December 23, 2009 • 18 mins
It's been said that behind every great man is a great woman, and Santa Claus is no exception. In this episode, Cristen and Molly take a closer look at the women behind Santa Claus, from his oft-forgotten wife to his team of reindeer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom never told you?
From house stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristin. Kristin, Happy holidays to you,
(00:21):
Thank you, Tidings, Tidings. We have been doing this podcast
for almost a year and something I always remark to
Christen is how doing a podcast like this where you
learn all sorts of facts about women, just it can
change your whole world view. You know, all of a sudden,
you'll be out at dinner and someone will say something
kind of casually You'll be like, whoa, that is so patriarchal.
Whoa whoa whoa, Yeah, that's exactly what. Actually you can
(00:44):
pick up the chick and you know, if Frank gets
married and all the son, you're like, well you better
go by miss. I mean it just it clouds your
worldview and then something like Christmas, well maybe clouds or
worldview is the wrong way to put it, just opens
your eyes to the way the world runs and writh
guards is something. Yeah, you get a different, you know,
different perspective on things, which is what we hope to
present to our wonderful listeners. So today we're gonna give
(01:07):
maybe an exaggerated perspective, the exaggerated feminist perspective, perhaps on
Santa clause. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's time this time
we took Santa down a notch because who who is
this guy who comes and breaks into our houses while
we're asleep, you know? And and we were supposed to
make cookies for him, We're supposed to like crawl up
(01:29):
into his lap at a crowded mall to ask him
for something new and shiny, and you know, I mean,
what what is that? I mean, we just a few
podcasts ago, we're talking about Edward Colin and we totally
distant for all of those things. Yeah yeah, and you know,
and and let's also point out no one, no one
asked Santa to go on a diet. But if you
(01:49):
pick up any women's magazine between now and January, I
guarantee there will be at least one article about holiday weight.
I mean, can you can I mean doublet is this
a patriarchoholair? What? And so one time we were reading
this article about, you know, how women are sometimes in
the shadow of their male husbands, and I think that
(02:10):
one woman who's definitely been in the shadow for too
long is missus Santa Claus. We don't even know her name.
We know Chris, Chris Kringle, Santa Claus. This is Santa Claus.
She has no name, what's your name? And she's a MSUSA.
We talked about that, We've talked about whether ms should
be sort of a feminist standard. All of a sudden,
(02:30):
she's just going by her husband's name. Was he changed
her name when she got married? And this is this
holiday is leading up to a cumbination of all our
previous podcasts. Kristen, this is really what we've been working
up to. UM. But one thing I thought was kind
of kind of cool about Mrs Claus was that she
also her emergence in holiday lore I think kind of symbolizes, um,
(02:52):
how Christmas evolved, in the celebration of Christmas evolved. True
because for a long time, basically Chris Smith was set
up as this day that was facilitated by one guy
driving around in a sleigh and delivering all presents. He's
responsible for everything. And yeah, I admit Santa does a
lot on Christmas Eve. I mean it's kind of busy.
(03:13):
He's I mean, he does an awful lot. I don't
want to discount his achievements, even if I do find
him a little creepy. Yeah, but and also impressive that
he can eat that many cookies in one night. Do
you think maybe he's at risk for diabetes? And that
much milk, all that dairy milk does make a body strong?
What if Santa was like just indolerant? Ever thought about that?
But you know who we'd expect to take care of
(03:34):
him in that regard, Mrs Claus Claus. And that's the
thing that we're going to try and get out today
is behind every good man, in this case Santa Clause,
there are a ton of great women who without whom
he would not be possible. Yeah. We first see and
we found this out in a paper by Carol Anne
Marling called the Revenge of Mrs Claus. This is Santa
Claus Um. And she found in her research that the
(03:57):
first instance of Mrs Santa to Clause pops up in
a children's publication called Harper's Young People in eight one,
and it was you know, Marlon calls it sort of
an unremarkable Christmas story, and that all you know, all
of a sudden, Mrs Santa Claus pops up. She's described
as plump, much like her husband, good natured, and her
(04:17):
jobs include being the supervisor of the North Pole Bakery
and candy factory, and she also trimmed hats for Christmas
dolls for the little girls. But unlike the docile Elves,
Mrs Claus did not like it when she did not
receive credit for for all the work that she did,
I know, which is sort of an interesting thing because
you think about the North Pole being all cheery. Maybe
(04:38):
Mrs Claus was sort of like Um Lily Leadbetter of
her time, wanting to do credit and reward for the
work she did. Yeah, and you know, and rightly so.
