December 23, 2015 • 33 mins
In addition to the characters we talked about on our last episode, there are even more colorful holiday traditions that may be a bit surprising to people who didn't grow up with them. That includes the ogress of Iceland and the Catalan pooping log. Read the show notes here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm tray cbe Wilson. And in
the first part of this two parter, we started our
discussion of a sampling of winter holiday characters that are
(00:21):
beyond Santa Claus, which is sort of the most popular
one here in the United States. And this uh two
part episode started because we have gotten lots of requests
about Crampus, but there are also some other really unique
folkloric icons tied to this time of year, and we
wanted to give them a little bit of play. And
while most of them have a theme along the lines
(00:41):
of teaching or scaring children into behaving, there's still a
pretty interesting variety among them. So in the first episode
we talked about Austria's Crampus, Italy's Laba Fauna, the Epiphany,
which and Center Claus, and Vota Pete of the Netherlands.
And we're gonna start this time around with a character
that shares some similarities with the other St. Nicholas based
(01:01):
winter visitors that have been already discussed in that episode,
and we'll have some more here and that is bell Snickel.
If you've watched the American version of the Office, which
I will confess now I have not because it upsets me,
you may recall that at one point dright Shrewd dressed
up as Bell Nickel, and bell s Nickel is not
(01:22):
something that was just cooked up for that sitcom. It's
a real character, a German and eventually Pennsylvania Dutch variation
on the punishing visitor theme that we see see over
and over and over in this theme of holiday visitors. Yeah,
and I didn't put it in this outline, but bell
Snickele the name breaks down where the first part Bells
(01:43):
is also seen sometimes with a p at the beginning
of pills like pelt like fur and then uh nicole
like Nicholas. So it's sort of like a fur st Nick,
and he covers both the basis of the good and
the bad holiday figure for children. If you listen to
the first part, you you recall, for example, that uh
in some of these cases, like Crampus usually comes alongside
(02:05):
st Nick or uh center Claus has water pete that
punishes the children. But Bell's Nickel doesn't need a sidekick.
He uh wears darker attire. His color palette is a
little darker, and as we said, they're furs involved. But
he brings both gifts and punishments, and he's sort of
like Center Clouds and cramp Us kind of mixed together
(02:27):
because he sometimes wears a mask and has a long tongue.
So good good children get candy and gifts under bells
Nickel's watch, and bad children get whipped with switches or
he'll rattle his chain at them in a very menacing manner.
If they're really bad, he might vandalize their house. Uh
(02:50):
yeah that the I mean, what kind of holiday cheer
doesn't come with a little vandalism of your house when
you're bad? Um? And it's like darkly hawad Santa Claus
tpeing somebody's front yard, right, or like spray painting their
garage door, like bad child lives here? Um. And it's
possible that bell Nickel is based on another myth from Germany,
(03:12):
which is Rupert the Servant. And Rupert was, according to
his varying backstory, either a servant to St. Nicholas, or
sometimes he is referenced as a servant of Christ and
the Samuel Taylor Coleridge writing the Christmas Tree. Rupert is
portrayed as an emissary of Jesus, visiting every house to
greet all of the children, delighting some and visiting others,
(03:34):
so very similar to the Santa Claus myths in the
regards that he travels and sees all the kids. El
Nichol's first appearance in the United States was in the
early eighteen hundreds, although his appeal really didn't spread the
way Santa claus Is did. The two of them did
appear around the same time in the States, though, it
seems like the appeal of bell Nickel initially was pretty
(03:55):
similar to the Crampus customs that we talked about in
part one of this episode. Young men they like to
throw together Bell Nickel outfits out of old clothes and
put on masks and wigs and then parade around the
street scaring children. Yeah yeah, So in this um race
to sort of become the Christmas icon of the United States,
(04:17):
bells Nickel had this, you know, crowd of men, usually
young men, dressed up as him, stomping through town and
they would be invited into homes to help celebrate the
end of the harvest season, and this sort of feasting
uh was something they would be a part of, and
they might leave nuts or candy for little ones or
bless desirable treats if a child was deemed naughty. But
(04:37):
by some accounts, things could often get out of hand
and a raucous bell snickel or two might just break
into homes unannounced, So you can see why eventually Santa
won the hearts of families in the US. He's a
little gentle and easy, easier to deal with perhaps, but
the bell nickel tradition does continue in various Pennsylvania Dutch communities,
(04:58):
so not as popular as he once was, but he
is still around. Like but Santa breaks in by coming
down the chimney. Will be any situation, though, and more
of not in a malevolent way though. Right he's he's invited,
people usually leave a snack for him, so there is
a sort of tacit invitation in the mix there. Yeah.
(05:19):
Next up we have a French character tied to the
feast of St. Nicholas, who could align a little more
closely with Halloween goolies than the season that winter giving
holidays have come to be associated with. But this character,
lepair Phutar, provides a counterpoint to the kindly St. Nick
and also a hero story for the benevolent Saint. This
is also a character with a lot of branches in
(05:41):
his backstory, and sometimes he's conflated with other similar characters,
so the translation of pair fota into English gives a
hint at his somewhat ominous nature. It actually means father whipper,
so the verb fete means to whip, which any of
our listeners who have taken ballet will likely know. There's
a dance step of that name. It's a turn where
(06:03):
you use your leg as a whip to propel you.
So as you may imagine, pair of foot are whips
children who were bad. There's a lot of punishing children
with violence of these stories. He dresses in dark clothing.
Sometimes his characterized as an almost exact mirror of St. Nick,
but all in dark tones. He's often ratty looking. He
(06:23):
carries a big stick or a bundle of sticks, or
a whip, and sometimes you've seen with a large basket
on his back, which is for stowing potentially bad children.
