Martinsburg snowmen: a decorative effort that pays for itself.

At this point in the winter, most property owners have either taken down all their Christmas decorations, or, at the very least, they downplay them by keeping the lights off or the inflatable blowers powered down.  The liturgical among us can certainly make a case for retaining the Christmas spirit through the Feast of the Epiphany, but geez—we’re completely past the Epiphany season with Ash Wednesday, unless one belongs to an Orthodox church and its respective calendar.  But even then: come on, now.  Easter is less than seven weeks away.  It’s time those Christmas decorations came down.  The quintessentially 1980s TV show Not Necessarily the News offered sniglets: words that aren’t in the dictionary but should be.  And yes, NNtN had a sniglet—“nerkle”—for people who leave their Christmas decorations up all year.  I’m not chiding the City of Martinsburg, West Virginia through this photo series; I took these pics in the middle of January a few years ago.  A wee bit late but not crazy late.  Besides, I’m here to complement the city for a modest but value-adding initiative at pioneering mimetic on a shoestring budget.  What am I talking about?  The Martinsburg snowmen, of course.

“Of course” is an unfair phrase to append to the previous sentence fragment.  Are these snowmen really that well-known?  Well, no.  And neither is Martinsburg, at least not outside of the almost Connecticut-sized expanse that is metropolitan Washington DC.  For the unacquainted, the mere mention of West Virginia in the same article as metro DC might appear unfathomable.  But Martinsburg has its strongest ties with nearby Hagerstown, Maryland across the Potomac River.  They together form a small Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which itself has converged with the broader Combined Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA) of Washington DC due to the increasingly expansive commuting patterns and sphere of economic influence that Washington exerts on a huge region of cities very large (Baltimore), large (Alexandria VA), medium (Frederick MD), and small (Martinsburg WV).  More simply put, since the early 2000s, commuters who work jobs related to the DC economy have begun living in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.  This includes Martinsburg as the largest city in that Eastern Panhandle, and by “Eastern Panhandle”, I’m referring specifically Morgan, Berkeley, and Jefferson Counties, the later two of which are close enough to Washington DC to belong in its vast CMSA.

West Virginia’s “Martinsburg” is the largest by far of the seven incorporated municipalities across the country with this name; within West Virginia it is a city that is gaining prominence concurrent with its growth in population, up to almost 19,000 in 2020 from 13,000 in 1980.  This trajectory does not constitute rapid growth, but for West Virginia, a state where the vast majority of communities have been declining in population during this same time frame, Martinsburg is a welcome exception.  It’s doing quite well as a remote outpost to escape the high housing costs of much nearer Washington DC suburbs, and it has a defined downtown of its own.

And, at least during part of the year, this downtown features numerous snowmen—hence the Martinsburg snowmen.

The one here to the right an almost certain (magical) hat-tip to Frosty the Snowman, the classic animated Rankin/Bass Christmas TV special from 1969, still broadcast annually.  It is merely the most conventional in the series of snowmen offerings in Martinsburg’s unconventionally shaped commercial core, consisting of a primary, older three-block corridor along Queen Street, a more muted (lower-density, partly residential) corridor along King Street, and the civic buildings at the intersections of these two streets—main branch of the library, the historic Berkeley County Court House, and an Elks Lodge—all right at King and Queen.  But across all the different signposts and streetlights of this inverted L-shaped downtown, Martinsburg snowmen add a little cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves to the drab winter landscape.

I took these photos in early 2021, when COVID lockdowns and social distancing were still very much a part of public limelight.  No further explanation is therefore necessary for this one, which, I venture to state in this epoch of maximally inclusive language, is likely a snow-woman due to the rouge on the cheeks.

Then there’s this one, which reinforces the unifying theme: the outline of a snow-figure, complete with top hat, which formed the template/stencil for all the wooden cuts.  Various artists then decorated these snow-figure shapes, not all of them abiding by snowman parameters.  Because why not?  Also, these Martinsburg snowmen offer a more generalized winter decorative theme than Christmas specifically.  So the City gets a nerkel exemption after all.

