"...Rosebud...."
— Charles Kane, Citizen Kane
The snow globe is a popular ornament depicting a figurine, building model or other scene encased in a glass globe filled with water. In fiction, the snow globe is often used to symbolize a time and place that was once innocent. A broken snow globe can symbolize innocence lost. Being trapped in a snow globe can symbolize separation. It's often connected to Christmas due to it being a winter holiday in the Northern Hemisphere, and while it's mostly popular with children, adults can also be keen on them, regardless of it being a special occasion or just as a hobby/interest of theirs.
The first snow globe was actually an attempt by Austrian Erwin Perzy to improve upon surgical lamps. When that didn't work out, he put a small model of the basilica of Mariazell in the globe. He and his brother Ludwig opened a shop in Vienna to sell these Schneekugels. The family business is still in production with the creation of the snow particles kept secret.
Compare to Empathy Doll Shot, symbolizing a child forced into a situation that was not innocent, though the snow globe is more flexible in the innocence it represents. If the person who has/had this is deceased or dying, then it could be considered a Tragic Keepsake. See also Toy-Based Characterization, Sentimental Homemade Toy, and Nostalgic Music Box.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Fairy Tail: One omake chapter follows Natsu babysitting Asuka (Alzack and Bisca's daughter), who decides to take him and Lucy to do jobs together to earn some money to buy a snowglobe lacrima from a pawn shop. She later reveals it had previously belonged to her parents and it was a very important memento for both, as they received it as reward for the first job they did together, but were forced to pawn it off in order to buy medicine for Asuka when she was sick.
Comic Books
- Watchmen: Lori has a memory of her childhood, tied to a snow globe, which also serves as the loss of her innocence when the snow globe is shattered, after she overhears a conversation that strongly hints at the fact that her mother's husband is not her biological father.
Films — Animated
- In Barbie in A Christmas Carol Eden gets a snow globe as a gift from her best friend Catherine (who is this movie's Composite Character equivalent of Fan, Belle, Bob Cratchit and Fred in the original story) as a symbol of their friendship in the most joyful day of the year. The globe has already appeared in the beginning when Barbie decided to tell Kelly a story about the true meaning of Christmas, and reappears later in the ending with its figures (the Spirit of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come) coming to life. It's heavly implied that Barbie's snow globe is the exact same Eden got from Catherine, thus making Barbie and Kelly descendents of Eden.
- Coraline has a souvenir snow globe of the Detroit Zoo that her parents become stuck in. Much of the film is about Coraline wanting to go back to a time before the accident when her family was happier, with the subsequent separation from her parents making her more appreciative of them.
- In The Nightmare Before Christmas, Jack shakes a snow globe with a snowman inside as he comes to realize that the citizens of Halloween Town just don't understand Christmas, lamenting that "They'll never know that special sort of feeling of Christmasland." Unbeknownst to him, he doesn't understand Christmas all that well either. Jack has innocent intentions but doesn't know how to act on them.
Films — Live-Action
- One of the best known examples is Citizen Kane. The film opens with the title character gazing upon a snow globe containing a log cabin that looks much like the one he lived in as a small boy who spent his days sledding. Kane whispers his dying word "Rosebud" and the snow globe tumbles from his hand as he dies, symbolizing how he lost his innocence a long time ago.
- The Crow (1994): Subverted. Gothic Mob boss Top Dollar is seen looking into a snow globe in his hand and reminiscing about his childhood; then we see the snowglobe depicts a blackened cemetery.
- Elf: When optimistic and childlike elf Buddy is told that his father lives in New York City, instead of a map he's given a snow globe featuring the Empire State Building. He uses it to find his way to where his dad works, though in spite of the snow globe's (and his own) idyllic image, he discovers New York is actually quite more chaotic than he expected.
- Used ambiguously at the end of Krampus. Max wishes his family back. It appears the Krampus has undone his deeds and now a family can happily celebrate Christmas together, until they find the Krampus' bell. It's revealed that the Krampus has myriads of snow globes in his lair, all holding little houses. As "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" plays in the background of the scene, it can be interpreted that the Krampus has given Max's family a second chance, but only a second chance. He'll always be watching.
- In Mary Poppins, Mary shows the children a snow globe featuring St. Paul's Cathedral as she sings "Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)". The song is about a kindly old woman who makes her living selling crumbs to feed to birds, an innocent activity that Michael is scolded by his father for wanting to do.
- In One Magic Christmas, Abbie has a snow globe of Santa's house at the North Pole. The angel Gideon breaks it and then magically fixes it, symbolizing that Ginnie must go through suffering to regain her Christmas spirit and lose her materialism.
- The Santa Clause:
- In the original, Charlie Calvin receives a magical snow globe from Head Elf Bernard. When the globe is shaken, a reindeer-pulled sleigh magically flies through the miniature neighborhood inside. The snow globe later serves as a plot element when Charlie shows its magic to his father Scott, helping him to remember his childhood belief in Santa Claus and realize that he truly is Santa.