But those were a lot of little hats she had
to trim. I mean, all Santa had to do was
make blocks for the boys, and there were other and
why are these toys so gendered? And there were also
(04:59):
a number of uh, you know, other notable women who
put their mark on this portrayal of Mrs Santa Claus um,
including Catherine Lee Bates, who wrote the words to America
the Beautiful Um and she wrote a biography of Santa.
Mrs Santa Claus and called Goody's Santa Claus on a
sleigh ride. I don't know if that means that her
(05:19):
name was Goody, do you know? Oh, I don't know
why she would take on the whole name though Goodey
Santa Claus. It might just be, it might just be
vernacular at the time. And then we also have Lucimate Alcott,
who wrote Little Women, Um, who also mentions Mrs Claus
in one of her many magazine stories, and she also
portrayed her as bespectacled and childless. And what she would
(05:43):
do is she would wait patiently for her husband's return
from a night in the world's chimneys on Christmas Eve.
So now all of this is happening in the eighteen eighties,
late um, eighteen hundreds, turn of the century, and it's
a it's a pretty market contrast to the stuff that
had come before. Like think of Clement Moore's famous poem
about the night before Christmas we got the jolly old elf. Um.
(06:05):
There were a lot of artists at the time who
were just showing Chris Chris Kringle working all year long
to bring all these toys. Um. He was living alone
though he was a bachelor in all these earlier versions
of him, and by the eighteen eighties women were sort
of maybe a little disgruntled about such a depiction. Yeah,
because by this time Christmas had really become the primary
(06:29):
like annual celebration um in American homes, and so a
lot of the tasks for decorating the house and fixing
the figgy pudding and trimming the tree and lighting the
candles fell to the women of the house. So it
became this sort of like domestic Olympics at Christmas time
because there was so much to do. Um. The women
(06:50):
were in charge of wrapping all this just domestic finery.
And women were kind of like, there's no way that
that bachelor living up there with all those elves can
do this by himself, and that that's why they think
maybe Mrs Claus came into being yeah. Um and then uh,
she mentions. Caroline Marlon mentions in her paper that in
nineteen there is a Good Housekeeping um forum and for
(07:13):
men about Christmas, and they basically, um kind of confirmed
this idea that women were the ones who kind of
made Christmas added the Christmas finery to the occasion. They
were like, oh, just if you want to give me
a box of cigars. There's no need to wrap it up.
Give me the cigar. So all your memories of wrapped
presents and the smell of baking and all these things
(07:34):
that people you know probably listed their main Christmas memories
were done by women that they're getting from women's magazines,
and thus women's magazines writers like UIs may Alcott took
the time to give Santa a domestic partner. And this
article We Keep Signing by Carol Ann Marling. She goes
on to sort of make a hypothesis that our modern
day Mrs Claus, aside from the one who does live
(07:56):
in the North Pole, is Martha Stewart, who you know,
just does does turn Christmas into a domestic Olympics and
shows you how to do it up right. I think
Martha deserves her own podcast at some point, But I
just thought that was sort of an interesting argument that
we see Mrs Claus as this person who just keeps
the North Pole running. Santa couldn't do without, or she's
got to oversee elf. She's got a feed reindeer, She's
(08:18):
gotta feed Santa's cookies the other three hundred sixty four
days of the year. She's got a lot to do,
and I think would be better if she was a
little more celebrated. Now, speaking of Santa's helpers, Molly, there
are some possible women. This is a very contentious Okay,
topics that we're about to bring up. Okay, see issue
of the reindeer. Because Santa could not fly around the
(08:40):
world without the reindeer. The reindeer. Yeah, without the reindeer,
Christmas would be could put. But the question is, are
these reindeer actually female reindeer? I mean, you wouldn't think
so just by the songs you know about these reindeer.
