"NO ONE MOURNS THE WICKED" -FROSTY THE SNOWMAN THRU THE EYES OF THE MAGICIAN; that old silk hat..who had rights to its ownership?

Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, watching the Christmas specials was a huge part of Christmas. Before the day of DVR, and when VCR tapes were just emerging, catching the live Christmas specials was an exciting event and my eyes were glued to the TV. I caught every nuance of every program over the years, and of course had questions.

Like, in Frosty the Snowman, why does Karen wear gloves and mittens yet her legs are fully exposed to the cold? And if you watch carefully, when the children run out of the school house, a little boy jumps on a sled which goes both ‘up’ and down a hill? Being an avid sledder, I just knew that wasn’t right, so my questions came.

And as I grew older and my moral compass developed, I started to question the Villain of the story of Frosty the Snowman. Yes, I started questioning the mythology that was part of my youth and I looked at the story through a different lens.

If the Wizard of Oz can be rewritten through the eyes of the Wicked Witch of The West, then certainly Frosty The Snowman can be retold through the eyes of the bumbling and bitter magician dressed in black; Professor Hinkle.

The cartoon version of Frosty begins with the Magician’s hat failing him while he performs to a classroom of children. He throws the hat in disgust, but just then the rabbit finally appears and hops away with the hat out the front door. The magician gives chase, but the hat ends up on the snowman the children have just built. The iceman comes to life with his proud first words, “Happy Birthday!”

It was his birthday, and it was a regular miracle. A Christmas day virgin birth. Indeed, ‘there must have been some magic on that old silk hat they found.’

But did they really ‘find’ the hat? They refuse to give the hat back to the magician, saying it was now there’s, but was ownership ever really ‘transferred’? The magician did throw the hat away, but after he threw it he immediately tries to get it back, chasing it down before Karen places it on Frosty’s head.

A fight over ownership of the hat ensues, and the conflict of the story becomes a chase, a hunt really. The Magician becomes an obsessed Javert, tracking the fugitive Jean Valjean Frosty to the North Pole, where Karen is bringing him so that he doesn’t melt away.

Why don’t we question which side is in the right? Do the sad faces of the children increase sympathy and tilt the justice in their favor?

I remember as a child how sad I was for Karen when her teardrops spilled into the puddle that used to be Frosty, and how I wanted her suffering to end and her sadness to go away. Hurry, Santa, I pleaded in my head, tell her that frosty isn’t gone but will come back with the first Christmas snow.

Going back many decades, I remember the common law definition of burglary - “Breaking and entering the dwelling house of another in the night season with intention to commit a felony or theft therin”

Blackstone was a bit more wordy and perhaps by Coke’s definition perhaps the Grinch wasn’t a burglar, because it seems the victims lived in ordinary houses and not mansions:

“THE definition of a burglar, as given us by fir Edward Cokes , is, “he that by night breaketh and entreth into a manfionhoufe, with intent to commit a felony.” In this definition there are hour things to be confiderd; the time, the place, the manner, and the intent.

1. THE time muft be by night, and not by day; for in the day time there is no burglary. We have feent , in the cafe of juftifiable homicide, how much more heinous all laws made an attack by night, rather than by day; allowing the party attacked by night to kill the affailant with impunity. As to what is reckoned night, and what day, for this purpofe: at tiently the day was accounted to begin only at funrifing, and to end immediately upon funfet; but the better opinion feems to be, that if there be daylight or crepufculum enough, begun or left, to difcern a man’s face withal, it is no burglaryu . But this does not extend to moonlight; for then many midnight burglaries would go unpunifhed: and befides, the malignity of the offence does not fo properly arife from it’s being done in the dark, as at the dead of night; when all the creation, except beafts of prey, are at reft; when fleep has difarmed the owner, and rendered his caftle defencelefs.

2. AS to the place. It muft be, according to fir Edward Coke’s definition, in a manfion houfe; and therefore to account for the reafon why breaking open a church is burglary, as it undoubtedly is, he quaintly obferves that it is domus manfionalis Deiw . But it does not feem abfolutely neceffary, that it fhould in all cafes be a manfion-houfe; for it may alfo be committed by breaking the gates or walls of a town in the nightx ; though that perhaps fir Edward Coke would have called the manfion-houfe of the garrifon or corporation. Selman defines burglary to be, “nocturna “diruptio alicujus habitaculi, vel ecclefiae, etiam murorum portarumve “burgi, ad feloniam perpetrandam.” And therefore we may fafely conclude, that the requifite of it’s being domus manfionalis is only in the burglary of a private houfe; which is the moft frequent, and in which it is indifpenfably neceffary to form it’s guilt, that it muft be in a manfion or dwelling houfe. For no diftant barn, warehoufe, or the like, are under the fame privileges, nor looked upon as a man’s caftle of defence: nor is a breaking open of houfes wherein no man refides, and which therefore for the time being are not manfion-houfes, attended with the fame circumftances of midnight terror. A houfe however, wherein a man fometimes refides, and which the owner hath only left for a fhort feafon, animo revertendi, is the object of burglary; though no one be in it, at the time of the fact committedy . And if the barn, ftable, or warehoufe be parcel of the manfionhoufe, though not under the fame roof or contiguous, a burglary may be committed therein; for the capital houfe protects and privileges all it’s branches and appurtenants, if within the curtilage or homeftallz . A chamber in a college or an inn of court, where each inhabitant hath a diftinct property, is, to all other purpofes as well as this, the manfion-houfe of the ownera . So alfo is a room or lodging, in any private houfe, the manfion for the time being of the lodger. The houfe of a corporation, inhabited in feparate apartments by the officers of the body corporate, is the manfion-houfe of the corporation. And not of the refpective officersb . But if I hire a fhop, parcel of another man’s houfe, and work or trade in it, but never lie there; it is no dwellinghoufe, nor can burglary be committed therein: for by the leafe it is fevered from the reft of the houfe, and therefore is not the dwellinghoufe of him who occupies the other part;”

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