December 15, 2018 • 19 mins
Tis the season for giving, sharing meals with loved ones, and forgetting Mrs. Claus exists. No more!
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
Never told you. Early in my Stuff I've Never Told
Your career, I used to produce the Stuff I've Never
Told You video series with past host and Forever creator
(00:29):
Kristen Conger, and we did this super awkward, purposely awkward,
just to be clear, funny mini series called Her Story. Uh.
It was meant to be like a bad public access
show and it was a lot of work, but it
was one of my very favorite things, and it's still
on YouTube, so you can go check it out. Anyway,
we did an episode on Mrs Clause as in the
(00:53):
Mrs Claus married to Santa Claus. And at the time
we recorded it, we were on a super time crunch
because it was Christmas holidays, We're coming up and we
all had places to be, so I remember feeling incredibly
rushed and I kept thinking about, oh, I still have
to edit this, um. But when it came together, the
story of Mrs Claus was and it is so interesting
(01:15):
and often forgotten UM and I it's one of those
things I've never really thought about it before because all
the attention is always going to Santa. But this holiday season,
spare thought the off Forgotten Mrs Claus, Welcome to Stuff
Mom Never told you from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(01:41):
and welcome to the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristin. Kristin.
Happy holidays to you, Thank you, Melad Tidings, Bad Tidings.
We have been doing this podcast for almost a year
and something I always remarked to Christen is how doing
a podcast like this where you learn all sorts of
facts about women, just it can change your whole world view.
You know, a suing. You'll be out at dinner and
someone will say something kind of casually. You'll be like, whoa,
(02:03):
that is so patriarchal. Whoa whoa whoa, Yeah, that's exactly chick. No,
actually you can pick up the chick. And you know
if friend gets married and all of a son, you're like,
well you better go by miss. I mean it just
it clouds your worldview. And then something like Christmas and
well maybe clouds your worldview is the wrong way to
put it. Just opens your eyes to the way the
world runs and regards to some things. Yeah, you get
(02:25):
a different, you know, different perspective on things, which is
what we hope to present to our wonderful listeners. So
today we're gonna give maybe an exaggerated perspective, the exaggerated
feminist perspective, perhaps on Santa Claus. Yeah, I mean, maybe
it's time. It's time we took Santa down a notch,
because who who is this guy who comes and breaks
(02:45):
into our houses while we're asleep, you know, And and
we were supposed to make cookies for him, We're supposed
to like crawl up into his lap at a crowded
mall to ask him for something new and shiny. And
you know, I mean, what what is that? I mean,
we just a few podcasts ago, we're talking about Edward
Cullen and we totally distant for all of those things. Yeah, yeah,
(03:09):
and you know, and and let's also point out no one,
no one asked Santa to go on a diet. But
if you pick up any women's magazine between now and January,
I guarantee there will be at least one article about
holiday weight exactly. I mean, can you can I mean
double standard? Is this a patriarchohol day or what? And
so one time we were reading this article about, you know,
(03:30):
how women are sometimes in the shadow of their male husbands,
and I think that one woman who's definitely been in
the shadow for too long is Mrs Santa Claus. We
don't even know her name. We know Chris, Chris Kringle,
Santa Claus, Mrs Santa Claus, she has no name, what's
your name? And she's a missus. We've talked about that,
We've talked about whether ms should be sort of a
(03:52):
feminist standard. All of a sudden, she's just going by
her husband's name. Obviously changed her name when she got married.
