Anyone who has ever been to Scandinavia during the Christmas season has certainly seen snow lanterns. If you want to build something like this yourself, you don’t need large masses of snow.

A snow lantern is a stack of snowballs with a candle burning in the center. The building shines impressively outwards through the gaps.

It doesn’t work without snow. Although you can build snow lanterns bigger and smaller or in different shapes, you can’t do it without snow. The basis are evenly shaped snowballs that you pile up. You also need:

Of course it depends on how big you want to build the snow lantern, but for small lanterns a few minutes is enough. But be careful, especially when the whole family is building with snowballs of different sizes, it can also be a shaky affair.

Make some snowballs first, starting at 20, then do the following:

Note: The heat from the candle will naturally melt the snow. This can cause the lantern to partially collapse after a period of time. Don’t let it get you down, just put it back together the next day.