December 22, 2016 • 54 mins
It’s the most wonderful time of year again! Time for Josh and Chuck to take you on a cozy, hall-decked ride full of glad tidings right into the heart of the holiday spirit!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. And
this is the two thy sixteen Stuff You Should Know
Super Christmas Holiday Spectacular glad Tidings Edition.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
In three d oh nice and stinkovision. Nice smellovision. That
was a real thing, you know, Yeah it was.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
It was a great idea that didn't really pan out
very well.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I don't know about that.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well, no, it didn't pan out very well.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, yeah, funny, I know what you meant. Uh so,
my friend, I look forward to this every year. Yeah,
me too, because, as I've said before, I save up
my vacation and take an elmmentary school break for a
solid three weeks at the end of every year, right,
which also means you get a bit of a break.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah. It's a de facto decision on my behalf as well.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
And this is it after in one hour, roughly you're
not going to see me again till next year. Yeah,
you know. I like to get small over the holidays.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
That's cool, man. I don't blame you. I do too,
just hold up in the secretly, I'm secretly fine with
you making that decision for me particular one.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah, so are you?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So? Are you full of cheer glad tidings.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Well, I'm in a silly mood. So this will who
knows where this goes?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
How's Jerry? Jerry, you're feeling pretty happy?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
She is?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
She's good.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Just gave a thumbs up. Yeah, she's fresh faced, but.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
She tailed Are her hauls decked?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Oh yes, double decked?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, I guess we should welcome everybody chuck to the
Christmas spectacular. Tell you, first off, to be sure to
start a fire somewhere in your house. Yes, put on sweater, maybe,
put on some slippers, put on pajamas, make yourself some eggnog,
hot butter room, something like that, and just sit down
(02:16):
and enjoy yourself.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, and we did our holiday special every year we
like to cover. I'm always afraid we're going to recover
something which I actually pitched, something we had already covered.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I've got a list, so don't worry about it.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Oh okay, great, well then let's ring in the holiday year.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Hey. Also, we should say, if there are any little
true believers among you, you may not want to let them
listen to this one.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Well, yeah, there, I was going to give a warning.
They can listen to most of it, but there is
one feature of the show where where you may not
want your kids to listen to some of the detail
the deats, and we're going to give you a warning
before that comes on. Yeah, so you can.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It'll sound like this wringling knowing that's the Christmas warning.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Well, all right, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
All right, everybody sit back as we begin our annual
Christmas special. So Chuck, we're gonna hop in our over
there sleigh and head on over to Catalonia. Yeah, parts
(03:38):
of Spain, parts of Spain, part of Spain, and there's
a Catalan tradition. There's a couple of them actually that
are really interesting and are scatological in nature. And the
first one is called Cagatillo.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah. I had never heard of this, but I put
out and you'll see you later in the show. We
put out a call on face book for some unusual
family traditions from listeners, and a couple of people mentioned this,
like saying, we don't do this, but I've heard of
it and it's really strange.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, it's definitely a thing, and in large parts of Spain, Portugal,
even some parts of Italy too from what I understand,
but specifically in the Catalan region of Spain, cagatillo, which
means poop log basically in Catalan, is a It's a
(04:31):
Christmas tradition that starts on December eighth when the family
gets around and while they've gone out, I think either
made one or they purchased a cagatillo, which is a
log with a face on it.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah, I get the idea that part of the fun
and correct me if I'm wrong, Spanish among you, But
part of the fun is making it with the family. Sure,
but I'm sure you can buy them though as well,
right full featured.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Even if you bought one fully featured, there's still some
some ritual that you the family have to go through
that would be kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So with with Kagatia, with the log, he's got a face,
but very importantly, he also has two front arms, so
he's kind of propped up right yeah, yeah, And when
you bring Kaigatio home, he also has that that the
standard Catalan red kind of overhangy hat yeap, yes, exactly,
(05:27):
And so the family brings him home, and on December eighth,
they get him prepared for the Christmas season. Right, They
wrap them in a blanket, and they basically wrap them
from what would amount to the waist down in a
blanket to keep them warm, to.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Keep him warm, and to maybe incubate what dwells inside
of the log. Yeah, because that's where we're headed with us.
They feed this thing orange peels, a Spanish nugat called
torone's that right, Yeah, And apparently, as tradition is held,
the more you feed the cagatillo, the more gifts it
(06:06):
will bestow to you through the traditional route, which means
out of the rear end.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Right. So the kids every night while they're caring for cagatiu,
and I imagine probably more than just every night. I'll
bet this thing gets fed a lot of orange peels
and nougat. They feed it. And as the Christmas I
guess Christmas Day, I also saw Christmas Eve approaches, they
(06:33):
they prepare to extract the stuff from cagatio. Yeah, and
they do that by by hitting cagato with sticks. And
they have a traditional chant. You want to you want
to give them the translation of the chant?
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah, not that not the original in English, it translates
literally as poop log, poop torone, hazel nuts and cottage cheese.
If you don't poop, well, I'll hit you with a
stick poop log.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
And so once they've beaten Kagatio with a stick enough times,
they'll look under the blanket and see that he's pooped
out a bunch of candy and treats and gifts. And
it's an amazing, wonderful little Christmas tradition.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
It's wonderful.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
But that's not the only unusual poop based cautle on
Christmas tradition either, is it.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
No.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I was kind of surprised to know that there was
more than one. How do you pronounce this that coganer, coganaire, cogganaire, Yeah,
pretty close. So this is this is just a it's
not a log. It's an actual carved or now you know,
readily manufactured sort of dull figurine that has dropped its
(07:49):
pants and is just pooping.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah. And and with the little traditional figurine, there's a
little pile of poop beneath his rear end on the ground.
So not only is he poopy, he has pooped. And
if it's the original version, it looks like a Catalan peasant,
so he also has that red hat. He's probably smoking
a pipe. And these things are designed to be put
(08:11):
into the Nativity scene as one of the figures along
with the Holy Family, and a lot of Westerners find
that offensive and don't understand that it's it's not meant,
even in a joking manner. It wasn't. Originally, it was
meant because the Kaganair represented things like fertility or good
fortune or good luck and as poop did. But over
(08:34):
time it's definitely evolved, and now you can find Kagan
Air figures of all sorts of famous people, from Barack
Obama to the Star Wars crew has a Kagan Air collection.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Of course.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Did you see it?
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Well, yeah I saw. I mean there are all kinds
of pop culture icons now with their pants pulled down pooping.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
But did you see the Star Wars one in particular?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
No, no, it was it good?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, it's pretty great. See three pooped out a nut
like a bolt nut.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Not a nut like one might traditionally find in a stool.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
No, no, it's not a peanut, a walnut. Oh man,
who knew this one was going to be so uh gross?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Well I guess we could have guessed.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Yeah, you found the stuff, so yeah, what else can
we mention here? There was a world's record, of course,
on December tenth, I'm sorry, December twenty ten, there was
a nineteen foot pooping figurine placed in the shopping center
and won the record for world's largest Kagan air.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, in Barcelona.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Pretty good.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, I looked at a picture. I couldn't find any
actual specs on it, but by my estimates, the pile
of poop is about three feet tall. Oh okay, yeah,
in the middle of the shopping center, the Marra Magnum
shopping center in Barcelona.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Nice. Well, my sister lives in Portugal. Now I'm going
to hit her up and see if she's seen any
in this action.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, for sure. Ask her to mail us some caganaiirs.
I'd love one.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
You can order one online?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, yeah, I'll bet she can get a better deal
on one there.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Uh, should we take a break, No, Josh, we shouldn't. Oh, yeah,
we shouldn't because as of per tradition, our Christmas episode
is ad free. It's one of small little thing we
like to do.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
It's ad free with one hundred percent more Christmas.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
That's right, all right, So let's pile on our sleigh
and let's head on over and see how doctor Crampis
is doing.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, over in the Alps, in the Alpine regions.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yes, of Austria. So well, let's talk about Crampis. It's
a it's a weird thing, but then it's not any
weirder than Santa Claus if you really look at it, Yeah,
or bringing a tree into your home.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
He's this. No, it's really not. And it actually makes
a lot of sense too, because you know, Santa Claus
is so good and pure and happy and joyful, and
Crampis is all the opposite. So as as it was
put in this one Smithsonian article I read, Crampis is
the Yen to Saint Nick's yang. Yeah, and they actually
hang out together. And we should probably describe Crampus a
(11:17):
little bit first, huh.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, So here's the legend, is that Crampus shows up.
Crampus is sort of a beast of sorts, a demon,
a demonic, impish beast.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
With a long tongue. And Claus, his name, in fact,
is derived from the German word for claw, I.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Believe, Yeah, what's that, uh, Crampin' huh was it that simple?
So Crampus he shows up. He shows up in the
town the night before December sixth, which is also known
as Crampas Snacht or Crampus Knight. And uh, that's also
a Nicholas taug or Saint Nicholas date. December six is.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Right, So they show up on December fifth, the night
of the fifth.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, and you know, like the light in the dark,
Crampus is like, no, no, no, Saint Nick can't just
show up. I will show up as well and try
and ruin the good time.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Right. So what's interesting is like on Crampus Knocked the
Saint Nick goes around and leaves little goodies in the
shoes of good kids. Sure, and then birch sticks in
the shoes of bad kids, ostensibly for their parents to
smack them on the behind with for being bad. But
there's another level reserved for the truly bad kids. And
(12:34):
that's what Crampus is there for. He's there to abduct
and torture and potentially eat the really bad kids. He's
actually going around with Saint Nick visiting people's home.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, say, how bad are you? Do you need to
be tortured and eaten?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Are you bad, or like crampist level bad.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And this hearkens back the first thing I thought it was,
of course, our episodes on the Grim's fairy Tales very
much sort of aligns with that where children are readily
offered up as food for beasts. You know, like no
one cared back then.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
No, they definitely treated their children more harshly, for sure.
There was a lot more like getting lost in the
forest and no one coming to find you, going on.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, so Crampus obviously, over the years there have been
a lot of people who have been like, let's abolish this.
