And That's Why We Drink - E255 Holiday Cryptid Friends and a Very Merry Christinemas

Episode Date: December 26, 2021

Christmastime is here... and so is the original cork-toothed pirate, the unhinged Shifter herself, CHRISTINE! What more perfect time to have an intermission in her parental leave than for the holidays. Don't worry, we sing both of our traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas songs to make up for lost time. Then Em covers the Dwight Schrute approved "dirty, worse Santa", Belsnickel. And speaking of Santa, Christine brings us a hilarious, scary and wild set of stories about Santa crimes. And did Christine eat walnuts out of her father's old boot? Tune in to find out! That's definitely why we drink!

hello everybody and welcome to i guess this is the intermission of your maternity leave christine i just came to do that i'm gonna go uh christine christine is still on maternity leave just before people get super stoked that christine's officially back But we, Christine did make it a priority and said, no matter what, I want to be on the Christmas episode. So Christine's here for just a moment. And then we will get back to our new programming with the other Schieffer I'd be replaced. And so at a certain point, I thought to myself, I have to force my way back in about halfway through to remind everybody that I'm still here. You did it pretty, pretty deliciously. And also, I want to let you know that it hasn't come out yet. So there's no way you would know this, but we just recorded last night, the listeners episode for December. And Allison, without being prompted, took over your Christmas Time Is Here song. Allison! Oh, I could cry. I'm so proud.

She did it in as high a pitched voice as you do it as well. God, that makes me so happy. Well, I will say, because the only one that's out right now is the first one with you and Eva. It was so fun. I listened to it yesterday and today and I was like I got like really emotional at the beginning. You guys were chatting. It made me miss you and then you guys are so funny and I was like oh shit I'm gonna get replaced

for real. Like I used to joke about it and now I'm like I think I'm done. I think I'm getting kicked out. At some point I'll find a way to remove myself for three months or so and you can just do whatever you want with the show at that point.

You'll have your moment. I'm gonna have to sabotage you somehow. I don't know how, but I'll work on it. I've literally tried bringing on your college roommate, your brother, Eva, everyone. It's not working. You're still wanted. So I-

At least I'm still forcing myself back into the show. So- No, I'm glad you're here for the Christmas episode. You're totally right. It would have been super weird without you. Also, it's very belated, but and it hasn't even come out yet. But I know we're going to get comments. Not a once during any time during Thanksgiving did I have whichever guest host was on do

the Kill the Turkey song. See, people have unread it. Apparently, Alexander was like, so just like a side note, this was literally like the week after I gave birth. He's like, people are estimating that you'll be back in time to sing the Pass the Turkey song, or yeah, Pass the Cranberry Sauce song. He's like,

should I tell them not to get their hopes up because you're not going to be back within like the next couple weeks? Hey, I know it's a month late, but do you want to give it a whirl? Oh yeah because while we're recording this it's like about to be it's literally a week from thanksgiving today for us it's it's turkey season it's upcoming yeah it is it is very timely oh my god okay who is ready i'm so deprived okay hang on hang on give me a minute you know what i have to do first you have to drink drink wine. I'm so excited. I wished it. I missed cork in your

teeth like you're a little pirate. Oh, there it is. The sloshing in the glass. It's been a long nine months for all of us. It's been a long nine. You honestly have no idea, Christine, what it's been like for me. It's been a lot. And I keep meaning to ask, but I don't want to like, you know, give you any sort of emotional trouble, so I just let you be. All right, do a little sippy, and then we'll kill the turkey. Blaze is downstairs feeding the baby, so I'm good to go. Mama's feeding herself. Okay, that's right.