Yeah there really bad ones always get carted away in
all of these stories. Just uh, except for the idea
of being taken back to Spain, which sounds still to
be like a lovely vacation in the center. Clouds and
(06:44):
swatch Pete myth, but most of them do not take
you to a beautiful place. So uh. If Pair of
foot are determines that a child has been naughty, he'll
leave coal or a bundle of twigs instead of the
candy that St. Nicholas would typically leave, And in some
homes these i's are displayed for the following year as
a reminder to that naughty child to do better in
(07:04):
the hopes of better treats the following year. That the
origin stories of Father Whipper are even darker than giving
out spankings and giving unwanted gifts, and the basic story
involves three young people. There's always a kidnapping, but otherwise
it varies pretty dramatically, and some versions of the stories
the three children are just random kids who got lost,
(07:27):
and other versions, including the oldest one that we know of,
which is from the twelfth century, they're well to do
children on their way to to a religious school. But
in addition to the children being characterized slightly differently in
their circumstances, Pair Fleetard is also characterized in different ways
depending on which version of the myth you're hearing. He
(07:48):
is sometimes an evil butcher who lures the cold lost
children into his home with plans to eat them. In
that version, he murders them, cuts them into pieces, and
puts them into assaulting tub with cuts of pork, and
sometimes makes a stew out of them. In others, he
and occasionally his horrible wife uh slit the children's throats
to steal their money in their possessions, and this very
(08:11):
grizzly turn of events is where St. Nicholas enters the story,
because when St. Nick discovers the terrible fate suffered by
the three children, he brings them back to life. Although
in gentler versions of the story of the children are
merely kidnapped and St. Nick comes to the rescue, there's
no salting and murdering happening, and after the happy resurrection
of the children in pretty much all of these stories,
(08:33):
Perfetard is repentant, and St. Nicholas offers him the chance
to travel with him looking for bad children as a
way for to make up for his sins. This is
not an appropriate punishment for someone who attempted to murder
children earlier in the story, well, or did in fact
murder them, I mean, and with cannibalism in mind, I'm like,
(08:55):
that's a pretty sweet deal, Like, oh, you did this
really horrible thing, but you're repent it. Will you help
me find bad children? So on. Alternate origin for a
pair of Ward places his origin in fifteen fifty two
at the Siege of Metz. And this is a case
of a historical event and a folkloric event happening at
(09:16):
around the same time and eventually converging into one story
through the cultural narrative. So Holy Roman Emperor Charles the
fifth of Spain sent his troops to take Mets. And
also just as a heads up, if you guys google
or otherwise search for Siege of Mets, there are two
of them. So again this is the one from fifteen
fifty two. And at this time, when these troops were
(09:39):
sent in to take Mets, French forces bested them in battle,
and an effigy of Charles the Fifth was set on
fire and dragged through the city. So that is the
real life event part. And at the same time, allegedly
several adults from the community got together and they concocted
this idea of a punish your character who would whip
naughty children on the Feast of St. Nicholas. So the
(09:59):
idea of the dark burnt figure and the judging whipping
character kind of melded over time to become pair Foetard.
In the nineteen thirties, the Tale of fair Footard was
adapted for English and American audiences as a penny dreadful character,
and this time he was called Father Flog and was
not a holiday character so much as this the terrifying
(10:21):
creature to frighten children into behaving. Father Flag gave bad
children the whip and cut out their tongues if he
believed they're lying. He also had a wife named Mother Flog,
who was both kind and cruel depending on the behavior
of the children that she captured and the panny a
of her dress. Can we go back to talking about
(10:41):
Laba fan of the Epiphany, which because you know it's
gonna get so much worse before it because speaking of
the ladies on the list, we have a lovely and
I see that with some irony icelandic Ogris coming up.
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trial and maybe get your gift giving handled. Go back
to our story. Iceland has its share of troll mythology,
and that includes holiday trolls as well. That sounded cheery
to me. I imagined a little troll doll with a present,
but this is not that. It is a terrifying, terrifying story.
One of the most terrifying of these trolls maybe Guerrilla,
(13:33):
who was an old lady troll Ogris hybrid who puts
a decidedly sinister twist onto Christmas. So we talked in
our last episode about how Laba Fauna is this amazing
winter witch and when you think of a classic image
of a witchy hag, you're picturing something very similar to Grilla,
and it is not sweet like Laba Fauna. She has
(13:55):
a terrifying face with a huge, warty nose. She also
has horns and hoofs, and she has a massive black
cat called Christmas Cat, which sounds sort of fun but isn't. Uh.
She is always in a terrible mood, and she is
always always hungry. During the holiday season, Grila travels through
the towns and cities of Iceland looking for badly behaved children,
(14:19):
and when she finds one, she stuffs it in her sack.
Once she's found plenty of naughty children in her sack
is full, she heads back to her cave in the mountains.
There is an escape clause, though, if a child is
truly repentant for his or her bad behavior, Grila has
to release them, so she can only capture legitimate, unrepentant misbehaviors.
(14:40):
And all of those crying, naughty children that she has
stuffed into her sack are apparently delicious to Grilla. She
boils them alive to make winter stew, and eating people
is something of a pastime for Greela. She also eat
her first two husbands, although in the mythology she remains
married to the third. Viola also has children of her own,
(15:03):
thirteen of them, and they are all sons. They are
also called the Yule Lads, and they're also trouble. They
have fabulous names, though, and their behaviors correlate to what
they're called. The first one is sheep coat Clode, who
tries to suckle the u's in sheep sheds her next son,
and these comes sort of in order, one per night
(15:24):
leading up to Christmas. Gully Gawk slurps the foam from
milk buckets and cow sheds. Then there's Stubby, who snatches
food from unwatched frying pans, apparently causing him injury. I uh,
he's just short. I thought it was a reference to
his fingers being literally burned on the pan. Nope, not
(15:47):
to the best of my knowledge, But I kind of
understand because it's hard to resist delicious things cooking, which
is why I also identify with the next one, which
is spoon liquor. What I told my husband about this,
who is a little germophobic, he was so grossed out
because spoon liquor, no surprise, licks the spoons in the house,
particularly ones that have been you know, used to stir
(16:09):
things that are cooking, and he still sometimes steals the spoons.
Pot scraper licks the tasty remnants from inside of pots
and bowl liquor hides under beds and he waits for
people to put their wooden bowls on the floor so
he can lick them clean. He's whole. Children are all hungry.
(16:30):
Her mom should feed them, but not feed them children.
Door Slammer was exactly as noisy as his name implies,
and he prevents people from getting a good night's rest.
