On Men of Snow

Snowmen, are in principle, no less capable of acts of kindness than they are acts of abomination. That they are represented as being more closely associated with the latter than the former has an origin in historical anecdotes of Faerie. When Winter introduced the ice dwarf to her court of snowmen, there was much grumbling among her courtiers. There was even a bit of soul-searching among them (although we use the term soul loosely). "What have we done wrong," they asked each other, "to be pushed aside by this puny specimen?" There can be no disguising the fact that, in failing to welcome the ice dwarf with any warmth at all, the snowmen acted abominably. However, before we engrave that pejorative on their headstone, let us first momentarily consider how we would have acted in their place, if our own favor with the glory of Winter had been called into question.