Oh, I've got Krampus here, by the way. Yay! And I've got a stupid bow on my head. There's two little demons that i get to look at for the next hour all right pass the cranberry sauce we're having mashed potatoes oh the turkey looks great thank you for loving me thank you for being there everyone's thinking the whole world's thinking you for thinking us for thinking you kill the turkey christine this is the first time you've been here since you've had a literal baby so god

i haven't given anyone much of an update i gave one in in the first episode where i just said you had some complications i gave the name of the baby but i kind of went and it's not my place to go further than that so is there people i'm sure would like to hear your piping hot take of what it's what it's like to have a baby and how it has been to have a baby well i'm thank you for asking i'm really tired um which you know it's like to have a baby and how it has been to have a baby. Well, thank you for asking. I'm really tired, which, you know, it's par for the course, I hear. I was dying laughing because in the episode you recorded with Eva, you were like,

yeah, Christine says like she hasn't lost much sleep yet. And I'm like, what the hell was wrong with me back then? Like, I miss those days because I definitely am not sleeping now. What is to someone who has not had a baby, but who has had a lot of sleep deprivation, to what level sleep deprivation is it for people who don't actually know what they're getting themselves into? I mean, I think it depends on the baby. I'm very lucky.

I feel like she's better than my sister was when she was a baby. She had colic and she was just, no offense, a nightmare. She screamed. She didn't sleep in her own bed until she was seven. It was just a nightmare. She's probably just scared of you, but okay. I mean, well, yeah, I was. Is it colicky or just living with the shifter?

Just looking at the shifter every day. Yeah, so I feel like I'm very lucky. But that being said, she still wakes up like last night she woke up almost every hour and a half to eat. And then it takes her like forever, like 45 minutes to an hour to eat. And then sometimes she won't go back to sleep. So within like a period of like 12 hours, I'll get like four and a half to six hours of sleep, but like really interrupted. So I never get like a long stretch. You're just like at any moment going to really be labeled as unhinged.

Yes, I'm very unhinged. You could just snap at any moment. Oh, 100%. Like you're luckier across the country for me. This is just a virtual meeting. Great. Well, and what else has it been? What's it have your maternal instincts kicked in? Are you thinking things you've never thought before or feeling things you've never thought before? You have mom superpowers yet? No, I just feel pretty damn normal. I'm just back to drinking wine, hanging out.

You just got a whole other like thing to take care of. I did have like really bad nightmares for a few weeks there, which I don't know if that was just the hormones or what, but like really bad, brutal, violent, horrific nightmares. So it could have been the sleep deprivation plus the hormones. I don't know. So that was fun, but that's kind of died down a little bit. So I had to stop watching Law and Order for a while, SVU, because it was just like poisoning my brain, especially when I was not sleeping. Sure. But other than that, I don't know. I just, I miss you guys. I feel like every day I lose so much time.

Because I am trying to sleep for 12 hours straight. And then by the time I'm up, I don't know. I just feel like I don't have any time. Like I feel like I'm attached to a baby. It's great. Okay, I love her more than anything. I mean, you don't have to sugarcoat it for me. It's a baby. I know. I feel like I'm just attached to her. Just a little

raisin that cries. Yeah. By the time he comes out, she'll be much, not much older, but like, I don't know, twice her age or something that she is now. So I don't know what the future holds, but right now she's six weeks old as we record this. So. And is, does, I mean, you're talking to like, we should start a spin-off podcast where you just explain things to me because i have no idea how i just have no idea how children work i don't either to be honest with you uh what so is there a milestone that happens by six weeks i was like anything no offense i know she's like the love of your life and you would just jump in front of 10 000 buses for her but like is there anything interesting about her yet? Like, can she do, can she smile? She started smiling. Um, and it's just

the greatest thing ever. Um, because like in the middle of the night when you're just like, I am about to cry cause all I want to do is sleep and she won't sleep. And then she'll just like start smiling and giggling and it's like, okay, I love you like you're she's laughing at the torture she's giving you yeah she thinks it's very funny um but so she starts laughing in her sleep now so sometimes she'll fall asleep and she'll start like full-on cackling like giggling that's precious her bassinet in like a cute not creepy way yet i'm sure when she's a little older it'll be creepy but she just kind of like giggles and she smiles back at us now which is very cute um but that's about it otherwise she's not very interesting um she likes to you know stare at