This is not in the modern Christmas spirit. He is
the son of the Norse god of the underworld hell
h l And during the twelfth century the Catholic Church
tried to ban Crampus, and then more recently in the
(13:41):
nineteen thirties when Austria's conservative Christian Social Party came in
came around, they definitely tried to get Crampus outlawed, but
people would not have it. They needed their Crampus.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah, I mean, Crampus predates Christianity. He has some staying power,
you know. He was originally like a German demon of
pagan folklore. Yeah, yeah, he would be tough to get
rid of, and probably now more so than ever because
some sort of weird Streisan effect apparently happened, and now
more people are aware of Crampis than ever before, and
(14:15):
he's celebrated big time. People love him. There are mostly people,
Oh yeah, there was yeah, a good horror movie. Well
I don't I can't say if it was good. I
haven't seen it, but it looks good. But people who
are who get sick of the holiday spirit being crammed
down their throat for you know, after X number of
weeks usually turned to Crampis to kind of find some relief.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I looked up this other thing because at the end
of this article it mentions a couple of weird things
demons in other countries Christmas demons and the one in
Greece Cali Kans. Did you look that up?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Yeah, this is crazy. These are little, impish demons that
speak with a lisp and eat worms and frogs and things.
They only come out at night. They're afraid of the
sun fire holy water, and then the rest of the
year they live in the center of the earth and
attempt to chop down the tree of life.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Right, but at Christmas time they emerge to wreak havoc
above ground.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Right, Yeah, And apparently one of the legends of the
Calikansari is that they can only count to two. Did
you see that?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Oh no, I didn't actually, but I'll bet I know
where you're going with this.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Well, they can only They won't say three because it's
a holy number supposedly, so they only count to two.
So if you want to guard your home against these
little imps, you leave a calendar on your torch step.
So they go mad trying to count the holes. They
just go one to one, two, over and over until
they commit suicide.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
That's yeah, that's a pretty standard.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It's very strange, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
You know what is strange though, too, is that that's
a remedy for protecting yourself against vampires. The original vampires
could count, and they would just go nuts trying to
count like seeds. I think you're supposed to leave.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Oh that's right, yeah, remember, but they were like.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
They originated in Greece too, I think.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, so it's all all. It was a.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Surefire remedy that just works for everything. One size fits all.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Did you see the one about Danny the South African
ghost boy.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yeah, that was really that. This was just like scary.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
So if you're a kid in South Africa around Christmas time,
you need to keep an eye out for the ghost
of Danny, who was a little boy who whose grandmother
made a batch of cookies for Saint Nick and Danny
just couldn't help himself. He ate the whole batch of cookies.
So grandmother murdered him and now his ghost haunts Christmas
in South Africa. It's a weird tradition.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, it really drives home that we're in an all
time high in terms of regard for children in the world. Yeah,
you know, yep, we're finally doing it right here in
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yep, no children's murdered, children into ghosts on our watch.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
You ready for the next segment or you want to.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I'm so psyched about this one. Let's get in this slate.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yeah, let's ride on over to TV Land.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, which exists in our imaginations and in Culver City, California.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
That's right, of course, we're talking about a Charlie Brown
Christmas and just a little bit of its history. It's
one of my favorites. After all these years, I still
love watching that show.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, and after all these years, is right. It's been
on every year since nineteen sixty five, which actually makes
it the second longest running animated cartoon special in history.
After it's in second place after Rudolph, which came out
the year before and has run every year since as well.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
The Rank and Bass Rudolph, Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Which is kind of Charlie Brown, just can't come in first.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
But it's a very Charlie Brown thing though.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah, it's kind of reassuring.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Well, that's one of the things I always loved about
Charlie Brown and the Peanuts Gang was the and this
article points it out as the melancholy behind it. It
was never just some happy go lucky dumb kids thing.
There was always just so much melancholy and pathos and
those characters. It really look I don't know, it spoke
to me as a kid.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, And so I guess the executives at CBS and
the ad agency for Coca Cola were expecting something totally
different from everything that Charles Schultz had done up to
that point with this Christmas special when they heard it.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Right, Yeah, well, it almost wasn't even ordered. There was
a producer named Lee Mendelssohn, who did a little documentary
short about Charles Schultz called a boy named Charlie Brown.
And for the first time for that little documentary, they
just did a little animation because previous it had been
a comic strip only, and so they just a little
(19:00):
bit of animation.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
By a guy named Bill Melendez.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Yeah, exactly. And so they put that famous jazz piano
score by Vince Garli, which is amazing, and people saw
it and they were like, hey, maybe this would be
a Christmas special and they said no, no one wanted it.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah. They somebody though, heard about this documentary, which apparently
was just lost to history pretty quickly, and said, have
you guys ever thought of just doing just a straight
up Christmas special? And apparently Lee Mendelssohn heard the first
rule of Hollywood, which is you answer yes to every question. Yeah,
of course, and he said, yes, of course we have
(19:42):
and apparently wrung up Charles Schultz the next day, and
that next day they had basically all the rough outline
points of what would become the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Yeah. They're like, we need this music because we love it.
We want some ice skating, we want a Christmas pageant,
and we want the theme that well, sort of a
religious theme, like Charles Schultz apparently insisted on that.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Well he was, yeah, he was pretty religious, and yeah,
he definitely insisted on it. And again the executives who
were waiting with baited breath for this thing to be
delivered to him, were like, this is awful, Like what's
going on here? Like this is super religious? It's not.
It's not hilarious and joyful. It's like you said, it
(20:29):
has path posts, but it's a children's animated Christmas special.
Where's the laugh track? They wanted to put a laugh
track in.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yes, and they definitely wanted a Linus reading from the
Bible out.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Well, yeah, they definitely did, and Charles Schultz said, nope,
it's staying in.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
And they also wanted to cast adult voice actors. And
it kind of occurred to me that I never knew
who did any of those. So just four quick shout
outs to some of the characters. Charlie Brown was voiced
by Peter Robbins that these great classic iconic voices were
just little kids. Linus was Christopher Shay, Sally was Kathy Steinberg,
(21:10):
and Lucy was Tracy Stratford and you can go look
up with the rest of the cast if you want.
But that would be weird if we read out like
eighteen people, right.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
But the other kids actually, so the ones you named
were professionals. The other kids were actually neighborhood kids. And
Bill Mendelssohn, the animator and director's neighborhood. Yeah, so they
were like, not just kids, they were legit kids and
not fake Hollywood kids, right exactly, who are actually like
thirty five or forty Yeah, But the use of kids
(21:40):
was unusual for sure, and they hadn't really thought it
through from what I saw, because some of these kids
were so young that they didn't know how to read yet,
Like the kid who played Lionus didn't know how to read,
so he had to be told what lions to say, yeah,
because he couldn't read the yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
And Snoopy actually was the only one not voiced by
a kid. He was voiced by the animator himself. Right,
So that's kind of neat. And it was a huge
hit despite the uh, the doubtful nature of the of
the network, it was a big hit. On Thursday, December ninth,
nineteen sixty five, it was seen literally by half of
(22:18):
the audience available in the country. Yes, almost half.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, basically everyone who had their TV set turned on
at I think eight o'clock or whatever on that date
watched it in the entire country. That's pretty astounding. And
it's like you said, it's the exact opposite of what
the exacts thought was going to happen. They thought it
was gonna air once and then just be gone.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yep, it won a Peabody, it won a Emmy Award.
This really says something about the time it finished second
place only to Bonanza, which really says that Americans loved Bonanza.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Man, they really did.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I watched it.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
You watch Bonanza? I never did. Sure, Yeah, I never
got into it.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Well, I mean you were. It was probably not a
little hokey for your your taste. Probably by that point,
little you were more sophisticated.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
I was a very sophisticated eight year old cravat.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
And here are a couple of interesting tidbits about the
Charlie Brown Christmas Is. There have been some scenes cut
throughout the years, notably sponsorship inserts. Notably Coca Cola even
had a full on Coca Cola sign animated into the
show that Linus is thrown into and they cut that
(23:37):
out aft. I'm not sure how long they said several
times is is? I guess just the first few years yea.
And they cut that Coca Cola sign out of there.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, because other advertisers were like, what the heck, we're.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
PEPSI, where's my sign?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
We're Royal Crown Cola. We don't want to advertise on
your Coca Cola?
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And what else? So something else that wasn't added until
nineteen ninety right.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Well, they had cut out the Peanuts gang throwing snowballs
that it can on a fence scene to make room
for more ads, and it wasn't restored until nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Man, Yeah, well they did the right thing.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, that's an important part.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
And I'll be watching it this year and every year
to come till I got sure.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Charles, Yes, Charles, it would not be our Christmas special
if we didn't teach people how to make booze in
new and interesting ways.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yeah. This has become a bit of a tradish around here.
Oh yeah, a holiday drink.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Oh yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah that one.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I cannot wait to make this one. No, I haven't
okay yet.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Yeah, So you always follow through. I don't.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, although I have to say I've still not had
a hot buttered rum.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Yeah. See, my whole problem comes it's an effort thing.
Like I get out the bottle of bourbon and the
I'm just like, well, I'll just pour this.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I really, I really don't even need a glass. I
can cut my hand and like bourbon down it.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, it's it's I should really put in the effort.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
This one does sound like a little bit of effort
until you really think about it. It's not that bad.
So so down in the Caribbean, it gets so hot
that you wonder do they know it's Christmas time at all? Yes? Yes,
they do actually, and in in the Caribbean, in Jamaica
in particular, there is a drink, a refreshing cold punch
(25:32):
called sorrel punch that apparently screams Christmas. It's part and
parcel with Christmas down there. But again, since it's hot,
they need something that's cool and refreshing. So we're gonna
go with Jamaican sorrel punch this year as the Christmas
drink because it sounds pretty great.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
All right, Well, should we just start with the ingredients?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, I mean we should we should say the first ingredient,
sorrel can be really confusing up here in the state.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, what's the deal there?
Speaker 2 (26:01):
So soirel is apparently a part or a flower of
the hibiscus plant, but it's not what those of us
in the United States would think of as the high
biscus flower. It's a different flower. And you can't use
hibiscus flowers or you'll die, You'll be haunted by Danny
the the You want to use straight up dried sorrel
(26:24):
plant flowers, okay, And you can actually find them online
for like five six bucks on like Amazon, or if
you're if you have an international market, you can probably
find them there in that whole like cellophane dried herb
section from other parts of the world, they're probably going
to be there. But you want to start with those.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
All right? A couple ounces? Yep, all right, that sounds good.
I can do that.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
You want to get some fresh ginger, where do you
do that? You should be able to find that anywhere.
You want to make two one inch cubes peeled and
then finally chop them three cloves. Is a good good
next ingredient?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah, I can taste it in my head.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, it's it's got like coming together Christmas spices. And
then this guy didn't use this this in his recipe,
but I also saw that you could at this point
add orange peels without the pith. You never want to
use the pith with an orange peel, and cinnamon sticks.
