By the 1950s, innovation in plastics and injection-molding meant that snow globes could be made even more cheaply. Even the “snow” that floats around inside the globe, called “flitter” in the business, could be made from plastics—no need to use marble, bone chips, or ground rice anymore (mass-produced plastic glitter, which was allegedly invented in 1934, became part of the snow globe story only later). The water filling the globes was also frequently mixed with glycol, to make the snow fall more slowly, although sometimes it was mixed with far more lethal substances. At least one manufacturer, McMichael told The New York Times, began mixing antifreeze into the water to keep the globes from freezing and cracking during shipping. Stories of children becoming ill after drinking the water from snow globes sometimes made headlines, including one about children who became seriously sick after drinking snow globe water taken directly from polluted Hong Kong Bay.

Tired of all the happy ballerinas and princesses in snow globes? Then give them the finger with this terrible, but hilariously wrong, prank snow globe. It’s something we’ve all asked at one time or another, just never in snow globe form. I’m not sure if this is meant as a gift or as bathroom décor, but either way, it’s sure to be a conversation starter. Additional info at personalized snow globe.

The first mention of a snow globe featured a man with an umbrella displayed at the Paris Exposition of 1878. Eleven years later at the 1889 Exposition, visitors came to marvel at the steel structure of the Eiffel Tower. There are no examples remaining of these first souvenir globes – but others introduced later suggest that domes were created to commemorate the inauguration of the Tower. The concept quickly became popular throughout Victorian Europe featuring religious themes and pilgrimage sites. “Snow domes are not only fascinating to look at, to hold, to play with, they are folk art”, says collector Nancy McMichael, author of Snowdomes(Abbeville Press). “They are a bridge back to an idealized past we think existed but is actually in our head. It is something we carry with us.”

Many Americans decorated their trees with imported ornaments up until World War II. Before World War II, many ornaments Americans purchased were imported from Germany. But once World War II started, Corning, an American glass company, started making ornaments out of a light bulb machine. They made 300,000 ornaments a day! The legend behind stockings involves a sweet story about Santa doing something really nice for a poor family. The common legend about Christmas stockings (which has an unknown source and date, according to Smithsonian Magazine) tells a tale of a poor, widowed man who had three young daughters that he worried would never marry due to their lack of wealth. St. Nick overheard people chatting about this family, so he slid down the man’s chimney and placed gold coins in the girls’ clean stockings that were hanging to dry by the fireplace. Source: https://www.qstomize.com/collections/custom-snow-globe.