things with giant eyes she has she does she's really mastered the like freaked out face yeah like everyone everyone comments oh m just told her a ghost story that's what her face looks like i hadn't heard that before no it's funkle i'm teaching her the horrors of lemon and she no why did you bring me onto this earth um uh well i'm happy you're doing well i i'm i'm sorry i feel like i really took the reins and like forced you off of the show but i had a hunch you'd be a little sleepy and i felt bad that we didn't announce it ever but like i was so not i was just not prepared i don't know i don't think either of of the show but I had a hunch you'd be a little sleepy and I felt bad that we didn't announce it ever but like I was so not I was just not prepared I don't know I don't think either of us were

prepared but what's now you know no we tried to be and it didn't work and was more prepared than I was not shocking at all I don't know about that I think we we really did try to record enough episodes that no one would even know you were gone but realistically I think that would have actually not worked out at all because we would have been so far ahead. We would like, I don't know, we would do something stupid like predict 2020 would be our year again, you know? We would have, yeah, you're right.

That didn't work out well for us last time. Well, anyway, I'm glad you're here. Since it is Christmas, obviously, as you can tell, but I have a little, a a very little please don't get your hopes up present uh for christmas okay um and i don't mean to discredit it because um one of our listeners uh helped me with this but and i say little because i was expecting like something really like holy crap about it and i it was it was kind of a a neutral shock which in itself was a shock but one of our listeners wrote into Tea Time Tuesday

and said that her friend matched with a certain someone shut up on tinder and his name rhymes with schmegelschmeitz oh my god and so i reached out and i said i absolutely 100 need you to get your friend to screenshot what that profile looks like yeah you're like paying the paparazzi at this point you're like i will give you 600 to get the scoop so i wanted to give them a shout out this is from alissa i just i said i'd give them a shout out for helping me. So thank you, Alyssa, for being a part of this. But I thought a very quick last minute Christmas gift to you would be I'm going to send you the screenshots of Bagel Bites' Tinder profile. Holy shit.

You have the screenshot? Okay. Hang on. This is just life changing. I'm sending it to you right now. Does Eva know about this? I don't know. But I'm sending it to you right now you even know about this i don't know but i'm sending it to geo's trio so everyone's gonna have it excellent because i i am curious if she's like wait what and so i was expecting it to be like bananas but i'm kind of shocked that it's actually a pretty neutral profile i think he's trying to not scare people

away but i thought you would still oh my god the gift is that you now in case you're ever wondering why haven't i matched with him besides being married and having i have wondered i have wondered a lot well now you know what you're missing out on god okay do you know that this photo of him sitting in front of like a leather chair in front of a bunch of books looks like the photos you and i took at that one photo shoot withio in the chair like we could probably match those up somebody please photoshop us behind Zach in his chair just like how Gio was sitting in the chair do people have access to these photos I feel like they're like I don't know if it's legal for us to show yeah I feel like we can't necessarily I don't know I mean it's a picture that everyone has seen online like he didn't it's not an original from well sure it's not fresh off his phone it's not a dick pic or anything like that shockingly but shockingly uh yeah and his

his uh oh are you gonna read the bio i was gonna say would you like me to dramatically read it for you okay please so we're obviously he's verified on tinder which is and the friend was in vegas when she matched so i didn't know you could be verified on Tinder. Fun fact. I'm verified on Bumble BFF. What? How? Honestly, I cannot give you that answer. It's the same way that I'm verified on everything else. I don't know. It just happened.

This is just another platform where I'm going to whine about not being verified. Excellent. Everyone get monogamous married Christine verified on Tinder, please. Okay. Zach, 44, verified. Verified.