I mean, this is this holiday is leading up to
a combination of all our previous podcasts. Think, Kristen, this
is really what we've been working up to. Um. But
one thing I thought was kind of kind of cool
about Mrs Claus was that she also her emergence in
(04:13):
holiday lore I think kind of symbolizes, um, how Christmas evolved,
in the celebration of Christmas evolved. True, because for a
long time, basically Christmas was set up as this day
that was facilitated by one guy driving around in a
sleigh and delivering all presents. He's responsible for everything. And yeah,
(04:33):
I admit Santa does a lot on Christmas Eve. Yeah,
I mean it's kind of busy he's I mean, he
does an awful lot. I don't want to discount his achievements,
even if I do find him a little creepy, but
and also impressive that he can eat that many cookies
in one night. Do you think maybe he's at risk
for diabetes? And that much milk, all that dairy well
milk does make a body strong. What if Santa was
(04:54):
like disindolerant? Have you ever thought about that? But you
know who we'd expect to take care of him in
that guard, Mrs Clause Clause. And that's the thing that
we're going to try and get out today is behind
every good man, in this case, Santa Clause, there are
a ton of great women who without whom he would
not be possible. Yeah, we first see and we found
this out in a paper by Carol Anne Marling called
(05:16):
the Revenge of Mrs Claus Mrs Santa Claus Um. And
she found in her research that the first instance of
Mrs Santa Claus pops up in a children's publication called
Harper's Young People in eight one, and it was, you know,
Marlon calls it sort of an unremarkable Christmas story and
that I'll you know, all of a sudden, Mrs Santa
(05:36):
Claus pops up. She's described as plump, much like her husband,
good natured, and her jobs include being the supervisor of
the North Pole Bakery and candy factory, and she also
trimmed hats for Christmas dolls for the little girls. But
unlike the docile Elves, Mrs Claus did not like it
when she did not receive credit for for all the
(05:58):
work that she did, I know, which is sort of
an interesting thing because you think about the North Pole
being all cheery. Maybe Mrs Claus was sort of like
um Lily Leadbetter of her time, wanting to do credit
and reward for the work she did. Yeah, and you know,
and rightly so. But those were a lot of little
hats that she had to trim. I mean, all Santa
had to do was make blocks for the boys, and
there were other and why are these toys so gendered?
(06:19):
I diright, alright? Uh? And there were also a number of,
you know, other notable women who put their mark on
this portrayal of Mrs Santa Clausum, including Catherine Lee Bates,
who wrote the words to America The Beautiful Um, and
she wrote a biography of Santa Mrs Santa Claus in
(06:40):
called Goody Santa Claus on a sleigh ride. I don't
know if that means that her name was Goody, do
you know. I don't know why she would take on
the whole name though, Goody Santa Claus maybe, so it
might just be it might just be vernacular at the time.
And then we also have Lucimate Alcott, who wrote Little Women, um,
who also mentions Mrs Claws in one of her many
(07:02):
magazine stories, and she also portrayed her as bespectacled and childless.
And what she would do is she would wait patiently
for her husband's return from a night in the world's
chimneys on Christmas Eve. So now all of this is
happening in the eighteen eighties, late um, eighteen hundreds, turn
of the century, and it's a it's a pretty market
(07:22):
contrast to the stuff that had come before. Like think
of Clement Moore's famous poem about the Night before Christmas
got the Jolly Old Elf. Um. There were a lot
of artists at the time who were just showing Chris
Chris Kringle working all year long to bring all these toys. Um.
He was living alone though he was a bachelor in
all these earlier versions of him, and by the eighteen
(07:44):
eighties women were sort of maybe a little disgruntled about
such a depiction. Yeah, because by this time Christmas would
really become the primary like annual celebration um in American homes,
and so a lot of the asked for decorating the
house and fixing the figgy pudding and trimming the tree
(08:06):
and lighting the candles fell to the women of the house.
So it became this sort of like domestic Olympics at
Christmas time because there was so much to do. Um.
The women were in charge of wrapping all this just
domestic finery. And women were kind of like, there's no
way that that bachelor living up there with all those
elves can do this by himself, and that's that's why
they think maybe Mrs Claus came into being yeah. Um.
(08:28):
And then she mentions, Caroline Marlon mentions in her paper
that in nine ten there is a Good Housekeeping um
forum and for men about Christmas, and they basically, um
kind of confirmed this idea that women were the ones
who kind of made Christmas added the Christmas finery to
(08:49):
the occasion. They were like, oh, just if you want
to give me a box of cigars, there's no need
to wrap it up. Give me the cigar. So all
your memories of wrapped presents and the smell of baking
and all these things that people you know probably lists
their main Christmas memories were done by women that they're
getting from women's magazines, and thus women's magazines writers like
Luis may Alcott took the time to give Santa a
(09:11):
domestic partner. And this article We keeps Signing by Carol
Anne Marling. She goes on to sort of make a
hypothesis that our modern day Mrs Claus, aside from the
one who does live in the North Pole, is Martha Stewart,
who you know, just does does turn Christmas into a
domestic Olympics and shows you how to do it upright.
