If there a word for this? A phrase? There ought to be.

Winterlust?

Icicle-envy?

Freeze-fervor?

Glacieritis?

What I know is this: Places that never get cold … wish they did. I saw it in Hong Kong a year ago. I’ve seen it in Abu Dhabi this winter. It is a recurring,  population-wide fantasy.

Take tonight, when temperatures plummeted to about 65 Fahrenheit … and we couldn’t help but stop and gawk and laugh at the ridiculous concept of these penguins set up among a winter wonderland of krazy kitsch at the Abu Dhabi Mall.

And, we took this photo:

That’s me, pretending to be cold. Because that’s what they do in spots where it’s never cold. Pretend.

Earlier in the evening, we had dinner at Nihal, the Indian restaurant we’ve been to so often we ought to have our own booth.

An Indian family came in, dad, mom, baby … and baby appeared to be encased in something that looked like a thermal blanket. A big fuzzy thermal blanket. That also covered the child’s head. The only part of its body not covered by this Chewbacca-like hide was its face.

See, you wouldn’t want baby to catch its death of cold. In the dead of Abu Dhabi winter. When it sometimes doesn’t crack 80 for even a minute all day.

Same thing, in Hong Kong last year. The place is basically tropical. Just this side of jungle. But come the first crash of the HK thermometers into the 60s, and out come the scarves and boots and leather. It’s ridiculous.

Even taking into the account the “thin blood” concept of human development. (The idea that people from warm/hot climes have thin blood that helps them cope with heat but leaves them the helpless prey of nature in the cold. I actually do believe that the local Arabs and subcontinent expats would be appalled and frightened by one day of Russian or Chicago winter.)

After seeing the baby yeti in the Indian resto, it was over to the mall, for a movie, and this ridiculous display of penguins and fake snow.

Now, this may have a marketing element to it. If shops can convince people (and this is difficult, but stay with me) that, baby, it’s cold outside, maybe they can flog a few sweaters and jackets and boots that people don’t really need. Unless they work in meat lockers.

I looked it up: The record for lowest temperature in Abu Dhabi history is … 42 degrees. That is, 10 degrees above freezing. In much of Europe,  42 is T-shirt weather. I have seen the Irish laying out on the beach at Galway when it was vaguely sunny and about 55.

When it’s 55 here, people go shopping for parkas.

But I think it’s more than advertising-induced longing.

I believe that in countries where it’s 90-plus seven months a year, where a cold snap is when it’s 60 in the middle of the night and you don’t have to run the air conditioner for a week … the idea of getting all bundled up and maybe having a snowball fight — or even touching ice that didn’t come out of a freezer — is exotic. The stuff of longing. The stuff of daydreams.

They want it because they don’t have it. And the whole idea of hot chocolate and sitting around a roaring fire and bundling up … seems like so much fun! (When, in fact, they ought to be careful what they wish for, because they would hate it almost immediately.)

There ought to be a word for this weird craving. This bizarre sentimentality for the unknown. Really.

Mitten-mongering?