Skier gobbler steals all the skier, which is a dairy
food similar to yogurt, and he takes it all from
people's pantries. Sausage swiper, Uh, we we have a bones
(16:52):
pick with sausage swiper. Don't steal our sausage. I swear
I will cut you if you come to my house.
Sausage swiper. Uh. Window peeper sounds like a creeper and
kind of is. He likes to just watch people, but
he also sometimes steals toys. Dooraway Sniffer uses a fantastic
sense of smell to find cakes and lace bread to eat.
(17:15):
Meat hook uses a hook to steal meat, and like
sausage swiper, he would lose a hand at my house.
Then there's candle beggar who snatches children's candles. Uh. And
you know, at one point candles were extremely expensive. Uh,
So that would have been unpleasant and also left them
in the dark, which maybe they were afraid of. Yes,
(17:35):
and we should note that there are a number of
variations on these names. This set was included in a
famous book that translates to Christmas Is Coming that was
written in and in the thirteen days preceding Christmas, these boys,
one at a time, rampage around Iceland, creating all manner
of mischief, and of course that mammoth black cat has
a role to play. Also, according to the lore of Iceland,
(17:58):
every person is supposed to receive a new article of
clothing at Christmas, and as the Christmas Cat prows about,
he eats anyone who's in violation of this policy. I
feel like this is the way to make children feel
grateful for the socks they didn't want by saying that, well,
now the Christmas Cat won't eat you, correct, uh, which
(18:23):
is pretty funny. But then I am I. Of course
I always have like this underdog mindset of like what
if people that don't have someone like doesn't give them
the right gift, Like it's really they're getting punished for
not giving them the clothing. My absolute first thought was THO,
no one gave me clothes? How is that my fault? Exactly? Uh?
(18:44):
And greeless story reaches back at least to the sixteen hundreds,
and like many of the stories we've talked about in
this two part or this story was told in large
part as a way to keep children from misbehaving. It's
there's some pretty obvious cause and effect to this one,
and it were and it worked in some ways too well,
because by the seventeen hundreds, children were so thoroughly terrified
(19:06):
of Greila and her family that authorities actually had to
step in. In seventeen forty six, there was a public
decree issued in an attempt to control the grilla terror
that was gripping the children of Iceland, and this decree
prohibited the use of the green Less Story on the
part of parents as a freight tactic against their children.
(19:27):
What this whole episode is really clarifying for me is
that we mistakenly believe that children misbehaving at Christmas time
is some kind of new fangled invention brought about by
over indulgent parents and or Santa Claus. But no, not
the case, as evidenced by hundreds of years of other mythologies. Uh.
(19:50):
The story of Greila and the U Lads did continue
even after this decree, but it got a little softer.
The lads started to look a little more like Christmas elves,
and they dressed in red and green, and they've taken
not a more benevolent image, So they leave presents and
children's shoes. They will, however, leave rotting potatoes, which smell disgusting.
If you have never smelled a rotting potato, the air foul? Uh.
(20:13):
If they beam the child to be naughty, yeah, but
a rotting potato is certainly better than being put in
a stew, So that's a fair treat. Correct. There's a uh,
as you said, I mean many of these you know,
we've uh we talked about, particularly in the US. This
is an ongoing debate sometimes that like we some people
(20:35):
think that Christmas Time should be more focused on the
religion versus sort of the Santa angle and all of
the gifts. But really you have to look at it
in terms of these mythologies were serving very different purposes.
Like there are people that have always celebrated it religiously,
but that doesn't really leave an appropriate opening for this
sort of didactic, potentially cruel angle, like they needed the
(20:58):
other characters to cover that you better behave or you'll
get eaten. You can't really fit that into the major
story as well. But but now we are going to
move on to Catalonia, and I kind of have this
moment of oh Catalonia. Uh So, if you've listened to
some of our previous topics, particularly are two part from
(21:19):
our live show, you will know that I don't love
to talk about scatological topics, yet it seems to come
up for me repeatedly. Uh. But I know that if
we leave the cagan air and Tioda natal also known
as Coga tillo off of this list, people will be
disappointed and or angry. So here it goes. Uh. In
(21:41):
case you have not heard or have never noticed, in
the back of Nativity scenes in Catalonia, there is normally
a humble figure off in the corner pooping. This figure,
the Cogan Air, which translates in the politest sense to
the defecator, has been a traditional part of the Catalonia
Christmas for at least two centuries and possibly longer. The
(22:05):
exact reason the exact reasons why are a little more
of a mystery, though There's one theory that it's tied
to the idea of luck and harvest and fertilization, so
along those lines, the thinking is that to leave the
Cagan air out of your nativity would bring terrible luck,
and your vegetable crop would not yield in the following year.
Another interpretation of his appearance and the Nativity is more
(22:28):
specifically religious, and that is that the man answering nature's
call off in the corner is a reminder that God
has plans and that something as significant as the birth
of Christ can happen whether you were prepared for it
or not. So the Coogan Air. It may be a
little bit tricky for people who are not used to
this concept to accept, but it is not a disrespectful thing.
(22:50):
He is simply a human and his placement tucked away
in the back of the scene really indicates respect, like
he's trying to be out of the way about having
to do this very natural thing, versus if he were
put closer to the front or out in front of Uh, Jesus,
Mary and Joseph. So in some families, the Kaganair is
actually part of traditions that are very similar to the
(23:10):
Elf on the shelf in the United States, as he
is moved each night and the children then have to
find him in the morning, and similarly, kind of weird
modern development around the Kaganair is the fact that this
figures of this character have become kind of collectibles and
there are versions of it made to resemble the British
royal family and the United States presidents and other various
(23:32):
famous figures. In a cogonair nearly twenty ft that's six
ms tall was placed in a Barcelona shopping center and
it garnered the Guinness World Record for largest cogonair. We're
gonna talk about the other scatological Catalan Christmas tradition, uh
after we have another brief word from a sponsor. We
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dot com slash stuff. That's the Great Courses Plus dot
Com slash stuff. And now we'll get back to our story.
