Frosty the Snowman has become as essential to Christmas as Santa Claus and mistletoe. The original song -- written by Walter E. "Jack" Rollins and Steve Nelson in 1950 -- quickly grew into a holiday staple. In 1969, Rankin/Bass Productions made an animated holiday special based on the song, which took a place alongside their version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as must-see Christmas viewing.

Surprisingly, one popular question that surrounds Frosty the Snowman is whether or not the holiday classic is a horror story. The question may seem absurd on the surface, but a number of horror movies have arisen from the concept. Indeed, the core of Frosty's story -- an inanimate object coming to life -- can be as terrifying as it is magical. Frosty the Snowman may not be a horror story, but there's a lot more darkness to the titular snowman's concept than it may seem.

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Frosty Fulfills the 'Inanimate Object Brought to Life' Horror Trope

Rankin Bass

The original song recounts how a magic hat brings an ordinary snowman to life to the delight of the children who built him. Named "Frosty" by the children, he dances and plays with them before departing when the sun grows warm enough to melt him. He promises the children he'll "be back again someday." It's a happy, friendly story, and yet, there have always been dark undertones to it, such as Frosty's innate understanding of his limited shelf life. The animated special leaned into that for its plot, as the stage magician whose hat brought Frosty to life schemes to take it back, and the Snowman himself looks for a long-term home in the permanent winter of the North Pole.

The story's premise comes back to the simple idea that Frosty is an inanimate simulacrum, brought to life by supernatural forces. It means he's not human and that his behavior therefore doesn't need to match human norms. The same concept feeds horror stories like the Child's Play and Annabelle movies, and goes back to myths such as the golem. Even Mary Shelley's Frankenstein touches on the "inanimate object coming to life" trope in a truly terrifying way. In this case, Victor Frankenstein's monster isn't so much a reanimated corpse as a stitched-together amalgamation of corpses brought to life. Frosty uses this same trope, even if it does so for different reasons. As such, the "snowman brought to life" idea has unsurprisingly found its way into horror stories.

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How Horror Stories Have Capitalized on the Frosty Concept

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Straight-up horror movies have taken notice of the "snowman brought to life" concept, and more than one has borrowed the idea to tell a far more sinister story. That includes Jack Frost, a direct-to-video horror-comedy film from 1997 about a serial killer who dies in transit to his own execution, and returns to life as a sentient snowman. The commercial success of the film spawned a sequel in 2000. Similarly, 2017's The Snowman starring Michael Fassbender has presented a far more serious thriller. The only thing different is that the killer is a normal human being who uses snowmen as a calling card. The BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who got into the act as well with Season 7, Episode 6, "The Snowmen." True to its name, the holiday special finds Matt Smith's 11th Doctor in Victorian England facing down sentient snow monsters created by the Great Intelligence.

Proof of the pudding comes from another movie called Jack Frost, an ostensibly heartwarming family film from 1998. It stars Batman's Michael Keaton as a struggling musician with no time for his family. He is killed in a car accident on Christmas Day only to come back to life as a sentient snowman to make things right. The film was an infamous box office bomb, largely due to the ostensibly charming lead character falling head-first into the Uncanny Valley. In his review of the film, the late Roger Ebert described it as "the most repulsive single creature in the history of special effects." Even something aiming for Frosty's vibes can turn sinister if it isn't careful.

All in all, the concept behind Frosty the Snowman can be just as terrifying as it is magical. Guillermo del Toro best summed up what makes horror work as a genre in a 2010 interview with Collider: "There are only two on-buttons for fear, in any permutation you want. One is when something that shouldn't be is, meaning a presence. And, the other one is an absence." Though presented as a children's story, Frosty is an object example of the first category -- in this case, Frosty is something that shouldn't be, and yet is. Context informs it in a particular way, but changing that context can easily turn it into something very different. As such, terror is never too far behind.