I think Martha deserves her own podcast at some point,
But I just thought that was sort of an interesting
(09:33):
argument that we see Mrs Claus as this person who
just keeps the North Pole running. Santa couldn't do with that,
or she's got to oversee elf. She's got a feed reindeer,
she's got a feed Santa's cookies. The other three D
sixty four days of the year. She's got a lot
to do and I think would be better if she
was a little more celebrated. Yeah, now, speaking of Santa's helpers, Molly,
(10:04):
there are some possible women. This is a very contentious okay,
topics that we're about to bring up. Okay, the issue
of the reindeer, because Santa could not fly around the
world without the reindeer. The reindeer. Yeah, without the reindeer,
Christmas would be could put. But the question is are
these reindeer actually female reindeer? I mean, you wouldn't think
(10:28):
so just by the songs you know about these reindeer.
I mean, I don't know any other girl's named Rudolph, Yeah,
or Donda or blitz In Yeah, I mean Vixen. Maybe
you could kind of see her being like a tomboy
girl who got in with the guys. But why would
we think the reindeer are women? Because in popular culture,
if you look at all the pictures, I've never seen
a reindeer, even though I used to stay up all
night looking for them. Um, in all the pictures of
(10:51):
Santa that have been taken with the reindeer, the reindeer
have antlers, and we learned that reindeer and caribou are
the only deer where the male as females and calves
produced antlers, and they shed them annually every year, which
is why I just said annually. Um. But the female
or cows, um. The female reindeer will keep their antlers
(11:15):
longer than the males will. So, according to snopes dot Com,
the fact that Santa's reindeer still have antlers on December
a k a. Christmas Eve indicates that they are likely female,
right because the males would have shed their antlers by
that point right now. Snopes goes on to say that
(11:37):
there are a few problems with this theory. One possible
theory is that um other sletters other people who use
sleighs often use castrated males known as steers, who might
still have their antlers. Now. The reason that you would
want to use a steer, um sletters say, is because
that they're going to be in better bodily shape by winter,
(11:58):
because they've been mating and all the months leading up
to December. So you're gonna have a mail that's fresh
as opposed to one that's kind of worn out. Although
I don't tend to think of a lot of mating
going on up at the North Pole. But I don't
really know that much about reindeer. Yeah, I mean, and
even if that is the case, it's in as reindeers
are just a pack of steers. I think it also
has a nice twist on Christmas that he's just flying
(12:21):
around with his band of eunuchs, his castrated males. Maybe
that's why they wouldn't let Rudolph play in their reindeer games.
They were grumpy. Yeah. Um, But there is another theory
that um Snopes points out is that already there there
are a few other species of reindeer that, believe it
or not, can fly. Um, so that was pretty much
(12:42):
the only one. So they do say that the fact
that this is a certain species of reindeer that can
fly might indicate that they might be able to keep
their antlers longer than other types of reindeer. However, christ
and I'm gonna prefer to think that it's all ladies
up there pulling Santi around with their ingenious sense of direction.
Is now another lady of Christmas of the winter Yule
(13:15):
tide season that we found that we thought was kind
of cool. Um who also helps st Nick. This a
woman called Laba Fauna. Laba Fauna, she is an Italian
lady who also brings children gifts. She doesn't do it
on Christmas Eve. She tends to come more around Epiphany,
which is January January six. And according to the Italian legend,
(13:39):
when the wise men went out looking for the baby Jesus,
they stopped by Laba Fauna's house, and she's this old
lady who had lost like her husband and her child,
and so she tended her house very diligently and kept
herself busy, and so the wise men stopped by to
see if she could point them in the direction of
the Christ child, and Laba Fauna said, not really, no,
(14:01):
I don't know. I don't I don't know where he is.
I'm just sweeping my heart, keeping clean, making something, making
some things. Uh. And they asked if she would want
to come along on their journey, and she also declined.
But then Lata Funa got to thinking. She you know,
she was a widow, she used to have a child
of her own, and she was like, I love children,
I miss my child, and I bet that new mom
(14:22):
needs some help, which I just think is a great
sign of female solidarity. I don't think she was going
to go and judge that lady for any parenting decisions
she was making, such as co sleeping, her breastfeeding. She
just wanted to help out or immaculate conception. True, she's
not even gonna touched that one. All she does is
she packs up her broom, she puts some gifts for
the child in a sack, and she sets off to
find this christ child Um, like the Wise Man had
(14:44):
told her about Um. But she couldn't find him. So
she stopped in at all the houses to see if
that's the house she was looking for, and as long
as she was there, might as well leave a gift
for the child. And that's what she continues to do.
