Here’s wishing the President a cold, lonely, miserable, desperate, self-loathing, scandal-ridden, dementia-fueled, sclerotic, septic, syphilitic, leprous Christmas.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) December 25, 2019
• • • to set a mood • • •
• • • some of the things I read while not having breakfast • • •
Ed. I didn’t have breakfast because it’s my day off and I never make my own breakfast. All the other days a trio of really great guys make my breakfast.
On the island of Top Knoll, off Florida, local customs treat Santa Claus as a deity who demands ritual sacrifices—some of which may have been murders.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 24, 2018
How Santa Survived the Soviet Era
Of all the variations on the beloved character, Russia’s Ded Moroz might have the strangest history.
Actor Alexander Khvylya plays Ded Moroz at a New Year performance the Kremlin in 1969.
THERE ARE VERSIONS OF THE character widely known as Santa Claus throughout northern, central, and eastern Europe—all large, bearded men who arrive with winter to bring gifts to children. Russia is not exempt from this, but the Russian version, Ded Moroz, which translates roughly as “Grandfather Frost,” has a particularly strange, convoluted history.
Ded Moroz today is about what you would expect. He has a long white beard, wears a fur-lined hat, has an animal-towed sleigh, and delivers presents to well-behaved children when it is cold outside. But Ded Moroz’s last hundred years have been violent, political, and full of massive social upheaval. This, for Santa, you would not expect. As a result, his status is unlike that of any of his holiday peers around the world. For one thing, he isn’t even necessarily associated with Christmas.
SANNTA CLAUS IS ONE OF several manifestations of a particular wintertime character, probably originating with the pagan, pre-Christian Germanic and Norse god Odin. Odin was a fearsome bearded figure, rode a flying horse, and was often associated with the Christmas predecessor holiday Yuletide. In fact, one of Odin’s names translates as “Yule Father.” As Christianity swept through the colder parts of Europe, many Yule traditions became Christmas traditions, and Odin’s image blended with stories of Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century Greek bishop also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker for his many miracles.
Snegurochka and Ded Moroz crossing a Moscow street in 1968.
From there the character evolved into distinct but similar forms. There’s Sinterklaas in the Netherlands, Joulupukki in Finland, Mikulás in Hungary, and several more. Over time some have faded away and shaded into the more international Santa Claus. Ded Moroz was the Russian form of the bearded wintertime gifter. …
Nivikkana Iskandar, of Greenland, declared herself “Empress of the North Pole”—and attempted to invade a land mass that didn’t exist.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 21, 2018
From woke to gammon: buzzwords by the people who coined them
Brexit, millennials, binge-watching… every word in the English language was coined by someone. What’s it like to be an accidental wordsmith?
Words to the wise, from Brexit to binge-watching.
Are we living through a golden age of linguistic inventiveness? Buzzwords and neologisms – from office jargon to the lexicons of democratic chaos in Britain and the US, as well as the ever-expanding culture wars – rain down on us every day, and can gain global currency at the speed of fibre-optic cable. Many, of course, fail – like “Brixit”, an early rival to Brexit, or “Generation Me”, one proposed label for what we now call millennials. Others rapidly become part of the modern conversation. Why, for example, do critics call young, supposedly over sensitive and easily triggered people “snowflakes”? Because in Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel Fight Club, Tyler Durden says: “You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.”
Palahniuk’s contribution, however, was accidental. He later explained: “Back in 1994, when I was writing my book, I wasn’t insulting anyone but myself… My use of the term ‘snowflake’ never had anything to do with fragility or sensitivity.” Instead, he was using it as a means of “deprogramming himself”, so he didn’t believe in his own praise. But the point is that you can’t control what usage will do once it’s out of your hands: a much wider uptake can shift the meaning. The term “woke”, for example, is now used mockingly for a kind of overrighteous liberalism; but its first recorded use, by the African-American novelist William Melvin Kelley, was meant to indicate an awareness of political issues, especially those around race, a positive usage that still also persists.
Some people coin words for the sheer fun of it – and if the rhythm and pleasure of the sound are sufficient, they might be lucky enough to see it go viral. This is how we got “fashionista” – coined by Stephen Freid in a 1993 biography of the supermodel Gia – and “amazeballs”, first used publicly by the fashion blogger Elizabeth Spiridakis Olson in 2008. It’s easy to forget that every word in the English language has had a first use; a language is the record of innumerable creative decisions. Most of those responsible are lost to lexicographical history, but in our online age, it is easier to identify the culprit or heroine.
I tracked some of them down. What is it like to see a word you invented get into the dictionary? And how does it feel if it spirals out of control, in ways you never intended? …
How the Railroads Created Modern Christmas
Before Americans could have gift-giving on a massive scale, they needed a way to move all those goods around.