And you take all these things and you put them
in a heat proof bowl, and you boil five cups
(27:29):
of water in a saucepan and pour it over the
sorrel mixture. Okay, so basically what you're doing is making
a sorrel tea. Because you let it steep for at
least four hours or overnight.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
You're putting together your roue.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I guess I would say tea is closer than rue
the mother batch. There you go, you're making the mother bat.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
None of these things are applicable.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
So you let you let the mother batch tea ru
sit overnight and just steep. Right, And then you want
to make a simple syrup.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Yeah, I mean I would say if you make your
own simple syrup, if you have your own favorite recipe,
you can just use that, right sure?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah, special, No, it doesn't have to be special. You
just want to make a one to one simple syrup.
And since this is the Caribbean, you probably want to
just go with demorera that raw brown, not brown sugar,
but brownish in color. But de Moorera sugar is probably
a good one to use. But you make a simple syrup,
(28:29):
not a complicated syrup. No, a simple syrup. You get
yourself some good amber rum. Yeah, I would recommend getting
the good stuff because this is Christmas, guys.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
That one's a year.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
And then you add for you, you take the tea
that you've let steep for four hours or overnight, and
you strain out the ingredients in there, so you just
have the tea and then you add to it the
simple syrup in the rum, stir it up little darling
nice and then and then you add some ice cubes
(29:04):
and then garnished with lime and orange slices.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
All right, So as far as the amounts, we're talking
a couple of ounces of the sorrel flower. We already
said that. The how much ginger? Three whole cloves, five
and three quarters cups of water, three quarters cups of
sugar for your syrup, one and a half cups of
amber rum, a little more if you're you know, yeah,
to taste and then you know garnish at will Yep,
(29:30):
sounds delicious. I might have to make that this year.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
I cannot wait, man, I have the sorrel ordered.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Oh you do already? All right, Well I'm making it up,
all right. Maybe you can bring it to our our
holiday sauna party.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
You got it. I'll bring I'll have added rue to it,
some flour, flour and butter. It's just floating in clumps and.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
The man, that sounds good. Yeah, all right, so let's
hop back in the sleigh. It's cooled off a bit
because that took longer than I've thought. Yeah, so let's
heat this sucker back up and head over to another
part of the internet. All right, so we're back. We're
(30:13):
out of the sleigh and into the frying pan. Actually
that's not true, because that made it sound like we're
about to cook something.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
You are in a silly mood today, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I am. I think I've I think I'm mentally gone
on vacation.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
You're giddy with delirium.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
I am totally.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
I like it. Man, you should mentally go on vacation
a lot. It's a good fit.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
So we're gonna talk a little about missus claws. It
sort of occurred to me when we were putting this together.
I was like, you know what, you hear about Saint
Nick all the time and nowadays you see his wife
in the photo some but where did she come from?
Who is this woman? And I didn't know, but she
has not been around the entire time. Sanna used to
(30:56):
be very much the batch.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Yeah, I didn't realize that either. This article puts it
as kind of a loaner, which is funny. Yeah, but yeah,
he was given a wife finally for the first time
in eighteen forty nine. And there's an American author named
James Reese. And apparently there's an author named James Reese
that's working today. Oh and he's hogged up all of
(31:21):
the Google search engine patches. Cannot find any mention of
the other one. But there was apparently an author named
James Rees who wrote a short story entitled The Christmas Legend,
and it was published in eighteen forty nine.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Yeah, I wonder what gave him the right. Don't get
me wrong, I love it, But why did he get
to say, like, you know what, I'm going to just
write in a missus clause?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I guess literary license yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Yeah, so is it canon? Did this get approval from
I guess George Lucas.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I think that just gets worked out over time, you know.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Yeah, I guess so probably huh if enough people buy
into it.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, although it sounds like she was kind of a
device that he used because he out of necessity, because
in the story, mister and Missus Claws are like delivering
presents to a family, right, And it turns out that
there is no mister and Missus Claus. It was really
a friendly couple that the family was friends with who
(32:20):
had dressed up as mister and Missus Claws.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Yeah, the burn bombs, right, So.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
The guy turns out to have no imagination whatsoever for
a short story writer.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yes, but she did stick a little bit, and then
she really started sticking in later years. She started kind
of popping up more and more in magazines and stories,
and then she showed up in a big way in
a picture book by Catherine Lee Bates, And this is
when she really took hold and everyone was like, Hey,
(32:54):
I love Sanna having a wife. She's super cool. She's
a strong lady that she is the woman behind the
man in the backbone of that whole operation. Right, And
who can argue with that?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Nobody, I mean, everybody liked the fact that Sanna had
finally settled down.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
He wasn't just sewing his oats across the world in
Chimney's all over the world.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Seriously, baby, I'll give you a riding my sleigh. You
know something that struck me that I hadn't really realized, Chuck,
missus Claus does not have an official first name.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Well, I looked into that, did you No, did you
find one? Apparently with artistic license, you can just name
or whatever you.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Want, right, Okay, that's what I found as well.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
And they're like, you know, Monica, Erica, Martha.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, Matha, which apparently is a typo.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Was it?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Maybe I wasn't sure. I didn't know if that was
just a variation.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
No, I'm sure it was a variation now, but at
the time it was probably a type.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
It was like a printer didn't have an R.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
So they were just right, exactly fine, just forget the R.
It's the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
No one cares Sandra that Sandra Claus. That sort of
rings a little bit. Who would you pick? What's your favorite?
Probably Rita that's what I was gonna go with. Yeah,
or Mary Mary Claus. Yeah, but because I mean also
you could.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Say Mary like emy r r y oh sure. The
one I do not agree with, I should say. The
two I do not agree with are Monica and Jessica.
Those are not missus Clau's names.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Monica Claus.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, it's weird, it's a little odd. Nothing nothing against
the name Monica, but just for missus Claus. Come on,
even Monica's can agree with that one?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
And then Jessica, that's just too. It's Jessica Rabbit's name
that has no business being part of missus Claus.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Agreed, Charles, mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
You found something else great on the internet that I
just found very heartening. It is a it's a way oh.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Ingle dingle jingle. Yes, parents, you may not want your
kids to hear this part. It is not dirty and
filthy or weird in any way. But depending how you
run Christmas in your household, if you know what I'm saying,
we just want to give you fair warning. So we'll
give you Let's just do a little Christmas music for
like five seconds. Oh good, gokay, okay.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
All right, hopefully you are not a psychopath, and you
got rid of any little kids who still believe.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yes, and hopefully Jerry inserted the music from the movie
Psycho instead of Christmas music.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
That would be wonderful, Yeah, because people would be like,
what are they?
Speaker 3 (35:53):
What happened?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
And understand it until we came back.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
All right? So I found this This is actually new
this year on the social medis. This lady named Charity
Hutchinson had a Facebook post that has really taken off.
Last I looked earlier that was gez had about thirty
thousand likes and has been shared quite a few times.
(36:20):
And she had a solution in her family on what
the conundrum parents face by lying to their children bald
face lying for years about the existence of a real
human Santa Claus as a person.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Right, So she, I guess tried this with her oldest
her firstborn recently, and they've both in the last couple
of years.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah, they fell for her client's sinker. And in a way,
it's a really great thing to do. But at the
same time, you're basically you're getting out of one lie
by creating another different lie.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Right, Oh not really?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Okay, All right, well, let's let everybody judge for themselves.
Let's describe this, okay, So Charity says that you start
off by taking your kid out for coffee. I didn't
realize that was the thing that you do with kids
these days, but apparently it is. So you take your
kid out for coffee or whatever, maybe a milk. Sure, yeah,
(37:20):
we'll let's go with one of those too. But you
take your kid out and you just basically say, hey,
you know what, I've noticed you doing a lot of
really great, kind, compassionate things this year, for example, this
and that, and the time you beat up that bully
who pushed down that smaller kid, that kind of thing,
the time you laid on that bird who had no
(37:42):
chance of surviving without his mother. Just some nice stuff, right,
And you say, you know, son or daughter, I think
you have become compassionate enough and old enough to become
a Santa Claus.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
And you drop your mic right, and you leave your
kid in Starbucks and you just walk down the street
feeling good about yourself.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
You get your car, you drive off to California to
start a new life with a new name.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
So no, you say, I want you, you're old not
to become Santa Claus. And then your kid is like
what yeah, and you say, get ready for your mind
to be blown, kid, because guess what. Here's the deal
with Sanna. Sanna is a construct sort of basically is
(38:31):
what you're trying to do is say you can become
Santa because Sanna is someone who just very kindly and
unselfishly gives something to others anonymously.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yeah, it's a it's being Santa is anybody could be Santa.
As long as you want to give to people just
for the sheer joy of making other people happy exactly
is Santa. And anybody who does that can be Santa.
And so hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you
try starting starting it out this year, Like, just pick
(39:07):
somebody that you know and like and say, find out
without them knowing what's going on, something that they really want,
and then go get it for him and wrap it
up and leave it for him. But here's the key.
You have to say that it's from Santa on the
little card or tag and you can never tell them.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
That it was you.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
That's pretty great, Yeah, And she backs it up by
making the point that being sand is not about getting credit,
it's about just giving for the joy of giving and
making other people happy. So yeah, just never tell so
that in that way you become Santa.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah, and it gives the kid all these lessons, you know,
understanding about what's going on around the world in their
own neighborhood. Maybe this article says it gives some providence
over their own innocence. It's a great point. I think
she said that it works so great with her older kid.
Now that kid is in on it, yep, trying to
help the the new batch about to lose their innocence. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Yeah, the thing is chuck and and I don't maybe
you know and I don't, But is there some standard
way that besides this that people recommend breaking the news
to kids.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Or well, I don't know about a standard, but there's
lots of different opinions on that. I put up a
Facebook post tangentially tangentially related to this, and people were
just kind of throwing out their ideas, and one of
them I think they got the most likes was this
guy that was like he does has never described Santa
(40:44):
as a person, he said, he has always from the
beginning described Santa as a like I said, as a construct.
Is that you don't say construct. You're three year old,
but you as just a part of the Christmas spirit.
