Jack Frost

Jack Frost, Window Painter, Oliver Herford (1926)

"He's nipping at your nose
You can feel him in your toes
A shiver and a tear
Lets you know Jack Frost is here!"

— Pardon-Me-Pete, Rankin Bass' Jack Frost

Jack Frost is the Public Domain Anthropomorphic Personification of cold in the air and the frost designs on windows. He is sometimes associated with Holiday Personifications, although unlike them he is associated with the broader winter season rather than with a specific day or celebration.

He is often depicted as an elf or spritelike creature who is the active creator of winter weather and phenomena, and can be involved in activities ranging from stirring blizzards into existence to carefully painting frosty designs on individual windows. Where he goes or what he does during the warmer seasons is rarely addressed. In personality, he can vary considerably from work to work; he can be as playful and mischievous as a snow day, or as cruel as the killing ice.

Compare Elemental Embodiment, The Old North Wind, and Yuki-onna. See also Snowlems.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Rosario + Vampire: Jack Frost appears as a spirit embodying the prophecy ability of the Snow Priestess.

Comic Books

• Archies Weird Mysteries: The comic adaptation has a story where Jack Frost feels unappreciated by humans, so he convinces his relative, Wind Jill, to help him make a colder winter. Unfortunately, Jack goes off the rails and almost plunges the world into an ice age, so Archie and the gang seeks help in the realm of elementals from Old Man Winter himself to rein Jack in.
• Fables: In the spinoff Jack of Fables, Jack Hoerner successfully seduces and ultimately sleeps with the Lumin the Snow Queen. She comes down with illness (later revealed to be a pregnancy) and is unable to do her job, so she gives her powers to Jack, making him Jack Frost where he makes a total ass of himself. Their son is also called Jack Frost, and is mostly referred to as Jack Frost II for convenience.

Films — Animation

• Jack Frost is the titular protagonist of Rankin Bass' Jack Frost, depicted as a blue-skinned elf-like creature who (according to Pardon-Me-Pete) is responsible for the chill you feel in winter.
• Rise of the Guardians: Jack Frost, depicted as a youth with white hair and blue clothes, is a playful and mischievous spirit of winter who paints the frost on windows, makes snow days for kids, and nips at their noses to make them happy.

• The Ugly Duckling: Frost, a tiny humanoid made of ice crystals, appears alongside the Winds of Winter to cover the land with ice and snow, while singing about how he enjoys making people suffer in the cold.

Films — Live-Action

• In Jack Frost (1997) and its sequel, Jack Frost was a human Serial Killer who, while being carried to his execution, gets into an accident and mutates into a killer snowman.
• Jack Frost (1998) is a family movie in which Jack Frost was a human who turned into a snowman after dying in a freak car accident. Using his second chance at life, he tries to rekindle his bond with his son before he melts at the end of winter.
• Morozko is the 1964 loose movie adaptation of the classic Russian fairy tale of Morozko (Father Frost). Due to the similarities between Morozko and Jack Frost, the movie has since been released in English-speaking countries under the title Jack Frost.
• The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause: Jack Frost appears as the villain, being jealous of Santa Claus and the other Holiday Personifications because he doesn't have his own holiday. He later hatches a plan to steal the position of Santa for himself.

Literature

• Hogfather: Jack Frost is a tiny figure covered in icicles who paints frost patterns on surfaces during the winter. In an early scene, a conversation with the Verruca Gnome convinces Frost that he's bored with just drawing ferns all the time. Various points later in the book describe windows on which patterns of frost have formed a picture of kittens, flowers in vases, and other objects.
• Serves as the main villian of the Rainbow Magic series

Music

• "Little Jack Frost Get Lost" (1947), whose lyrics lament the winter spirit for bringing the cold. The song has been covered by artists from Bing Crosby to Seth MacFarlane.
  Oh, little Jack Frost get lost, get lost
  Little Jack Frost get lost
  You know you don't do a thing but put a bite on the toes
  Freeze up the ground and take the bloom from the rose
• "The Christmas Song" (1946), first popularized by Nat King Cole, opens with a mention of Jack Frost nipping at the listener during winter weather.

Video Games

• In Cookie Run: Kingdom, Sherbert Cookie is a Frost Spirit who appears as a young boy with white hair and blue skin, serving the Frost Queen as an agent of winter.
• Jack Frost is one of the many objects that can be summoned in the Scribblenauts series, appearing as an icy mustached man with snowflakes regularly floating away from his body. He has a few minor NPC appearances in Scribblenauts Unlimited, one of which involves him shooing the Spring-Heeled Jack out of his cave. He also has a female design, who wears an ice tiara.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Jack Frost appears as a recurring recruitable demon, a playful creature resembling a small living snowman and typically spouting his catchphrase, "Hee-ho!" He's gone on to become the Mascot Mook of the entire franchise, as well as developer Atlus itself, and often appears in several forms, including the extra-demonic Black Frost and the giant King Frost. He's also often paired up with the fiery Jack-o'-Lantern.

Web Original

• RWBY character Jacques Schnee was designed as an allusion to Jack Frost. His surname before being married into the Schnee family was "Gelè" (French for "frost"), he is cruel and calculating, he always keeps his office cold, and he took over the Schnee Dust Company from his father-in-law, Nicholas Schnee, after the latter's death.
• YouTuber Scott Cramer discusses Jack Frost's movie depictions and portrayals in this video.

Western Animation

• Comi Color Cartoons: In one short, Jack Frost is depicted as an artistic elf who paints the landscape and helps a young bear cub to escape from Old Man Winter.
• Frosty's Winter Wonderland has Jack Frost as the villain of the special. He is jealous of Frosty the Snowman being loved by children while he gets ignored, even though he brings the winter, and thus he plans to get rid of Frosty. He does undergo a Heel–Face Turn when Frosty's fiance Crystal asks him to be the best man at their wedding, after which he becomes a steadfast friend of the family.
  • Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July has the same version of Jack Frost brought in at the end to help save the day. After Frosty, Crystal, and their children are melted away; Frost provides a blast of winter wind to refreeze and revive them.

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