46 Fun Facts About Snowmen

In North America a classic snowman is built from how many snowballs?

In the United Kingdom two spheres are the norm, one for the body and one for the head.

Snow is best for packing into a snowman when it is in which state?

Close to melting and moist: slightly thawing snow packs together as it is rolled, while dry powder will not stick to itself.

The earliest known snowman picture, from 1380, is in what kind of book?

Prayer book: the snowman is a margin drawing in a medieval Book of Hours kept in The Hague, tracked down by cartoonist Bob Eckstein for his history of the snowman.

Which Renaissance artist was commissioned by Piero de' Medici to make a snowman in 1494?

Michelangelo: after heavy snow in January 1494, Piero had the 18-year-old sculpt a snow statue in the palace courtyard, and the job brought him back into the Medici court.

Which Low Countries city's residents built over 100 rude and satirical snow sculptures in the winter of 1511?

Brussels: in a freezing winter that left the poor hungry, townspeople built more than a hundred snow figures, many obscene or mocking prominent citizens, an episode remembered as the Miracle of 1511.

Mary Dillwyn, who took the earliest known photograph of a snowman, was from which country?

Wales: Dillwyn used a small camera that needed only short exposures, which let her catch passing moments, such as a snowman being built, that stiffer portraits of the day missed.

Guards at which colonial settlement supposedly left snowmen on watch during a 1690 massacre?

Schenectady: the villagers went to bed with the gates open and no guard set, and tradition adds that two snowmen stood sentry as French and Indigenous raiders walked in and killed sixty people.

Bethel, Maine's record-setting snowwoman of 2008 was named Olympia in honour of whom?

A US senator: she was named for Maine's Olympia Snowe, and built because nobody else had beaten the town's 1999 record snowman, so Bethel decided to break its own record.

Which folk singer voiced Sam the Snowman, the banjo-playing narrator of the 1964 special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

Burl Ives: his snowman sings 'A Holly Jolly Christmas' in the special, and Ives's own record of the song became a standard that first reached the US top ten more than fifty years later.

Japan's two-ball snowman is named after a round good-luck doll and is called what?

Yukidaruma: 'yuki' means snow, and a daruma is a round doll of the monk Bodhidharma, sold with blank eyes so its owner can paint one in on making a wish and the other when it comes true.

Who first recorded 'Frosty the Snowman', by Walter Rollins and Steve Nelson, in 1950?

Gene Autry: the writers took the song to him because his 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' had been a smash the year before, and he recorded it hoping for a second seasonal hit.

In the song 'Frosty the Snowman', what brings Frosty to life?

An old silk hat: the children set it on his head and he starts to dance around, in a seasonal favourite whose original lyrics never once mention Christmas.

Which New York hamlet, home to IBM's headquarters, holds a Frosty parade and claims to be the song's setting?

Armonk: lyricist Steve Nelson was a regular visitor from nearby White Plains, and the hamlet says the village square in the song is its own, though White Plains makes a rival claim.

Which studio, also behind Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, produced the 1969 special Frosty the Snowman?

Rankin/Bass: its Rudolph was filmed with stop-motion puppets, but Frosty was drawn by hand because the producers wanted the special to look like a Christmas card.

Which comedian narrated the 1969 special Frosty the Snowman before a stroke ended his career?

Jimmy Durante narrated the special and sang its title song in what proved his final film role; after his 1972 stroke, Andy Griffith took over as narrator for the 1976 sequel.

In the 1969 special Frosty the Snowman, what is the name of the inept magician who chases Frosty north?

Professor Hinkle: when Santa finally catches up with him and threatens to stop his Christmas presents for good, the magician runs home to write out his apologies.

The girl who rides north with Frosty in a refrigerated freight car in the 1969 special is called what?

Karen: the little girl rides north with Frosty in a refrigerated boxcar, catches a chill, and Frosty melts in a greenhouse trying to warm her before Santa revives him.

The 1969 Frosty special's character designs were by Paul Coker Jr., best known for which magazine?

Mad: Paul Coker Jr. drew for Mad for decades but started out designing Hallmark greeting cards, which is why the studio picked him to give Frosty the look of a Christmas card.

What do the children name Frosty's wife in the 1976 sequel Frosty's Winter Wonderland?

Crystal: the children build her, but she only comes to life when Frosty hands her a bouquet of frost flowers, and a parson made of snow then marries the pair.

In the 1992 special Frosty Returns, Frosty was voiced by which actor?

John Goodman voiced Frosty in the 1992 special, which came not from the original studio but from Lorne Michaels's Broadway Video and Bill Melendez, the director of the Peanuts specials.

Olaf, the summer-loving snowman in Disney's Frozen, is voiced by which actor?

Josh Gad was already Broadway's Elder Cunningham in The Book of Mormon; he has said he regrets making Olaf sound so much like himself.

In early drafts of Frozen, Olaf was written as what?

The first of Elsa's snowman guards: director Chris Buck likened that early Olaf to a first pancake, made while Elsa was learning her powers and then thrown away, before he became the sisters' childhood creation.

Olaf famously says he likes what kind of embrace?

Warm hugs: 'Hi, I'm Olaf, and I like warm hugs' is his introduction, the joke being a snowman obsessed with heat who has never seen what sun does to snow.

In Frozen II, Olaf no longer needs his personal snow flurry because Elsa gave him what?