He would say this, okay? Yes. TV show host at Discovery Plus, straight. If anyone ever wants to like blackmail M, you can just get that like straight and be like. At which point I would be like, I need answers. Like,

you know, okay. Three miles away was Zach at this moment. Wow. These are the little toggles he selected for himself. Dog lover, travel, movies, spirituality spirituality board games i like that

spirituality is like the way he would say it on his tv show okay but he so would he would 100 i feel like i've heard him say the word reality before and he goes reality yeah he has to emphasize every letter anyway this is the actual bio very short direct i like i like foggy days fast cars and ghost stories ghost emoji okay but i too like a good foggy day i, but it sounds like something I said in eighth grade when I was trying to be emo, you know. If we were to really construct, if we were to build out a dating profile, there's a lot of things you could lead with before foggy days, you know. Right. Like, I like hiking. I don't.

Oh, my God. Wow. So you're straight and you like hiking. This is like the most pretty soon there's just gonna be a picture of me with like a bass and i'm just gonna be holding well like there's so many things before foggy days i think like at least i have friends something you know at least i have friends i don't wow i like foggy days fast cars which i didn't know about him and ghost stories ghost emoji tv show host slash producer and own an award-winning museum instagram real zach bagans oh my god i own an

award-winning museum i mean he's not wrong i mean he's that's true and that is impressive i mean he's a bit he's a businessman you know know? He is a foggy loving businessman. Well, I'm not surprised by the fast cars because I've seen clips where he's driving around and he's always in these like really fancy cars. I don't know what they are, but. I'm not surprised. I do feel like I learned something new. Everything else I was pretty sure about.

The foggy days in the cars. You're right. Dog lover. I guess I did. He has a dog. He does have in the cars you're right uh dog lover i guess i did he has a dog he does have a dog you're right i didn't know he liked board games you and him could actually really get along on a hang on that's exactly i also like spirituality so i feel like we could get along in that regard as well who couldn't appreciate a good spirituality i can't believe that you did this this is the best gift ever. Anyway, Merry quick Christmas because we planned on recording like it was kind of a sporadic recording moment. And I was like, I know exactly what I'm going to give. I'm like actually crying.

I think I've like become a real mess with this. It's just that's the nicest thing ever. It's such a fun and silly idea. I love that you have such an emotional personality, you know? Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. It's award winning. All right.

I guess we should do our usual. What do you drink and why do you drink? And let's get into our stories. For a second, I thought that was your story. And I was like, wow, that was epic. It's not a ghost story, but it's a man among other. A man among men. Yeah. Oh, okay. A man among men. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Well, thank you for asking. I'm drinking a wine that I think that came in my Bright Cellars box, or I don't remember where I got it. But I don't know what it is, but it's in French. So that's fun. Great. It looks kind of spooky. And I'm drinking, because, Em, because m oh my god i have an update a

haunted update for you and i'm like scared to talk about it because it really really scared the absolute shit out of me is it all of these nightmares because i feel like what happened was you opened an immortal portal and now once you opened your immortal portal and had a baby now there's like, I feel like all those nightmares were like something awakening. Yeah. I felt really off for a while there. Hello,

Gio. Um, because, uh, he's home from daycare and about to cause a ruckus because I was really like not in my right mind for obvious reasons. And I was like, God,

I am off my rocker. I'm awake at 3am every night because of the baby. Like I was just in a bad, weird headspace obvious reasons. And I was like, God, I am off my rocker. I'm awake at 3am every night because of the baby. Like I was just in a bad, weird headspace. But so finally, I was like, I'm back. I feel more normal. I feel back to myself a little bit. And the other day, Blaze's family was in town, which was awesome because they were, you know, helping with the baby and everything. And I was upstairs writing some thank you notes i think um and i was sitting there writing some thank you notes like everybody was downstairs across the house in the living room and i'm sitting there i'm not fucking kidding with you i'm not kidding with you

i'm so scared i'm i was sitting there in silence just writing my thank you notes and i hear daddy and i went see ya i literally my my first thought was oh it must be a toy like a talking like doll or something like a toy because it sounded like a little girl and so my brain went there and then i thought wait like i don't a i'm not any we we're not in like the baby's room second of all she doesn't have talking toys or anything like that she also doesn't have like a working uh skill set of the english language mouth yeah exactly exactly and so i just sat there in like total silence for a minute looked around and i was like that was not it wasn't a whisper it wasn't like in my head it was just in the room probably four feet from me in this mts room