That's the legend of La Pafano. So if you're in Italy,
you know that you've got to be good. You got
to write your note to Laba fun and ask her
to visit you. And if you're bad, she's going to
bring you a call, not sweets or toys. No. So UM,
(15:09):
I think that that's a pretty cool legend of a
lady who helps out St. Nick. And these are the
these are the examples we have found. There might be
some more ladies out there. Behind st nick, So if
you know of any right in Yeah, and speaking of
writing in, why don't we do some listener mail? Okay? Well,
(15:29):
to start things off, I've got an email here from
Joyce and she was responding to our episode on co sleeping.
She said, I was kind of disappointed in your podcast
on co Sleeping with Baby, since you hinted about your
youthful age and acknowledge that you're not parents yourselves. I
felt you're rather unqualified to be speaking on such a topic.
It sounded like you're just some naive girls who read
(15:50):
and rehash some articles from Wikipedia or baby center dot com.
Side note, we actually didn't use either of those sites.
I'm not saying this to bring you down. I'm just
saying that it's kind of cute. You reminded me of
myself ten years ago. And while this it is possible
to be both cute and inchaligent, this podcast really was
almost embarrassingly too cute. I suggest that next time you
do a show on a parenting topic, please included guests
(16:12):
who is more experienced, say a pediatrician, doula, are just
a plain parent, and I will take your word with
more than just a grain of salt cheers, Joyce. It's
a valid point, I think. I think, I wrote back
Joyce that we'd also done things um like on roller
Derby and vampires and witches, and we were none of
those things either. But that's why we rely on our
listeners to write in and tell us what it's actually
(16:34):
like to co sleep with the baby. And you can
rest assure that our sources are far more credible in
places like Wikipedia and baby center dot com. We do
take a lot of time to try to find very valid,
credible sources of inflammation. Next up an email from Christopher,
who writes in about the panty Hose podcast. He claims
(16:55):
to be one of the males that does wear pantyhose.
He writes, I am a construction worker and I only
wear them during cold other and under only under clothes.
I find that they help keep my feet and legs
warm in cold weather and much more comfortable to wear
than insulated underwear. No one that I work with knows
that I wear them, only my wife does. So yes,
my wife knows that I do this and does not
have a problem with it. I first started wearing them
when I played football in high school, and believe it
(17:16):
or not many of the guys did this, Molly, he
writes to me. And now you say you do not
like wearing pantyhose, but have you ever tried wearing some
better brands. It really does make a difference in how
they feel. My wife says she only likes to wear
the silky type. They generally cost a little more, but
according to my wife, makes it big difference. Last, but
not least, meeting a guy. I know that seeing a
woman in panty hose always gives my attention. I would
(17:37):
tell any single girl if they want to draw attention
to themselves, were sheer panty hose and see for yourself
how many guys will look your way. Most guys, whether
they admit it or not, find women in hosiery very attractive. So,
Molly and Kristen, now you're in this to Kristen. So
Molly and Kristen, you need to take my challenge and
go out on the town wearing pantyhose and see how
many more men will look your way. Well, Molly, today
I up to the auntie. Not only am I wearing pantyhose,
(17:59):
I'm wearing red pantyos. So we'll got to lunch and
we'll see how a manuet look your way or a
part back um. And to cap things off, we've got
an email in from Caitlin. She was responding to you
our episode on breastfeeding, and she said, as a breastfeeding mother,
I appreciate your insights and thought you handled the controversial
subject in an unbiased way. Before I had my son,
(18:19):
I knew I was going to breastfeed whenever he was hungry,
and I didn't want to retreat to a bathroom stall
since nowhere um in my college campus are their lactation rooms.
I also knew that I didn't want to and could
not afford to leave him with someone else while I
finished my bachelor's degree, so he goes to class and
work with me. Hence I find breastfeeding in the halls
and lobbies and the student center and even doing class.
I've actually been surprised that no one has ever had
(18:41):
a problem with this, or at least voiced it to me.
Some of my fellows students have even commented that they
didn't realize what I was doing, and my class only
has twenty people in it. My professors have been completely
supportive of me, and one even offered to hold my
son while I gave a presentation my class yesterday. I
think our society should be more supportive of breastfeeding mothers
and keeping their babies with them during the day. I'm
(19:01):
still just as productive as before, and I do not
feel like I'm distracting anyone by having my son around.
I think that's so cool. You can take him everywhere. Yeah. So,
if you guys have got something to share about any
of our topics or things you'd like to see become topics,
you can email us It's mom stuff at how stuffworks
dot com. You can also check out our blog, how
to Stuff, and if you want to learn a ton
(19:22):
about Christmas, you can do that at how stuff works
dot com and other Holidays. Also at how stuffworks dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Because at how stuff works dot com. Want more how
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
works dot com home page
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
Never told you. Early in my Stuff I've Never Told
Your career, I used to produce the Stuff I've Never
Told You video series with past host and Forever creator
(00:29):
Kristen Conger, and we did this super awkward, purposely awkward,
just to be clear, funny mini series called Her Story. Uh.
