The first snowman was purchased on a street corner in Korea in 1981.
Hughes and Sherry Protzman were missionaries and the little snowman candle was a welcome bit of Americana.
From that moment, Sherry Protzman decided she liked snowmen, so naturally, family and friends thought she’d like a few more. Like a snowball tumbling downhill, the collection grew.
Today, the Protzmans, who live in Everett, own hundreds of snowman-themed items: candles, cookie jars, teapots, plates, mugs, platters, ornaments, strings of lights, hand-sewn quilts and pillows. Stuffed snowmen, wood snowmen, crystal snowmen. Thimble-sized snowmen. Musical snowmen. Bears dressed like snowmen. In the kitchen, a jolly snowman dispenses hot cocoa or cider.
Over the years, Sherry Protzman, 63, couldn’t resist purchasing a few, but friends and family are responsible for supplying most of her snowman army. After Thanksgiving, she and Hughes spend a week decking halls, walls and many other parts of their classic 1940s home with snowmen.
“The week we decorated, it looked like a Christmas bomb went off,” said Hughes Protzman, 64, nearly retired from his position as associate pastor at Word of Life Church in Lynnwood.
When they’re through, it looks more like Norman Rockwell went through a Frosty period.
Snowmen huddle on the doorstep and inhabit the glass-fronted cabinets in the pretty little kitchen. They dangle from Christmas trees and stoop on the staircase. Many of the 51 snowmen candles, the oldest beginning to yellow with age, watch over the kitchen from the windowsill. All those plates, teapots and candles get set out for dinners and played with by children. Despite the breakable nature of much of it, Sherry Protzman’s philosophy is: “There’s no point in having it if you don’t use it.”
The snowmen are the first thing the grandchildren look for when they visit. The family has come to associate the snowmen collection with the holidays. Pity the grandparent who contemplates a simpler decorating scheme. Maybe just evergreen boughs and lights, she thought last year. But what protests from the grandchildren — and the grown children.
“The kids have come to expect the snowmen,” said the Protzmans’ daughter Lisa Northup, of Lynnwood. “You think maybe the kids don’t care, but when they don’t have it, they notice.”
Northup, now a mother of three, remembers snuggling on her mother’s lap in a rocking chair absorbing the lights and the tree. Christmas has always been a special time in this family. The grandchildren, even the teenagers, have come to expect Grandma’s tower of presents: A pyramid of boxes, shiny paper specially selected for each child, wrapped with a bow.
“She has always decorated beautifully,” Northup said. “All the baking and the candy. There was always a holiday party with family.”
And always, when possible, an open house for neighbors to see the snowmen, nibble holiday treats and rub elbows, often for the first time.
“It seems like most of our society drives into the driveways, and we never get to see anybody else,” Sherry Protzman said.
The Protzmans still collect snowmen, although they told family no more snowman teapots, please, when the 11 she had filled the cabinet.
Whenever she thinks pulling out all those snowmen might be too much bother, something changes her mind.
“I find I miss getting it out,” she said. “It brings out memories of old friends that have given me one and reminds me of different places I’ve lived. I’m every bit as bad as my grandkids.”
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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