Before Frosty there was Der Schneemann, the story of a magical snowman that gets chased by a dog and eventually melts. Even Nazi Germany provided holiday firsts. The Yule log and the most famous Christmas icon Santa Claus both find roots in Germany. Many of our famous Christmas traditions come from Germany. Prince Albert brought the holiday traditions of Germany to England, while Hans Christian Andersen used his story telling ability to further cement the snowman’s mythos. With the help of Prince Albert and Hans Christian Andersen, the snowman was given its holiday christening. On the third Monday of April a cotton snowman is paraded through the city stuffed with dynamite to the center of town where it is destroyed.
This tradition is still alive to this day. In 1818 Zurich, Switzerland began celebrating the beginning of spring by blowing up snowmen. 60 villagers were left dead and the fort was ransacked.Īs society progressed the snowman began to take on a more whimsical nature. 210 Canadian and Native American soldiers were not fooled. The unfortunate soldiers asked to guard the gates decided to instead build snowmen and dress them as guards. A brutal snow storm pounded that fort and its doors were frozen open. The Dutch Fort Schenectady was a remote settlement that lived in everyday fear of attack. The Schenectady Massacre of 1690 is one of the most horrific events in American history. Unfortunately for the people of Brussels – when the snow melted it caused a massive flood.Īmerica was also involved in their own snow covered controversy. A snow-nun seducing a snowman and a naked snow-boy urinating into the mouth of a drunken snowman are just a few of the more outlandish creations. 110 satirical and extremely obscene snowmen and snow-women were displayed to decry the unjust treatment of the peasants. The people of Belgium were starving and freezing while the ruling House of Habsburg lived in opulence. The Miracle of 1511 began after the six-week long Winter of Death. 17 years later the city of Brussels would use the cheerful tradition to make a point.
In 1494 a young up and coming artist by the name of Michelangelo was commissioned by Piero de’ Medici to create a snowman for the ruler. People would walk about town discussing the merit of each frozen display. Outdoor galleries were set up to display the different artistic takes on snow creation. Not only were children making snowmen, but adults were using the figure as a means of expression. The exact meaning or thought behind this picture is unclear.ĭuring the Middle Ages snowmen were something of a phenomenon. In the book sitting beside a fire is a snowman wearing a hat. The Book of Hours was written in 1380 and is currently stored in the National Library of the Netherlands. In Eckstein’s book The History of the Snowman he reveals that the earliest documentation of a snowman was a tiny illustration in the medieval devotional Book of Hours. The definite history of the snowman isn’t perfectly clear, but Bob Eckstein set out to discover the ancestry of Frosty. They would take hats, coats, sticks, and food to create an anthropomorphic pile of snow. For thousands of years children and adults have been packing snow, rolling it into large mounds and then stacking them to form bodies like their own. It’s hard to imagine a tradition so old that we don’t really know when or where it began… but that is exactly the case of the snowman.
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