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When Perzy tried the trick with a lightbulb, he discovered the brightness wasn’t improved. But what if he added something to the water that the light could bounce off of? Perzy started with white semolina flakes, used in baby food at the time. “He poured [them] into the glass globe, and [they] got soaked by the water and floated very slowly to the base of the globe,” his grandson, Erwin Perzy III, told the BBC. “This effect reminded him of snowfall.” Inspiration struck: What if he used his technical expertise to create a tiny diorama in his snowy little world? Perzy made a miniature replica of the Basilica of the Birth of the Virgin Mary in Mariazell, Austria, placed it in his water-filled globe, sealed it, and mounted it to a gypsum base that he painted black. And voila—the first snow globe was born.

Following in the style of Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz’s realistic and detailed snow globe creations, the Danish architectural firm Ja-Ja made a special series of snow globes to celebrate Christmas. These creations show what the “Nisse” (a small Scandinavian mythological creature that helps around the house) are up to in modern times. This particular globe shows a Nisse working away on a rooftop garden just out of sight of us silly humans. Additional information at custom snowglobes.

A few years later, a Viennese man Edwin Perzy developed the same idea when researching a way to improve operating room lights. A glass globe filled with water creates a magnifying lens by increasing refraction. To enhance the reflected light, Perzy put ground glass in the water. When it quickly sank, he tried semolina which floated slowly to the bottom of the globe. It did nothing to improve the light quality, but the snowfall inspired him to make his first snow globe: a reproduction of a Viennese shrine in a glass bulb with water, magnesium powder and rock. The snow domes were exquisitely and painstakingly produced and are still in production today where they make around 200,000 a year outside of Vienna.

In case you forgot, gingerbread houses are linked to the Hansel and Gretel story. The most mentioned explanation for gingerbread houses stems from the fable created by the Brothers Grimm in which two little kids encounter an evil witch whose house is made out of bread and frosting. Engelbert Humperdinck’s play version of “Hansel and Gretel” premiered in Germany on December 23, 1893, which could explain why the story — and gingerbread houses — are associated with Christmas. Source: https://www.qstomize.com/collections/custom-snow-globe.