My Haunting History With ‘The Snowman’//October 86th, 2022

For all my indifference toward the Christmas season, there is one thing I always have to do every year, to keep a lifelong tradition alive:

Watch Disney’s Very Merry Christmas Songs, a sing-along video that I watched for the first time when I was two, and have consistently watched via my original VHS, a DVD version with some more modern bits added, or this YouTube video, at least once a year since. Somehow Christmas songs just sound different coming from this video, and it’s literally the one tradition I still have any control over.

This year’s annual viewing took place on the afternoon of December 23rd, and I noticed a suggested video when I was done: An animated special from 1982, The Snowman.

I’m not sure how many people will remember The Snowman, as it didn’t seem to catch on in the US quite like it did in the UK, and I don’t have any real memory of it consistently airing beyond the early 90s. I remember seeing it once when I was very little, then again a few years later when I was old enough to understand the ending…and it’s something that’s haunted me for years.

The full video is available to watch here.

The thing about The Snowman that really sets it apart from other holiday specials is, there is no dialogue. This story is told entirely through visuals and extremely haunting, mostly instrumental, music, save for one piece of the film where the main melody is suddenly given lyrics, becoming a haunting song called Walking In The Air.

The story is simple enough. A young boy, named James (we only know this because we see it on a Christmas gift later on in the film), excitedly builds a snowman during what seems to be the first snow of the year, near Christmas. At midnight that night, the Snowman comes alive, and he and James go on all sorts of adventures, culminating in a flight to the North Pole, among other snowman, where they meet Santa Claus himself, who gifts James with a scarf with a snowman pattern. Realizing the time, James and the Snowman fly back to James’s house, say their goodbyes, and the Snowman returns to his original position in front of the house. 

Sounds like a fun enough, magical Christmas special for kids, right?

The thing is, there is something weirdly melancholy and ominous about the whole thing, despite how lighthearted the story seems at first. It’s hard to explain, but even when you don’t know how it’s going to end, there’s just something sad about it. I’m not sure if it’s the animation style, the tone of the music, the sudden worried expressions that appear on the Snowman’s face at times, or what, but there’s something throughout that gives the inclination that this is not necessarily a happy story. And while it’s not like it goes full horror or anything like that, it certainly does not end well.

The film ends extremely abruptly, with James waking up the next morning, running out to see his Snowman friend, only to find him melted. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the snowman scarf he received from Santa Claus the night before, and stares at it, as the scene pans away and the ending credits roll.

The Snowman basically, unceremoniously, dies, with no hope for a chance that the situation will be fixed. The second time I saw this film, when I was probably around six-ish, I remember both my mother and myself thinking there had to be more, that somehow we’d missed something or that there was going to be a post-credits scene or something like that, but no. The Snowman is gone, and that is that. 

And the memory of that gut-punch has stayed with me for all of these years, along with the strangely foreboding feeling of the film as a whole. Obviously it’s not a horror film, but it’s definitely about the inevitability of death, which was something that always both fascinated and terrified me in childhood.

After watching the film again the other night, I did a little more research to try and find out why, exactly, this seemingly innocent children’s Christmastime special had to end on such a sad note, and it turns out, the creator, Raymond Briggs, actually did intend to tell a story about the inevitability of death, as he had suffered the loss of both of his parents at a young age and couldn’t see a need to try and protect kids from the inevitable, and didn’t quite believe in all children’s stories having happy endings, as he had learned the hard way that isn’t how life works. And while my child-self may have felt robbed somehow by the ending of this film, I have to say, his viewpoint does make a lot of sense. Most kids’ stories avoid rough subject matter, and while it’s understandable, it certainly isn’t realistic. (I started to despise the ‘good always triumphs over evil’ trope in my teens.) And hey, that ending, along with the whole mood of the film,  stayed with me for about thirty years. 

The thing about the ending that really gets me now as an adult, too, though, and the main reason I decided to blog about a film that isn’t really part of my normal wheelhouse of interests, is the fact that it actually reminds me a lot of how the end of Halloween feels. 

I mean, think about it. You have this magical night, feeling like you’re in another world, where everything feels like a dream, so vibrant and alive and perfect. The magical season culminates, much like James meeting Santa Claus, and you feel like you’re on top of the world, or at least, “walking in the air”. 

But then, the morning comes. As you look around, desperate to find even the tiniest shred of the magic of the night before, you find that it has all very suddenly died. The weather feels different. Decorations are down. People are acting like it never happened. You wonder if you dreamed it, and you hold onto the things, like James’s scarf, that prove it was all very real, wishing it hadn’t come and gone so quickly. The beating November 1st sun has melted Halloween away, like that magical snowman who knew the way to the North Pole, where every dream and wish could be realized.

And maybe that’s why, now, at thirty-five, I still found myself mourning along with James, when the Snowman was reduced to a melted shell of his former self the next morning. 

I have been both James and the Snowman, I think. And will be again, the next time November 1st comes around.

Stay spooky, my friends.

PS, even if you don’t have time to watch the full film, just listen to Walking In The Air and tell me there’s not something weirdly spooky about it.