This phrase finds its origin in C.S. Lewis's book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). In the second chapter, Lucy stumbles through the back of the wardrobe into the imaginary country of Narnia. Although it is summer in England (where the wardrobe sits), it is winter in Narnia. Lucy soon meets a Faun, Mr. Tumnus. Tumnus tells Lucy that Narnia is under the thumb of the White Witch, and then says;
"It's she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!"
The arrival of Lucy and her three siblings spells the end of the Witch's reign, but not before some trials and tribulations intervene.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the first of Lewis's seven books about Narnia (although it comes second in Narnian chronology). The books, although intended as entertainments first and foremost, were Lewis's re-imagination of the Christian story in terms of a children's fairy story. Thus the characters of the books experience the central events of Christianity, but described as they might happen in another world.
The novels are not, however, allegorical; they are entirely keeping with the belief, shared by Lewis and his close friend and Oxford colleague Tolkien, that stories themselves, especially of the mythical type, can give spiritual nourishment without imparting abstract meaning.
(Source: Carpenter and Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, 1984, p.370.)
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