Thomas Mann wrote of snowflakes in The Magic Mountain:

And among these myriads of enchanting little stars, in their hidden splendour that was too small for man's naked eye to see, there was not one like unto another; an endless inventiveness governed the development and unthinkable differentiation of one and the basic scheme, the equilateral, equiangled hexagon. Yet each in itself – this was the uncanny, the antiorganic, the life-denying character of them all – each of them was absolutely symmetrical, icily regular in form.

Inspired by this elegant prose, and since it is around Christmas time, I made a Processing sketch on the variations of snowflake forms, based on simple rules of symmetry and branching.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

— 2002. 12. 25