It's a thing and not a person. Yeah, who literally
comes to your house. And he was like, I can't
tell any difference, Like they'd love that just as much
(41:06):
as I did, thinking it was a real guy. And
he said, you know, they see the Christmas specials and
they get that it's a made up thing, but it's
just a part of the whole idea of Christmas. Right,
So he was just kind of kind of truthful about
the whole thing. Yeah, and they're still delighted with Sanna
and when they see Santa and the mall, they aren't like,
you're a construct, although that would be great.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
It would be you did some part of you would
be pretty proud of your kid for that.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Yeah. I think is interesting though. I mean I don't
know what I'm gonna do yet, so I got to
think this over.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Yeah, because I mean there's probably parents listening right now
they're like, oh man, yeah, I don't want to do this,
but this is a pretty good out. So everybody give
Charity Hutchinson a pat on the back. Oh all right, Chuck,
(42:00):
it's almost time for soul punch.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
That's right, we're gonna wrap it up here. We crowdsource
some Facebook traditions from our listeners, and I asked for
specifically unusual traditions, and I wedded through, waded through the
ninety percent that were not unusual in any way, and
managed to find some pretty interesting things. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Oh yeah, so I was I don't know what percentage
I didn't see what percentage of the actual ideas submitted
this is, but some people have some pretty cool little
traditions that I just love. Agreed, So you want to start?
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah, So Victoria krum she says that on her father's
side of the family, he was I think he was Polish,
his Polish roots, and so in order to honor their
Polish roots, every year, their father makes a paupers meal
for Christmas Eve. Instead of you know, some big lavish,
extravagant thing. They made sour out soup and Parochi's and
(43:03):
the most reasonable priced cold water fish available.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Yeah, because it kind of honors like the humble roots
that their family has.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Yeah, that's great. So Victoria Kroum, good on you for
that one.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Nice. So how about Emily Ruth Vander.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Arks, Yes, this is actually a lot of people had this,
So this is a thing.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
So her mom hides a pickle ornament on the Christmas
tree somewhere right, and on Christmas Morning, everybody tries to
find it. Whoever finds it first gets a gift. And
Emily said that it started out just being like, oh, hey,
here's a piece of chocolate. Yeah, and the person would
just be like, just throw it to the ground. But
(43:44):
she said that it's gotten better over the years, so
now it's like up to like a Starbucks gift card.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Whoa yeah, yeah, I saw a lot of people with
this pickle thing though, so obviously it's a thing, and
she said it's regionalized.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
She said that her husband is a master ace at
finding the pickle. Yeah, and he wins it every year.
So Champ pickle Finder, Emily's husband, Emily's husband, So thanks, Emily.
Ruth vander Ark. That's a great name.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yep. Jessica Evans Totin Tautan, this is pretty good. I
love weird dads. After my parents got divorced, my dad
was in charge of getting and wrapping his own Christmas
presents for me and my three older sisters, and he
had a hard time knowing what to get us, so
he made a tradition of buying us a Barbie doll
every year along with a gift receipt, and he called
(44:32):
it a creative gift card. I just love that, basically, like,
I know you're going to take this back, but here,
here's something at least.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
And he also has a really fun time rejecting traditional
Christmas wrapping, right, So yeah, he would just put it
in a garbage bag for him this and then apparently
in his older years he's like, I can do better
than this, So now he goes to like thrift stores
in ventedge shops and finds old carpet or old briefcases.
(45:01):
That's awesome, and puts them in there. Yeah, which is
super eighties, like delivering a Barbie doll in a briefcase.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Yeah, and he's still doing it. They still get the barbie.
They're well into adulthood now, she points out, and he
still gets them the barbie every year. So I think
that's a really cool thing. And mister Evans, if that
is your name, sir, I salute you. Yep.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
So Catherine Joy Figley, Yeah, this is a good one.
She said that her husband's family wraps presence. They also
reject traditional Christmas paper wrapping paper, so they they kind
of have like a friendly competition or theme going where
they find the weirdest thing they can wrap it in.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Yeah, my favorite is the unused diaper. Yeah that's good.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
My favorite birthday wrapping paper?
Speaker 3 (45:50):
Oh yeah, I like it. Subversive.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
It is extremely saying like, yeah, I'm gonna use wrapping paper.
I'm just not gonna it for this particular holiday.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
Yeah, I like it. So that's from Catherine Joy Figley.
Keep that going, all right. Check.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
There's this cat named Nick Meller who has a great
Christmas Morning tradition with his mom, who he calls his mom.
So he probably spells color with a you.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
I think it's a lady too, Nick.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Oh, it could be Nicole, I guess yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
I think she's from Australia.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah, okay, well every Christmas morning, this would actually make
a lot of sense that she would be from Australia.
Every Christmas morning, her mom and she get up very
early and they go to the beach and this is
where the Australian clue it kicks in before the hordes
of people get there. The says are not very popular
in the Northern Hemisphere in Christmas time. But she says
(46:44):
that they grab a bottle of champagne and a huge
bucket of cherries and that's what they have for breakfast.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yeah, that's so neat.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Great Christmas tradition.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Let me see this one. I love, Tanya floyd Ellis.
Growing up, my mom and father in law, my grandpa,
would pass to each other a ba humbug can. They
both relish, disgusting and just sorry and disguising the can.
Don't worry, it gets disgusting to make it unrecognizable as
a rat present. And some of the more memorable additions
to the can, like you put junk in It was
(47:12):
a year's worth of Grandpa's tonios in there. That was
very nice. Pile of dog poop gathered in January and
left to cure until the next December. A clump of
ketchup packets held together by one broken packet now acting
as glue. I love that, Thank you, Tania floyd Ellis.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
That's a good one, all right. So how about Sarah
Flora Monte's Christmas tradition. Yes, so every year on Christmas Eve,
her whole family has an ice cream eating contest with
all of her cousins. Yeah, so whoever can finish a
half a gallon of ice cream within an hour. And
here's the key without throwing it up. When's a substantial
(47:52):
amount of cash? She says, She doesn't say how much,
she does use the word substantial. So she says that
it's nearly impossible to do this, and it's only been
done three times before out of probably one hundred attempts.
I'm thinking that they haven't been doing this for a century.
But just if you take the number of people who've
tried it over the years, yeah, you come up with
a hundred.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
She means, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
She says that a lot of people can finish but
not hold it down, and that's where that key comes in.
So there's a lot of vomiting going on at Sarah
Flora Monte's house on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, and she posted pictures too. She posted a couple
one of the entire family sitting around with each with
a gallon half gallon of ice cream in front of them,
and then one of a couple of people doing that
with her her grandmother just like bitter and staring at them.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
She said, her grandmother hates it, so they're going to
do it as long as she's around.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
It's very nice. Here's one from Norma Mullen that's really
really neat. This is not gross or anything. Our family
has a tablecloth that goes on the Christmas dinner table
every year and everyone signs it with a fabric pen.
And they've been doing this since nineteen ninety four, so
they use the same tablecloth and they're able to look
back every year and look at all these memories and
(49:03):
along with obviously people they've lost over the years and
people that they've gained over the years. So that is
just super cool. It's older than most of her cousins,
and she can see how much their family has grown
year by year.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
That's really nice.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
And then how about Ryan Bradfields.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Ryan Bradfield's mom's family, who says it's a large Sicilian bunch.
They have a wind up et toy that they got
in the eighties and somehow it just became family tradition
for them to dress up the et doll as different
character and then they use it as a Christmas tree
topper for their grandparents tree.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Yeah that's pretty great.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
So ET's been like Elvis, NBA player, Dolly parton your
favorite Yeah a show girl, And it turns out obviously weirdly,
but one of Bradfield's cousins married a member of the
or a friend I guess of this Spielberg family. So
they're trying to get them pictures of the et dressed up.
(50:04):
Over the years.
Speaker 3 (50:05):
I'm sure no one's ever tried to get Steven Spielberg
a funny et picture, right. This one is very sweet.
This is from Holly Henderson of Portland. She and her
husband bought their first house four years ago just outside
of Portland, and the very first night there, on Christmas Eve,
they spent the night in a mattress on the floor
(50:27):
next to the Christmas tree. And she says, now we
do that every year. We bring that mattress back in
the living room on Christmas Eve and sleep on the
mattress by the tree.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
It's very sweet, lovely. And then the last one, Chuck,
how about Chelsea Alan Lindsay's.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Oh yeah, the Christmas route Bega, Yeah, I love weird families.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
So her family puts a Christmas Rutebiga out in the
living room along with the tree every year. And the
whole thing started from a car trip when they were
living in the UK, and she says that her grandma,
parents and her aunt had come to visit one Christmas time.
They were all in the car and everything was just
going nuts and crazy, and apparently Chelsea's mom started calling
(51:09):
the whole thing rude. Bega's on parade. Yeah, and I
love her mom. She bought a rudabaga and put it
on the dashboard of the car for the rest of
the trip, and then when she got home she made
a face for it out of clothes, put clothes, put
a wreath on it, and then it became a Christmas
root to Bega, Yeah, this is not just weird dad's weird.
(51:30):
Moms are great too.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Sure you know. I got one more, Okay, because I
forgot Michelle Greenwald. I want to be in her family
because they have a holiday they invented called Pajamaica's. Oh yeah,
and I think I see you. I'll see where this
is going. It's the day before Christmas Eve even and
she said it was necessary since we were traveling for
(51:51):
Christmas Day and didn't have a day that was dedicated
just to the four of us in our family. So
Pajamaicus goes down like this. It's immediate family. They get
each other pajamas and change into the pajamas all together.
Well they're all wearing the pajamas in other words. And
then they watch Christmas movies and eat breakfast for dinner,
(52:13):
which is one of my favorite things.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
And it's like a no holds barred breakfast for dinner.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
Yes, yeah, she says. They cook all day and have
a huge breakfast spread like Latcus waffles, poached eggs, briosh,
you name it.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Yeah, whatever you want you get to have. Yeah for dinner.
Speaker 3 (52:29):
I don't know where the green walls are, but I
want to come over for pajamakas. Yeah, it sounds pretty
great to just invite me and I'll be there. Get
me pajamas with feet good. I got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (52:48):
So oh okay, well I guess this is the outro
then huh yeah, wow, this is great, Chuck. I mean,
it's it's officially now Christmas time.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
For us, that's right, and other wonderful year of stuff
you should know. Twenty sixteen. We're going to close the
books on this one and thank everyone, as we do
every year, for your support, because without you, there would
be no us. We really really don't take that for granted,
and actually a very special birthday shout out. I know
people that are born around Christmas always get jipped off
(53:21):
in the birthday department, but one of our most delightful
and oldest, most supportive fans, Miss Gail Coots. It's her
birthday on Christmas Eve, and her husband Mark was kind
enough to email me because he knows what a big
fan she is and Gail is wonderful. So happy birthday,
Gail from Ohio. You're the best. I hope we can
all meet up someday and sounds.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
Good right yep. So happy holidays to everybody. Merry Christmas,
Happy Honikah, Happy Kwanza, tip top tet all that jazz.
