Hans Christian Anderson’s
The Snow Queen Prologue: Frozen Hearts
Retold by iGrandma

There once was a miserable little devil whose heart was truly filled with hate and malice for all humankind. This hate blinded him from seeing anything but the dark ugliness of the world and the cold-heartedness of those who lived in it. His hating heart consigned him to an awful fate of never-ending loneliness and hopeless despair. The war in heaven still raged in his heart and he ceaselessly strove to stir up enmity and strife among the inhabitants of the earth.

The fury of his hostility raged within his breast as he antagonized over his infinite hunger to feel what it was to become a living, breathing soul in the flesh. Watching humans live their daily lives with hope and companionship tormented him. This endless torment fed his ravenous hunger as he knew he could never experience these things. Although he would never experience love or kindness, he recognized that these were at the core of human happiness. He despised human happiness and reviled against it to the core of his soul determined to drive it from the face of the earth.
Among his associates this demon was especially respected because of his interminable determination to destroy all happiness from the earth. Lost souls from eons of time sought him out as to how they too could join the dark forces waging war against the goodness of human nature. Because of his fiercely competitive spirit, he became a great tempter among tempters. Through the power of his anger he stirred up great contentions breeding ferocious competitions among his fellow creatures.

His influence was felt throughout the existence and his methods were employed by hosts of darkness across time. He marshaled the dark forces by teaching that the human heart held the keys to the devastation of happiness because it also held the secret to ultimate happiness. Humans were born into this world inherently selfish in order to survive, but as they grew and developed mingling with others especially family, their selfishness diminished and love for others developed. Using the receptiveness of human nature to desire to keep their own self-interest at heart, countless tempters simply roused selfishness by small degrees and clever means.

Hostilities escalated among those who liked to consider themselves as angels to a devil for they had no capacity to be united even in their aims to destroy human happiness. Fearing that other devils would usurp his prominence as a leading devil, this malicious spirit devised the means to set himself apart as one of the greatest destroyer of happiness, ever. Recognizing that human nature compelled most humans to be drawn to looking into mirrors, he fashioned a wicked and twisted mirror.

Once a person looked into this malignant mirror, their self-interest became corruptible and easily manipulated to evil ends. The person could no longer hope to see the good in themselves or in others. It was as if they were seeing the world through a glass darkly and their love for others grew dimmer and dimmer. As their love for each other waxed cold in this clouded and darken state, they could no longer see the beautiful things in the world, and saw only ugliness. Envy and strife overtook the kindheartedness of loving families as they bickered over who the worse was off and whose fault it was that life had become so bleak.

The unparalleled success of the wicked mirror fueled the envy and contention of the hosts of darkness, they also fought and argued over who would be allowed to assist in beguiling the humans to look into the mirror. Their leader reveled in the misery his evil design was creating among the world of the humans as well as in realms of darkness. But this was not enough to quell the anguish of his tormented soul. He burned to launch a battle against the forces of light and eternal goodness at its source.

He called all of the most ferocious demons together and enticed them to assist him in carrying the mirror up to the highest realms of light and goodness. Their aim was to take the mirror to the doorstep of heaven itself captivating the angels and luring them to look into the mirror. In this way they could triumph over all hope of happiness forever thwarting the Maker’s Great Plan of Happiness.

As the devils assembled and mounted to the skies with the mirror, the quarreling between them ascended as they flew higher and higher. The brightness of the heaven revealed the darkness of the devil force and their evil plan. All of the angels of heaven began to weep for the lost souls they were powerless to help. The angels had no fear as they saw the demons flying helter-skelter towards the gates of heaven.

The bickering devils bitterness raged on through the downpour of glistening angel tears. As the tears splattered across the surface of the ascending mirror, it became slippery. Then as mirror rose higher into the atmosphere, the tears froze on the glass. The mirror became as a sheet of ice and the demons lost their grip. They could no longer managed to hold onto the icy mirror. The mirror slipped from their grasp and plummeted down, down, down to the earth. Once it landed on the ground it shattered into millions of tiny shards of frozen mirror.

Some of the bits of the mirror were so tiny, they were like a spec of sand. The bits of glass were carried away by the breeze and floated across the face of the whole earth. The bits and shards often landed in the eyes of humans and some pieces even found their way into the some people’s hearts. Through grace the tears of the angels once frozen to the glass, stayed in place and protected many souls from being overpowered by the mirror’s evil designs. Although many people who had a fragment in their eye missed out on much loveliness in the world and the goodness in others.

The shards that found their way into hearts often responded as if it was a seed. The state of the person’s heart determined the extent of the influence the shard had on the person’s character just as the state of the ground determines how the seed will grow. If the person was already cold-hearted, their heart would grow even colder. If the person was filled with light and goodness, the shard could only reflect the goodness of that person’s soul. The good news is that because all light reflects from the Son, even a person with a frozen heart can be renewed and graced with a new heart.