So the Kagan Air is not the only Catalan Christmas
tradition that features excrement. There's also Coga tillo also called
TiO di natal, and this translates basically to the poop
(25:45):
log or the Christmas Log. Cagatillo joins the Catalan festivities
on December eighth, the Feast of Immaculate Conception. It is
a log, a log with a smiley face and a
red Catalan traditional cap on one end, and uh usually
it has little legs on that same end, so it
kind of sits at an angle, and the children of
(26:06):
the household must look after Kagatillo. He needs to be
covered with a blanket so he stays warm and cozy,
and he needs to be fed turan, which is an
almond candy, every evening, and he's also sometimes fed bits
of orange peel. This is all meant to fatten him up.
Sometimes will be larger in the morning than he was
the night before, and the children have to continue looking
after him and feeding him right up until Christmas Eve. Then,
(26:30):
on Christmas Eve, after a lavish dinner and after the
children have gone elsewhere in the house to pray, they
then returned to the log and they sing a song
which translates roughly to gaga tillo hazelnuts and turan. If
you don't want to pooh, we will hit you with
a stick. You will see different variations of that translation,
but really It pretty much all equates to it is
(26:52):
time to poop out our gifts. We're going to hit
you with a stick to make it happen. And then
they do. They hit the log they've been looking after
with it uh, and then they reach inside the blanket
and pull out fruit and candy and small toys similar
to what you might find in a Christmas stocking in
the United States. When Kagatillo is empty and has given
all of his gifts, he'll sometimes drop something that's not
(27:14):
very appealing, like a head of garlic or a piece
of salt hat herring or an onion. Sometimes he urinates,
which is just water. That is the signal that the
fun is over. And as for the historical roots of Cogatillo,
those are also pretty fuzzy. So it is possible that
it is some sort of combination of the Kagan air
(27:35):
and the traditional Pagan yule log, but with both of
these traditions we don't really have solid info on their origins.
And there are actually two things about this Catalan pair
of traditions that I sort of found myself having a
brief revelation over as I was doing the research. So one,
(27:56):
it's fascinating to me that these unlike some of the
others that we have, they don't have a there's culturally
been no need for them to concoct a backstory around it,
you know what I mean, Like there are fables that
go with all the others, but there's no like fable
of someone going and finding a magical log in the forest,
and there's none of that. They're just like, it's just
(28:17):
part of our tradition. And the other thing I have
to say, having started this segment out by saying that
I am very uncomfortable usually talking about pretty much anything scatological,
that I kind of appreciate a culture that is not
quite so hung up about bodily functions and that makes
it a normal part of everyday life and even in
some ways something that's celebrated. So those are my two
(28:38):
revelations about Catalonian Christmas and the Kagan and Cagato. So
happy Christmas, everybody, Happy holidays, whatever you celebrate. Uh, you know,
it's the end of the year, So I hope all
the things that you're wrapping up are going smoothly and
that you have had more joy than grief this year,
(28:59):
and that eyone who is traveling is traveling very safely,
and that the coming year treats you better than any
year has before, but it's not nearly so good as
years to come. Do you also have listener mail? I do.
I have two pieces of listener mail, and they are
both about the Declaration of Sentiments, and they're fairly brief.
The first one is from UH Laura or Lara. She
(29:21):
it's based on spelling. It could be either, she says,
Holly and Tracy, I just listen to your podcast on
the Declaration of Sentiments. I am a teacher and I
taught the Declaration to my eighth graders last year. Side
note from me right on teach those eighth graders, UH,
thank you for teaching, because we need great teachers. Back
to Lara, she says, one of the questions students had
after they read it was how many of these issues
(29:41):
still exist? One of my students asked me, is it
possible these all still exist? And I replied sadly yes.
It was actually one of my favorite teaching moments where
students made connections to history that are still important today.
That it's a really good point. We mentioned it in
that episode that if you read the Declaration of Sentiments, UH,
equality issues that were being addressed in that document are
(30:04):
still very vital today, like we're still fighting those battles
a hundred and sixty seven years later. I think that's
the correct number. The next one is from our listener Jessica,
and she says, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I just listened
to your podcast on the Declaration of Sentiments from Seneca Falls.
What an interesting story. I have taken many history classes
and even work in a history museum, but I had
(30:26):
never heard of the Declaration of Sentiments. The use of
crowdsourcing in an attempt to find it is amazing. As
a museum professional, I have seen this tactic used before
with success. At my museum, we post photos of unidentified
people onto social media in an attempt to find out
more about them. You would be surprised at how well
this works. We just had someone identified today that I
(30:46):
have been trying to I D for months. There is
hope that the declaration will be found, and social media
is a great way to put the word out there.
You never know what is lurking in someone's attic. I agree,
Thank you, Jessica. She works incidentally for the Jim Getchell
Memorial Museum um UH in Buffalo, Wyoming and I um,
I agree. That's one of the reasons I was so
excited about that project and about um Megan Smith's efforts
(31:11):
to kind of have it found and people, I hope
you are still out there on social media if you
have any information, sharing that information with the hashtag find
the Sentiments, because like she said, it's very possibly sitting
in someone's attic somewhere, or someone just knows some piece
of the puzzle that's going to lead us to the
next step. So that is all exciting to me. I'm
still very excited about the Declaration of Sentiments. That was
(31:32):
just a fun trip for me. And uh, it's, like
I said, a cool project. It's important everybody can engage
in history and be part of both creating it and
preserving it. So if you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at how stoneworks
dot com. You can connect to this at Facebook dot com,
slash mist in history, on Twitter at misst in history,
(31:53):
at pinterest dot com, slash miss in history at missed
in history dot tumbler dot com, and we're on Instagram
at misst in history. If you would like to learn
more about what we talked about today. You can do
so by going to our parents site, how stuff Works.
