Advice is like snow — the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I’m a snow globe aficionado. If I mosey into a store featuring them, I’m engrossed. In fact, I’m the one gently turning them upside down or giving the winding lever a modest turn so I can hear the first few notes of the song when there is a music box component. If I spot dust I blow it off and I never touch the globe so my fingerprints will not spoil the shine. I’m a bit opinionated about globes as well. Plastic varieties rarely turn my head. The ones I think are less than attractive don’t get picked up.

If the variety and sheer number of snow globes is any indicator, many Americans are as crazy about them as I am. But perhaps you know them by another name. I have a friend who calls hers water globes. I’ve also heard them called snow domes. My favorite reference came the other day from a young friend of mine. She called her Christmas globe — the one her mommy displays only during December each year — her “shake ‘em up.” Now that name made me think.

While the Snow Globe Club of America cannot identify the first globe ever made, diligent historical research points to France, where they began showing up during the early 1800s. Some believe their production spawned from glass paperweights, especially popular at the time. Whatever the case may be, rare pieces date back to 1879 when at least five European companies mass produced them. The craze had begun and 10 years later, at the International Expo in Paris, a palm-sized snow globe containing a tiny Eiffel Tower to commemorate its construction quickly became the sought-after souvenir.

During the early 1920s, European immigrants to the U.S. brought them along and their popularity stretched across the Atlantic. In no time at all they began shipping globes back to European relatives featuring local American towns, even though the primary manufacturer worldwide worked out of a plant in Germany. The turning point came in 1927 when Joseph Garaja of Pittsburgh filed a patent for the mass production of “glass water globes of artistic attractiveness and novel ornamentation.” The patent was granted and soon snow globes could be found nearly everywhere in the States.

Many of these early globes consisted of heavy lead glass filled with water, then sealed onto a black cast ceramic base. The snow was often made of bone chips, porcelain chips, sawdust or sand. As the sophistication in production grew, the glass became thinner and bases lighter. Eventually snow particles were made of gold foil or non-soluble soap flakes. Today plastics are used.

Religious snow globes were common gifts for Catholic children in Europe during the 1940s and 1950s, and American advertisers caught on quickly. Suddenly consumer products and politicians were featured. Hollywood jumped in as well and globes were seen in any number of films over the years. Perhaps the most famous is the one included in the 1941 film classic, “Citizen Kane.” In the opening scene a snow globe fills the screen, then diminishes and eventually breaks when it rolls out of the hand of Charles Foster Kane as he whispers, “Rosebud….”

I have been amazed with the enormous variety of globes produced this year. Some highlight moving bases and parts, internal lights, and of course, music. I spotted one featured in a magazine that included an electric motor to move the snow, eliminating any need for shaking. My daughter Katie has a plastic fashion your own globe containing a center slot to accommodate a photo.

This week I looked into a snow globe featuring evergreen trees, a cardinal and gently falling snow because I merely turned it over once rather than shaking it madly. Brittany Spears was not singing Jingle Bells and there was no Mickey Mouse dressed in a Santa suit. One look at that globe and I forgot for just a moment that baking mess in the kitchen to clean and line at the post office to conquer. In fact, there was absolutely nothing to break the serenity portrayed inside that globe and I decided right then and there to create sweet moments of my own this Christmas.

Sometimes I like to shake it up. More often than not these days I choose the gentle approach, instead. I’m determined to push the frenzy and intensity away for a few moments this Christmas. It can be a mighty tough prospect, but I’m convinced that creating peaceful experiences with people will sink deeply into our memories, adding pleasure and security and love to last long after the globes are packed away.

Freelance writer Joan Bay Klope’s e-mail address is jbklope@hotmail.com.