Have them read Little House on the Prairie in their spare time and see what winter was like over 100 years ago. We have all grown to comfortable (myself included) and don’t know true suffering. I do have sympathy for the businesses whose livelihoods were disrupted. Some of my family’s fondest memories where from an ice storm north of Houston back in the 90’s and our power (including the well for water) was out for four days. We slept in sleeping bags by the fire and no one got frostbite. Our pipes froze and we thawed them with a hair dryer (when the electricity came back on) and we repaired them.
Furthermore it's cruel to be sitting in a warm place (didn't you mention you work for a power company to another poster?) telling people to suck it up because it's not that cold. I can tell you from working with the homeless shelter in Rapid City, SoDak that people die from exposure more often when the temps are in the 30's and 40's because it's 'just not that cold'.
I grew up in Oregon and lived in a house where it was not unusual to wake up with frost on the bedcovers, it was no fun when I was 8. In modern America, short of an act of God, why should any of us have to accept the conditions the Ingles lived with?