- In Part 3: The Escape Clause, Lucy Miller is also shown to have a love of snow globes, and receives one from Scott which shows her hugging a snowman and turning it pink, representing her hugs are magical.
- The Made-for-TV Movie Snowglobe features Christina Milian as Angela, who loves Christmas but is disappointed that her family doesn't. She finds herself transported to a world inside a snow globe where the inhabitants are friendly and childlike.
- In Unfaithful Edward gives his wife Connie a snow globe depicting a man and a woman in the city with a dog. When Connie cheats on him with Paul, Edward smashes the globe on Paul's head. Their relationship was once innocent, but it soured with infidelity.
Literature
- The prologue to The Lovely Bones mentions Susie playing with a snow globe as a small child and feeling a bit sorry for the lonely looking penguin inside. Though Susie is a young girl, the snow globe comes to symbolize her isolation from the world of the living that she was unjustly taken from too soon.
- Station Eleven: In the airport, Clark looks at and muses on a snow globe, thinking about all the thousands of people that worked to get it made and shipped to its place. This is melancholy as this world doesn't exist anymore, and almost all (if not all) of the people who contributed to making the globe are dead.
Live-Action TV
- Babylon 5: At the very end of the episode "Shadow Dancing", Delenn is in Sheridan's quarters, watching him sleep. (It's a Minbari custom, part of their equivalent of getting engaged.) Delenn notices a snow globe on the table and picks it up to look at it. Just then the door slides open and a woman walks in.
Woman: Hello. You must be Delenn. I'm Anna Sheridan. John's wife.
[The snow globe slips from Delenn's fingers in slow motion and shatters on the floor.] - Black Mirror: In "White Christmas", Joe buys a snow globe as a present for his daughter. In an unfortunate chain of events the globe leads to her death and becomes an Arc Symbol in his guilt trip.
- Miami Vice: After Larry Zito dies and the OCB enter his apartment to gather evidence against those who killed him and prove him innocent of a self-induced overdose to the skeptical Internal Affairs, they learn that he has a collection of snowglobes. In the last aired episode of the series, "Too Much, Too Late", his still-grieving partner Switek, who in addition to failing to cope with the loss of his best friend and is also battling a crippling gambling addiction that has ruined his life, is seen playing with one of his snowglobes and thinking of him.
- The series finale of St. Elsewhere infamously ends with the implication that the events of the whole series were nothing more than a mere fantasy imagined by Tommy Westphall, an autistic boy whose most treasured possession is a snow globe containing a small model of a building resembling the hospital in which the series is set.
- In the Sex and the City episode "All That Glitters", Carrie contemplates a snow globe of the New York City skyline along with the decline of her relationship with Aiden. Incidentally, the globe was made before 9/11 while the episode aired the next year.
Music
- The music video for "Written in the Stars" features Elton John and LeAnn Rimes contemplating snow globes depicting doomed lovers such as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Romeo and Juliet, Cio-Cio-San and Pinkerton and a mermaid and a sailor. The lovers are/were innocent until something happened to shake them up and ruined their innocence.
- The music video "Black or White" shows Michael Jackson dancing in a Russian scene that becomes a snow globe played with by a couple of babies, one black and one white while sitting on a globe. The scene was meant to depict that babies are too innocent to judge based on color or nationality.
Puppet Shows
- In the Sesame Street special Elmo Saves Christmas, Santa Claus gives Elmo a magic snow globe that will grant him three wishes. Elmo innocently wishes every day could be Christmas, not realizing the downside to this.
Video Games
- In OMORI you can find several snowglobes in the Snowglobe Mountain. Examining them yields descriptions of several children playing in the snow. The "lost innocence" part comes in when you consider they're Sunny's happy childhood memories playing with his friends. This area is only accessible in the last day of Hikikomori route, where all hope of Sunny reconciling with his friends is already lost.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation: Inverted with SCP-251 - The Deceptive Snow Globe
. SCP-251 is a snow globe that always snows. If viewed by more than one person, the glass will be obscured by a constant blizzard. If a person is left alone to look into SCP-251, they will see the little figures inside depicting a violent and morbid scene that is different each viewing. People who spend too much time looking into SCP-251 start to become violent, xenophobic, or generally emotionally distressed.
Western Animation
- Batman: The Animated Series: The episode "Heart of Ice" begins and ends with Mr. Freeze contemplating a woman figure skater in a snow globe that represents his wife Nora who was cryogenically frozen. While Fries and Boyle are both guilty of numerous crimes, Nora is an innocent who suffers because of them.
- Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol: When Belle is about to break her engagement with Scrooge, she gazes into a snowglobe, reminiscing about the snowy day he asked her to marry him as she sings "Winter was Warm".
- In The Simpsons episode "Rosebud", Mr. Burns drops a snow globe while dreaming about his childhood where he immediately left his loving poor parents for a soulless billionaire, but also forgotten his teddy bear Bobo ("a symbol of [his] youth and innocence"). We pan to see he has a box full of snow globes next to his bed, and has dropped several others already.