I mean, I don't know any other girl's named Rudolph, yeah,
or donder Blitzen yeah, I mean Vixen. Maybe you could
(09:02):
kind of see her being like a tomboy girl who
got in with the guys. But why would we think
the reindeer are women? Because in popular culture, if you
look at all the pictures, I've never seen a reindeer,
even though I used to stay up all night looking
for them. Um, in all the pictures of Santa that
have been taken with the reindeer, the reindeer have antlers.
And we learned that reindeer and caribou are the only
(09:24):
deer where the males, females, and calves produced antlers, and
they shed them annually every year, which is why I
just said annually. Um. But the female or cows, um.
The female reindeer will keep their antlers longer than the
males will, So, according to snopes dot Com, the fact
(09:46):
that Santa's reindeer still have antlers on December a k a.
Christmas Eve indicates they are likely female, right because the
males would have shed their antlers by that point right now.
Snopes goes on to say that there are a few
problems with this theory. One possible theory is that um
(10:08):
other sletters other people who use sleighs often use castrated
males known as steers, who might still have their antlers. Now.
The reason that you would want to use a steer,
um sletters say, is because that they're gonna be in
better bodily shape by winter because they've been mating and
all the months leading up to December. So you're gonna
(10:29):
have a male that's fresh as opposed to one that's
kind of worn out. Although I don't tend to think
of a lot of mating going on up at the
north Pole. But I don't really know that much about reindeer. Yeah,
I mean, and even if that is the case, it's
in as reindeers are just a pack of steers. I
think it also has a nice twist on Christmas that
he's just flying around with his band of eunuchs, his
(10:49):
castrated males. Yes, maybe that's why they wouldn' let Rudolf
play in their reindeer games. They were grumpy. Yeah. Um,
But there is another theory that um Snopes points out
is that already there there are a few other species
of reindeer that, believe it or not, can fly. Um,
so that was pretty much the only one. So they
do say the fact that this is a certain species
(11:11):
of ranger that can fly might indicate that they might
be able to keep their antlers longer than other types
of reindeer. However, christ and I'm gonna prefer to think
that it's all ladies up there pulling Santi around with
their ingenious sense of direction. Is now another lady of
Christmas of the winter Yule tide season that we found
(11:34):
that we thought was kind of cool. Um who also
helps st nick This a woman called la Ba Fauna
Laba Fauna She is an Italian lady who also brings
children gifts. She doesn't do it on Christmas Eve. She
tends to come more around Epiphany, which is January five
January six. And according to the Italian legend, when the
(11:56):
wise men went out looking for the baby Jesus, they
stopped by Laba Fauna's house, and she's this old lady
who had lost like her husband and her child, and
so she tended her house very diligently and kept herself busy.
And so the wise man stopped by to see if
she could point them in the direction of the Christ child,
and Laba Fauna said, uh, not really, no, I don't know.
(12:18):
I don't I don't know where he is. I'm just
sweeping my heart, keeping clean, making something, making some things. Uh.
And they asked if she would want to come along
on their journey, and she also declined. Then Laba Funa
got to thinking she you know, she's a widow, she
used to have a child of her own, and she
was like, I love children, I missed my child, and
I bet that new mom needs some help, which I
(12:40):
just think is a great sign of female solidarity. I
don't think she was going to go and judge that
lady for any parenting decisions she was making, such as
co sleeping, her breastfeeding. She just wanted to help out
or immaculate conception. True, she's not even gonna touched that one.
All she does is she packs up her broom, she
puts some gifts for the child in a sack, and
she sets off to find this christ child um like
(13:00):
the Wise Man had told her about um. But she
couldn't find them. So she stopped in at all the
houses to see if that's the house she was looking for,
and as long as she was there might as only
the gift for the child. And that's what she continues
to do. That's the legend of La Befauna. So if
you're in Italy, you know that you've got to be good.
You've got to write your note to La ba Fauna
and ask her to visit you. And if you're bad,
(13:20):
she's going to bring you a cold not sweets her toys.
So UM, I think that that's a pretty cool legend
of a lady who helps out St. Nick. And these
are the these are the examples we have found. There
might be some more ladies out there behind St. Nick.