Type in the word traditions in the search bar, and
you will churn up an entire list of results about
traditions throughout the world, some of which will include Christmas
(32:15):
traditions and holiday traditions like the ones we've talked about
in today's episode and the preceding one, and some that
are just other traditions around different cultures, which is always
good fun. So we encourage you to visit us there
at house to works dot com and also at missed
in history dot com, where you will find an archive
of all of our episodes, as well as show notes
for any of the episodes that Tracy and I have
worked on together. So again, visit us at how stuff
(32:37):
Work dot com and missed in History dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm tray cbe Wilson. And in
the first part of this two parter, we started our
discussion of a sampling of winter holiday characters that are
(00:21):
beyond Santa Claus, which is sort of the most popular
one here in the United States. And this uh two
part episode started because we have gotten lots of requests
about Crampus, but there are also some other really unique
folkloric icons tied to this time of year, and we
wanted to give them a little bit of play. And
while most of them have a theme along the lines
(00:41):
of teaching or scaring children into behaving, there's still a
pretty interesting variety among them. So in the first episode
we talked about Austria's Crampus, Italy's Laba Fauna, the Epiphany,
which and Center Claus, and Vota Pete of the Netherlands.
And we're gonna start this time around with a character
that shares some similarities with the other St. Nicholas based
(01:01):
winter visitors that have been already discussed in that episode,
and we'll have some more here and that is bell Snickel.
If you've watched the American version of the Office, which
I will confess now I have not because it upsets me,
you may recall that at one point dright Shrewd dressed
up as Bell Nickel, and bell s Nickel is not
(01:22):
something that was just cooked up for that sitcom. It's
a real character, a German and eventually Pennsylvania Dutch variation
on the punishing visitor theme that we see see over
and over and over in this theme of holiday visitors. Yeah,
and I didn't put it in this outline, but bell
Snickele the name breaks down where the first part Bells
(01:43):
is also seen sometimes with a p at the beginning
of pills like pelt like fur and then uh nicole
like Nicholas. So it's sort of like a fur st Nick,
and he covers both the basis of the good and
the bad holiday figure for children. If you listen to
the first part, you you recall, for example, that uh
in some of these cases, like Crampus usually comes alongside
(02:05):
st Nick or uh center Claus has water pete that
punishes the children. But Bell's Nickel doesn't need a sidekick.
He uh wears darker attire. His color palette is a
little darker, and as we said, they're furs involved. But
he brings both gifts and punishments, and he's sort of
like Center Clouds and cramp Us kind of mixed together
(02:27):
because he sometimes wears a mask and has a long tongue.
So good good children get candy and gifts under bells
Nickel's watch, and bad children get whipped with switches or
he'll rattle his chain at them in a very menacing manner.
If they're really bad, he might vandalize their house. Uh
(02:50):
yeah that the I mean, what kind of holiday cheer
doesn't come with a little vandalism of your house when
you're bad? Um? And it's like darkly hawad Santa Claus
tpeing somebody's front yard, right, or like spray painting their
garage door, like bad child lives here? Um. And it's
possible that bell Nickel is based on another myth from Germany,
(03:12):
which is Rupert the Servant. And Rupert was, according to
his varying backstory, either a servant to St. Nicholas, or
sometimes he is referenced as a servant of Christ and
the Samuel Taylor Coleridge writing the Christmas Tree. Rupert is
portrayed as an emissary of Jesus, visiting every house to
greet all of the children, delighting some and visiting others,
(03:34):
so very similar to the Santa Claus myths in the
regards that he travels and sees all the kids. El
Nichol's first appearance in the United States was in the
early eighteen hundreds, although his appeal really didn't spread the
way Santa claus Is did. The two of them did
appear around the same time in the States, though, it
seems like the appeal of bell Nickel initially was pretty
(03:55):
similar to the Crampus customs that we talked about in
part one of this episode. Young men they like to
throw together Bell Nickel outfits out of old clothes and
put on masks and wigs and then parade around the
street scaring children. Yeah yeah, So in this um race
to sort of become the Christmas icon of the United States,
(04:17):
bells Nickel had this, you know, crowd of men, usually
young men, dressed up as him, stomping through town and
they would be invited into homes to help celebrate the
end of the harvest season, and this sort of feasting
uh was something they would be a part of, and
they might leave nuts or candy for little ones or
bless desirable treats if a child was deemed naughty. But
(04:37):
by some accounts, things could often get out of hand
and a raucous bell snickel or two might just break
into homes unannounced, So you can see why eventually Santa
won the hearts of families in the US. He's a
little gentle and easy, easier to deal with perhaps, but
the bell nickel tradition does continue in various Pennsylvania Dutch communities,
(04:58):
so not as popular as he once was, but he
is still around. Like but Santa breaks in by coming
down the chimney. Will be any situation, though, and more
of not in a malevolent way though. Right he's he's invited,
people usually leave a snack for him, so there is
a sort of tacit invitation in the mix there. Yeah.
(05:19):
Next up we have a French character tied to the
feast of St. Nicholas, who could align a little more
closely with Halloween goolies than the season that winter giving
holidays have come to be associated with. But this character,
lepair Phutar, provides a counterpoint to the kindly St. Nick
and also a hero story for the benevolent Saint. This
is also a character with a lot of branches in
(05:41):
his backstory, and sometimes he's conflated with other similar characters,
so the translation of pair fota into English gives a
hint at his somewhat ominous nature. It actually means father whipper,
so the verb fete means to whip, which any of
our listeners who have taken ballet will likely know. There's
a dance step of that name. It's a turn where
(06:03):
you use your leg as a whip to propel you.
So as you may imagine, pair of foot are whips
children who were bad. There's a lot of punishing children
with violence of these stories. He dresses in dark clothing.
Sometimes his characterized as an almost exact mirror of St. Nick,
but all in dark tones. He's often ratty looking. He
(06:23):
carries a big stick or a bundle of sticks, or
a whip, and sometimes you've seen with a large basket
on his back, which is for stowing potentially bad children.
