Prepare your balls for a snowman contest - The Chaff with Scott Stephenson
In what can only be described as a community-forward, winter-positive initiative, The Chaff is pleased to announce a snowraising contest designed to meet local snow needs through civic participation, neighbourly competition and a level of procedural thoroughness that should reassure everyone involved.
The contest, formally titled “The Betty White Snowman Building-Competition”, invites residents to construct snow figures of a snowman persuasion using responsibly-sourced, locally-available powder. White powder. Snow, to be clear. Just snow. We cannot stress this enough.
Participants must gather snow, shape snow and submit snow to be weighed, catalogued, admired and ultimately redistributed to where it is most required. Snow, once raised, will be allocated to community snow needs as determined by a committee that is still being struck. The committee will be empowered to ask important questions like, “How much snow is enough snow?” and “Where exactly does it go when we say it goes back into the community?”
The snowmen themselves will be judged on a variety of criteria, including but not limited to structural integrity, adherence to the general idea of a snowman and an ineffable warmth that suggests kindness, longevity and a reassuring presence that makes you feel everything is going to be fine, even if the forecast says otherwise.
Naming the competition after Betty White is, of course, entirely coincidental and rooted only in an appreciation for winter-friendly nomenclature and the undeniable fact that snow is, traditionally, white.
Participants are encouraged to use clean snow, packed snow, fluffy snow and snow that has fallen with purpose. Yellow snow will not be accepted.
Safety guidelines will be provided, including reminders to lift with the knees, hydrate appropriately despite the cold and remember that competition, while healthy, should never overshadow the greater good, which in this case is having a lot of snow ready to be deployed if needed.
There will be prizes, though the nature of those prizes remains under consideration. Options include wet mittens, soggy bragging rights and/or a damp certificate acknowledging that you helped raise snow for your neighbours. Gift cards to ToHo are always on the ToHo table too! Shout out to all the ToHo bros and TH girly gals™!
Some ambitious residents have already begun discussing scale, permanence and what it might look like if a snow figure were to be particularly well-formed, particularly beloved and particularly central. These discussions are healthy and should continue organically, without rushing toward conclusions or making any declarations about future plans, bronze or otherwise.
Organizers of the Betty White Snowman-Building Competition wish to clarify that the figures being constructed are snowmen. This is not up for debate, review or a community listening session. They are snowmen because they have always been snowmen, because the sign-up form says snowmen and because changing the word now would require updating several laminated documents. No one is suggesting that snow lacks complexity, interiority or the capacity to become something else under different conditions. Snow is, after all, famously fluid. Still, for the purposes of this event, snowmen will be men, in the way that stop signs are re(a)d and rivers go not only where they go but also beyond.
When asked whether a snow figure might identify differently, serious officials explain that snow does not identify, it accumulates. Any suggestion that a snowman could also be a snowwoman, or something in between, or something else entirely that we have not yet invented a checkbox for, is met with polite concern and an offer of hot chocolate or homemade hooch. The competition, it’s emphasized, is welcoming to everyone, as long as everyone stubbornly agrees on what things are definitely called and why they have - unflinchingly, flinchlessly and without flinch, not even the slightest glimmer of flinch - always been called that with nary an exception, anomaly or inexplicable twist of cosmic fate.
In the end, organizers emphasize that the competition’s true achievement is clarity, achieved through careful repetition and firm agreement on terms that no one had previously found confusing. That this level of linguistic precision is being applied to the Betty White Snowman-Building Competition is unfortunate but necessary, given the stakes.
Participants are asked only to build snow, call it what it is called and resist the urge to complicate matters that will, by design, melt away. The snow will not remember what it was named, but for a few earnest winter hours, everyone else will, and that, organizers agree, is the important part.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Builders, build your Bettys!