Category: X-Mas in July

Hi Aunt and Unk,

They used to show an animated film somewhere around Christmas every year, before the advent of VCRs; one that our mother used to circle in the TV Guide as not to miss. "It's a beautiful story", she would say. Mom also thought that the story of THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL was beautiful, so you see where this is leading. Not surprising, both were by HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, who evidently gave the BROTHERS GRIMM some stiff competition in terms of painting the bleakest possible situations for children in stories.

THE SNOW QUEEN, at least the version I saw, and I guess there have been others, almost had a '40s Disney vibe to it, at least in terms of animation quality. And along the lines of PINOCCHIO and SNOW WHITE, it didn't hold back in dishing out some old school fear. It was narrated by a little fat elf named Old Dreamy.

The main gist of THE SNOW QUEEN is that it spins the tale of two blonde-haired kids, a girl and boy, up North in Finland or somewhere in the 1800s, who are happy by the fire in their cottage during a cold winter's night. One of them makes a joking remark, offending the Snow Queen, who is some kind of supernatural goddess type with an icy heart who rules in a castle even further north, and has command of the weather. I guess she can hear all too, and is not to be taken lightly.

In retribution, we see her large face fill up the window looking inside. The kids gasp, and she sends an ice storm into the house, which blows open the window, and somehow affects the young boy by entering him through his eye, turning him into a cold-hearted, mean-spirited jerk. I remember him stomping on the little girl's roses and making her cry. He is later picked up by the Snow Queen in a sleigh, and held captive in her castle, much the same in spirit as the Narnia Ice Queen. The rest of the story is the little girl's harrowing ordeal to get him back, since Lord knows, no adults seem to be interested.

Fast-forward to the end, where she gets to the castle, hugs the mean boy, and melts his icy heart, bringing him back to her. Something is expelled from his eye, and we get a look at it… an ice splinter, about two inches long. Somehow after that, it all gets better and the story ends.

My sister and I both found this more horrible than a decapitation. We grew up in an old wood house without much carpeting, with plenty of splinters extracted by Dad, armed with a needle and a cigarette lighter for "sterilization," so splinter trauma abounded. Couple that trauma with the eyeball, and even a normal splinter would be too awful to bear, but to get a look at the roofing nail of a pointy ice dagger that was somehow stuck in this little boy's eye…..oh, I'm getting nauseated just writing about it.

I'm almost certain this was pulled from the Yuletide T.V. schedule for being just too plain miserable for kids to watch.

Anyone remember this?

Bigwig

UNK SEZ: Bigwig, thanks for the frosty traumafession! Sorry if the images I gathered are from a different version of THE SNOW QUEEN than the one you speak of. (They are all from the acclaimed, 1957 Soviet version.) I myself seem to recall THE SNOW QUEEN being shown back-to-back with THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL in the early eighties but I can't find any reference to it on IMDb even when I search under HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. Let me know if you ever locate the version you are looking for. By the way, my mom had a thing for THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL too!

I just remembered a huge trauma from my childhood, associated with what should be a happy time – Christmas. Every year my sister and I were encouraged to watch whatever version of Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL was being screened on T.V. that year (this being England in the '70s there were only three channels) as our parents were big on getting us to read and understand lterature.

So, I'd seen a few different versions, the old black & white film with ALASTAIR SIM, and probably one or two others. Being only young (7–10-ish) I was terrified of ghosts, but I knew the ones in A.C.C. were not THAT type of ghost (except the last one who was in a cowl and a bit creepy, but it all ended happily so I was O.K. with him.)

This year it was a cartoon – "even better" thought I (what kid DOESN'T love cartoons, right?). Oh dear, what a terrible lesson was this little girl about to learn; the animation style wasn't at all Disney, and was rather dark. Then Marley's Ghost appears, looking scary indeed with his head thrown back at an unnatural angle, then six minutes in, he removes the bandage around his head and HIS MOUTH GAPES OPEN AS IF TO DEVOUR THE VIEWER!!

I found in on YouTube and just about had kittens! I'm 40 years old for goodness sake!!

I had nightmares for years where he came into my room, for some reason in my dreams he was a white outline, but he ALWAYS had that gaping maw.

Watch part one below – but don't say I didn't warn you.

A re-traumatised Bluegrasslass