It was meant to be like a bad public access
show and it was a lot of work, but it
was one of my very favorite things, and it's still
on YouTube, so you can go check it out. Anyway,
we did an episode on Mrs Clause as in the
(00:53):
Mrs Claus married to Santa Claus. And at the time
we recorded it, we were on a super time crunch
because it was Christmas holidays, We're coming up and we
all had places to be, so I remember feeling incredibly
rushed and I kept thinking about, oh, I still have
to edit this, um. But when it came together, the
story of Mrs Claus was and it is so interesting
(01:15):
and often forgotten UM and I it's one of those
things I've never really thought about it before because all
the attention is always going to Santa. But this holiday season,
spare thought the off Forgotten Mrs Claus, Welcome to Stuff
Mom Never told you from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(01:41):
and welcome to the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristin. Kristin.
Happy holidays to you, Thank you, Melad Tidings, Bad Tidings.
We have been doing this podcast for almost a year
and something I always remarked to Christen is how doing
a podcast like this where you learn all sorts of
facts about women, just it can change your whole world view.
You know, a suing. You'll be out at dinner and
someone will say something kind of casually. You'll be like, whoa,
(02:03):
that is so patriarchal. Whoa whoa whoa, Yeah, that's exactly chick. No,
actually you can pick up the chick. And you know
if friend gets married and all of a son, you're like,
well you better go by miss. I mean it just
it clouds your worldview. And then something like Christmas and
well maybe clouds your worldview is the wrong way to
put it. Just opens your eyes to the way the
world runs and regards to some things. Yeah, you get
(02:25):
a different, you know, different perspective on things, which is
what we hope to present to our wonderful listeners. So
today we're gonna give maybe an exaggerated perspective, the exaggerated
feminist perspective, perhaps on Santa Claus. Yeah, I mean, maybe
it's time. It's time we took Santa down a notch,
because who who is this guy who comes and breaks
(02:45):
into our houses while we're asleep, you know, And and
we were supposed to make cookies for him, We're supposed
to like crawl up into his lap at a crowded
mall to ask him for something new and shiny. And
you know, I mean, what what is that? I mean,
we just a few podcasts ago, we're talking about Edward
Cullen and we totally distant for all of those things. Yeah, yeah,
(03:09):
and you know, and and let's also point out no one,
no one asked Santa to go on a diet. But
if you pick up any women's magazine between now and January,
I guarantee there will be at least one article about
holiday weight exactly. I mean, can you can I mean
double standard? Is this a patriarchohol day or what? And
so one time we were reading this article about, you know,
(03:30):
how women are sometimes in the shadow of their male husbands,
and I think that one woman who's definitely been in
the shadow for too long is Mrs Santa Claus. We
don't even know her name. We know Chris, Chris Kringle,
Santa Claus, Mrs Santa Claus, she has no name, what's
your name? And she's a missus. We've talked about that,
We've talked about whether ms should be sort of a
(03:52):
feminist standard. All of a sudden, she's just going by
her husband's name. Obviously changed her name when she got married.