Meanwhile, at least one of the artists decided to cheat with the Martinsburg snowman outline a wee bit further:

The wooden snowman was the required canvas for this civic art initiative, but beyond that, rules were minimal.  This innovator apparently decided to lop off the top hat to better encapsulate populist art legend Bob Ross and his righteous afro.  

The entire effort seamlessly partners Main Street Martinsburg, the primary downtown revitalization organization, with Berkeley County schools, local artist associations, and other civic organizations (Scouts, day care centers, church youth groups).  I say “seamless” because actual press coverage is remarkably scant, and it’s been very tricky learning about the origins and history of Martinsburg snowmen.  To the best of my understanding, the initiative has taken place for at least a decade: the participants decorate their figures in the summer of autumn, so that Main Street Martinsburg can install them in early December.  Siince they aren’t all about Christmas, it’s reasonable that they remain on street poles until March.   Once they come down, the initiative culminates in an auction, where money raised through the bids go directly to the Main Street Martinsburg general fund.

Therefore, in addition to supplementing seasonal directions with something unique to the city—not the standard wreaths, candles, or snowflakes perched on poles (though it has those too)—the Martinsburg snowmen auction helps raise money for an organization dedicated to revitalizing the increasingly high-profile WV Eastern Panhandle city.

From what I can tell looking at some of the latest snowmen on display, the exact contours of the snowman vary annually, preventing year-after-year duplicates.  But since the template still instills at least a baseline unity in the undertaking (even if an artist amputates a portion as a paean to Bob Ross), the effort involves nemesis, not just as snowmen but as an iteration of other longstanding civic art efforts.  The one that comes to mind most powerfully (and here I’m aging myself) is the Cows on Parade of Chicago in the late 90s, in which various business leaders commissioned artists to decorate fiberglass cows, with no concern for verisimilitude: white and black spots would have revealed creative bankruptcy.  The 300+ cows-as-canvas evoked famous moments in Chicago history, celebrities, other historic artists (and their celebrated paintings) or a pastiche.  The CowPARADE concept began in Switzerland a year or two earlier, modeled after an Alpabfahrt, a fall festival where farmers bring their flower-adorned bovines from the hills to the towns to celebrate the harvest.   The loud, brassy City of Big Shoulders popularized the Swiss-inspired civic art initiative, no doubt a snide wink at Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, the mythical origin of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Numerous other cities across the country and globe borrowed the concept, just as Chicago borrowed it from Zurich.  Cow sculptures adorned numerous cities to engage and amuse visitors throughout the first two decades of the 21st century; many still feature them today, or else they feature other animals or iconic elements characteristic of the city.  In almost all cases, whether 3-D and quite costly like Chicago or 2-D and modest like Martinsburg snowmen, the effort shows its single-minded vision through unity in the template: the duplication of one (or very few) templates which then artists customize through the painted veneer.  The arty animals can adorn linear walking paths to create a sculpture trail, or celebrate the impending arrival of a major sporting event.  The installations—sturdy but not permanent—must eventually get removed or they will deteriorate, and, before such deterioration, it behooves the initiative’s sponsors to capitalize on their appeal and demand, by monetizing them.  It’s a simple and foolproof effort.  Unless the painting itself elicits profound controversy, I see no reason for cows, elephants, dolphins, pigs, penguins, dragons, manatees, buses, or peanuts to continue to parade through urban centers until civilization’s end.

As for Martinsburg, it doesn’t seem to be hurting things.  It’s not as grand of an effort as what Chicago launched a quarter-century ago, but it has become more of an annual tradition.  In that respect, and the soup-to-nuts effort to bring people together with amateur art during the holiday season, it reminds me of the front yard giant Christmas cards that numerous homes feature in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia.  Yes, the Virginia example is exclusively residential, with art installations perched exclusively on private property—a huge contrast from the infrastructural “easels” in Martinsburg.  But the civic spirit that spawned the Martinsburg snowmen has a facsimile in a city much closer to the heart of this huge Washington DC metro.  Leave eternally chipper Frosty to the folks of West By God Virginia.  Throughout the this seasonally cynical country, they seem to prefer the Grinch.