I made a chart of Google search interest in the words "snowman" and "snowflake" in the U.S. since 2010. Don't ask why I did this because I really don't have an answer.
Here are some interesting observations:
- Interest in these terms is very seasonal, peaking in late December.
- There was a substantial spike in interest in "snowman" in 2014. This was just after Frozen came out, and the extra interest is entirely due to the song "Do you want to build a snowman?"
- There was a much smaller spike in snowman interest in November of 2017, when The Snowman was released. I haven't seen the film itself, but I highly recommend this video about how much of a mess it is.
- Traditionally, off-season interest in "snowman" and "snowflake" has been about equal. However, over the last few years "snowflake" has overtaken "snowman," presumably due to its increasing use as a political insult.
- Winter usually continues after December, but interest in both snowmen and snowflakes drops rapidly after December ends. Moreover, if you look at Australia or New Zealand1 rather than the U.S., the interest in both still peaks in December, despite it being summer there. This suggests that the seasonal nature of these terms is specifically Christmas-related rather than merely winter-related, which I found somewhat surprising.
- Not included in my graph, because I can't figure out how to get this data and U.S. data from Google at the same time using the same y-axis scale. ↩