I mean, this is this holiday is leading up to
a combination of all our previous podcasts. Think, Kristen, this
is really what we've been working up to. Um. But
one thing I thought was kind of kind of cool
about Mrs Claus was that she also her emergence in
(04:13):
holiday lore I think kind of symbolizes, um, how Christmas evolved,
in the celebration of Christmas evolved. True, because for a
long time, basically Christmas was set up as this day
that was facilitated by one guy driving around in a
sleigh and delivering all presents. He's responsible for everything. And yeah,
(04:33):
I admit Santa does a lot on Christmas Eve. Yeah,
I mean it's kind of busy he's I mean, he
does an awful lot. I don't want to discount his achievements,
even if I do find him a little creepy, but
and also impressive that he can eat that many cookies
in one night. Do you think maybe he's at risk
for diabetes? And that much milk, all that dairy well
milk does make a body strong. What if Santa was
(04:54):
like disindolerant? Have you ever thought about that? But you
know who we'd expect to take care of him in
that guard, Mrs Clause Clause. And that's the thing that
we're going to try and get out today is behind
every good man, in this case, Santa Clause, there are
a ton of great women who without whom he would
not be possible. Yeah, we first see and we found
this out in a paper by Carol Anne Marling called
(05:16):
the Revenge of Mrs Claus Mrs Santa Claus Um. And
she found in her research that the first instance of
Mrs Santa Claus pops up in a children's publication called
Harper's Young People in eight one, and it was, you know,
Marlon calls it sort of an unremarkable Christmas story and
that I'll you know, all of a sudden, Mrs Santa
(05:36):
Claus pops up. She's described as plump, much like her husband,
good natured, and her jobs include being the supervisor of
the North Pole Bakery and candy factory, and she also
trimmed hats for Christmas dolls for the little girls. But
unlike the docile Elves, Mrs Claus did not like it
when she did not receive credit for for all the
(05:58):
work that she did, I know, which is sort of
an interesting thing because you think about the North Pole
being all cheery. Maybe Mrs Claus was sort of like
um Lily Leadbetter of her time, wanting to do credit
and reward for the work she did. Yeah, and you know,
and rightly so. But those were a lot of little
hats that she had to trim. I mean, all Santa
had to do was make blocks for the boys, and
there were other and why are these toys so gendered?
(06:19):
I diright, alright? Uh? And there were also a number of,
you know, other notable women who put their mark on
this portrayal of Mrs Santa Clausum, including Catherine Lee Bates,
who wrote the words to America The Beautiful Um, and
she wrote a biography of Santa Mrs Santa Claus in
(06:40):
called Goody Santa Claus on a sleigh ride. I don't
know if that means that her name was Goody, do
you know. I don't know why she would take on
the whole name though, Goody Santa Claus maybe, so it
might just be it might just be vernacular at the time.
And then we also have Lucimate Alcott, who wrote Little Women, um,
who also mentions Mrs Claws in one of her many
(07:02):
magazine stories, and she also portrayed her as bespectacled and childless.
And what she would do is she would wait patiently
for her husband's return from a night in the world's
chimneys on Christmas Eve. So now all of this is
happening in the eighteen eighties, late um, eighteen hundreds, turn
of the century, and it's a it's a pretty market
(07:22):
contrast to the stuff that had come before. Like think
of Clement Moore's famous poem about the Night before Christmas
got the Jolly Old Elf. Um. There were a lot
of artists at the time who were just showing Chris
Chris Kringle working all year long to bring all these toys. Um.
He was living alone though he was a bachelor in
all these earlier versions of him, and by the eighteen
(07:44):
eighties women were sort of maybe a little disgruntled about
such a depiction. Yeah, because by this time Christmas would
really become the primary like annual celebration um in American homes,
and so a lot of the asked for decorating the
house and fixing the figgy pudding and trimming the tree
(08:06):
and lighting the candles fell to the women of the house.
So it became this sort of like domestic Olympics at
Christmas time because there was so much to do. Um.
The women were in charge of wrapping all this just
domestic finery. And women were kind of like, there's no
way that that bachelor living up there with all those
elves can do this by himself, and that's that's why
they think maybe Mrs Claus came into being yeah. Um.
(08:28):
And then she mentions, Caroline Marlon mentions in her paper
that in nine ten there is a Good Housekeeping um
forum and for men about Christmas, and they basically, um
kind of confirmed this idea that women were the ones
who kind of made Christmas added the Christmas finery to
(08:49):
the occasion. They were like, oh, just if you want
to give me a box of cigars, there's no need
to wrap it up. Give me the cigar. So all
your memories of wrapped presents and the smell of baking
and all these things that people you know probably lists
their main Christmas memories were done by women that they're
getting from women's magazines, and thus women's magazines writers like
Luis may Alcott took the time to give Santa a
(09:11):
domestic partner. And this article We keeps Signing by Carol
Anne Marling. She goes on to sort of make a
hypothesis that our modern day Mrs Claus, aside from the
one who does live in the North Pole, is Martha Stewart,
who you know, just does does turn Christmas into a
domestic Olympics and shows you how to do it upright.
I think Martha deserves her own podcast at some point,
But I just thought that was sort of an interesting
(09:33):
argument that we see Mrs Claus as this person who
just keeps the North Pole running. Santa couldn't do with that,
or she's got to oversee elf. She's got a feed reindeer,
she's got a feed Santa's cookies. The other three D
sixty four days of the year. She's got a lot
to do and I think would be better if she
was a little more celebrated. Yeah, now, speaking of Santa's helpers, Molly,
(10:04):
there are some possible women. This is a very contentious okay,
topics that we're about to bring up. Okay, the issue
of the reindeer, because Santa could not fly around the
world without the reindeer. The reindeer. Yeah, without the reindeer,
Christmas would be could put. But the question is are
these reindeer actually female reindeer? I mean, you wouldn't think
(10:28):
so just by the songs you know about these reindeer.
