It’s Christmas, so I thought I should come up with a suitably Grinchy post for the season. Since everyone already knows that Jesus wasn’t actually born any time even near this time of year, I thought I’d point out a little known fact about another icon of Christmas. The opening lyrics of this particular Christmas song should be familiar enough to everyone:

Frosty the Snowman
Was a jolly happy soul
With a corncob pipe and a button nose
And his eyes made out of coal.

Frosty the Snowman
May the children laugh and play
And were they surprised when before their eyes
He came to life that day.

There must have been some magic
In that old silk hat they found
For when they placed it on his head
He began to dance around.

The interesting fact about this song, first released by Gene Autry in the 1950s, is that the original idea wasn’t for it to be about Christmas at all. In the 1970s, one of the song’s writers, Walter Rollins, confessed in an interview in Life magazine, that it was supposed to be about the consequences of a nuclear winter, with the snowman being brought to life amidst the radioactive fallout and the dreams of children of a world without war. Sounds sinister doesn’t it? Unfortunately the producers ultimately decided that a more childish version of the song would have more commercial value.

A pity because the original version of the song would be just the perfect thing to have on while I play Fallout 3 on Christmas day.