You guys have yourselves a wonderful holiday season from all
of us here at Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com. H
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. And
this is the two thy sixteen Stuff You Should Know
Super Christmas Holiday Spectacular glad Tidings Edition.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
In three d oh nice and stinkovision. Nice smellovision. That
was a real thing, you know, Yeah it was.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
It was a great idea that didn't really pan out
very well.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I don't know about that.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well, no, it didn't pan out very well.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, yeah, funny, I know what you meant. Uh so,
my friend, I look forward to this every year. Yeah,
me too, because, as I've said before, I save up
my vacation and take an elmmentary school break for a
solid three weeks at the end of every year, right,
which also means you get a bit of a break.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah. It's a de facto decision on my behalf as well.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
And this is it after in one hour, roughly you're
not going to see me again till next year. Yeah,
you know. I like to get small over the holidays.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
That's cool, man. I don't blame you. I do too,
just hold up in the secretly, I'm secretly fine with
you making that decision for me particular one.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah, so are you?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So? Are you full of cheer glad tidings.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Well, I'm in a silly mood. So this will who
knows where this goes?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
How's Jerry? Jerry, you're feeling pretty happy?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
She is?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
She's good.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Just gave a thumbs up. Yeah, she's fresh faced, but.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
She tailed Are her hauls decked?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Oh yes, double decked?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, I guess we should welcome everybody chuck to the
Christmas spectacular. Tell you, first off, to be sure to
start a fire somewhere in your house. Yes, put on sweater, maybe,
put on some slippers, put on pajamas, make yourself some eggnog,
hot butter room, something like that, and just sit down
(02:16):
and enjoy yourself.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, and we did our holiday special every year we
like to cover. I'm always afraid we're going to recover
something which I actually pitched, something we had already covered.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I've got a list, so don't worry about it.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Oh okay, great, well then let's ring in the holiday year.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Hey. Also, we should say, if there are any little
true believers among you, you may not want to let them
listen to this one.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Well, yeah, there, I was going to give a warning.
They can listen to most of it, but there is
one feature of the show where where you may not
want your kids to listen to some of the detail
the deats, and we're going to give you a warning
before that comes on. Yeah, so you can.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It'll sound like this wringling knowing that's the Christmas warning.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Well, all right, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
All right, everybody sit back as we begin our annual
Christmas special. So Chuck, we're gonna hop in our over
there sleigh and head on over to Catalonia. Yeah, parts
(03:38):
of Spain, parts of Spain, part of Spain, and there's
a Catalan tradition. There's a couple of them actually that
are really interesting and are scatological in nature. And the
first one is called Cagatillo.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah. I had never heard of this, but I put
out and you'll see you later in the show. We
put out a call on face book for some unusual
family traditions from listeners, and a couple of people mentioned this,
like saying, we don't do this, but I've heard of
it and it's really strange.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, it's definitely a thing, and in large parts of Spain, Portugal,
even some parts of Italy too from what I understand,
but specifically in the Catalan region of Spain, cagatillo, which
means poop log basically in Catalan, is a It's a
(04:31):
Christmas tradition that starts on December eighth when the family
gets around and while they've gone out, I think either
made one or they purchased a cagatillo, which is a
log with a face on it.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah, I get the idea that part of the fun
and correct me if I'm wrong, Spanish among you, But
part of the fun is making it with the family. Sure,
but I'm sure you can buy them though as well,
right full featured.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Even if you bought one fully featured, there's still some
some ritual that you the family have to go through
that would be kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So with with Kagatia, with the log, he's got a face,
but very importantly, he also has two front arms, so
he's kind of propped up right yeah, yeah, And when
you bring Kaigatio home, he also has that that the
standard Catalan red kind of overhangy hat yeap, yes, exactly,
(05:27):
And so the family brings him home, and on December eighth,
they get him prepared for the Christmas season. Right, They
wrap them in a blanket, and they basically wrap them
from what would amount to the waist down in a
blanket to keep them warm, to.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Keep him warm, and to maybe incubate what dwells inside
of the log. Yeah, because that's where we're headed with us.
They feed this thing orange peels, a Spanish nugat called
torone's that right, Yeah, And apparently, as tradition is held,
the more you feed the cagatillo, the more gifts it
(06:06):
will bestow to you through the traditional route, which means
out of the rear end.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Right. So the kids every night while they're caring for cagatiu,
and I imagine probably more than just every night. I'll
bet this thing gets fed a lot of orange peels
and nougat. They feed it. And as the Christmas I
guess Christmas Day, I also saw Christmas Eve approaches, they
(06:33):
they prepare to extract the stuff from cagatio. Yeah, and
they do that by by hitting cagato with sticks. And
they have a traditional chant. You want to you want
to give them the translation of the chant?
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah, not that not the original in English, it translates
literally as poop log, poop torone, hazel nuts and cottage cheese.
If you don't poop, well, I'll hit you with a
stick poop log.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
And so once they've beaten Kagatio with a stick enough times,
they'll look under the blanket and see that he's pooped
out a bunch of candy and treats and gifts. And
it's an amazing, wonderful little Christmas tradition.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
It's wonderful.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
But that's not the only unusual poop based cautle on
Christmas tradition either, is it.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
No.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I was kind of surprised to know that there was
more than one. How do you pronounce this that coganer, coganaire, cogganaire, Yeah,
pretty close. So this is this is just a it's
not a log. It's an actual carved or now you know,
readily manufactured sort of dull figurine that has dropped its
(07:49):
pants and is just pooping.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah. And and with the little traditional figurine, there's a
little pile of poop beneath his rear end on the ground.
So not only is he poopy, he has pooped. And
if it's the original version, it looks like a Catalan peasant,
so he also has that red hat. He's probably smoking
a pipe. And these things are designed to be put
(08:11):
into the Nativity scene as one of the figures along
with the Holy Family, and a lot of Westerners find
that offensive and don't understand that it's it's not meant,
even in a joking manner. It wasn't. Originally, it was
meant because the Kaganair represented things like fertility or good
fortune or good luck and as poop did. But over
(08:34):
time it's definitely evolved, and now you can find Kagan
Air figures of all sorts of famous people, from Barack
Obama to the Star Wars crew has a Kagan Air collection.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Of course.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Did you see it?
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Well, yeah I saw. I mean there are all kinds
of pop culture icons now with their pants pulled down pooping.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
But did you see the Star Wars one in particular?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
No, no, it was it good?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, it's pretty great. See three pooped out a nut
like a bolt nut.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Not a nut like one might traditionally find in a stool.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
No, no, it's not a peanut, a walnut. Oh man,
who knew this one was going to be so uh gross?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Well I guess we could have guessed.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Yeah, you found the stuff, so yeah, what else can
we mention here? There was a world's record, of course,
on December tenth, I'm sorry, December twenty ten, there was
a nineteen foot pooping figurine placed in the shopping center
and won the record for world's largest Kagan air.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, in Barcelona.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Pretty good.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, I looked at a picture. I couldn't find any
actual specs on it, but by my estimates, the pile
of poop is about three feet tall. Oh okay, yeah,
in the middle of the shopping center, the Marra Magnum
shopping center in Barcelona.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Nice. Well, my sister lives in Portugal. Now I'm going
to hit her up and see if she's seen any
in this action.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, for sure. Ask her to mail us some caganaiirs.
I'd love one.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
You can order one online?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, yeah, I'll bet she can get a better deal
on one there.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Uh, should we take a break, No, Josh, we shouldn't. Oh, yeah,
we shouldn't because as of per tradition, our Christmas episode
is ad free. It's one of small little thing we
like to do.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
It's ad free with one hundred percent more Christmas.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
That's right, all right, So let's pile on our sleigh
and let's head on over and see how doctor Crampis
is doing.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah, over in the Alps, in the Alpine regions.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yes, of Austria. So well, let's talk about Crampis. It's
a it's a weird thing, but then it's not any
weirder than Santa Claus if you really look at it, Yeah,
or bringing a tree into your home.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
He's this. No, it's really not. And it actually makes
a lot of sense too, because you know, Santa Claus
is so good and pure and happy and joyful, and
Crampis is all the opposite. So as as it was
put in this one Smithsonian article I read, Crampis is
the Yen to Saint Nick's yang. Yeah, and they actually
hang out together. And we should probably describe Crampus a
(11:17):
little bit first, huh.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, So here's the legend, is that Crampus shows up.
Crampus is sort of a beast of sorts, a demon,
a demonic, impish beast.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
With a long tongue. And Claus, his name, in fact,
is derived from the German word for claw, I.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Believe, Yeah, what's that, uh, Crampin' huh was it that simple?
So Crampus he shows up. He shows up in the
town the night before December sixth, which is also known
as Crampas Snacht or Crampus Knight. And uh, that's also
a Nicholas taug or Saint Nicholas date. December six is.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Right, So they show up on December fifth, the night
of the fifth.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah, and you know, like the light in the dark,
Crampus is like, no, no, no, Saint Nick can't just
show up. I will show up as well and try
and ruin the good time.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Right. So what's interesting is like on Crampus Knocked the
Saint Nick goes around and leaves little goodies in the
shoes of good kids. Sure, and then birch sticks in
the shoes of bad kids, ostensibly for their parents to
smack them on the behind with for being bad. But
there's another level reserved for the truly bad kids. And
(12:34):
that's what Crampus is there for. He's there to abduct
and torture and potentially eat the really bad kids. He's
actually going around with Saint Nick visiting people's home.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, say, how bad are you? Do you need to
be tortured and eaten?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Are you bad, or like crampist level bad.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And this hearkens back the first thing I thought it was,
of course, our episodes on the Grim's fairy Tales very
much sort of aligns with that where children are readily
offered up as food for beasts. You know, like no
one cared back then.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
No, they definitely treated their children more harshly, for sure.
There was a lot more like getting lost in the
forest and no one coming to find you, going on.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, so Crampus obviously, over the years there have been
a lot of people who have been like, let's abolish this.