I mean, I don't know any other girl's named Rudolph, Yeah,
or Donda or blitz In Yeah, I mean Vixen. Maybe
you could kind of see her being like a tomboy
girl who got in with the guys. But why would
we think the reindeer are women? Because in popular culture,
if you look at all the pictures, I've never seen
a reindeer, even though I used to stay up all
night looking for them. Um, in all the pictures of
(10:51):
Santa that have been taken with the reindeer, the reindeer
have antlers, and we learned that reindeer and caribou are
the only deer where the male as females and calves
produced antlers, and they shed them annually every year, which
is why I just said annually. Um. But the female
or cows, um. The female reindeer will keep their antlers
(11:15):
longer than the males will. So, according to snopes dot Com,
the fact that Santa's reindeer still have antlers on December
a k a. Christmas Eve indicates that they are likely female,
right because the males would have shed their antlers by
that point right now. Snopes goes on to say that
(11:37):
there are a few problems with this theory. One possible
theory is that um other sletters other people who use
sleighs often use castrated males known as steers, who might
still have their antlers. Now. The reason that you would
want to use a steer, um sletters say, is because
that they're going to be in better bodily shape by winter,
(11:58):
because they've been mating and all the months leading up
to December. So you're gonna have a mail that's fresh
as opposed to one that's kind of worn out. Although
I don't tend to think of a lot of mating
going on up at the North Pole. But I don't
really know that much about reindeer. Yeah, I mean, and
even if that is the case, it's in as reindeers
are just a pack of steers. I think it also
has a nice twist on Christmas that he's just flying
(12:21):
around with his band of eunuchs, his castrated males. Maybe
that's why they wouldn't let Rudolph play in their reindeer games.
They were grumpy. Yeah. Um, But there is another theory
that um Snopes points out is that already there there
are a few other species of reindeer that, believe it
or not, can fly. Um, so that was pretty much
(12:42):
the only one. So they do say that the fact
that this is a certain species of reindeer that can
fly might indicate that they might be able to keep
their antlers longer than other types of reindeer. However, christ
and I'm gonna prefer to think that it's all ladies
up there pulling Santi around with their ingenious sense of direction.
Is now another lady of Christmas of the winter Yule
(13:15):
tide season that we found that we thought was kind
of cool. Um who also helps st Nick. This a
woman called Laba Fauna. Laba Fauna, she is an Italian
lady who also brings children gifts. She doesn't do it
on Christmas Eve. She tends to come more around Epiphany,
which is January January six. And according to the Italian legend,
(13:39):
when the wise men went out looking for the baby Jesus,
they stopped by Laba Fauna's house, and she's this old
lady who had lost like her husband and her child,
and so she tended her house very diligently and kept
herself busy, and so the wise men stopped by to
see if she could point them in the direction of
the Christ child, and Laba Fauna said, not really, no,
(14:01):
I don't know. I don't I don't know where he is.
I'm just sweeping my heart, keeping clean, making something, making
some things. Uh. And they asked if she would want
to come along on their journey, and she also declined.
But then Lata Funa got to thinking. She you know,
she was a widow, she used to have a child
of her own, and she was like, I love children,
I miss my child, and I bet that new mom
(14:22):
needs some help, which I just think is a great
sign of female solidarity. I don't think she was going
to go and judge that lady for any parenting decisions
she was making, such as co sleeping, her breastfeeding. She
just wanted to help out or immaculate conception. True, she's
not even gonna touched that one. All she does is
she packs up her broom, she puts some gifts for
the child in a sack, and she sets off to
find this christ child Um, like the Wise Man had
(14:44):
told her about Um. But she couldn't find him. So
she stopped in at all the houses to see if
that's the house she was looking for, and as long
as she was there, might as well leave a gift
for the child. And that's what she continues to do.
That's the legend of La Pafano. So if you're in Italy,
you know that you've got to be good. You got
to write your note to Laba fun and ask her
to visit you. And if you're bad, she's going to
bring you a call, not sweets or toys. No. So UM,
(15:09):
I think that that's a pretty cool legend of a
lady who helps out St. Nick. And these are the
these are the examples we have found. There might be
some more ladies out there. Behind st nick, So if
you know of any right in Yeah, and speaking of
writing in, why don't we do some listener mail? Okay? Well,
(15:29):
to start things off, I've got an email here from
Joyce and she was responding to our episode on co sleeping.
