How to Make a Snowman

Start with a snowball you can hold in two hands and squeeze until it holds its shape. Set it down on untouched snow and push it slowly away from you. Every pass wraps another layer around it, and the ball grows fast once it gets going.

Turn it a quarter every few feet. Rolling in a straight line gives you a barrel instead of a ball. Stop when it comes up to about your knee, which is as big as one person can still shift.

Decide where the snowman is going to stand before you stop rolling, because this ball is not moving again. Pick flat ground out of direct sun.

Work around the ball with both hands, pressing loose snow into the dents and patting the sides until it is round. Pack the bottom edge down into the ground so it sits solid. A base that rocks takes the whole snowman over later.

Roll the second ball the same way and stop it at around two thirds the width of the base. Bigger than that and you will not get it off the ground.

Squat down, hug the ball against your chest and stand up with your legs. Set it square in the center of the base so the weight sits over the middle, then shuffle it a little to seat it before you let go.

Roll a third ball for the head and keep it small. About half the width of the middle ball looks right, and it is far easier to lift above your shoulders.

Hold it with both hands, line it up over the middle ball and press straight down. It should sink in and sit in its own dish rather than balance on a curve. Step back a few paces, look at it, and nudge it until it sits straight.

Grab handfuls of loose snow and push them into the gap where the head meets the middle ball, then do the same at the lower joint. Press hard with your palms and work all the way around.

This is the step people skip and it is the one that counts. Seams are where a snowman cracks once the sun gets on it. Filled and packed, the stack behaves like one piece of snow instead of three.

Look around for two branches of roughly the same length, ideally with a fork or a few twigs on the end for fingers. Fallen wood is easier to find than green wood is to snap off a tree.

Push one into each side of the middle ball, angled up and out. Drive them in four or five inches so they carry their own weight. Wiggle each one and push it deeper if it droops.

Hunt around for small dark stones. Two round ones about the size of a bottle cap become the eyes, and five or six smaller ones make the mouth.

Set the eyes high on the head and roughly a hand apart. Push each stone in until the snow grips it, then thumb a little snow around the edge so it stays put. Curve the mouth stones underneath in a shallow arc.

Push a carrot into the middle of the face between the eyes and the mouth, angled slightly upward. Run three or four stones down the front of the body for buttons, spaced evenly.

Wrap a scarf around the joint between the head and the body and tuck the ends in behind so the wind cannot take it. A hat on top finishes the whole thing, and the brim shades the head, which buys the snowman another day.