So if you know of any right now. Yeah, and
speaking of writing in why don't we do solicitor mail? Okay? Well,
(13:46):
to start things off, I've got an email here from
Joyce and she was responding to you our episode on
co sleeping. She said, I was kind of disappointed in
your podcast on co Sleeping with Baby, since you hinted
about your youthful age and acknowledge that you're not parents yourselves.
I felt you're rather unqualified to be speaking on such
a topic. It sounded like you're just some naive girls
(14:06):
who read and rehab some articles from Wikipedia or baby
center dot com. Side note, we actually didn't use either
of those sites. I'm not saying this to bring you down.
I'm just saying that it's kind of cute. You reminded
me of myself ten years ago. And while this it
is possible to be both cute and intelligent, this podcast
really was almost embarrassingly to cute. I suggest that next
time you do a show on a parenting topic, please
(14:28):
included guests who is more experienced, say a pediatrician. Dula
are just a plain parent, and I will take your
word with more than just a brain of salt. Cheers, Joyce,
It's a valid point. I think I think I wrote
back choice that we'd also done things um like on
roller Derby and vampires and whiches, and we were none
of those things either. But that's why we rely on
(14:48):
our listeners to write in and tell us what it's
actually like to co sleep with the maybe and you
can rest tossure that are sources are far more credible
in places like Wikipedia and baby center dot com. We
do take a lot of time to try to find
very valid, credible sources of inflammation. Next up an email
from Christopher, who writes in about the panty Hose podcast.
(15:11):
He claims to be one of the males that does
wear panty hose. He writes, I am a construction worker
and I only wear them during cold weather and under
only under clothes. I find that they help keep my
feet and legs form in cold weather and much more
comfortable to wear than insulated underwear. No one that I
work with knows that I wear them, only my wife does.
So yes, my wife knows that I do this and
does not have a problem with it. I first started
(15:31):
wearing them when I played football in high school, and
believe it or not, many of the guys did Molly,
he writes to me. And now you say you do
not like wearing panty hose, but have you ever tried
wearing some better brands? It really does make a difference
in how they feel. My wife says she only likes
to wear the silky type. They generally cost a little more,
but according to my wife, makes it big difference. Last,
but not least, me being a guy, I know that
seeing a woman in panting hose always gives my attention.
(15:53):
I would tell any single girl, if they want to
draw attention to themselves, where sheer panty hose and see
for yourself how many guys will look your way. Most guys,
whether they admit it or not, find women in hosiery
very attractive. So, Molly and Kristen, now you're in this
to Kristen. So Molly and Kristen, you need to take
my challenge and go out on the town wearing pantyhos
and see how many more men will look your way. Well, Molly,
today I up the annie. Not only am I wearing pantios,
(16:16):
I'm wearing red pantios. Yeah, so we'll go out to
lunch and we'll see how may men you look your
way or a port back um. And to cap things off,
we've got an email in from Kitlin. She was responding
to you our episode on breastfeeding, and she said, as
a breastfeeding mother, I appreciate your insights and thought you
handled the controversial subject in an unbiased way. Before I
had my son, I knew I was going to breastfeed
(16:37):
whenever he was hungry, and I didn't want to retreat
to a bathroom stall since nowhere um in my college
campus are their lactation rooms. I also knew that I
didn't want to you and could not afford to leave
him with someone else while I finished my bachelor's degree,
so he goes to class and work with me. Hence
I find breastfeeding in the halls and lobbies and the
student center and even doing class. I've actually been surprised
that no one has ever had a problem with this,
(16:58):
or at least voiced it to me. Some of my
fellow students have even commented that they didn't realize what
I was doing. In my class only has twenty people
in it. My professors have been completely supportive of me,
and one even offered to hold my son while I
gave a presentation. My class yesterday. I think our society
should be more supportive of breastfeeding mothers and keeping their
babies with them during the day. I'm still just as
productive as before, and I do not feel like I'm
(17:20):
distracting anyone by having my son around. I think that's
so cool. You can take him everywhere are Yeah. So,
if you guys have got something to share about any
of our topics or things you'd like to see become topics,
you can email us It's mom stuff at how stuffworks
dot com and also check out our blog how to stuff.
