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.

Summary
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 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.

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 realises that the blizzard has once again returned.

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, and in the end, all of the tribes live in harmony with each other. At the end of the play, the cast and audience begin to sing a carol, The Heart Carol.

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.

In the play, the three tribes learned about that harmony and love to each other can conquer over hatred and grief, which is the true message of the Hearth's Warming Eve festival.

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. A Clever Clover earth pony toy was part of the G2 toyline.
 * 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.

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.

Gallery

 * Hearth's Warming Eve image gallery

Trivia

 * 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, and Rarity herself (during the play), live.
 * The flag the 6 ponies plant in the ground bears both Luna and Celestia, as well as the Sun and Moon. However, Luna and Celestia were not the rulers at the time.
 * Celestia's mane on the flag is green rather than the pink it is normally seen as (though this does match the color of her mane in the stained glass window that shows her and her sister defeating Discord).
 * When Twilight is trying to pull Fluttershy out of the bucket before the show begins, she yells "PINKIE!". This sound can also be heard at the end of The Ticket Song from the episode "The Ticket Master".
 * This is the first episode where Derpy Hooves is seen more then once.