Snowman

A snowman is a figure made of snow modeled roughly in a human form. It traditionally consists of three snowballs of different sizes stacked with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on the top. Other features typically include sticks for arms, coal or other stones for eyes, mouth, and buttons, and a carrot for a nose. Makers may include hats, scarves, gloves, or other clothing as desired and items such as brooms or snow shovels. Another traditional accessory is a pipe, though as these are less common in modern times, they are not used as much as in the past. In addition to snowmen, people also pat and roll snow into the shapes of women, children, and animals such as family dogs.

For many people, snowmen are symbols of childhood and winter, but throughout history they have been used to pillory leaders, social classes, and professions. These frozen personages also have a rich history in popular culture. They are the heroes and even villains of folk tales, books, films, songs, and television shows. They appear on kitsch items such as kitchen accessories, sweaters, and cookie jars and are often featured in print and broadcast advertising shilling for soups, sodas, and shops.

Background

People in cold climates have made snowmen for many centuries and likely millennia. Paleoanthropologists believe prehistoric humans probably did make figures of snow because it was one of the easiest materials to shape, certainly easier than stone, bone, and other materials they carved. The Upper Paleolithic period, from about forty thousand to ten thousand years ago, is known as a prolific period of creativity among prehistoric peoples. Scholars point to the tens of millions of prehistoric art objects of stone that have been uncovered, noting untold numbers of works of less durable materials such as feathers, bones, wood, and hides would not have survived for long. This era coincided with the last Ice Age. Human snow figures might have been crafted purely as expressions of creativity but likely also had religious or cultural meaning. The oldest surviving clay anthropomorphic figures were made by joining rounded balls of clay, the same method used to make a snowman. Archaeologists call this the snowman technique.

When modern humans, especially common folk, had few means of self-expression and creativity, snow was readily available in many parts of the world for months out of the year. The seventh-century Taoist text Fengdao kejie includes guidelines about appropriate holy images, stating that they may be shaped using piled-up snow. Images of snowmen appear in ancient texts, such as the sixteenth-century engravings of Petits Voyages by the DeBry brothers and the fourteenth-century Book of Hours. Accounts of daily life and news from the Middle Ages include multiple references to snowmen, for example people described the figures in diaries. In 1461, French poet François Villon mentioned snowmen in a ballad, referring to particularly artistic sculptures created in Arras, France, during a deep, snowy winter.

Artistic creations in those regions included biblical and mythological figures and heroes. For example, citizens of Arras built the biblical Samson, the king, the emperor, Death, and a snow Joan of Arc, who had been in the town three years earlier. About 1510, Brussels endured a deeply cold winter. A poet described 110 snow figures that were created all over the city. These winter seasons occurred during the period known as the Little Ice Age, which began in the fourteenth century and lasted into the middle of the eighteenth century. Heavy snowfalls were frequent and, owing to the cold temperatures, what fell frequently lasted for months before melting.

It was not just ordinary people who made snowmen in the Middle Ages. In 1494, Michelangelo, then nineteen years old and already a famed artist, was commissioned by Piero de’ Medici, the ruler of Florence, Italy, to create a snowman in the courtyard of his palace following a blizzard.

Records from the Middle Ages indicate that snowmen were serious business, used to insult authority figures, neighbors, the clergy, and others. Offended parties were known to knock the heads off the caricatures or obliterate them entirely. Authorities in Brussels went so far as to promise to prosecute anyone who damaged a snowman.

Overview

A traditional snowman is built from scratch rather than sculpted from a pile of snow. One begins with a large handful of snow, packed and shaped into a ball. This snowball is then grown by rolling it in snow until it reaches the desired size. The largest ball is the base. A second ball is created in the same way and hefted onto the first snowball. A third, smaller ball is placed on top to serve as the head. The creator may add features as desired.

Snowman Celebrations

Many winter festivals or observations of the end of winter include snowmen. In Québec, Bonhomme Carnaval has been the anthropomorphic representation of the winter carnival since November 1954. Several business owners created the character, who is seven feet tall and clothed in a red stocking cap called a tuque and a multicolored sash. He was made the official ambassador of the Carnaval de Québec, which dates to 1894, the following year.

The residents of Zürich, Switzerland, parade an eleven-foot-tall cloth snowman stuffed with straw and dynamite through the streets in February as part of Sechseläuten, an annual spring festival that began in the sixteenth century. This figure, Böögg, is then set afire in the town square. The faster his head explodes, the sooner spring will arrive.

Several locales in Japan also host celebrations that feature snowmen. In two villages in Ishikawa Prefecture, people build thousands of snowmen in February. Kuwajima hosts the festival the first week, then the celebration moves to Shiramine. After dark, the snowmen are illuminated.

The Snowman in Popular Culture

Snowmen are common in illustrations, greeting cards, paintings, and other works of visual art. They are also regularly featured in books, films, songs, and television shows. Some beloved popular culture snowmen include Frosty, of the Frosty the Snowman television special (and sequels) and song; The Snowman (1978), a children’s picture story by Raymond Briggs that was adapted for television in 1982; and Sam the Snowman, the narrator of the 1964 animated television show Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, voiced by Burl Ives; Olaf, a comical character in the 2013 film Frozen, its sequel, and his own special. Menacing frosty figures include evil snowmen in the 2012 special Doctor Who: The Snowmen; the titular character in the 2017 horror film The Snowman; and an army of menacing figures in the horror comedy film Krampus (2015).

Bibliography

Eckstein, Bob. “The Fascinating History of the Snowman.” Reader’s Digest, 4 Nov. 2022, www.rd.com/article/history-of-the-snowman/. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.

Eckstein, Bob. The Illustrated History of the Snowman. Globe Pequot, 2018.

Hensher, Philip. “Michelangelo’s Snowman and Other Great Lost Works of Art.” The Guardian, 4 Apr. 2014, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/04/gauguin-bonnard-lost-paintings-michelangelo-snowman. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.

Heritage, Stuart. “‘We’ll Still Be Watching in 50 Years’: How Raymond Briggs’s The Snowman Changed Christmas.” The Guardian, 10 Aug. 2022, www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/aug/10/well-still-be-watching-in-50-years-how-raymond-briggss-the-snowman-changed-christmas. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.

Nalewicki, Jennifer. “In Switzerland, an Exploding Snowman Helps Predict Spring.” Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Apr. 2016, www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/in-switzerland-giant-exploding-snowman-helps-predict-spring-180958667/. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.

“25 Snowmen from Pop Culture (Photos).” HuffPost, 6 Dec. 2012, www.huffpost.com/entry/25-snowmen-from-pop-culture‗n‗2227898. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.

Zaretsky, Aaron. “Bonhomme: Canada’s Snowman.” Vibe 105FM, 19 Dec. 2019, www.vibe105to.com/full-disclosure/bonhomme-canadas-snowman. Accessed 4 Apr. 2023.