And if you want to learn a ton about Christmas,
you can do that at how stuffworks dot com and
(17:42):
other Holidays. Also at how stuffworks dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Because at how
stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
home page. Yeah. Brought to you by the reinvented two
(18:03):
thousand and twelve Camry. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom never told you?
From house stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristin. Kristin, Happy holidays to you,
(00:21):
Thank you, Tidings, Tidings. We have been doing this podcast
for almost a year and something I always remark to
Christen is how doing a podcast like this where you
learn all sorts of facts about women, just it can
change your whole world view. You know, all of a sudden,
you'll be out at dinner and someone will say something
kind of casually You'll be like, whoa, that is so patriarchal.
Whoa whoa whoa, Yeah, that's exactly what. Actually you can
(00:44):
pick up the chick and you know, if Frank gets
married and all the son, you're like, well you better
go by miss. I mean it just it clouds your
worldview and then something like Christmas, well maybe clouds or
worldview is the wrong way to put it, just opens
your eyes to the way the world runs and writh
guards is something. Yeah, you get a different, you know,
different perspective on things, which is what we hope to
present to our wonderful listeners. So today we're gonna give
(01:07):
maybe an exaggerated perspective, the exaggerated feminist perspective, perhaps on
Santa clause. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's time this time
we took Santa down a notch because who who is
this guy who comes and breaks into our houses while
we're asleep, you know? And and we were supposed to
make cookies for him, We're supposed to like crawl up
(01:29):
into his lap at a crowded mall to ask him
for something new and shiny, and you know, I mean,
what what is that? I mean, we just a few
podcasts ago, we're talking about Edward Colin and we totally
distant for all of those things. Yeah yeah, and you know,
and and let's also point out no one, no one
asked Santa to go on a diet. But if you
(01:49):
pick up any women's magazine between now and January, I
guarantee there will be at least one article about holiday weight.
I mean, can you can I mean doublet is this
a patriarchoholair? What? And so one time we were reading
this article about, you know, how women are sometimes in
the shadow of their male husbands, and I think that
(02:10):
one woman who's definitely been in the shadow for too
long is missus Santa Claus. We don't even know her name.
We know Chris, Chris Kringle, Santa Claus. This is Santa Claus.
She has no name, what's your name? And she's a MSUSA.
We talked about that, We've talked about whether ms should
be sort of a feminist standard. All of a sudden,
(02:30):
she's just going by her husband's name. Was he changed
her name when she got married? And this is this
holiday is leading up to a cumbination of all our
previous podcasts. Kristen, this is really what we've been working
up to. UM. But one thing I thought was kind
of kind of cool about Mrs Claus was that she
also her emergence in holiday lore I think kind of symbolizes, um,
(02:52):
how Christmas evolved, in the celebration of Christmas evolved. True
because for a long time, basically Chris Smith was set
up as this day that was facilitated by one guy
driving around in a sleigh and delivering all presents. He's
responsible for everything. And yeah, I admit Santa does a
lot on Christmas Eve. I mean it's kind of busy.
(03:13):
He's I mean, he does an awful lot. I don't
want to discount his achievements, even if I do find
him a little creepy. Yeah, but and also impressive that
he can eat that many cookies in one night. Do
you think maybe he's at risk for diabetes? And that
much milk, all that dairy milk does make a body strong?
What if Santa was like just indolerant? Ever thought about that?
But you know who we'd expect to take care of
(03:34):
him in that regard, Mrs Claus Claus. And that's the
thing that we're going to try and get out today
is behind every good man, in this case Santa Clause,
there are a ton of great women who without whom
he would not be possible. Yeah. We first see and
we found this out in a paper by Carol Anne
Marling called the Revenge of Mrs Claus. This is Santa
Claus Um. And she found in her research that the
(03:57):
first instance of Mrs Santa to Clause pops up in
a children's publication called Harper's Young People in eight one,
and it was you know, Marlon calls it sort of
an unremarkable Christmas story, and that all you know, all
of a sudden, Mrs Santa Claus pops up. She's described
as plump, much like her husband, good natured, and her
(04:17):
jobs include being the supervisor of the North Pole Bakery
and candy factory, and she also trimmed hats for Christmas
dolls for the little girls. But unlike the docile Elves,
Mrs Claus did not like it when she did not
receive credit for for all the work that she did,
I know, which is sort of an interesting thing because
you think about the North Pole being all cheery. Maybe
(04:38):
Mrs Claus was sort of like Um Lily Leadbetter of
her time, wanting to do credit and reward for the
work she did. Yeah, and you know, and rightly so.