She said, I was kind of disappointed in your podcast
on co Sleeping with Baby, since you hinted about your
youthful age and acknowledge that you're not parents yourselves. I
felt you're rather unqualified to be speaking on such a topic.
It sounded like you're just some naive girls who read
(15:50):
and rehash some articles from Wikipedia or baby center dot com.
Side note, we actually didn't use either of those sites.
I'm not saying this to bring you down. I'm just
saying that it's kind of cute. You reminded me of
myself ten years ago. And while this it is possible
to be both cute and inchaligent, this podcast really was
almost embarrassingly too cute. I suggest that next time you
do a show on a parenting topic, please included guests
(16:12):
who is more experienced, say a pediatrician, doula, are just
a plain parent, and I will take your word with
more than just a grain of salt cheers, Joyce. It's
a valid point, I think. I think, I wrote back
Joyce that we'd also done things um like on roller
Derby and vampires and witches, and we were none of
those things either. But that's why we rely on our
listeners to write in and tell us what it's actually
(16:34):
like to co sleep with the baby. And you can
rest assure that our sources are far more credible in
places like Wikipedia and baby center dot com. We do
take a lot of time to try to find very valid,
credible sources of inflammation. Next up an email from Christopher,
who writes in about the panty Hose podcast. He claims
(16:55):
to be one of the males that does wear pantyhose.
He writes, I am a construction worker and I only
wear them during cold other and under only under clothes.
I find that they help keep my feet and legs
warm in cold weather and much more comfortable to wear
than insulated underwear. No one that I work with knows
that I wear them, only my wife does. So yes,
my wife knows that I do this and does not
have a problem with it. I first started wearing them
when I played football in high school, and believe it
(17:16):
or not many of the guys did this, Molly, he
writes to me. And now you say you do not
like wearing pantyhose, but have you ever tried wearing some
better brands. It really does make a difference in how
they feel. My wife says she only likes to wear
the silky type. They generally cost a little more, but
according to my wife, makes it big difference. Last, but
not least, meeting a guy. I know that seeing a
woman in panty hose always gives my attention. I would
(17:37):
tell any single girl if they want to draw attention
to themselves, were sheer panty hose and see for yourself
how many guys will look your way. Most guys, whether
they admit it or not, find women in hosiery very attractive. So,
Molly and Kristen, now you're in this to Kristen. So
Molly and Kristen, you need to take my challenge and
go out on the town wearing pantyhose and see how
many more men will look your way. Well, Molly, today
I up to the auntie. Not only am I wearing pantyhose,
(17:59):
I'm wearing red pantyos. So we'll got to lunch and
we'll see how a manuet look your way or a
part back um. And to cap things off, we've got
an email in from Caitlin. She was responding to you
our episode on breastfeeding, and she said, as a breastfeeding mother,
I appreciate your insights and thought you handled the controversial
subject in an unbiased way. Before I had my son,
(18:19):
I knew I was going to breastfeed whenever he was hungry,
and I didn't want to retreat to a bathroom stall
since nowhere um in my college campus are their lactation rooms.
I also knew that I didn't want to and could
not afford to leave him with someone else while I
finished my bachelor's degree, so he goes to class and
work with me. Hence I find breastfeeding in the halls
and lobbies and the student center and even doing class.
I've actually been surprised that no one has ever had
(18:41):
a problem with this, or at least voiced it to me.
Some of my fellows students have even commented that they
didn't realize what I was doing, and my class only
has twenty people in it. My professors have been completely
supportive of me, and one even offered to hold my
son while I gave a presentation my class yesterday. I
think our society should be more supportive of breastfeeding mothers
and keeping their babies with them during the day. I'm
(19:01):
still just as productive as before, and I do not
feel like I'm distracting anyone by having my son around.
I think that's so cool. You can take him everywhere. Yeah. So,
if you guys have got something to share about any
of our topics or things you'd like to see become topics,
you can email us It's mom stuff at how stuffworks
dot com. You can also check out our blog, how
to Stuff, and if you want to learn a ton
(19:22):
about Christmas, you can do that at how stuff works
dot com and other Holidays. Also at how stuffworks dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Because at how stuff works dot com. Want more how
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
works dot com home page
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