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. The ponies put up a play in Canterlot about the founding of Equestria.

Episode number
The episode initially showed up as number thirteen on Zap2it and the iTunes library. 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.

In other media
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 episode.

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, they head for the stage where they'll be performing the play.

Next, the ponies are seen backstage preparing for the play that Princess Celestia asked them to perform. Fluttershy suffers from stage fright, which is not helped when Rarity tells her that hundreds, maybe thousands of ponies will be watching. Rainbow Dash, in contrast, thinks that the show should be all about her, since she's the star.

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

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 founded. Spike narrates, providing an introduction. He explains what life was like. 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. None of the tribes cared what happened to each other. This fragile relationship continues until a large blizzard comes along causing a food shortage.

Without any food, the leaders of each pony tribe meet up to discuss what to do. The meeting however goes 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.

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". 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".

They soon discover that each tribe has claimed the same land, 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, causing everyone to realize that the blizzard has once again returned.

Act three
To escape the blizzard, the ponies make their way into a cave. Once in the cave, they continue to argue over who gets what part of the cave. Due to their constant arguing, the Windigoes once again return, causing an ice blizzard, which freezes each of the leaders solid. Clover the Clever identifies the creatures, saying her mentor Star Swirl the Bearded taught her about them. The advisors, however, manage to hold good relations to each other, regardless of the different tribes they hail from. They deduce 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 the warmth of harmony and love to each other can conquer over the coldness of 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. The ponies raise a banner bearing two winged unicorns, which bear a resemblance to Princess Luna and Princess Celestia, depicted flying with the Sun and Moon.

At the end of the play, the cast and audience begin to sing a carol.

Epilogue
Once the play is over, backstage, Twilight concludes that the Princess chose them to perform the play because they exemplify what good friends are. They then notice that the window is still open (or open again), 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. No friendship report is sent to Princess Celestia.

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

 * 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 My Little Pony special - My Little Pony Crystal Princess: The Runaway Rainbow - in which all unicorns live.
 * When Twilight tries pull Fluttershy out of the bucket before the play begins, she yells "PINKIE!" The sound clip is recycled from the end of The Ticket Song.
 * This is the first episode where Spike can be seen singing, although he is not specifically heard.
 * The shape of the heart is a probably a reference to the video game 'Kingdom Hearts'