Santa and his reindeer didn’t appear in the sky immediately upon the birth of Christ, and the Christmas holiday as Americans now know it—the carols, the lights, the long-distance travel, and, above all, the massive consumer spending on gifts—didn’t always exist this way. By the mid-1800s, the holiday had picked up and assimilated various elements of European religious and pagan traditions. Upon the publication of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in England in 1843, it took a form recognizable to modern eyes.
Despite the enthusiasm for Christmas abroad, the holiday wasn’t all that popular yet in the United States. “They made more of New Year’s than of Christmas,” 101-year-old Jane Ann Brown told The New York Times in 1894. Brown had seen the holiday change over the course of her long life. Unlike today, New Yorkers of her youth didn’t think much of Christmas. What she might not have realized was how much of the holiday’s evolution was attributable to the steel rails multiplying across the American continent.
I am a materials scientist—I study the substances that humans use to construct the physical world we inhabit. How inventors transform materials is widely understood, but less evident—sometimes to the inventors themselves—is the extent to which those materials shape the culture that comes to depend upon them. It’s obvious how smartphones and broadband internet are radically transforming the lives and customs of the people who use them. The cultural alchemy that turned steel into Christmas has been largely forgotten, but today’s holiday is unmistakably a product of innovations in materials. …
14 Villains & Monsters Created To Insult Real People
Writing is magic. It is a beautiful, impressive, artsy-fartsy pursuit…AND a way screenwriters and novelists take weird shots at their enemies. On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writers Ben Joseph and Chase Mitchell for a look at world-famous villains and monsters created to insult real people. From Godzilla to Goldfinger to the funniest galactic adventure ever written, get ready to learn how Pent-Up Writer Anger generated some of the all-time best evil characters. …
Confessions of a Jewish Santa
They wanted dinosaurs and fire trucks, American Girl dolls and Uggs, and they wanted their grandma to get healthy.
Jewish Santa really wanted to adjust his wig. The stomach padding, shoulder pads, and heavy jacket were tolerable. The baggy red overalls underneath, downright comfortable. But the wig itched. A lot. It barely covered his brown Jew fro, and he couldn’t risk scratching and revealing his hair. Well, he could, but he wouldn’t. Jewish Santa wanted people to believe. He wanted everyone to have some of Santa’s magic.
Jewish Santa was raised lighting candles for eight days at this time of year, and he had little firsthand experience with the opposing team’s mascot. His only time on Santa’s lap was at age 23 in a Memphis mall; he asked Santa what to look for in a wife, and Santa recommended a churchgoing woman. But now he was putting on the outfit for more than 20 hours a week in a well-known downtown department store on the West Coast, earning $22 an hour. (Santas received $24 an hour if the beard was real.) It was Jewish Santa’s first year, and he was sharing the chair with some men who had donned the Santa cap for decades. He received little formal instruction from his manager. Just one important note: no asking if a kid has been naughty or nice. The store no longer felt guilt and punishment belonged in the Santa visit. Jewish Santa, himself a lapsed believer, liked this change. After a few days of trial and error, he settled on opening his visits with “Dear child, what do you want for Christmas?”
They wanted L.O.L Surprise Dolls and stuffed animals. They wanted Legos and Barbies, Big Wheels and Hot Wheels. They wanted dinosaurs and fire trucks, American Girl dolls and Uggs, and they wanted their grandma to get healthy. They wanted planes and cars and promised Jewish Santa they had a license to drive even when they didn’t look a day over 6. One young girl wanted a diamond. Jewish Santa asked her if it could be a small diamond or did she need something larger? She was okay with a small diamond, and Jewish Santa praised her flexibility. She warned, “Just don’t tell my parents.”
They wanted Nintendo Switches and X-Boxes, roller skates and scooters. They wanted PJ Masks and baby dolls, Buzz Lightyears and Elsas. Jewish Santa told them he also loved Toy Story, that some nights after dinner, he and Mrs. Claus retire to the parlor to light a Yule log, drink eggnog, and watch it together. …
Chief Niwot’s Curse
A bust of Chief Niwot near the courthouse on Pearl Street.
ON the longest night of the year, we sit cross-legged in a circle and watch unfamiliar faces across from us flicker in candlelight. We clasp hands, the one to my right clammy and the one to my left ice cold. The full moon beams through the window like a spotlight on our host, who closes his eyes and begins to speak over the steady beat of a deer hide drum.