But those were a lot of little hats she had
to trim. I mean, all Santa had to do was
make blocks for the boys, and there were other and
why are these toys so gendered? And there were also
(04:59):
a number of uh, you know, other notable women who
put their mark on this portrayal of Mrs Santa Claus um,
including Catherine Lee Bates, who wrote the words to America
the Beautiful Um and she wrote a biography of Santa.
Mrs Santa Claus and called Goody's Santa Claus on a
sleigh ride. I don't know if that means that her
(05:19):
name was Goody, do you know? Oh, I don't know
why she would take on the whole name though Goodey
Santa Claus. It might just be, it might just be
vernacular at the time. And then we also have Lucimate Alcott,
who wrote Little Women, Um, who also mentions Mrs Claus
in one of her many magazine stories, and she also
portrayed her as bespectacled and childless. And what she would
(05:43):
do is she would wait patiently for her husband's return
from a night in the world's chimneys on Christmas Eve.
So now all of this is happening in the eighteen eighties,
late um, eighteen hundreds, turn of the century, and it's
a it's a pretty market contrast to the stuff that
had come before. Like think of Clement Moore's famous poem
about the night before Christmas we got the jolly old elf. Um.
(06:05):
There were a lot of artists at the time who
were just showing Chris Chris Kringle working all year long
to bring all these toys. Um. He was living alone
though he was a bachelor in all these earlier versions
of him, and by the eighteen eighties women were sort
of maybe a little disgruntled about such a depiction. Yeah,
because by this time Christmas had really become the primary
(06:29):
like annual celebration um in American homes, and so a
lot of the tasks for decorating the house and fixing
the figgy pudding and trimming the tree and lighting the
candles fell to the women of the house. So it
became this sort of like domestic Olympics at Christmas time
because there was so much to do. Um. The women
(06:50):
were in charge of wrapping all this just domestic finery.
And women were kind of like, there's no way that
that bachelor living up there with all those elves can
do this by himself, and that that's why they think
maybe Mrs Claus came into being yeah. Um and then uh,
she mentions. Caroline Marlon mentions in her paper that in
nineteen there is a Good Housekeeping um forum and for
(07:13):
men about Christmas, and they basically, um kind of confirmed
this idea that women were the ones who kind of
made Christmas added the Christmas finery to the occasion. They
were like, oh, just if you want to give me
a box of cigars. There's no need to wrap it up.
Give me the cigar. So all your memories of wrapped
presents and the smell of baking and all these things
(07:34):
that people you know probably listed their main Christmas memories
were done by women that they're getting from women's magazines,
and thus women's magazines writers like UIs may Alcott took
the time to give Santa a domestic partner. And this
article We Keep Signing by Carol Ann Marling. She goes
on to sort of make a hypothesis that our modern
day Mrs Claus, aside from the one who does live
(07:56):
in the North Pole, is Martha Stewart, who you know,
just does does turn Christmas into a domestic Olympics and
shows you how to do it up right. I think
Martha deserves her own podcast at some point, But I
just thought that was sort of an interesting argument that
we see Mrs Claus as this person who just keeps
the North Pole running. Santa couldn't do without, or she's
got to oversee elf. She's got a feed reindeer, She's
(08:18):
gotta feed Santa's cookies the other three hundred sixty four
days of the year. She's got a lot to do,
and I think would be better if she was a
little more celebrated. Now, speaking of Santa's helpers, Molly, there
are some possible women. This is a very contentious Okay,
topics that we're about to bring up. Okay, see issue
of the reindeer. Because Santa could not fly around the
(08:40):
world without the reindeer. The reindeer. Yeah, without the reindeer,
Christmas would be could put. But the question is, are
these reindeer actually female reindeer? I mean, you wouldn't think
so just by the songs you know about these reindeer.
