The Snowmen Burning Unicorn Hunters of LSSU

How are you feeling about winter right now? Are you ready to send it packing? Maybe burn a snowman? You might if you live in a cold climate, one that measures winter temperatures in degrees below zero and feet of snow. You might even have a Snowman Burning Festival near you to banish Old Man Winter and welcome Spring.

“Burn a snowman? Seriously, Courtney, you find the weirdest things to write about.”

Maybe that’s not what you’re saying,  but it’s what my husband said when I told him about this post. (And that was before I added the unicorn hunting into it.)

To which I replied, “Thank you. And I am serious. I take my job finding weird things to write about very seriously indeed. Burning snowmen is no laughing matter.”

Okay, so maybe it is. (But don’t tell my husband.)

A Day for Burning Snowmen

Anyway, one of the fun strange days on the Weird Holidays & Observances page is March 20th, Snowman Burning Day.

Actually, March 20 is pretty busy. It’s also Alien Abduction Day (aka Extraterrestrial Abduction Day), International Astrology Day, and World Storytelling Day…just to name a few.

However, Snowman Burning Day also has a cross-over connection with the Paracons & Horror Fests page, because there’s also a Snowman Burning event I list under the Wacky Fun category. It takes place at Lake Superior State University in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, every year on March 20.

The Unicorn Hunters

According to the History section of LSSU’s Snowman Burning page, the university’s Unicorn Hunters held the first snowman burning in 1971. The Unicorn Hunters were a former campus club created by W.T. (Bill) Rabe, also in 1971.

Rabe was LSSU’s Director of Public Relations. Along with Professors of English Peter Thomas, John McCabe, John Stevens and others, they came up with the Hunters as a way to get more publicity for LSSU, which had been a branch of what is now Michigan Technological University, but had become its own independent school.

The Snowman Burning Day was among the club’s first stunts. Its other events and activities included:

• The annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness
• World Sauntering Day
• International Stone-Skipping Tournament
• Unicorn Questing Season
• Teacher Thank You Week

When Rabe retired in 1987, so did the Unicorn Hunters. However, their Snowman Burning legacy lives on.

Burning of the Böögg

LSSU’s snowman burning draws inspiration from the Rose Sunday Festival in Weinheim-an-der-Bergstrasse, Germany, but it has many similarities to Zurich’s burning of the Böögg. According to Wikipedia:

Following the parade of the Zünfte (guilds), the climax of the holiday is the burning of Winter in effigy, in the form of the Böögg, a figure of a snowman prepared with explosives. The custom of burning a rag doll called Böögg predates the Sechseläuten. A Böögg (cognate to bogey) was originally a masked character doing mischief and frightening children during the carnival season.

The Sechseläuten marked the season when “summer working hours” went into effect in Zurich. (And perhaps other parts of Switzerland and Germany? But at least Zurich.) Laws mandated that a work day last as long as there was daylight. However, when Spring approached and the days got longer, the law was that work stopped when the bells tolled six p.m.

Changing to summer working hours traditionally was a joyous occasion because it marked the beginning of the season where people had some non-working daylight hours.

I don’t know about you, but there is something to be celebrated when days turn longer and warmer, isn’t there? (Although, I’m not a fan of Daylight Savings. I don’t like springing ahead and losing that hour. But I do like longer, sunnier evenings…)

Burning Snowman Prophet?

Does the burning (or exploding, as they do to the Böögg in Switzerland), help predict spring? As Smithsonian put it, “Think Groundhog Day –but with fire.”

Not sure if the burning snowman is more an accurate predictor than Punxsutawney Phil, but they say the time from when the pyre is lit to when the Böögg’s head explodes indicates what kind of summer to expect:

• A quick explosion means a warm, sunny summer
• A drawn-out one means a cold, rainy summer

But LSSU’s burning snowman has it’s own oracle: the smoke from the fire is supposed to ward off blizzards.

Maybe there’s something to it? Legend tells that after one of the snowman burning events, a blizzard hit the eastern Upper Peninsula and northern Lower Peninsula but missed Sault Ste. Marie.

Check-In

Which would you trust to predict the coming season more: The Groundhog or the Snowman?