Shaken up by the human snow globe

It may be just a plastic bubble in a shopping centre, but for ROSITA BOLANDthe Human Snow Globe is a chance to live a childhood dream

IT HAD A snowman in it, with a red and white striped scarf. And a Christmas tree. I saw my first snow globe in Roches Stores in Limerick the December I was eight. I have no idea how long I stood there, among the tinsel, piped carols and Christmas cards, turning the glass globe upside down over and over again, and watching the snow scatter, fall and settle. At that point in my life I had never seen real snow, or a snowman. I don’t know why the snow globe was so captivating, but I was utterly entranced by this tiny, charming, strangely perfect world. Perhaps it was because it represented something unattainable, like my childhood dream of snowman-deep snow in Clare in December.

Fast forward oh, about 873 years, and my enduring delight for snow globes finds me at 11am one morning last week, waiting to enter Ireland’s first Human Snow Globe. The location couldn’t be less atmospheric, a plastic bubble in the concourse of the Pavilions Shopping Centre in Swords, but it doesn’t matter. The globe has a snowman with a red and white striped scarf! It has a white, fibre-optic, lit-up Christmas tree! Never mind that the snow is made of some kind of recycled paper, airborne for a few brief seconds via a blower by a young woman who hides behind the snowman every time the centre’s photographer takes a picture, and then pops up like a jack-in-the-box to sweep the paper snow back into position ready to be blown around again. I am so excited I discard 13 years experience as a journalist in under a minute and fail to write the young woman’s name down in my notebook.

In fact, so clearly delighted am I at my pending Human Snow Globe experience that even the PR people, who are paid to be very excited indeed when promoting their products, seem a little surprised at the level of my enthusiasm. One of them asks – in all seriousness – if I would like to visit Santa's Grotto when I'm done with the Snow Globe. Brenda, The Irish Timesphotographer, is so overcome with mirth at this suggestion that she needs a little time out on the floor before she can return to checking camera angles.

“Maybe you’d like to wear a pair of reindeer antlers when you’re in there?” the PR people then suggest. I shake my antler-free head. Reindeer antlers! Are we at a seasonal hen party in Temple Bar, or a Human Snow Globe in, er, a suburban shopping centre? Respect, please! However, having already discarded the first rules of journalism by not getting someone’s name, I then abandon my ethics by accepting the gift of a lovely strand of silver tinsel, which I wear like a scarf.

Brenda goes off to investigate the upper levels of the shopping centre. “You’ll look more like you’re on the mantelpiece if I shoot from above,” she tells me.

I step into the globe. It’s quiet inside. There I am, with the snowman, the Christmas tree, and the paper snow. I am in a Human Snow Globe; inside the world that so entranced me as a child.

When I am in this silent, ephemeral place, I realise suddenly that I associate snow with happiness. I find myself thinking of last December in Boston, when I finally got to spend a winter in a land where snow does indeed fall snowman-deep. I think of watching the first blizzard of the season from my apartment window during a Christmas party, and of all of us running outside to throw snow around, and how profoundly happy everyone was. I am time travelling in the Human Snow Globe. I never want the snow to stop falling.