My Favourite Christmas Film: The Snowman
"I remember that winter because it had brought the heaviest snow I had ever seen...The whole world seemed to be held in a dream-like stillness. It was a magical day, and it was on that day I made the snowman." - Raymond Briggs
Some say that youth is wasted on the young. Could it be that the same applies to children’s films? Raymond Briggs’s ‘The Snowman,’ my all-time favourite Christmas classic, certainly suggests so.
Since its first release in 1982, children everywhere have been charmed by the story of James, a lonely red-haired little boy whose snowman springs to life one night. Their adventures together, with James still in his slippers and dressing-gown, are fun and fantastical. Together, they go for a snowy, breakneck spin on a motorbike, followed by a journey soaring hand in hand through the starlit sky to a rollicking fiesta with Santa Claus, complete with a visit to the reindeer. However, the festive film culminates in heartbreak the next morning when James rushes outside to be reunited with his friend, only to find that the snowman has melted away. Alone again, he mournfully clasps the scarf that Santa gave him at the party, whilst he stands beside the slushy remains, grieving both a friend and a friendship.
I liked ‘The Snowman’ as a child, but not intensely. I remember the disappointment when my younger sister tore the reel out of our VHS tape to dance around the house wearing it as a cross-body handbag, but I don’t recall any great desire to watch it out of choice. However, in adulthood, ‘The Snowman’ has become a Christmas treasure to me. It’s the first thing I look for when flicking through the pages of the bumper Christmas Radio Times, and I watch it on television every year with tears streaming down my face. Why does this animated classic, one that I wasn’t particularly connected to as a youngster, now reduce me to a sobbing mess in my older and apparently wiser years?
As an adult, that final image of James clutching his fallen friend’s scarf becomes all the more poignant. Suddenly, it’s more than just a disappointed little boy. The film leaves us with an image of that pure, crushing feeling of utter regret for the things that hadn’t worked out as we’d so much hoped. Emotive messages for an older audience are hidden within the film’s colourful, cartoonish drawings. ‘The Snowman’ reminds us that nothing stays the same and, like the sun’s rays turning snow to slush, there’s some changes that we are simply powerless against. This year, that profound image of longing for ‘what could have been’ will undoubtedly touch the hearts of post-covid viewers more than the countless others that came before them.
For a children’s classic, ‘The Snowman’ reaches a surprisingly devastating finish. And yet, like the twinkle of a snowflake, I think a glimmer of hope is still very much intended to shine through. Over the course of the film, we’ve watched James experience a truly wonderful adventure of magic he never thought possible. Despite its heartbreaking end, perhaps the story, when considered as a whole, carries a more positive message to adult viewers watching with welling eyes: life’s most precious moments, the ones that really do makes us feel as though we’re ‘walking in the air’, will always stay with us, no more how fleeting or ethereal.
As a youngster, I’m unlikely to have identified ‘The Snowman’ as my number one Christmas film. As a wannabe ballerina, I sense that ‘Barbie and the Nutcracker’ may have taken the top spot. However, in my mid-twenties, I am in no doubt whatsoever about my favourite festive film today. Perhaps as we age, the movies that mean the most to us aren’t necessarily the ones we’ve adored forever, but instead the films that ‘shape-shift’ into different personal meanings as our lives develop. Growing older and very little wiser with each annual Christmas Eve viewing, I hope that ‘The Snowman’ will always keep me young at heart.
Written by Carla van der Sluijs
Carla's 9 to 5 day is based in technical PR, and in the evenings she likes to unwind from the semiconductors by scribbling in notebooks. Though initially focussed on theatre, she has since expanded her writing to encompass all of life's other dramas. She currently resides in a cottage in Buckinghamshire, but has previously lived abroad in Italy and Russia. She can be found on Twitter under @carlavds21 or at her personal blog 'The Carla Chronicles’.
