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If we’re all in agreement that Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, The Little Drummer Boy and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer are the four essential Rankin-Bass Christmas specials, then I have to declare that Frosty is my least favorite of the classics. That doesn’t mean it’s not still pretty great or that you can skip it. Heavens no. If you go through a December without watching it, it means you’re a total jerk and should be banished from the planet.

If you know the song, you know the basics of the cartoon. The essential story is taken right from the classic tune. A two minute song, however, is hardly adequate for a full half-hour of animation, so there has been some significant fleshing out. The fleshiest of all is the narrator, voiced by the notoriously big-schnozzed Jimmy Durante. He rants on and on like a maniac about how the first snow of the season is full of magic and mystery and who knows what. The town’s schoolchildren all believe him, seemingly, because instead of attending to their math studies so we can beat the Russkies to the moon they’re looking out the window at the snow and drawing pictures in the frost on the window. Bunch of goddamn slackers.

The teacher (voiced by Rocket J. Squirrel) tells the children that all this looking out of windows isn’t going to fly in her classroom and it is time to get down to some serious business. Serious business, in this case, refers to the lukewarm antics of a subpar pretidigitator. The awful magician manages to botch Legerdemain 101 level tricks like putting eggs in his hat and pulling things out of his sleeve. Even the signature magician’s trick, pulling a rabbit from his hat, manages to be beyond this cretin. He gets so flustered by this failure that he throws the trick away, rabbit, hat and all. That hat’s worthless.

OR IS IT?!?!? After school, we meet Karen, a sexy, hot-to-trot blonde who’s whipping up a snowman. All the children try to decide on a name for the snowman (does anyone actually name snowmen?) and eventually they decide upon “Frosty.” It seems we’ve met our titular iceman. Ha, tit.

Anyway, along hops the magician’s rabbit, with the magician’s hat in tow. Karen takes the hat and puts it on the head of her new wintry friend and, as you may have guessed, the snowman comes to life, despite having no lungs, brain or heart. As life first stirs within him he shouts out “Happy birthday!” I think if I were a snowman who came to life, I’d have said something more along the lines of “Holy shit, a walkin’ talkin’ snowman,” but this is a children’s program after all.

After deciding that it’s the hat that brought Frosty to life the magician, who’s been sneakily observing the whole shindig, takes his hat back, wanting to make his fortune bringing snowmen to life. Apparently he plans to move to points northward and impress Eskimos all year round or something. The magician’s rabbit, suddenly filled with feelings of righteousness and virtue, swipes the hat away and returns it to the children so they can revive their big, fat snow creation. The kids all dance around like idiots with their new buddy while Jimmy Durante “sings” the title song.

After being alive for less than five minutes, Frosty begins to die. That’s right, our new best friend is about to become our new best corpse. A quick gander at the thermometer reveals that it’s getting hotter, which means Frosty’s getting meltier. (And Leon’s getting larger!) It’s a serious conundrum, this. Not wanting to lose their buddy, the kids come up with the brilliant idea to take Frosty down to the train station and put him on an Amtrak bound for the North Pole (what?). As they parade toward the depot, all the citizens of the village see this walking snowman and go batshit crazy, running into each other and fainting and whatnot. Frosty and his j.d. pals run into a sassy policeman (Irish, of course) who ultimately swallows his whistle, leaving the kids to escape while he chokes and dies.

Upon arrival at the train station, Karen and Frosty find out it’ll cost some three thousand dollars to ship Frosty away to where the innocent townsfolk will never have to see him again. This puts a serious kink in their plans. I mean, it’s a kid and some sort of freezyman; it’s not like they have jobs. So, unable to buy a ticket, they decide to break the law by having Frosty sneak into a refrigerated boxcar and ride the rails for free, in the style of a filthy stinking hobo. Karen, being apparently none too bright, hops into the frigid boxcar with him. And, heck, as long as everybody else is going, the rabbit might as well come too. But these aren’t the only stowaways, no sir; that feisty magician, still obsessed with finding his ugly top hat, jumps onto the end of the train as it’s rolling away, bound and determined to get that snowman and murder him brutally.

Seemingly at random, Frosty and pals jump off the train while it’s stopped at an intersection (what?). They land safely. The magician also jumps off the train, but he falls down a mountain that suddenly appears becase he’s the bad guy and that’s what happens to bad guys in cartoons. Frosty, Karen and the rabbit trudge through the forest. Except Karen doesn’t exactly trudge because she’s freezing to death and Frosty has to carry her. What these guys need is someone who can quickly get Karen back where it’s warm and Frosty off to where it’s cold. They need someone who is kind and gentle and can travel great distances all in one night. Got any ideas? I think I do! (Hint: It is Christmas Eve.)

Poophead the Magician takes this opportunity to show up and hassle everybody, so Frosty and Karen high-tail it the hell out of there. They arrive at a greenhouse, which is just what you’d expect to find in the middle of a forest, and Frosty takes Karen inside to warm her up. Once more the magician appears and slams the greenhouse door, leaving Frosty trapped inside the glass death chamber.

But guess who shows up now it’s Santa Claus!!!! The magician’s rabbit informs Santa of the seriousness of the situation and they run off to the greenhouse to mount a rescue. Santa’s pretty fat, though, so he ain’t too fast, and they arrive too late; Frosty’s nothin’ but a melted puddle on the ground. Fortunately, Santa’s got a few deus ex machinas up his sleeve, so he whips up a batch o’ magic and reassembles Frosty right then and there. Karen and her treasured, most well-loved friend that she’s known for maybe an hour and a half are reunited at last!

Everybody hops on board Santa’s sleigh (pulled by four reindeer because four is easier to draw than eight), the jolly old elf takes Karen home and Frosty to the North Pole, and an irritating choir of kids and the even more irritating Jimmy Durante take us out singing. It’s a Christmas miracle.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Frosty Returns
• Hey, Wait!
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town
• A Pinky and the Brain Christmas