Yeah there really bad ones always get carted away in
all of these stories. Just uh, except for the idea
of being taken back to Spain, which sounds still to
be like a lovely vacation in the center. Clouds and
(06:44):
swatch Pete myth, but most of them do not take
you to a beautiful place. So uh. If Pair of
foot are determines that a child has been naughty, he'll
leave coal or a bundle of twigs instead of the
candy that St. Nicholas would typically leave, And in some
homes these i's are displayed for the following year as
a reminder to that naughty child to do better in
(07:04):
the hopes of better treats the following year. That the
origin stories of Father Whipper are even darker than giving
out spankings and giving unwanted gifts, and the basic story
involves three young people. There's always a kidnapping, but otherwise
it varies pretty dramatically, and some versions of the stories
the three children are just random kids who got lost,
(07:27):
and other versions, including the oldest one that we know of,
which is from the twelfth century, they're well to do
children on their way to to a religious school. But
in addition to the children being characterized slightly differently in
their circumstances, Pair Fleetard is also characterized in different ways
depending on which version of the myth you're hearing. He
(07:48):
is sometimes an evil butcher who lures the cold lost
children into his home with plans to eat them. In
that version, he murders them, cuts them into pieces, and
puts them into assaulting tub with cuts of pork, and
sometimes makes a stew out of them. In others, he
and occasionally his horrible wife uh slit the children's throats
to steal their money in their possessions, and this very
(08:11):
grizzly turn of events is where St. Nicholas enters the story,
because when St. Nick discovers the terrible fate suffered by
the three children, he brings them back to life. Although
in gentler versions of the story of the children are
merely kidnapped and St. Nick comes to the rescue, there's
no salting and murdering happening, and after the happy resurrection
of the children in pretty much all of these stories,
(08:33):
Perfetard is repentant, and St. Nicholas offers him the chance
to travel with him looking for bad children as a
way for to make up for his sins. This is
not an appropriate punishment for someone who attempted to murder
children earlier in the story, well, or did in fact
murder them, I mean, and with cannibalism in mind, I'm like,
(08:55):
that's a pretty sweet deal, Like, oh, you did this
really horrible thing, but you're repent it. Will you help
me find bad children? So on. Alternate origin for a
pair of Ward places his origin in fifteen fifty two
at the Siege of Metz. And this is a case
of a historical event and a folkloric event happening at
(09:16):
around the same time and eventually converging into one story
through the cultural narrative. So Holy Roman Emperor Charles the
fifth of Spain sent his troops to take Mets. And
also just as a heads up, if you guys google
or otherwise search for Siege of Mets, there are two
of them. So again this is the one from fifteen
fifty two. And at this time, when these troops were
(09:39):
sent in to take Mets, French forces bested them in battle,
and an effigy of Charles the Fifth was set on
fire and dragged through the city. So that is the
real life event part. And at the same time, allegedly
several adults from the community got together and they concocted
this idea of a punish your character who would whip
naughty children on the Feast of St. Nicholas. So the
(09:59):
idea of the dark burnt figure and the judging whipping
character kind of melded over time to become pair Foetard.
In the nineteen thirties, the Tale of fair Footard was
adapted for English and American audiences as a penny dreadful character,
and this time he was called Father Flog and was
not a holiday character so much as this the terrifying
(10:21):
creature to frighten children into behaving. Father Flag gave bad
children the whip and cut out their tongues if he
believed they're lying. He also had a wife named Mother Flog,
who was both kind and cruel depending on the behavior
of the children that she captured and the panny a
of her dress. Can we go back to talking about
(10:41):
Laba fan of the Epiphany, which because you know it's
gonna get so much worse before it because speaking of
the ladies on the list, we have a lovely and
I see that with some irony icelandic Ogris coming up.
But first we're gonna have a word from one of
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trial and maybe get your gift giving handled. Go back
to our story. Iceland has its share of troll mythology,
and that includes holiday trolls as well. That sounded cheery
to me. I imagined a little troll doll with a present,
but this is not that. It is a terrifying, terrifying story.
One of the most terrifying of these trolls maybe Guerrilla,
(13:33):
who was an old lady troll Ogris hybrid who puts
a decidedly sinister twist onto Christmas. So we talked in
our last episode about how Laba Fauna is this amazing
winter witch and when you think of a classic image
of a witchy hag, you're picturing something very similar to Grilla,
and it is not sweet like Laba Fauna. She has
(13:55):
a terrifying face with a huge, warty nose. She also
has horns and hoofs, and she has a massive black
cat called Christmas Cat, which sounds sort of fun but isn't. Uh.
She is always in a terrible mood, and she is
always always hungry. During the holiday season, Grila travels through
the towns and cities of Iceland looking for badly behaved children,
(14:19):
and when she finds one, she stuffs it in her sack.
Once she's found plenty of naughty children in her sack
is full, she heads back to her cave in the mountains.
There is an escape clause, though, if a child is
truly repentant for his or her bad behavior, Grila has
to release them, so she can only capture legitimate, unrepentant misbehaviors.
(14:40):
And all of those crying, naughty children that she has
stuffed into her sack are apparently delicious to Grilla. She
boils them alive to make winter stew, and eating people
is something of a pastime for Greela. She also eat
her first two husbands, although in the mythology she remains
married to the third. Viola also has children of her own,
(15:03):
thirteen of them, and they are all sons. They are
also called the Yule Lads, and they're also trouble. They
have fabulous names, though, and their behaviors correlate to what
they're called. The first one is sheep coat Clode, who
tries to suckle the u's in sheep sheds her next son,
and these comes sort of in order, one per night
(15:24):
leading up to Christmas. Gully Gawk slurps the foam from
milk buckets and cow sheds. Then there's Stubby, who snatches
food from unwatched frying pans, apparently causing him injury. I uh,
he's just short. I thought it was a reference to
his fingers being literally burned on the pan. Nope, not
(15:47):
to the best of my knowledge, But I kind of
understand because it's hard to resist delicious things cooking, which
is why I also identify with the next one, which
is spoon liquor. What I told my husband about this,
who is a little germophobic, he was so grossed out
because spoon liquor, no surprise, licks the spoons in the house,
particularly ones that have been you know, used to stir
(16:09):
things that are cooking, and he still sometimes steals the spoons.
Pot scraper licks the tasty remnants from inside of pots
and bowl liquor hides under beds and he waits for
people to put their wooden bowls on the floor so
he can lick them clean. He's whole. Children are all hungry.
(16:30):
Her mom should feed them, but not feed them children.
Door Slammer was exactly as noisy as his name implies,
and he prevents people from getting a good night's rest.
