Why we all need a little festive pedantry when it comes to snowflakes
Mathematician Katie Steckles explains just why the proliferation of snowflake decorations this time of year is deeply annoying
Mathematics
Mathematician Katie Steckles explains just why the proliferation of snowflake decorations this time of year is deeply annoying
23 December 2025
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This decoration just about passes muster for Katie
Andrii Oleksiienko/Shutterstock
At this time of year, everything seems to be decorated with some kind of seasonal design – trees, holly, jolly Santas and so on. One shape you often see is a snowflake. Yes, they are beautiful and intricate, but I can find their proliferation deeply annoying.
The shape of snowflakes is an artefact of the chemical structure of ice, and even though (as they say) every snowflake is unique, there is actually a surprisingly regular mathematical pattern in there too. We often use the language of to describe shapes. If something has reflection symmetry, we can draw a line across it, and the shapes on each side will be mirror images of each other.