I mean, I don't know any other girl's named Rudolph, yeah,
or donder Blitzen yeah, I mean Vixen. Maybe you could
(09:02):
kind of see her being like a tomboy girl who
got in with the guys. But why would we think
the reindeer are women? Because in popular culture, if you
look at all the pictures, I've never seen a reindeer,
even though I used to stay up all night looking
for them. Um, in all the pictures of Santa that
have been taken with the reindeer, the reindeer have antlers.
And we learned that reindeer and caribou are the only
(09:24):
deer where the males, females, and calves produced antlers, and
they shed them annually every year, which is why I
just said annually. Um. But the female or cows, um.
The female reindeer will keep their antlers longer than the
males will, So, according to snopes dot Com, the fact
(09:46):
that Santa's reindeer still have antlers on December a k a.
Christmas Eve indicates they are likely female, right because the
males would have shed their antlers by that point right now.
Snopes goes on to say that there are a few
problems with this theory. One possible theory is that um
(10:08):
other sletters other people who use sleighs often use castrated
males known as steers, who might still have their antlers. Now.
The reason that you would want to use a steer,
um sletters say, is because that they're gonna be in
better bodily shape by winter because they've been mating and
all the months leading up to December. So you're gonna
(10:29):
have a male that's fresh as opposed to one that's
kind of worn out. Although I don't tend to think
of a lot of mating going on up at the
north Pole. But I don't really know that much about reindeer. Yeah,
I mean, and even if that is the case, it's
in as reindeers are just a pack of steers. I
think it also has a nice twist on Christmas that
he's just flying around with his band of eunuchs, his
(10:49):
castrated males. Yes, maybe that's why they wouldn' let Rudolf
play in their reindeer games. They were grumpy. Yeah. Um,
But there is another theory that um Snopes points out
is that already there there are a few other species
of reindeer that, believe it or not, can fly. Um,
so that was pretty much the only one. So they
do say the fact that this is a certain species
(11:11):
of ranger that can fly might indicate that they might
be able to keep their antlers longer than other types
of reindeer. However, christ and I'm gonna prefer to think
that it's all ladies up there pulling Santi around with
their ingenious sense of direction. Is now another lady of
Christmas of the winter Yule tide season that we found
(11:34):
that we thought was kind of cool. Um who also
helps st nick This a woman called la Ba Fauna
Laba Fauna She is an Italian lady who also brings
children gifts. She doesn't do it on Christmas Eve. She
tends to come more around Epiphany, which is January five
January six. And according to the Italian legend, when the
(11:56):
wise men went out looking for the baby Jesus, they
stopped by Laba Fauna's house, and she's this old lady
who had lost like her husband and her child, and
so she tended her house very diligently and kept herself busy.
And so the wise man stopped by to see if
she could point them in the direction of the Christ child,
and Laba Fauna said, uh, not really, no, I don't know.
(12:18):
I don't I don't know where he is. I'm just
sweeping my heart, keeping clean, making something, making some things. Uh.
And they asked if she would want to come along
on their journey, and she also declined. Then Laba Funa
got to thinking she you know, she's a widow, she
used to have a child of her own, and she
was like, I love children, I missed my child, and
I bet that new mom needs some help, which I
(12:40):
just think is a great sign of female solidarity. I
don't think she was going to go and judge that
lady for any parenting decisions she was making, such as
co sleeping, her breastfeeding. She just wanted to help out
or immaculate conception. True, she's not even gonna touched that one.
All she does is she packs up her broom, she
puts some gifts for the child in a sack, and
she sets off to find this christ child um like
(13:00):
the Wise Man had told her about um. But she
couldn't find them. So she stopped in at all the
houses to see if that's the house she was looking for,
and as long as she was there might as only
the gift for the child. And that's what she continues
to do. That's the legend of La Befauna. So if
you're in Italy, you know that you've got to be good.
You've got to write your note to La ba Fauna
and ask her to visit you. And if you're bad,
(13:20):
she's going to bring you a cold not sweets her toys.
So UM, I think that that's a pretty cool legend
of a lady who helps out St. Nick. And these
are the these are the examples we have found. There
might be some more ladies out there behind St. Nick.
So if you know of any right now. Yeah, and
speaking of writing in why don't we do solicitor mail? Okay? Well,
(13:46):
to start things off, I've got an email here from
Joyce and she was responding to you our episode on
co sleeping. She said, I was kind of disappointed in
your podcast on co Sleeping with Baby, since you hinted
about your youthful age and acknowledge that you're not parents yourselves.