Skier gobbler steals all the skier, which is a dairy
food similar to yogurt, and he takes it all from
people's pantries. Sausage swiper, Uh, we we have a bones
(16:52):
pick with sausage swiper. Don't steal our sausage. I swear
I will cut you if you come to my house.
Sausage swiper. Uh. Window peeper sounds like a creeper and
kind of is. He likes to just watch people, but
he also sometimes steals toys. Dooraway Sniffer uses a fantastic
sense of smell to find cakes and lace bread to eat.
(17:15):
Meat hook uses a hook to steal meat, and like
sausage swiper, he would lose a hand at my house.
Then there's candle beggar who snatches children's candles. Uh. And
you know, at one point candles were extremely expensive. Uh,
So that would have been unpleasant and also left them
in the dark, which maybe they were afraid of. Yes,
(17:35):
and we should note that there are a number of
variations on these names. This set was included in a
famous book that translates to Christmas Is Coming that was
written in and in the thirteen days preceding Christmas, these boys,
one at a time, rampage around Iceland, creating all manner
of mischief, and of course that mammoth black cat has
a role to play. Also, according to the lore of Iceland,
(17:58):
every person is supposed to receive a new article of
clothing at Christmas, and as the Christmas Cat prows about,
he eats anyone who's in violation of this policy. I
feel like this is the way to make children feel
grateful for the socks they didn't want by saying that, well,
now the Christmas Cat won't eat you, correct, uh, which
(18:23):
is pretty funny. But then I am I. Of course
I always have like this underdog mindset of like what
if people that don't have someone like doesn't give them
the right gift, Like it's really they're getting punished for
not giving them the clothing. My absolute first thought was THO,
no one gave me clothes? How is that my fault? Exactly? Uh?
(18:44):
And greeless story reaches back at least to the sixteen hundreds,
and like many of the stories we've talked about in
this two part or this story was told in large
part as a way to keep children from misbehaving. It's
there's some pretty obvious cause and effect to this one,
and it were and it worked in some ways too well,
because by the seventeen hundreds, children were so thoroughly terrified
(19:06):
of Greila and her family that authorities actually had to
step in. In seventeen forty six, there was a public
decree issued in an attempt to control the grilla terror
that was gripping the children of Iceland, and this decree
prohibited the use of the green Less Story on the
part of parents as a freight tactic against their children.
(19:27):
What this whole episode is really clarifying for me is
that we mistakenly believe that children misbehaving at Christmas time
is some kind of new fangled invention brought about by
over indulgent parents and or Santa Claus. But no, not
the case, as evidenced by hundreds of years of other mythologies. Uh.
(19:50):
The story of Greila and the U Lads did continue
even after this decree, but it got a little softer.
The lads started to look a little more like Christmas elves,
and they dressed in red and green, and they've taken
not a more benevolent image, So they leave presents and
children's shoes. They will, however, leave rotting potatoes, which smell disgusting.
If you have never smelled a rotting potato, the air foul? Uh.
(20:13):
If they beam the child to be naughty, yeah, but
a rotting potato is certainly better than being put in
a stew, So that's a fair treat. Correct. There's a uh,
as you said, I mean many of these you know,
we've uh we talked about, particularly in the US. This
is an ongoing debate sometimes that like we some people
(20:35):
think that Christmas Time should be more focused on the
religion versus sort of the Santa angle and all of
the gifts. But really you have to look at it
in terms of these mythologies were serving very different purposes.
Like there are people that have always celebrated it religiously,
but that doesn't really leave an appropriate opening for this
sort of didactic, potentially cruel angle, like they needed the
(20:58):
other characters to cover that you better behave or you'll
get eaten. You can't really fit that into the major
story as well. But but now we are going to
move on to Catalonia, and I kind of have this
moment of oh Catalonia. Uh So, if you've listened to
some of our previous topics, particularly are two part from
(21:19):
our live show, you will know that I don't love
to talk about scatological topics, yet it seems to come
up for me repeatedly. Uh. But I know that if
we leave the cagan air and Tioda natal also known
as Coga tillo off of this list, people will be
disappointed and or angry. So here it goes. Uh. In
(21:41):
case you have not heard or have never noticed, in
the back of Nativity scenes in Catalonia, there is normally
a humble figure off in the corner pooping. This figure,
the Cogan Air, which translates in the politest sense to
the defecator, has been a traditional part of the Catalonia
Christmas for at least two centuries and possibly longer. The
(22:05):
exact reason the exact reasons why are a little more
of a mystery, though There's one theory that it's tied
to the idea of luck and harvest and fertilization, so
along those lines, the thinking is that to leave the
Cagan air out of your nativity would bring terrible luck,
and your vegetable crop would not yield in the following year.
Another interpretation of his appearance and the Nativity is more
(22:28):
specifically religious, and that is that the man answering nature's
call off in the corner is a reminder that God
has plans and that something as significant as the birth
of Christ can happen whether you were prepared for it
or not. So the Coogan Air. It may be a
little bit tricky for people who are not used to
this concept to accept, but it is not a disrespectful thing.
(22:50):
He is simply a human and his placement tucked away
in the back of the scene really indicates respect, like
he's trying to be out of the way about having
to do this very natural thing, versus if he were
put closer to the front or out in front of Uh, Jesus,
Mary and Joseph. So in some families, the Kaganair is
actually part of traditions that are very similar to the
(23:10):
Elf on the shelf in the United States, as he
is moved each night and the children then have to
find him in the morning, and similarly, kind of weird
modern development around the Kaganair is the fact that this
figures of this character have become kind of collectibles and
there are versions of it made to resemble the British
royal family and the United States presidents and other various
(23:32):
famous figures. In a cogonair nearly twenty ft that's six
ms tall was placed in a Barcelona shopping center and
it garnered the Guinness World Record for largest cogonair. We're
gonna talk about the other scatological Catalan Christmas tradition, uh
after we have another brief word from a sponsor. We
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dot com slash stuff. That's the Great Courses Plus dot
Com slash stuff. And now we'll get back to our story.
