快猫短视频

EACH year millions of people send greeting cards bearing images of what is,
let鈥檚 face it, just a couple of balls of snow. Not that manufacturers are
complaining: snowmen are good for business. Increasingly standardised,
depictions of these smiley chaps with their carrot noses, bright scarves and
bedraggled hats can shift not only cards but a wide assortment of Christmas
decorations, not to mention confectionery, books, videos and soft toys. Today,
the snowman is up alongside Santa as a secular icon of Christmas, at least
throughout northern Europe and North America. But what is he doing there?

As a figure of jollity and fun, the snowman undoubtedly contributes to the
carnival air of the Christmas festival, argues Tricia Cusack, who lectures in
history of art, architecture and design at the University of Birmingham. The
snowman鈥檚 intrinsic good humour is captured by his French appellation: he is
鈥渂onhomme de neige鈥�. His rotund body conveys an air of bacchanalia, of
celebratory overindulgence. But snowmen do a lot more symbolic work besides,
Cusack contends.

For a start, by simply standing out there alone in the cold, the snowman
provides the perfect contrast to the putative seasonal warmth of the family
within. Fantasies about perfect families are central to Christmas iconography
these days, and here images of snowmen can do double duty. 鈥淎s one of the minor
household gods at Christmas,鈥� says Cusack, 鈥渢he snowman both enhances the
element of fantasy and magic for children and reminds adults of childhood.鈥�

If so much seems benign, there is more that is less so, says Cusack. Snowmen
may look innocent, but nowadays, even they cannot escape connotations of class,
gender, and even 鈥渞ace鈥�. Social commentators have noted that the Christmas
festival can seem a rather 鈥渨hite鈥� affair, exacerbated, perhaps, by the very
whiteness of the snowman himself.

Gender, however, is undoubtedly at the heart of the snowman phenomenon.
Snowmen look androgynous but are presumed to be male, says Bernard Mergen. A
historian at George Washington University, Mergen is one of a select band of
scholars who have made the cultural significance of snow their specialist
subject. 鈥淲oody Allen cleared up the ambiguity in his movie Radio Days,
when he had two boys decorate their snowman with a carrot penis,鈥� says Mergen.
鈥淩eports of anatomically correct nude snowmen regularly appear in the press.鈥�
Occasional images of snow-women are seen as funny, precisely because they
overturn gender expectations.

So what sort of a man is this? The combination of the snowman鈥檚 masculinity
and his 鈥渞itual location in the semi-public space of garden or field鈥� is
telling, Cusack contends. It鈥檚 no accident that the Victorian promotion of
Christmas as a family-centred celebration went hand in hand with the ideology
that a woman鈥檚 place is in the home. Traditional celebrations of Christmas
underline women鈥檚 supposed role in the domestic sphere, while the snowman
presents an image of masculine control of public space. 鈥淭he snowman鈥檚 presence
is a reminder of masculine dominance and predominance outside the home,鈥� argues
Cusack. It becomes 鈥渁 household god keeping nature in order鈥攊t represents
masculine ordering and surveillance.鈥�

Despite this, the snowman remains essentially an outsider, excluded from the
family circle. Traditional Christmas scenes show a solitary snowman viewed
through a window from the warmth of a roaring hearth. Cusack argues that as well
as being a symbol of male dominance, the snowman can also represent a potential
object of charity. No wonder he has so few accessories and a Dickensian hat. She
suspects that the Victorians enjoyed the snowman as a symbolic outcast,
available to be the recipient of a new red scarf. 鈥淭he snowman, cared for,
smiles back, and the family within gain satisfaction both from their cosiness
and their charity.鈥�

But if Cusack sees England鈥檚 Victorian underclass in today鈥檚 snowmen, Mergen
points to a more subversive role for the snowmen built on the streets of
American cities in the 19th century. Kitted out with a tall stovepipe hat or a
derby鈥攂oth of which bespoke wealth and social pretentions鈥攖he
traditional American snowman was, on the whole, 鈥渁 symbol of authority to be
attacked鈥�, Mergen concludes. Unwittingly, perhaps, Daniel Carter Beard, one of
the founders of the Boy Scouts of America in the 1880s, promoted the building of
snowmen as a wholesome activity for young boys, who were supposed to confine
snowballs to those harmless targets. Intent on more subversive activity, the
youths made snow effigies of male authority figures and then destroyed them.

