In the novel A Separate Peace, what is the significance of the Winter Carnival for Gene?

In Chapter 8 of John Knowles A Separate
Peace, Gene narrates,

readability="15">

Until now, in spite of everything, I had
welcomed each new day as though it were a new life, where all past failures and problems
were erased, and all future possibilities and joys open and available, to be achieed
probably before night fell again.  Now, in this winter of snow and crutches with
Phineas, I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of the night
before.

But, on the
battleship grey day Finny becomes functional for "the first time...since he came back"
from his accident.  So while Gene has reflected that Winter's occupation seems to have
conquered, overrun and destroyed everything," Finny's attitude that "winter loves me"
and his creation of the Winter Carnival conquers winter instead.  Later, Gene expresses
his feelings as Finny places on his head a laurel wreath made from the evergreen
trees:

readability="14">

Phineas recaptured that magic gift for existing
primarily in space, one foot conceding briefly to gravity its rights before spinning him
off again into the air.  It was his wildest demonstration of himself, of himself in the
kind of world he loved:  it was his choreogaphy of peace....It wasn't the cider which
made me surpass myself; it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments
of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusionary, special
and separate
peace.

For
Gene, the restoration of Phineas to his old self, and the escape from thoughts of the
war are what make the Winter Carnival so significant to him.