Hearth's Warming Eve

Hearth's Warming Eve is the eleventh episode of the second season of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, and the thirty-seventh episode overall. One of the show's layout artists suggested in an online forum that the episode might have been number thirteen in the season's production order, which would account for it being listed as the thirteenth episode in Zap2it's TV guide. The episode is also listed as number thirteen in the iTunes library.

Visit to Canterlot
The episode starts with a shot of a snowy Ponyville, and the 6 friends on a train on their way to Canterlot. Once they arrive, Twilight expresses her delight at Canterlot at this time of year, with Rainbow Dash agreeing and wishing that it could be Hearth's Warming Eve every day.

Next, the ponies are seen backstage preparing for the play that Princess Celestia asked them to perform. Fluttershy shows a large amount of stage fright, which is only worsened when Rarity says that there will be hundreds, maybe thousands, of ponies watching the play, prompting her to hide in a box, back to the state that Rarity found her in the first place.

The Play: Act One
The ponies are then called on stage, and the play begins. The play is about the history of ponykind and how Equestria was formed. Spike narrates, providing an introduction. He explains how life was before the huge storm came. Earth ponies grew food, and in payment for providing weather, the Pegasi were given some of the food. The Unicorns also wanted payment for magically raising the sun and moon. This fragile relationship continues until a large blizzard comes along causing a food shortage and destroying it completely.

Without any food, the leaders of each pony tribe met up to discuss what to do. The meeting however went poorly, as each of the leaders continued to argue with each other. After the assembly, three ghostly horses are shown overlooking the earth below from a passage in the clouds; they are later identified as Windigoes. Each of the leaders returns to their second-in-command and explains that the meeting went poorly because the other leaders refused to cooperate. Smart Cookie then tells Chancellor Puddinghead that they are out of food, and Chancellor Puddinghead exclaims that they need to grow somewhere else, and each leader comes to the conclusion that they must find new land to inhabit.

The Play: Act Two
Commander Hurricane and Private Pansy fly through clouds, while Princess Platinum and Clover the Clever travel through a forest, and while Chancellor Puddinghead and Smart Cookie travel across a gem-encrusted mountainside. Each tribe leader finds their ideal land, and claims it for their tribe. Commander Hurricane names her land "Pegasopolis" (the suffix -polis comes from Greek, meaning "city"). Princess Platinum naming her land "Unicornia", and Chancellor Puddinghead naming her land "Earth" as a recommendation from Smart Cookie to replace her first choice of "Dirtville".

However, each tribe has claimed land right next to each other, and of course more arguments ensue about who gets to own the land. Commander Hurricane calls for a fight to the land, but each of the advisors votes for everyone to just calm down. Chancellor Puddinghead throws a snowball at Princess Platinum, and then each leader realizes that the blizzard has once again returned.

The Play: Act Three
To escape the blizzard, each pony makes their way to a cave. Once in the cave, they continue to argue over who gets what part of the cave. Once each tribe has marked out which part of the cave they get, they begin to argue over rocks. Due to their constant arguing, the Windigoes once again return, causing an ice blizzard, which freezes each of the leaders solid. The advisors, however, manage to hold good relations to each other, regardless of the different tribes they hail from. They all joke with each other, exclaiming that the leaders' arguing is what caused all of this, and tell stories and sing, the songs of which became the carols that are still sung in Equestria today.

With their continued display of friendship, Smart Cookie, Clover the Clever and Private Pansy manage to melt the ice surrounding their leaders. In the end, all the tribes learned that harmony and love to each other can conquer over hatred and grief. After the leaders settled their differences, they all finally live in harmony with each other ever since while founding the new land, Equestria. At the end of the play, the cast and audience begin to sing a carol.

Epilogue
Once the play is over, backstage, Twilight thinks about why the Princess chose them to perform the play, coming to the conclusion that they exemplify what good friends are. Unfortunately, a window bursts open, and then they all start arguing about who will close the window. However, when they hear the distant wail of a Windigo, Rainbow Dash comes to her senses and closes the window without further argument. The episode ends with a shot of Canterlot with the same magical heart floating above it that broke the blizzard in the cave in the play, and somewhat unusually, no friendship lesson is sent to Princess Celestia.