A layer of permafrost: the little snow cloud that followed Olaf had proved so hard to animate that the directors had Elsa give him a permafrost coating for the sequel instead.

What is the giant snow monster that defends Elsa's ice palace in Frozen called?

Marshmallow: after the credits he lumbers back into the ice palace, finds Elsa's crown and happily sets it on his own head.

Frozen, the film that gave the world Olaf, is loosely based on which Hans Christian Andersen tale?

The Snow Queen is the inspiration; Andersen also wrote a story actually titled The Snowman, about a snowman who falls in love with a stove.

Raymond Briggs' picture book The Snowman, published in 1978, is unusual for what reason?

It has no words: Briggs told the whole story in wordless pencil-crayon panels, and the 1982 film kept that spirit, with no dialogue apart from the song 'Walking in the Air'.

Which British broadcaster first showed the animated The Snowman on Boxing Day 1982?

Channel 4 had been on air for less than two months when it first showed the film, which has been a fixture of its Christmas schedule ever since.

The boy in The Snowman flies with his snowman to a party of snowmen and meets whom?

Father Christmas: he gives the boy a snowman-patterned scarf, a meeting invented for the film, since in Raymond Briggs's book the pair fly only as far as Brighton pier.

Which rock star filmed an alternative live-action introduction to The Snowman?

David Bowie: American backers wanted a big name attached, so in 1984 he filmed a new opening in an attic, pulling out the snowman scarf as though he were the boy grown up.

The 1985 hit cover of 'Walking in the Air' was first recorded for a television advert for which chain?

Toys "R" Us: composer Howard Blake re-recorded his song for the chain's Christmas advert with a 14-year-old Welsh chorister, and the single then climbed to number five.

In Jack Frost (1998), Michael Keaton's character returns from the dead as a snowman thanks to what magical object?

A harmonica: Jack gives it to his son before he dies, and the boy's playing brings him back as a snowman, one whose head was first sculpted to look like George Clooney, the original star.

Dweezil, Ahmet and Moon Unit, who all appear in the 1998 film Jack Frost, are children of which rock musician?

Frank Zappa: his children play a music agent, a snowplough driver and a teacher in a film that cost a reported $85 million and took only $34.6 million.

Bill Watterson used Calvin's bizarre snowmen in Calvin and Hobbes chiefly to poke fun at what?

The art world: Calvin's grotesque snow sculptures, presented as avant-garde 'snow art', let Watterson skewer critics, galleries and the commercialisation of art without leaving the front yard.

Guides on which 1921 expedition described footprints of the 'Wild Man of the Snows', inspiring 'Abominable Snowman'?

British Everest reconnaissance: its leader, Charles Howard-Bury, thought the tracks had probably been left by a loping grey wolf, but his guides' phrase reached a Calcutta journalist, who made it famous.

The Sherpa term 'metoh', mistranslated to give 'Abominable Snowman', is usually taken to mean what?

Man-bear: 'metoh-kangmi' is usually read as 'man-bear snowman', but journalist Henry Newman rendered 'metoh' as 'filthy' and then dressed that up as 'abominable'.

Which Japanese city's snow festival began in 1950 when school students built six snow statues in a park?

Sapporo: about 50,000 people turned up to see the statues in Odori Park, a far bigger crowd than expected, and the one-day show became a fixture of the city's winter.

A record snowball fight of 7,681 people was staged in 2016 in which Canadian city?

Saskatoon: the mass fight was staged to send Team Canada off to Japan for the world championships of yukigassen, snowball fighting played as an organised team sport.

In The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), which 'keeper of cold weather' is forever feuding with his heat-loving brother?

Snow Miser: he and his brother refuse to strike a deal over snow for a southern town, so Mrs. Claus goes over their heads to their mother, Mother Nature, who forces one on them.

Bethel, Maine's 1999 record snowman, 'Angus, King of the Mountain', honoured which Maine figure of the day?

The governor: Angus King ran Maine from 1995 to 2003, and his 113-foot namesake stayed the world's tallest until the same townspeople built a taller snowwoman nine years later.

In Sweden, a hollow cone of stacked snowballs glowing from within is called what?

A snow lantern: the Swedish snölykta is a hollow cone of snowballs with a candle set inside, a winter garden decoration rather than a figure.

Japan's small snow figures with leaf ears and red-berry eyes are shaped like which animal?

Rabbits: a yukiusagi was often set on a tray and carried indoors to decorate a tea gathering or a snow-viewing party, as prints from the 1700s show.

Which producer was behind the Ronettes' 1963 cover of 'Frosty the Snowman'?

Phil Spector made it for his Christmas album, which came out on the day President Kennedy was shot, flopped, and only years later became a holiday classic.

Which actor was announced in July 2020 to voice Frosty in a planned live-action Warner Bros. film?

Jason Momoa later said the announcement was made without his permission, to distract from a co-star's complaints.

Who voiced Frosty in the 1969 special Frosty the Snowman?

Jackie Vernon: a nightclub comic known for gloomy deadpan and hard-luck jokes, he became the voice of the jolly snowman and came back for two sequels.

Which Norwegian crime writer sent detective Harry Hole after a killer who builds snowmen in The Snowman?

Jo Nesbø: his 2007 novel became a 2017 film that critics panned, after which its director admitted that 10 to 15 percent of the script had never been shot.