I felt you're rather unqualified to be speaking on such
a topic. It sounded like you're just some naive girls
(14:06):
who read and rehab some articles from Wikipedia or baby
center dot com. Side note, we actually didn't use either
of those sites. I'm not saying this to bring you down.
I'm just saying that it's kind of cute. You reminded
me of myself ten years ago. And while this it
is possible to be both cute and intelligent, this podcast
really was almost embarrassingly to cute. I suggest that next
time you do a show on a parenting topic, please
(14:28):
included guests who is more experienced, say a pediatrician. Dula
are just a plain parent, and I will take your
word with more than just a brain of salt. Cheers, Joyce,
It's a valid point. I think I think I wrote
back choice that we'd also done things um like on
roller Derby and vampires and whiches, and we were none
of those things either. But that's why we rely on
(14:48):
our listeners to write in and tell us what it's
actually like to co sleep with the maybe and you
can rest tossure that are sources are far more credible
in places like Wikipedia and baby center dot com. We
do take a lot of time to try to find
very valid, credible sources of inflammation. Next up an email
from Christopher, who writes in about the panty Hose podcast.
(15:11):
He claims to be one of the males that does
wear panty hose. He writes, I am a construction worker
and I only wear them during cold weather and under
only under clothes. I find that they help keep my
feet and legs form in cold weather and much more
comfortable to wear than insulated underwear. No one that I
work with knows that I wear them, only my wife does.
So yes, my wife knows that I do this and
does not have a problem with it. I first started
(15:31):
wearing them when I played football in high school, and
believe it or not, many of the guys did Molly,
he writes to me. And now you say you do
not like wearing panty hose, but have you ever tried
wearing some better brands? It really does make a difference
in how they feel. My wife says she only likes
to wear the silky type. They generally cost a little more,
but according to my wife, makes it big difference. Last,
but not least, me being a guy, I know that
seeing a woman in panting hose always gives my attention.
(15:53):
I would tell any single girl, if they want to
draw attention to themselves, where sheer panty hose and see
for yourself how many guys will look your way. Most guys,
whether they admit it or not, find women in hosiery
very attractive. So, Molly and Kristen, now you're in this
to Kristen. So Molly and Kristen, you need to take
my challenge and go out on the town wearing pantyhos
and see how many more men will look your way. Well, Molly,
today I up the annie. Not only am I wearing pantios,
(16:16):
I'm wearing red pantios. Yeah, so we'll go out to
lunch and we'll see how may men you look your
way or a port back um. And to cap things off,
we've got an email in from Kitlin. She was responding
to you our episode on breastfeeding, and she said, as
a breastfeeding mother, I appreciate your insights and thought you
handled the controversial subject in an unbiased way. Before I
had my son, I knew I was going to breastfeed
(16:37):
whenever he was hungry, and I didn't want to retreat
to a bathroom stall since nowhere um in my college
campus are their lactation rooms. I also knew that I
didn't want to you and could not afford to leave
him with someone else while I finished my bachelor's degree,
so he goes to class and work with me. Hence
I find breastfeeding in the halls and lobbies and the
student center and even doing class. I've actually been surprised
that no one has ever had a problem with this,
(16:58):
or at least voiced it to me. Some of my
fellow students have even commented that they didn't realize what
I was doing. In my class only has twenty people
in it. My professors have been completely supportive of me,
and one even offered to hold my son while I
gave a presentation. My class yesterday. I think our society
should be more supportive of breastfeeding mothers and keeping their
babies with them during the day. I'm still just as
productive as before, and I do not feel like I'm
(17:20):
distracting anyone by having my son around. I think that's
so cool. You can take him everywhere are Yeah. So,
if you guys have got something to share about any
of our topics or things you'd like to see become topics,
you can email us It's mom stuff at how stuffworks
dot com and also check out our blog how to stuff.
And if you want to learn a ton about Christmas,
you can do that at how stuffworks dot com and
(17:42):
other Holidays. Also at how stuffworks dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. Because at how
stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
home page. Yeah. Brought to you by the reinvented two
(18:03):
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