Have you ever thought about snowmen? Snowmen are weird.
From the name, you'd think that a snowman is a representation of a person made from snow, but that's not really what the word means. When we think of a snowman, we don't think of a human shaped mass of snow. We think of a tower of three successively smaller snow spheres. Sure, it's got stick arms and a crude face, but it doesn't really represent a human, not anymore. When you go outside to build a snowman, you try ro build a snowman. You don't aim for the form of a human being and end up with a stack of snowballs. You aim for the form of a snowman itself.
This means that at some point in time, the idea of a snowman went from being a representation of a human to being its own idea with a distinct ifentity. If someone built a perfect model of a human from snow, that would be incredible, but no one would call it a snowman. We'd call it a snow sculpture or snow art or something else, because snowmen have become self defining. They no longer depend on us for their identity.
Snowmen are no longer men made of snow. Snowmen are just snowmen. Much like how in many secular Christmas movies, Christmas is about finding the true meaning of Christmas. It's openly self-referential.
So snowmen clearly are no longer related to man. But they aren't necessarily related to snow either. It's the shape that really matters. You can make a tower of three spheres out of sand or mud or mashed potatoes, and people will think of it as a snowman. The shape has become so universally iconic that the material no longer matters.
Snowmen. They've become so ubiquitous and recognizable that neither snow nor man is a real factor in their identity. And that's really weird.
