A lost art?

I've never seen snow fall, and I've only ever seen a bit of snow on the ground, on one occasion in 1974, so it's not surprising I've never seen a snowman. I thought I'd like to see one, so I went to Google Images and typed in 'snowman'.

I was surprised that almost all the images were cartoons, with very few photos. Has the snowman gone the way of most things that people actually used to do, or was it never much of a custom anyway? Is the jolly snowman now not much more than a sad skeuomorph?