This is not in the modern Christmas spirit. He is
the son of the Norse god of the underworld hell
h l And during the twelfth century the Catholic Church
tried to ban Crampus, and then more recently in the
(13:41):
nineteen thirties when Austria's conservative Christian Social Party came in
came around, they definitely tried to get Crampus outlawed, but
people would not have it. They needed their Crampus.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yeah, I mean, Crampus predates Christianity. He has some staying power,
you know. He was originally like a German demon of
pagan folklore. Yeah, yeah, he would be tough to get
rid of, and probably now more so than ever because
some sort of weird Streisan effect apparently happened, and now
more people are aware of Crampis than ever before, and
(14:15):
he's celebrated big time. People love him. There are mostly people,
Oh yeah, there was yeah, a good horror movie. Well
I don't I can't say if it was good. I
haven't seen it, but it looks good. But people who
are who get sick of the holiday spirit being crammed
down their throat for you know, after X number of
weeks usually turned to Crampis to kind of find some relief.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I looked up this other thing because at the end
of this article it mentions a couple of weird things
demons in other countries Christmas demons and the one in
Greece Cali Kans. Did you look that up?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Yeah, this is crazy. These are little, impish demons that
speak with a lisp and eat worms and frogs and things.
They only come out at night. They're afraid of the
sun fire holy water, and then the rest of the
year they live in the center of the earth and
attempt to chop down the tree of life.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Right, but at Christmas time they emerge to wreak havoc
above ground.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Right, Yeah, And apparently one of the legends of the
Calikansari is that they can only count to two. Did
you see that?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Oh no, I didn't actually, but I'll bet I know
where you're going with this.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Well, they can only They won't say three because it's
a holy number supposedly, so they only count to two.
So if you want to guard your home against these
little imps, you leave a calendar on your torch step.
So they go mad trying to count the holes. They
just go one to one, two, over and over until
they commit suicide.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
That's yeah, that's a pretty standard.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It's very strange, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
You know what is strange though, too, is that that's
a remedy for protecting yourself against vampires. The original vampires
could count, and they would just go nuts trying to
count like seeds. I think you're supposed to leave.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Oh that's right, yeah, remember, but they were like.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
They originated in Greece too, I think.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, so it's all all. It was a.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Surefire remedy that just works for everything. One size fits all.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Did you see the one about Danny the South African
ghost boy.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yeah, that was really that. This was just like scary.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
So if you're a kid in South Africa around Christmas time,
you need to keep an eye out for the ghost
of Danny, who was a little boy who whose grandmother
made a batch of cookies for Saint Nick and Danny
just couldn't help himself. He ate the whole batch of cookies.
So grandmother murdered him and now his ghost haunts Christmas
in South Africa. It's a weird tradition.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, it really drives home that we're in an all
time high in terms of regard for children in the world. Yeah,
you know, yep, we're finally doing it right here in
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yep, no children's murdered, children into ghosts on our watch.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
You ready for the next segment or you want to.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I'm so psyched about this one. Let's get in this slate.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yeah, let's ride on over to TV Land.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, which exists in our imaginations and in Culver City, California.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
That's right, of course, we're talking about a Charlie Brown
Christmas and just a little bit of its history. It's
one of my favorites. After all these years, I still
love watching that show.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, and after all these years, is right. It's been
on every year since nineteen sixty five, which actually makes
it the second longest running animated cartoon special in history.
After it's in second place after Rudolph, which came out
the year before and has run every year since as well.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
The Rank and Bass Rudolph, Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Which is kind of Charlie Brown, just can't come in first.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
But it's a very Charlie Brown thing though.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah, it's kind of reassuring.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Well, that's one of the things I always loved about
Charlie Brown and the Peanuts Gang was the and this
article points it out as the melancholy behind it. It
was never just some happy go lucky dumb kids thing.
There was always just so much melancholy and pathos and
those characters. It really look I don't know, it spoke
to me as a kid.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, And so I guess the executives at CBS and
the ad agency for Coca Cola were expecting something totally
different from everything that Charles Schultz had done up to
that point with this Christmas special when they heard it.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Right, Yeah, well, it almost wasn't even ordered. There was
a producer named Lee Mendelssohn, who did a little documentary
short about Charles Schultz called a boy named Charlie Brown.
And for the first time for that little documentary, they
just did a little animation because previous it had been
a comic strip only, and so they just a little
(19:00):
bit of animation.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
By a guy named Bill Melendez.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Yeah, exactly. And so they put that famous jazz piano
score by Vince Garli, which is amazing, and people saw
it and they were like, hey, maybe this would be
a Christmas special and they said no, no one wanted it.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah. They somebody though, heard about this documentary, which apparently
was just lost to history pretty quickly, and said, have
you guys ever thought of just doing just a straight
up Christmas special? And apparently Lee Mendelssohn heard the first
rule of Hollywood, which is you answer yes to every question. Yeah,
of course, and he said, yes, of course we have
(19:42):
and apparently wrung up Charles Schultz the next day, and
that next day they had basically all the rough outline
points of what would become the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Yeah. They're like, we need this music because we love it.
We want some ice skating, we want a Christmas pageant,
and we want the theme that well, sort of a
religious theme, like Charles Schultz apparently insisted on that.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Well he was, yeah, he was pretty religious, and yeah,
he definitely insisted on it. And again the executives who
were waiting with baited breath for this thing to be
delivered to him, were like, this is awful, Like what's
going on here? Like this is super religious? It's not.
It's not hilarious and joyful. It's like you said, it
(20:29):
has path posts, but it's a children's animated Christmas special.
Where's the laugh track? They wanted to put a laugh
track in.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yes, and they definitely wanted a Linus reading from the
Bible out.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Well, yeah, they definitely did, and Charles Schultz said, nope,
it's staying in.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
And they also wanted to cast adult voice actors. And
it kind of occurred to me that I never knew
who did any of those. So just four quick shout
outs to some of the characters. Charlie Brown was voiced
by Peter Robbins that these great classic iconic voices were
just little kids. Linus was Christopher Shay, Sally was Kathy Steinberg,
(21:10):
and Lucy was Tracy Stratford and you can go look
up with the rest of the cast if you want.
But that would be weird if we read out like
eighteen people, right.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
But the other kids actually, so the ones you named
were professionals. The other kids were actually neighborhood kids. And
Bill Mendelssohn, the animator and director's neighborhood. Yeah, so they
were like, not just kids, they were legit kids and
not fake Hollywood kids, right exactly, who are actually like
thirty five or forty Yeah, But the use of kids
(21:40):
was unusual for sure, and they hadn't really thought it
through from what I saw, because some of these kids
were so young that they didn't know how to read yet,
Like the kid who played Lionus didn't know how to read,
so he had to be told what lions to say, yeah,
because he couldn't read the yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
And Snoopy actually was the only one not voiced by
a kid. He was voiced by the animator himself. Right,
So that's kind of neat. And it was a huge
hit despite the uh, the doubtful nature of the of
the network, it was a big hit. On Thursday, December ninth,
nineteen sixty five, it was seen literally by half of
(22:18):
the audience available in the country. Yes, almost half.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, basically everyone who had their TV set turned on
at I think eight o'clock or whatever on that date
watched it in the entire country. That's pretty astounding. And
it's like you said, it's the exact opposite of what
the exacts thought was going to happen. They thought it
was gonna air once and then just be gone.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yep, it won a Peabody, it won a Emmy Award.
This really says something about the time it finished second
place only to Bonanza, which really says that Americans loved Bonanza.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Man, they really did.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I watched it.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
You watch Bonanza? I never did. Sure, Yeah, I never
got into it.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Well, I mean you were. It was probably not a
little hokey for your your taste. Probably by that point,
little you were more sophisticated.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
I was a very sophisticated eight year old cravat.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
And here are a couple of interesting tidbits about the
Charlie Brown Christmas Is. There have been some scenes cut
throughout the years, notably sponsorship inserts. Notably Coca Cola even
had a full on Coca Cola sign animated into the
show that Linus is thrown into and they cut that
(23:37):
out aft. I'm not sure how long they said several
times is is? I guess just the first few years yea.
And they cut that Coca Cola sign out of there.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, because other advertisers were like, what the heck, we're.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
PEPSI, where's my sign?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
We're Royal Crown Cola. We don't want to advertise on
your Coca Cola?
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And what else? So something else that wasn't added until
nineteen ninety right.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Well, they had cut out the Peanuts gang throwing snowballs
that it can on a fence scene to make room
for more ads, and it wasn't restored until nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Man, Yeah, well they did the right thing.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, that's an important part.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
And I'll be watching it this year and every year
to come till I got sure.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Charles, Yes, Charles, it would not be our Christmas special
if we didn't teach people how to make booze in
new and interesting ways.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yeah. This has become a bit of a tradish around here.
Oh yeah, a holiday drink.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Oh yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah that one.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I cannot wait to make this one. No, I haven't
okay yet.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Yeah, So you always follow through. I don't.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, although I have to say I've still not had
a hot buttered rum.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Yeah. See, my whole problem comes it's an effort thing.
Like I get out the bottle of bourbon and the
I'm just like, well, I'll just pour this.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I really, I really don't even need a glass. I
can cut my hand and like bourbon down it.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, it's it's I should really put in the effort.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
This one does sound like a little bit of effort
until you really think about it. It's not that bad.
So so down in the Caribbean, it gets so hot
that you wonder do they know it's Christmas time at all? Yes? Yes,
they do actually, and in in the Caribbean, in Jamaica
in particular, there is a drink, a refreshing cold punch
(25:32):
called sorrel punch that apparently screams Christmas. It's part and
parcel with Christmas down there. But again, since it's hot,
they need something that's cool and refreshing. So we're gonna
go with Jamaican sorrel punch this year as the Christmas
drink because it sounds pretty great.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
All right, Well, should we just start with the ingredients?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, I mean we should we should say the first ingredient,
sorrel can be really confusing up here in the state.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, what's the deal there?
Speaker 2 (26:01):
So soirel is apparently a part or a flower of
the hibiscus plant, but it's not what those of us
in the United States would think of as the high
biscus flower. It's a different flower. And you can't use
hibiscus flowers or you'll die, You'll be haunted by Danny
the the You want to use straight up dried sorrel
(26:24):
plant flowers, okay, And you can actually find them online
for like five six bucks on like Amazon, or if
you're if you have an international market, you can probably
find them there in that whole like cellophane dried herb
section from other parts of the world, they're probably going
to be there. But you want to start with those.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
All right? A couple ounces? Yep, all right, that sounds good.
I can do that.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
You want to get some fresh ginger, where do you
do that? You should be able to find that anywhere.
You want to make two one inch cubes peeled and
then finally chop them three cloves. Is a good good
next ingredient?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah, I can taste it in my head.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, it's it's got like coming together Christmas spices. And
then this guy didn't use this this in his recipe,
but I also saw that you could at this point
add orange peels without the pith. You never want to
use the pith with an orange peel, and cinnamon sticks.
