By Caro Alt

A few Christmas Eve Eves ago, the floor of my parents’ house was covered by every towel we owned. A green striped one, one embroidered with my sister’s name, one with Violet from The Incredibles, Winnie the Pooh, a Myrtle Beach souvenir, paint-stained rags, hand towels, etc. They were hopelessly trying to sop up the layer of water that had gathered there mere minutes ago.

Five minutes before, I was sitting at the counter in my parents’ kitchen while my sister was working on her annual holiday cookie baking. Frosted sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, dark chocolate peppermint cookies, all of it. I wasn’t helping. I don’t help during her dessert day, but I do man the TV remote, and we were in the middle of marathoning the Christmas episodes of Glee. She was prepping another tray when a static sound started to get louder and louder. I remember her walking out of the kitchen in her apron to inspect it and running back in to tell me that a pipe had burst by the front door.

A couple hours later, everyone in my family was pretty mad, and I was pretty drunk in the bar of a local hotel. If I could pick a holiday song to best punctuate the muted chaos of that Christmas Eve Eve, I would pick “Mr. Frosty Man” by Sufjan Stevens.

“Mr. Frosty Man” is a very disjointed song, constantly walking a self-imposed tightrope between recognizable tune and exasperated strumming. A quietly ferocious acoustic guitar keeps the song moving in its pandemonium while Sufjan sings in a similarly tumultuous way. Lyrically, this song has a distinct Beastie Boys quality, and by that I just mean that amongst the chaos, Stevens is set on describing a pretty cool and unique guy he knows — Mr. Frosty Man.

First of all, Mr. Frosty Man is NOT Frosty the Snowman. He’s way more chill. Frosty has a corncob pipe and a button nose, but does he like ice cream? Does he like Yo La Tengo? Mr. Frosty Man does. Mr. Frosty Man is also your favorite artist’s favorite snow dude — boasting friendships with Coolio, Vanilla Ice, Ice Cube, and [checks notes] Mr. Saucy Pants.

It’s a totally weird track, roiling its own absurdity. But isn’t that what this time of year is all about? Wearing a too-hot sweater that’s pushing you to the brink of insanity while someone tells a story that goes on and on? When that pipe burst right before Christmas, it was bad, but at least Sufjan got it. A Christmas song on the verge of collapse really understands the reason for the season.

Other holiday situations I can imagine the strumming of this song soundtracking, aside from my family’s ceiling coming down during Cookiepalooza 2022:

Barfing after drinking too much eggnog with your dad.
Getting electrocuted while stringing up the lights after you say you can fix that one bulb that’s out.
Texting that one person from your hometown that you said you weren’t gonna text, but you do, and you think you’re being so cute about it, but turns out he has a fiancée and doesn’t have your number saved anymore, so he just says, “Sorry, who is this?”
Slipping on that one patch of ice that freezes and melts and freezes and melts, and you say you’re not gonna slip, but you do because it’s dark or something, and you break your arm and are stuck in an Urgent Care until 3 am.
Your grandma getting run over by a reindeer.

The story of the pipe bursting in my parents’ house just days before Christmas is one that only recently became funny. Up until this year, it was a mutual migraine to even reference that one time the ceiling almost came down while Chris Colfer was hitting his falsetto note in “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” No one dared bring up how cookies got burned, or how our brave little puppy dog almost got rained on indoors, but after the insurance calls and the new floors, it’s pretty funny. I think Mr. Frosty Man is kind of the same. Like, if I were in that situation where Mr. Frosty Man was up to with his boisterous hijinks, I would be very, very irritated. Irritated until I wasn’t anymore and I had made it into another good holiday story. Happy Holidays, Mr. Frosty Man. Thank you for what you do.

Caro Alt (she/her) is from New Orleans, Louisiana, and if she could be anyone in The Simpsons, she would be Milhouse.