Carrots and sticks

The sociology of snowman-building today remains shockingly under-researched,
despite an exhaustive catalogue of the materials used in the construction of
snowmen by two American scholars, Avon Neal and Ann Parker, in the late 1960s.
According to their investigations, eyes can be fashioned out of chunks of coal,
shrivelled apples, stones, bolts, electrical fuses, bottle caps, champagne
corks, batteries, buttons and nutshells. Additional accoutrements for mouths
include twigs, pebbles, rusty horseshoes, false teeth and possibly a pipe.
Carrots tend to be favoured for noses, but corncobs, sticks and clothes pegs
have also served that purpose, while in Raymond Briggs鈥檚 celebrated children鈥檚
story and animated film, The Snowman, a clementine (or similar citrus
fruit) serves as nasal equipment. Hints of nakedness are offset by the provision
of a row of 鈥渂uttons鈥�. The finishing touches are provided by a scarf and, most
famously, a hat, or at a pinch a hat substitute such as an old pot.

Tradition, tradition

A straw poll of half a dozen embassies in London suggests that snowmen thrive
in countries as diverse as Sweden, Germany, Russia and Japan. 鈥淚t is traditional
to use coal for the eyes,鈥� says the spokeswoman at the Swiss Embassy, 鈥渂ut these
days it can be difficult for children to find.鈥� The Russian press officer said
that buckets made good substitutes for hats, which are presumably all in use on
human heads. Carrots for noses are universally favoured. Indeed, one
enterprising British company in West Sussex has marketed 鈥淕row Your Own
Snowman鈥� packets, which on closer inspection turn out to contain carrot seeds.
鈥淲e had planned to offer you the opportunity to grow your own Frozen Friend with
our amazing patented whizzo F111 hybrid Sno-seeds, the result of crossing a
snowdrop with a mangel wurzle in sub-zero conditions,鈥� the packaging explains.
鈥淯nfortunately, all the seeds melted on the way to the toy factory. So instead
we have substituted carrot seeds.鈥�

Yet, jokey vegetables aside, there鈥檚 a hint of menace about snowmen. In
Frosty the Snowman, a hit song of the 1950s, children run to follow Frosty
to the town square, where he evades a policeman and then disappears. His
anarchic behaviour befits someone made of snow, says Mergen, which is
鈥減aradoxically hard and soft, substantial yet ephemeral鈥�.

Briggs鈥檚 snowman also becomes a touch frightening when he subverts his
accepted status as an outsider and comes inside the house. As the parents sleep,
he makes mischief with their property, even trying on a set of false teeth
soaking by the bedside, and then flies away with their underaged son.

Perhaps our ambivalence to snow is showing. Could it be that we make snowmen
look so friendly to compensate for our intrinsic fear of all that white stuff
falling from the sky? Humans may have sought to assert their dominance over snow
by shaping it in their own image, argues Mergen.

But if the snowman is in some way a suggestion that nature can be enjoyed but
also tamed and controlled, his demise as winter gives way to spring reasserts
the natural cycles of death and rebirth. Even The Snowman ends with the
main protagonist reduced to a hat in a puddle鈥攏o wonder the haunting theme
music is in a minor key.

Poets have written of the snowman鈥檚 plight, seeing him as Everyman, doomed to
transience, who, according to the Canadian poet P. K. Page, eventually melts
away into a 鈥渓andscape without love鈥�. As his snowmen melted, they 鈥済reyed a
little too, growing sinister and disreputable in their sooty fur鈥�, he wrote in
The Snowman. And in Wallace Stevens鈥檚 bleak poem of 1921, also called
The Snow Man, he evokes 鈥渢he listener, who listens in the snow, and
nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is鈥�. In
Mergen鈥檚 view, Wallace鈥檚 snowman is a quintessential 20th-century American.

American novelty shops sell plastic snow domes, filled with bits of plastic
snow, lumps of coal, a hat and a carrot, entitled 鈥淐alifornia snowmen鈥�. In an
age of global warming, will we come to see the snowman鈥檚 destiny as a potent
symbol of our collective future?

Perhaps the human genius for self-destruction is best symbolised by one
card on sale in Britain this Christmas: it shows three gleeful snowmen gathered
round a roaring brazier, warming themselves by the fire.