This charming British animated short film (it's just 23 minutes long) is a 1982
production of London's Channel 4, based on the classic children's book by
Raymond Briggs and crafted with a colored-pencils-on-paper look, like fluffy,
hand-drawn illustrations. Small children should be entranced by the story of
a small boy in rural England whose lovingly constructed snowman comes to
life and takes him flying over the white-blanketed landscapes, in a beautiful
rotoscoped (traced) sequence based on live-action flying footage. Part of the
charm of the film is the gentle, everyday quality of its fantasy adventures: the
snowman is invited in to try on clothes and play with the Christmas
decorations, then plays host to the boy at a party in the woods, at which his
snowy relatives do English country dances. This is one of the very few
Christmas tapes on the market that really deserves to be a holiday perennial,
a gentle fable of friendship and the power of imagination.