And you take all these things and you put them
in a heat proof bowl, and you boil five cups
(27:29):
of water in a saucepan and pour it over the
sorrel mixture. Okay, so basically what you're doing is making
a sorrel tea. Because you let it steep for at
least four hours or overnight.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
You're putting together your roue.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I guess I would say tea is closer than rue
the mother batch. There you go, you're making the mother bat.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
None of these things are applicable.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
So you let you let the mother batch tea ru
sit overnight and just steep. Right, And then you want
to make a simple syrup.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Yeah, I mean I would say if you make your
own simple syrup, if you have your own favorite recipe,
you can just use that, right sure?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah, special, No, it doesn't have to be special. You
just want to make a one to one simple syrup.
And since this is the Caribbean, you probably want to
just go with demorera that raw brown, not brown sugar,
but brownish in color. But de Moorera sugar is probably
a good one to use. But you make a simple syrup,
(28:29):
not a complicated syrup. No, a simple syrup. You get
yourself some good amber rum. Yeah, I would recommend getting
the good stuff because this is Christmas, guys.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
That one's a year.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
And then you add for you, you take the tea
that you've let steep for four hours or overnight, and
you strain out the ingredients in there, so you just
have the tea and then you add to it the
simple syrup in the rum, stir it up little darling
nice and then and then you add some ice cubes
(29:04):
and then garnished with lime and orange slices.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
All right, So as far as the amounts, we're talking
a couple of ounces of the sorrel flower. We already
said that. The how much ginger? Three whole cloves, five
and three quarters cups of water, three quarters cups of
sugar for your syrup, one and a half cups of
amber rum, a little more if you're you know, yeah,
to taste and then you know garnish at will Yep,
(29:30):
sounds delicious. I might have to make that this year.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
I cannot wait, man, I have the sorrel ordered.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Oh you do already? All right, Well I'm making it up,
all right. Maybe you can bring it to our our
holiday sauna party.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
You got it. I'll bring I'll have added rue to it,
some flour, flour and butter. It's just floating in clumps and.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
The man, that sounds good. Yeah, all right, so let's
hop back in the sleigh. It's cooled off a bit
because that took longer than I've thought. Yeah, so let's
heat this sucker back up and head over to another
part of the internet. All right, so we're back. We're
(30:13):
out of the sleigh and into the frying pan. Actually
that's not true, because that made it sound like we're
about to cook something.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
You are in a silly mood today, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I am. I think I've I think I'm mentally gone
on vacation.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
You're giddy with delirium.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
I am totally.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
I like it. Man, you should mentally go on vacation
a lot. It's a good fit.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
So we're gonna talk a little about missus claws. It
sort of occurred to me when we were putting this together.
I was like, you know what, you hear about Saint
Nick all the time and nowadays you see his wife
in the photo some but where did she come from?
Who is this woman? And I didn't know, but she
has not been around the entire time. Sanna used to
(30:56):
be very much the batch.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Yeah, I didn't realize that either. This article puts it
as kind of a loaner, which is funny. Yeah, but yeah,
he was given a wife finally for the first time
in eighteen forty nine. And there's an American author named
James Reese. And apparently there's an author named James Reese
that's working today. Oh and he's hogged up all of
(31:21):
the Google search engine patches. Cannot find any mention of
the other one. But there was apparently an author named
James Rees who wrote a short story entitled The Christmas Legend,
and it was published in eighteen forty nine.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
Yeah, I wonder what gave him the right. Don't get
me wrong, I love it, But why did he get
to say, like, you know what, I'm going to just
write in a missus clause?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I guess literary license yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Yeah, so is it canon? Did this get approval from
I guess George Lucas.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I think that just gets worked out over time, you know.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Yeah, I guess so probably huh if enough people buy
into it.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, although it sounds like she was kind of a
device that he used because he out of necessity, because
in the story, mister and Missus Claws are like delivering
presents to a family, right, And it turns out that
there is no mister and Missus Claus. It was really
a friendly couple that the family was friends with who
(32:20):
had dressed up as mister and Missus Claws.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Yeah, the burn bombs, right, So.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
The guy turns out to have no imagination whatsoever for
a short story writer.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yes, but she did stick a little bit, and then
she really started sticking in later years. She started kind
of popping up more and more in magazines and stories,
and then she showed up in a big way in
a picture book by Catherine Lee Bates, And this is
when she really took hold and everyone was like, Hey,
(32:54):
I love Sanna having a wife. She's super cool. She's
a strong lady that she is the woman behind the
man in the backbone of that whole operation. Right, And
who can argue with that?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Nobody, I mean, everybody liked the fact that Sanna had
finally settled down.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
He wasn't just sewing his oats across the world in
Chimney's all over the world.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Seriously, baby, I'll give you a riding my sleigh. You
know something that struck me that I hadn't really realized, Chuck,
missus Claus does not have an official first name.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Well, I looked into that, did you No, did you
find one? Apparently with artistic license, you can just name
or whatever you.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Want, right, Okay, that's what I found as well.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
And they're like, you know, Monica, Erica, Martha.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, Matha, which apparently is a typo.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Was it?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Maybe I wasn't sure. I didn't know if that was
just a variation.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
No, I'm sure it was a variation now, but at
the time it was probably a type.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
It was like a printer didn't have an R.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
So they were just right, exactly fine, just forget the R.
It's the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
No one cares Sandra that Sandra Claus. That sort of
rings a little bit. Who would you pick? What's your favorite?
Probably Rita that's what I was gonna go with. Yeah,
or Mary Mary Claus. Yeah, but because I mean also
you could.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Say Mary like emy r r y oh sure. The
one I do not agree with, I should say. The
two I do not agree with are Monica and Jessica.
Those are not missus Clau's names.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Monica Claus.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, it's weird, it's a little odd. Nothing nothing against
the name Monica, but just for missus Claus. Come on,
even Monica's can agree with that one?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
And then Jessica, that's just too. It's Jessica Rabbit's name
that has no business being part of missus Claus.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Agreed, Charles, mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
You found something else great on the internet that I
just found very heartening. It is a it's a way oh.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Ingle dingle jingle. Yes, parents, you may not want your
kids to hear this part. It is not dirty and
filthy or weird in any way. But depending how you
run Christmas in your household, if you know what I'm saying,
we just want to give you fair warning. So we'll
give you Let's just do a little Christmas music for
like five seconds. Oh good, gokay, okay.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
All right, hopefully you are not a psychopath, and you
got rid of any little kids who still believe.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yes, and hopefully Jerry inserted the music from the movie
Psycho instead of Christmas music.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
That would be wonderful, Yeah, because people would be like,
what are they?
Speaker 3 (35:53):
What happened?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
And understand it until we came back.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
All right? So I found this This is actually new
this year on the social medis. This lady named Charity
Hutchinson had a Facebook post that has really taken off.
Last I looked earlier that was gez had about thirty
thousand likes and has been shared quite a few times.
(36:20):
And she had a solution in her family on what
the conundrum parents face by lying to their children bald
face lying for years about the existence of a real
human Santa Claus as a person.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Right, So she, I guess tried this with her oldest
her firstborn recently, and they've both in the last couple
of years.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah, they fell for her client's sinker. And in a way,
it's a really great thing to do. But at the
same time, you're basically you're getting out of one lie
by creating another different lie.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Right, Oh not really?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Okay, All right, well, let's let everybody judge for themselves.
Let's describe this, okay, So Charity says that you start
off by taking your kid out for coffee. I didn't
realize that was the thing that you do with kids
these days, but apparently it is. So you take your
kid out for coffee or whatever, maybe a milk. Sure, yeah,
(37:20):
we'll let's go with one of those too. But you
take your kid out and you just basically say, hey,
you know what, I've noticed you doing a lot of
really great, kind, compassionate things this year, for example, this
and that, and the time you beat up that bully
who pushed down that smaller kid, that kind of thing,
the time you laid on that bird who had no
(37:42):
chance of surviving without his mother. Just some nice stuff, right,
And you say, you know, son or daughter, I think
you have become compassionate enough and old enough to become
a Santa Claus.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
And you drop your mic right, and you leave your
kid in Starbucks and you just walk down the street
feeling good about yourself.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
You get your car, you drive off to California to
start a new life with a new name.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
So no, you say, I want you, you're old not
to become Santa Claus. And then your kid is like
what yeah, and you say, get ready for your mind
to be blown, kid, because guess what. Here's the deal
with Sanna. Sanna is a construct sort of basically is
(38:31):
what you're trying to do is say you can become
Santa because Sanna is someone who just very kindly and
unselfishly gives something to others anonymously.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yeah, it's a it's being Santa is anybody could be Santa.
As long as you want to give to people just
for the sheer joy of making other people happy exactly
is Santa. And anybody who does that can be Santa.
And so hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you
try starting starting it out this year, Like, just pick
(39:07):
somebody that you know and like and say, find out
without them knowing what's going on, something that they really want,
and then go get it for him and wrap it
up and leave it for him. But here's the key.
You have to say that it's from Santa on the
little card or tag and you can never tell them.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
That it was you.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
That's pretty great, Yeah, And she backs it up by
making the point that being sand is not about getting credit,
it's about just giving for the joy of giving and
making other people happy. So yeah, just never tell so
that in that way you become Santa.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah, and it gives the kid all these lessons, you know,
understanding about what's going on around the world in their
own neighborhood. Maybe this article says it gives some providence
over their own innocence. It's a great point. I think
she said that it works so great with her older kid.
Now that kid is in on it, yep, trying to
help the the new batch about to lose their innocence. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Yeah, the thing is chuck and and I don't maybe
you know and I don't, But is there some standard
way that besides this that people recommend breaking the news
to kids.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Or well, I don't know about a standard, but there's
lots of different opinions on that. I put up a
Facebook post tangentially tangentially related to this, and people were
just kind of throwing out their ideas, and one of
them I think they got the most likes was this
guy that was like he does has never described Santa
(40:44):
as a person, he said, he has always from the
beginning described Santa as a like I said, as a construct.
Is that you don't say construct. You're three year old,
but you as just a part of the Christmas spirit.