So the Kagan Air is not the only Catalan Christmas
tradition that features excrement. There's also Coga tillo also called
TiO di natal, and this translates basically to the poop
(25:45):
log or the Christmas Log. Cagatillo joins the Catalan festivities
on December eighth, the Feast of Immaculate Conception. It is
a log, a log with a smiley face and a
red Catalan traditional cap on one end, and uh usually
it has little legs on that same end, so it
kind of sits at an angle, and the children of
(26:06):
the household must look after Kagatillo. He needs to be
covered with a blanket so he stays warm and cozy,
and he needs to be fed turan, which is an
almond candy, every evening, and he's also sometimes fed bits
of orange peel. This is all meant to fatten him up.
Sometimes will be larger in the morning than he was
the night before, and the children have to continue looking
after him and feeding him right up until Christmas Eve. Then,
(26:30):
on Christmas Eve, after a lavish dinner and after the
children have gone elsewhere in the house to pray, they
then returned to the log and they sing a song
which translates roughly to gaga tillo hazelnuts and turan. If
you don't want to pooh, we will hit you with
a stick. You will see different variations of that translation,
but really It pretty much all equates to it is
(26:52):
time to poop out our gifts. We're going to hit
you with a stick to make it happen. And then
they do. They hit the log they've been looking after
with it uh, and then they reach inside the blanket
and pull out fruit and candy and small toys similar
to what you might find in a Christmas stocking in
the United States. When Kagatillo is empty and has given
all of his gifts, he'll sometimes drop something that's not
(27:14):
very appealing, like a head of garlic or a piece
of salt hat herring or an onion. Sometimes he urinates,
which is just water. That is the signal that the
fun is over. And as for the historical roots of Cogatillo,
those are also pretty fuzzy. So it is possible that
it is some sort of combination of the Kagan air
(27:35):
and the traditional Pagan yule log, but with both of
these traditions we don't really have solid info on their origins.
And there are actually two things about this Catalan pair
of traditions that I sort of found myself having a
brief revelation over as I was doing the research. So one,
(27:56):
it's fascinating to me that these unlike some of the
others that we have, they don't have a there's culturally
been no need for them to concoct a backstory around it,
you know what I mean, Like there are fables that
go with all the others, but there's no like fable
of someone going and finding a magical log in the forest,
and there's none of that. They're just like, it's just
(28:17):
part of our tradition. And the other thing I have
to say, having started this segment out by saying that
I am very uncomfortable usually talking about pretty much anything scatological,
that I kind of appreciate a culture that is not
quite so hung up about bodily functions and that makes
it a normal part of everyday life and even in
some ways something that's celebrated. So those are my two
(28:38):
revelations about Catalonian Christmas and the Kagan and Cagato. So
happy Christmas, everybody, Happy holidays, whatever you celebrate. Uh, you know,
it's the end of the year, So I hope all
the things that you're wrapping up are going smoothly and
that you have had more joy than grief this year,
(28:59):
and that eyone who is traveling is traveling very safely,
and that the coming year treats you better than any
year has before, but it's not nearly so good as
years to come. Do you also have listener mail? I do.
I have two pieces of listener mail, and they are
both about the Declaration of Sentiments, and they're fairly brief.
The first one is from UH Laura or Lara. She
(29:21):
it's based on spelling. It could be either, she says,
Holly and Tracy, I just listen to your podcast on
the Declaration of Sentiments. I am a teacher and I
taught the Declaration to my eighth graders last year. Side
note from me right on teach those eighth graders, UH,
thank you for teaching, because we need great teachers. Back
to Lara, she says, one of the questions students had
after they read it was how many of these issues
(29:41):
still exist? One of my students asked me, is it
possible these all still exist? And I replied sadly yes.
It was actually one of my favorite teaching moments where
students made connections to history that are still important today.
That it's a really good point. We mentioned it in
that episode that if you read the Declaration of Sentiments, UH,
equality issues that were being addressed in that document are
(30:04):
still very vital today, like we're still fighting those battles
a hundred and sixty seven years later. I think that's
the correct number. The next one is from our listener Jessica,
and she says, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I just listened
to your podcast on the Declaration of Sentiments from Seneca Falls.
What an interesting story. I have taken many history classes
and even work in a history museum, but I had
(30:26):
never heard of the Declaration of Sentiments. The use of
crowdsourcing in an attempt to find it is amazing. As
a museum professional, I have seen this tactic used before
with success. At my museum, we post photos of unidentified
people onto social media in an attempt to find out
more about them. You would be surprised at how well
this works. We just had someone identified today that I
(30:46):
have been trying to I D for months. There is
hope that the declaration will be found, and social media
is a great way to put the word out there.
You never know what is lurking in someone's attic. I agree,
Thank you, Jessica. She works incidentally for the Jim Getchell
Memorial Museum um UH in Buffalo, Wyoming and I um,
I agree. That's one of the reasons I was so
excited about that project and about um Megan Smith's efforts
(31:11):
to kind of have it found and people, I hope
you are still out there on social media if you
have any information, sharing that information with the hashtag find
the Sentiments, because like she said, it's very possibly sitting
in someone's attic somewhere, or someone just knows some piece
of the puzzle that's going to lead us to the
next step. So that is all exciting to me. I'm
still very excited about the Declaration of Sentiments. That was
(31:32):
just a fun trip for me. And uh, it's, like
I said, a cool project. It's important everybody can engage
in history and be part of both creating it and
preserving it. So if you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at how stoneworks
dot com. You can connect to this at Facebook dot com,
slash mist in history, on Twitter at misst in history,
(31:53):
at pinterest dot com, slash miss in history at missed
in history dot tumbler dot com, and we're on Instagram
at misst in history. If you would like to learn
more about what we talked about today. You can do
so by going to our parents site, how stuff Works.
Type in the word traditions in the search bar, and
you will churn up an entire list of results about
traditions throughout the world, some of which will include Christmas
(32:15):
traditions and holiday traditions like the ones we've talked about
in today's episode and the preceding one, and some that
are just other traditions around different cultures, which is always
good fun. So we encourage you to visit us there
at house to works dot com and also at missed
in history dot com, where you will find an archive
of all of our episodes, as well as show notes
for any of the episodes that Tracy and I have
worked on together. So again, visit us at how stuff
(32:37):
Work dot com and missed in History dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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