Hearth's Warming Eve play
The episode features a play put up by the ponies in Canterlot for Hearth's Warming Eve. The cast is as follows:
 * Spike as Narrator
 * Pinkie Pie as Chancellor Puddinghead, leader of the Earth ponies
 * Applejack as Smart Cookie, advisor to Chancellor Puddinghead
 * Rarity as Princess Platinum, leader of the Unicorn ponies
 * Twilight Sparkle as Clover the Clever, advisor to Princess Platinum. The character shares her name with Clever Clover, which a G2 male earth pony.
 * Rainbow Dash as Commander Hurricane, leader of the Pegasus ponies
 * Fluttershy as Private Pansy, advisor to Commander Hurricane

Windigoes
The Windigoes are "winter spirits that feed off fighting and hatred; the more hate the spirit feels, the colder things become", according to the character Twilight Sparkle plays in the Hearth's Warming Eve play, Clover the Clever. The three windigoes feature three times throughout the episode: at the conclusion of the grand summit, after the pony leaders' snowball fight, and at the cave that the ponies took as shelter.

The Windigoes look like ghostly and slightly translucent horses. In their first appearance the three windigoes only look down onto the grand summit from a passage in the clouds with glowing blue eyes, but in their second and third appearances they wail and fly in a circle of clouds. They are defeated by "the fire of friendship", a pink flame that takes the shape of a heart which was created in the play when Clover, Smart Cookie, and Pansy become friends. However, it is implied that they, or other members of their race, are still around in modern Equestria when one of their distinctive howls is heard through an open window when Rainbow Dash and Applejack start arguing about who has the responsibility of closing it.

In the mythology of the Algonquian peoples, the Wendigo is a malevolent, cannibalistic supernatual being strongly associated with the winter, the North, and coldness, as well as with famine and starvation.

Quotes

 * Fluttershy: I'm so excited, I, I feel like shouting! [softly] Woo hoo!


 * Twilight Sparkle: I have an idea, let's play 'I spy with my little eye' as we walk! I'll go first. I spy... an eight foot candy cane.
 * Rainbow Dash: I spy a snowpony!
 * Pinkie Pie: I spy somepony eating a gingerbread house!


 * Rainbow Dash: Aaah, Rain-bow-Dash! Rain-bow-Dash! Aaaah! Thank you, thank you!
 * Applejack: It's a reenactment of the founding of Equestria. It's not the Rainbow Dash Show.
 * Rainbow Dash: Well it should be the Rainbow Dash Show! I'm the star!


 * Applejack: Wouldn't it have been easier to use the door, Chancellor?
 * Pinkie Pie: Maybe for you, Smart Cookie. But I am a chancellor. I was elected because I know how to think outside the box. Which means [slightly echoy] I can also think inside the chimney. Can you think inside a chimney?
 * Applejack: Uh-
 * Pinkie Pie: I didn't think so.


 * Pinkie Pie: Oh my gosh. Hold on to your hooves – I am just about to be brilliant!


 * Applejack: Heaven forbid that should happen, your chancellorship, heh. It's just that... the map is also upside down.
 * Pinkie Pie: I got a newsflash for you, Cookie. The earth is round. There is no up or down.


 * Fluttershy: Well, I don't hate you... I actually hate Commander Hurricane a lot more than I hate you guys.
 * Applejack and Twilight Sparkle: [giggling]
 * Fluttershy: Actually, I don't really hate her, I just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really dislike her.

Gallery

 * Hearth's Warming Eve image gallery

Trivia

 * The plot of the Hearth's Warming Eve play partly overlaps with the story in the iOS storybook application My Little Pony: Twilight Sparkle, Teacher for a Day. The storybook application came out three months before the actual episode.
 * Each Pony tribe outfit resembles the ancient Europe people, the Pegesus tribe like ancient Greek, Unicorn Tribe resemble Medvil England and Earth pony like Portuguese.
 * In the Hearth's Warming Eve Play, Rarity proclaimed part of Equestria as the new country called Unicornia. Unicornia is also a city in the G3 special My Little Pony Crystal Princess: The Runaway Rainbow in which all unicorns live.
 * The flag the six ponies plant in the ground bears both Luna and Celestia, as well as the Sun and Moon. However, the play's narration notes that Luna and Celestia were not the rulers at the time.
 * Celestia's mane on the flag is green rather than the pink it is usually seen in paintings, though this does match the color of her mane in the stained glass window that shows her and her sister defeating Discord.
 * When Twilight tries pull Fluttershy out of the bucket before the show begins, she yells "PINKIE!" The sound clip is recycled from the end of The Ticket Song.
 * This is the first episode where Spike sings.
 * During the first act, in the scene depicting famine among the pegasi, two murals (or bas-reliefs) can be seen on two of their buildings: The first depicts a pegasus leading a trio of soldiers in a charge while the second depicts a pegasus locked in combat against what appears to be a draconequus or similar chimera.