Easter is late this year, but I beg you to please hold off on those white shoes just a while longer. Several self-proclaimed “fashion experts” have declared it’s now OK to wear white shoes any time of the year, but here in the South we know better. The bright white shoes shouldn’t see the light of day until the bunny has hidden the eggs.

Give me a brief moment of your time, and I think I can explain exactly why we Southerners love to – no, have to adhere to the white shoe rule.

To start with, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s hot down here. Throw in a bucket of humidity and even Coco Chanel herself would be tempted to think, “It’s so warm, I can wear summery white things year round” (She wouldn’t). It’s precisely because of our warm temperatures that we feel obligated to follow a dress code of sorts so that we remember which season we are currently observing.

Although we’ve experienced a chilly winter and spring, we also know that 80 degrees could show up during any season. Since the thermometer is no guide, we are forced to turn to clothing for direction. White shoes, seersucker and sandals all say to us, “Hello Spring, is that your friend Summer behind you?”

Do you want to debate this issue?

“But I have a wild spirit and love to break the rules,” you may say.

I’ll reply, “Then go ahead a run a red light and see how fun it is to break that rule.”

“But running a red light may cause someone to be injured,” is your smart comeback.

I say, “Well, your white shoes before Easter are injuring my eyes!”

I learned the white shoes rule like most girls around here. My mother, grandmothers, great grandmothers, aunts, great aunts, 17 cousins and 47 neighbors told me so. The neighbor on the far corner didn’t care, but then again, she moved into the neighborhood nine years earlier from Pittsburg and would wear her white shoes in the middle of November while standing in her front yard, sporting a bathrobe and smoking little brown cigarettes.

Here’s the deal; if you aren’t a baby, bride or retro nurse with a big blue cape, keep the white shoes tucked away until the sacred fashion day of Easter arrives. This world needs rules. We need order. We need to know what to do. It’s like taking a casserole to a bereaved family or dropping peanuts in our Coca-Cola. It’s simply what we’ve been trained to do.

We don’t know why we do such things; it’s just ingrained in our being.

Outward signs give us inward peace. Seeing the giant red “V” in Atlanta lets us know we’ve arrived at the chili dog nirvana of The Varsity, just as spotting the cavernous mouth of the cement killer shark lets us know we’ve completed our trek to Gulf Shores. White shoes are the great indicator that life is progressing as planned and another season has opened before us. Spring has officially arrived.

So after a long, hot summer when you hear that white shoes are prohibited after Labor Day, and your lightweight cottons must now be in colors of brown, deep gold and burgundy, please know it’s for the good of Southern society. It brings unity, order and focus to an otherwise chaotic place that is teased by the spiteful thermometer.

As my mother always told me when I impatiently longed to wear my new Easter shoes a few weeks early, “good things come to those who white.”

Leslie Anne Harrison also contributes to the blog Fairhope Supply Co. at www.fairhopesupply.com.