I have been here once before, sitting on the floor of my neighbor Ryan’s living room and shivering when someone coming or going from the winter solstice ritual lets in a draft of December air. During an initial conversation in our front yard, my mother and Ryan had quickly bonded over their shared interest in spirituality. Last year, at the beginning of my winter break from college, she convinced me to attend his solstice party, insisting that a Boulder hippie celebration would be a perfect welcome home from my first semester on the East Coast. I was hesitant to go, not because this sort of get-together was foreign to me, but because I was suffering from altitude sickness, an ailment I had previously thought was reserved for tourists. Unwilling to admit the strength of my headache, I had no excuse not to go with my mother to the solstice party around the corner.
Now, back for the winter break of my second year away, I am already familiar with the strange metric by which I have come to measure my identification with my home. Any personal development or shifts in perspective I acquire from my time at school are unintelligible when I am there; it is only when I return to the place I have always known that I realize exactly how much I have changed. Because of this, much of my relationship to my home appears to be located in the 1,800 miles between Colorado and Connecticut.
“I want to call in the directions: West, East, South, North, Above, Below. Thank you thank you thank you for joining us.” Ryan’s thanks tumble out of his mouth as if pulled from his throat by a string. “Pachamama, our Earth mother, thank you thank you thank you.”
“Thank you thank you thank you,” the girls on either side of me murmur. …
CHIEF NIWOT”S CURSE
A CURSE, A DREAM, AND AN ill-fated peace.
Chief Niwot is said to have first stated at this meeting his legendary Curse of the Boulder Valley. According to the chief, the curse was its breathtaking landscape: “People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.” …
Ed. Chief Niwot’s Curse trily has happened. The Boulder Valley I first saw as my family crested Davidson Mesa in the mid-1960’s has been destroyed by the many, myself included, who came, left our stain upon the Earth… and then never left.
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
An intimate glimpse into a diverse community of witches, druids, wizards, sacred drummers, and Christo-pagans. Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/video/ind…
Ronny Chieng explores climate change’s impact on the holidays, including the rising price of Christmas trees, the lack of reindeer lichen and the shortage of usable Prosecco grapes.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
The global obesity rate is on the rise, having nearly tripled since the 1970s. Hasan examines how federal policy and corporations like Coca-Cola helped America export its unhealthy diet to the rest of the world.
THANKS to Netflix and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhah for making this program available on YouTube.
壊れてしまったまるホイホイ。Maru Trap broke.
If you hung a Christmas stocking in 14th-century France, you would have been offering a place for the Devil to warm his hoofs in exchange for payment
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 25, 2017
FINALLY . . .
The Strange Tale of the Great 1911 Trans-Saharan Ostrich Heist
Big hats, big risks, big payoffs.
Ostriches on a farm in Oudtshoorn, South Africa.
IT WAS 1911, AND THE UNION OF South Africa was awash with rumor and suspicion. It was said that there was a turncoat who had deserted the Ministry of Agriculture to sell secrets to a shadowy syndicate of American capitalists. South Africa had only been autonomous—as a dominion of the British Empire—for about a year. Any disruption to a major industry could be very damaging to the fledgling country.
In response, the parliament authorized a clandestine expedition to the Sahel, the semi-arid region south of the Sahara. The expedition was led by Russell Thornton, a veteran of the Boer War and two other “competent experts.” The alleged traitor? None other than Thornton’s brother, Earnest, a former employee of the Secretary of Agriculture.
Their mission was to secure a flock of ostriches—by any means necessary.
WHAT’S THE WEIRDEST BIRD? The ostrich,” says Arne Mooers, professor of biodiversity at Simon Fraser University, “They may be the most [evolutionarily] isolated species in the world.”* Massive and flightless, ostriches thrive in arid environments, insulated from both heat and cold by their thick plumage. And they have the biggest bodies and largest eggs of any living avian. According to a 2014 study, ostriches and their closest relatives—the group including emus, cassowaries, and kiwis—diverged when there were still dinosaurs walking the earth. “They are different because they’re a long [evolutionary] branch, with a flowering at the end,“ explains Mooers—two species and a couple of subspecies, ranging across central and southern Africa.
Ostrich farm, South Africa.
There were ostriches around when humans emerged, so we have a long history with the massive birds. Africans had long hunted ostriches for meat and leather. In ancient Egypt, the goddess Maat and divine justice were represented by the ostrich feather, and two of them adorned the crowns of pharaohs as a symbol of authority. Ostrich eggs were carved and given as offerings in ancient Greece, and later they were used to adorn minarets. In the Ottoman Empire, the Arabian ostrich was hunted for sport, and those showy feathers.
But it wasn’t until the last decades of the 19th century that ostriches—their feathers, in particular—became a global commodity. …
In 1947, the Cobbwell Food Company attempted to infiltrate Christmas via a lavish ad campaign in which Santa acquired a sidekick, "Cobbo the Christmonster". This did not go well
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 25, 2017
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Not? I have absolutely no idea.