It's a thing and not a person. Yeah, who literally
comes to your house. And he was like, I can't
tell any difference, Like they'd love that just as much
(41:06):
as I did, thinking it was a real guy. And
he said, you know, they see the Christmas specials and
they get that it's a made up thing, but it's
just a part of the whole idea of Christmas. Right,
So he was just kind of kind of truthful about
the whole thing. Yeah, and they're still delighted with Sanna
and when they see Santa and the mall, they aren't like,
you're a construct, although that would be great.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
It would be you did some part of you would
be pretty proud of your kid for that.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Yeah. I think is interesting though. I mean I don't
know what I'm gonna do yet, so I got to
think this over.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Yeah, because I mean there's probably parents listening right now
they're like, oh man, yeah, I don't want to do this,
but this is a pretty good out. So everybody give
Charity Hutchinson a pat on the back. Oh all right, Chuck,
(42:00):
it's almost time for soul punch.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
That's right, we're gonna wrap it up here. We crowdsource
some Facebook traditions from our listeners, and I asked for
specifically unusual traditions, and I wedded through, waded through the
ninety percent that were not unusual in any way, and
managed to find some pretty interesting things. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Oh yeah, so I was I don't know what percentage
I didn't see what percentage of the actual ideas submitted
this is, but some people have some pretty cool little
traditions that I just love. Agreed, So you want to start?
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah, So Victoria krum she says that on her father's
side of the family, he was I think he was Polish,
his Polish roots, and so in order to honor their
Polish roots, every year, their father makes a paupers meal
for Christmas Eve. Instead of you know, some big lavish,
extravagant thing. They made sour out soup and Parochi's and
(43:03):
the most reasonable priced cold water fish available.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Yeah, because it kind of honors like the humble roots
that their family has.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Yeah, that's great. So Victoria Kroum, good on you for
that one.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Nice. So how about Emily Ruth Vander.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Arks, Yes, this is actually a lot of people had this,
So this is a thing.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
So her mom hides a pickle ornament on the Christmas
tree somewhere right, and on Christmas Morning, everybody tries to
find it. Whoever finds it first gets a gift. And
Emily said that it started out just being like, oh, hey,
here's a piece of chocolate. Yeah, and the person would
just be like, just throw it to the ground. But
(43:44):
she said that it's gotten better over the years, so
now it's like up to like a Starbucks gift card.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Whoa yeah, yeah, I saw a lot of people with
this pickle thing though, so obviously it's a thing, and
she said it's regionalized.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
She said that her husband is a master ace at
finding the pickle. Yeah, and he wins it every year.
So Champ pickle Finder, Emily's husband, Emily's husband, So thanks, Emily.
Ruth vander Ark. That's a great name.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yep. Jessica Evans Totin Tautan, this is pretty good. I
love weird dads. After my parents got divorced, my dad
was in charge of getting and wrapping his own Christmas
presents for me and my three older sisters, and he
had a hard time knowing what to get us, so
he made a tradition of buying us a Barbie doll
every year along with a gift receipt, and he called
(44:32):
it a creative gift card. I just love that, basically, like,
I know you're going to take this back, but here,
here's something at least.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
And he also has a really fun time rejecting traditional
Christmas wrapping, right, So yeah, he would just put it
in a garbage bag for him this and then apparently
in his older years he's like, I can do better
than this, So now he goes to like thrift stores
in ventedge shops and finds old carpet or old briefcases.
(45:01):
That's awesome, and puts them in there. Yeah, which is
super eighties, like delivering a Barbie doll in a briefcase.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Yeah, and he's still doing it. They still get the barbie.
They're well into adulthood now, she points out, and he
still gets them the barbie every year. So I think
that's a really cool thing. And mister Evans, if that
is your name, sir, I salute you. Yep.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
So Catherine Joy Figley, Yeah, this is a good one.
She said that her husband's family wraps presence. They also
reject traditional Christmas paper wrapping paper, so they they kind
of have like a friendly competition or theme going where
they find the weirdest thing they can wrap it in.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Yeah, my favorite is the unused diaper. Yeah that's good.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
My favorite birthday wrapping paper?
Speaker 3 (45:50):
Oh yeah, I like it. Subversive.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
It is extremely saying like, yeah, I'm gonna use wrapping paper.
I'm just not gonna it for this particular holiday.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
Yeah, I like it. So that's from Catherine Joy Figley.
Keep that going, all right. Check.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
There's this cat named Nick Meller who has a great
Christmas Morning tradition with his mom, who he calls his mom.
So he probably spells color with a you.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
I think it's a lady too, Nick.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Oh, it could be Nicole, I guess yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
I think she's from Australia.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah, okay, well every Christmas morning, this would actually make
a lot of sense that she would be from Australia.
Every Christmas morning, her mom and she get up very
early and they go to the beach and this is
where the Australian clue it kicks in before the hordes
of people get there. The says are not very popular
in the Northern Hemisphere in Christmas time. But she says
(46:44):
that they grab a bottle of champagne and a huge
bucket of cherries and that's what they have for breakfast.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yeah, that's so neat.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Great Christmas tradition.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Let me see this one. I love, Tanya floyd Ellis.
Growing up, my mom and father in law, my grandpa,
would pass to each other a ba humbug can. They
both relish, disgusting and just sorry and disguising the can.
Don't worry, it gets disgusting to make it unrecognizable as
a rat present. And some of the more memorable additions
to the can, like you put junk in It was
(47:12):
a year's worth of Grandpa's tonios in there. That was
very nice. Pile of dog poop gathered in January and
left to cure until the next December. A clump of
ketchup packets held together by one broken packet now acting
as glue. I love that, Thank you, Tania floyd Ellis.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
That's a good one, all right. So how about Sarah
Flora Monte's Christmas tradition. Yes, so every year on Christmas Eve,
her whole family has an ice cream eating contest with
all of her cousins. Yeah, so whoever can finish a
half a gallon of ice cream within an hour. And
here's the key without throwing it up. When's a substantial
(47:52):
amount of cash? She says, She doesn't say how much,
she does use the word substantial. So she says that
it's nearly impossible to do this, and it's only been
done three times before out of probably one hundred attempts.
I'm thinking that they haven't been doing this for a century.
But just if you take the number of people who've
tried it over the years, yeah, you come up with
a hundred.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
She means, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
She says that a lot of people can finish but
not hold it down, and that's where that key comes in.
So there's a lot of vomiting going on at Sarah
Flora Monte's house on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah, and she posted pictures too. She posted a couple
one of the entire family sitting around with each with
a gallon half gallon of ice cream in front of them,
and then one of a couple of people doing that
with her her grandmother just like bitter and staring at them.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
She said, her grandmother hates it, so they're going to
do it as long as she's around.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
It's very nice. Here's one from Norma Mullen that's really
really neat. This is not gross or anything. Our family
has a tablecloth that goes on the Christmas dinner table
every year and everyone signs it with a fabric pen.
And they've been doing this since nineteen ninety four, so
they use the same tablecloth and they're able to look
back every year and look at all these memories and
(49:03):
along with obviously people they've lost over the years and
people that they've gained over the years. So that is
just super cool. It's older than most of her cousins,
and she can see how much their family has grown
year by year.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
That's really nice.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
And then how about Ryan Bradfields.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Ryan Bradfield's mom's family, who says it's a large Sicilian bunch.
They have a wind up et toy that they got
in the eighties and somehow it just became family tradition
for them to dress up the et doll as different
character and then they use it as a Christmas tree
topper for their grandparents tree.
Speaker 3 (49:42):
Yeah that's pretty great.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
So ET's been like Elvis, NBA player, Dolly parton your
favorite Yeah a show girl, And it turns out obviously weirdly,
but one of Bradfield's cousins married a member of the
or a friend I guess of this Spielberg family. So
they're trying to get them pictures of the et dressed up.
(50:04):
Over the years.
Speaker 3 (50:05):
I'm sure no one's ever tried to get Steven Spielberg
a funny et picture, right. This one is very sweet.
This is from Holly Henderson of Portland. She and her
husband bought their first house four years ago just outside
of Portland, and the very first night there, on Christmas Eve,
they spent the night in a mattress on the floor
(50:27):
next to the Christmas tree. And she says, now we
do that every year. We bring that mattress back in
the living room on Christmas Eve and sleep on the
mattress by the tree.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
It's very sweet, lovely. And then the last one, Chuck,
how about Chelsea Alan Lindsay's.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
Oh yeah, the Christmas route Bega, Yeah, I love weird families.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
So her family puts a Christmas Rutebiga out in the
living room along with the tree every year. And the
whole thing started from a car trip when they were
living in the UK, and she says that her grandma,
parents and her aunt had come to visit one Christmas time.
They were all in the car and everything was just
going nuts and crazy, and apparently Chelsea's mom started calling
(51:09):
the whole thing rude. Bega's on parade. Yeah, and I
love her mom. She bought a rudabaga and put it
on the dashboard of the car for the rest of
the trip, and then when she got home she made
a face for it out of clothes, put clothes, put
a wreath on it, and then it became a Christmas
root to Bega, Yeah, this is not just weird dad's weird.
(51:30):
Moms are great too.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
Sure you know. I got one more, Okay, because I
forgot Michelle Greenwald. I want to be in her family
because they have a holiday they invented called Pajamaica's. Oh yeah,
and I think I see you. I'll see where this
is going. It's the day before Christmas Eve even and
she said it was necessary since we were traveling for
(51:51):
Christmas Day and didn't have a day that was dedicated
just to the four of us in our family. So
Pajamaicus goes down like this. It's immediate family. They get
each other pajamas and change into the pajamas all together.
Well they're all wearing the pajamas in other words. And
then they watch Christmas movies and eat breakfast for dinner,
(52:13):
which is one of my favorite things.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
And it's like a no holds barred breakfast for dinner.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
Yes, yeah, she says. They cook all day and have
a huge breakfast spread like Latcus waffles, poached eggs, briosh,
you name it.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Yeah, whatever you want you get to have. Yeah for dinner.
Speaker 3 (52:29):
I don't know where the green walls are, but I
want to come over for pajamakas. Yeah, it sounds pretty
great to just invite me and I'll be there. Get
me pajamas with feet good. I got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (52:48):
So oh okay, well I guess this is the outro
then huh yeah, wow, this is great, Chuck. I mean,
it's it's officially now Christmas time.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
For us, that's right, and other wonderful year of stuff
you should know. Twenty sixteen. We're going to close the
books on this one and thank everyone, as we do
every year, for your support, because without you, there would
be no us. We really really don't take that for granted,
and actually a very special birthday shout out. I know
people that are born around Christmas always get jipped off
(53:21):
in the birthday department, but one of our most delightful
and oldest, most supportive fans, Miss Gail Coots. It's her
birthday on Christmas Eve, and her husband Mark was kind
enough to email me because he knows what a big
fan she is and Gail is wonderful. So happy birthday,
Gail from Ohio. You're the best. I hope we can
all meet up someday and sounds.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
Good right yep. So happy holidays to everybody. Merry Christmas,
Happy Honikah, Happy Kwanza, tip top tet all that jazz.
You guys have yourselves a wonderful holiday season from all
of us here at Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com. H
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