Throwback: "Snow Flake Breakdown"

Well it’s about time!

Minot High School caught up with the times this year and adopted a winter semi-formal. The times have managed to elude MHS since its very first winter, but no more! Many other state high schools have been sporting similar wintry dances for years now. Hopefully the Snow Flake Break will become an annual tradition.

What is commonly called a Snow Ball, we are calling Snow Flake Break. And first off, I’d better make it clear that a “Snow Ball” is not the same as a “snowball.” A snowball is a spherical object made of snow, while a Snow Ball refers to a fancy (or in our case semi-fancy) dance held in the wintertime.

Winter dances date all the way back to the Russian Revolution in 1917. A group of college students were putting together a dance and wanted a new “catchy” name. They had just been to the Ice Ball (during Russia’s ice season) and a clever young Russian came up with Snow Ball, or снежок (snye-ZHAWK).

It was a big hit and the Snow Ball has been with us, humans, ever since. The same can’t be said for the Ice Ball however. It’s dreadful temperatures and prevalent ice lead to its last appearance in the year 1922.

The Russian Snow Ball was always a week-long affair and featured different activities for each night of the week. There was ice-skating, ice-fishing, ice-scraping, an ice-sculpting competition, and finally the Ball on Friday night (weather permitting of course).

The Snow Ball has been held every year since 1917 in Russia and today is as rich with tradition as Christmas. Being so popular, the tradition started to branch out to other countries but really gained speed in the 20’s.

Not long after the first commercial radio broadcast in 1920, news of the Russian’s winter dance and festivities spread to all snow-covered corners of the world. It swept the world by storm and was “the Bee’s Knees” for roughly ten years but slowly lost popularity and came to be celebrated with about as much enthusiasm as Arbor Day.

The Snow Ball was revived triumphantly during the late fifties in England and came with the Beatles to America in 1964. The first Snow Ball in the U.S. was held in a vague town in Rhode Island the following year but was called a Winter Formal because it was “more American.”

The Winter Formal spread fiercely through the U.S. and became especially popular in high schools, where the majority of them are held today. The celebration still lasts one week but the traditional Russian ice-tivities are now replaced with more American activities that vary with each Formal. All, however, are more fun than ice-scraping.

Since the turn of the Millennium, Winter Formals have started to include a dinner party before their Friday dances with the hopes of relieving the stress on stressed students having to make reservations for dinner. The dinner has been widely enjoyed, and plus, you’re guaranteed a seat!

Though a Snow Ball has been discussed for years at MHS, this year we made the commitment and became a tri-dance school. We are very proud to be a part of the Earth’s tradition of wintry themed dances. You can all give yourselves a pat on the back; well done, team!