed in their coats" refers to the small size of the children, wrapped up in their bulky winter coats with the scarves of red perhaps being part of the school uniform. The scarves are tied tightly to protect them from the cold, so tightly that it seems that they have been pulled tight to "stop their little heads from falling in the snow". "I turned around and there you go" conjures up images of the narrator, himself a young child in the song turning to throw a snowball at his friend, Michael, who falls as he tries to avoid it. As the snowball hits, Michael suffers a burst nose dripping blood onto the snow. The metaphor of "strawberries in the summertime", to me, shows that while something unpleasant has happened, the boys are having fun and Michael sees this accidental injury as part of the fun, not something to get upset about.

I think that this song is actually about the French Revolution. White is the color of the people (as well as virtue and whatnot) in France and came about during the French Revolution. The red scarf part could refer to the red ribbons that people would wear to commemorate those who died in the guillotine. Micheal (this is a stretch) could be the guillotine falling to kill King Louis XVI of France in January, which would turn the snow red with blood.

It's possible, but that's my guess.

Right. To be honester, without your insight I might have forgotten the British were fighting in the American Civil War. Do you think the battle they're recounting happened before or after the care bears volunteered their efforts, or were they still too busy drafting the Magna Carta?

to be honest, i think this song is reliving history.
and its describing an american civil war battle
where obviously he's on the british side (with the red scarves)
and he witnesses the death of a friend

there also seems to be a lot of thought going through his mind
but we could go into endless debates about that
(like when he "turned around", he might of been running away from the fight
and then he saw his friend get shot
and he realized how scary war really is)

tell me what you think of my interpretation