right in front of me. I just heard daddy. Why are you getting called daddy is the weird thing. I don't know. It should have been mommy, which is even worse. Yeah. I kind of appreciate that it's daddy because at least, you know,

they weren't trying to talk to you. Like at least. That's true. It, it, it almost, I didn't feel like it was like talking to me. It just sort of felt like I was like in the way while it was talking to

somebody. I don't know. Like it was like, it was like a memory that replayed or something? Yeah, exactly. Or like it was not addressing me. It was addressing somebody else. I don't know.

But I was totally flipped out because I have – I don't know. I've been in this house for over a year now. I've never had anything that weird happen. And it sounds so dumb because like i can't follow it up with like and then i found a note in the wall that said daddy you know i don't know what else daddy came home daddy walked in you know it'd be weird did blaze walk in right after no so blaze was upstairs and i went to tell him and he was like oh i'm sorry that happened to you and i was like what the fuck nobody and then i told blaze's parents and they were like oh it must have been the tv and i was like were you watching tv

and they were like no and i was like well why would you go to any lampagnale and expect i know you're right but i couldn't tell you because i knew we were recording in a few days and i was like gotta save this but it was like my heart was pounding so fast because i was just in an empty room where a literal child had just yelled across the room. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I have a lot of opinions. And I wasn't sleep deprived at that point because they had been there for six days and had been watching the baby. So I had actually slept. So I wasn't like totally exhausted. I wasn't like hallucinating. I don't know. So what's your theory? Sorry.

Oh, a lot of them. First of all, super creepy. But what if one ghost was saying daddy because another ghost was in the room who was daddy? That's what I was feeling. That's what I was afraid of, that it was like addressing something else that I was not aware of. Or what? I mean, hey, like, don't they say like the second you have a baby, like things just get spiritually crazy because it's just like fresh new energy and new life and all that. And yes, and it was by the way, it was in that hallway where a those creepy church stairs are.

But also it was the doorway to the nursery, which I didn't love. And I was like, oh, well, it's a couch where you slept on right when you visited. I was sitting there and to my right where that nursery is, that's where I like heard it. No, thanks. No, thanks. Also, I would like to think it's like a cool situation. Remember when we covered the Conjuring house and they were actually seeing ghosts from the past who were looking at them in the future? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It would be cool if it was like future Leona and you heard her calling Blaze calling blaze oh and not me even though i'm in the room thanks a lot it's possible what you didn't hear was actually the first sense of move mom and now it's daddy mom i'm not talking to you get out of the way yeah but i i'd like to think it would be just future leona and you heard some weird wormhole. That's cute. I'll take that. But it could be not that. It didn't feel, it felt terrifying, but it didn't feel like evil. Like it didn't feel like there's a demon in the room. It just felt like, oh shit.

That's how it starts. I need to leave now. And I literally. You never know if it's a little girl or a little demon. I know. And that was where my head went. And then I called Gio to the room and I was like screaming at him. I was like, Gio, come here right now. And he like walked in and looked at me and I was like, sit with me. He was like, okay. Like he didn't know what was going on. And I was so, I was, I was actually very fucking scared.

I don't like that. So I haven't hung out in there since. Anyway, that's my update. Why do you drink it? I drink because of what I drink. Before, when we started recording, I was supposed to get a peanut butter chocolate banana smoothie. And what arrived to my door was a mango, a mango, a medium mango agogo for Kiana Martin. So if you're Kiana, you have my chocolate peanut butter smoothie and I'm real upset about it. I don't know if it's worse to be expecting chocolate and get fruit or be expecting fruit and get like chocolate peanut butter. I know. Actually, yours is worse. Yours is worse.

I really didn't want something as tart. And every time I order a smoothie, this was the first time I was like also good about it because I'm always like, I'm going to try something new. And every time I'm disappointed, it's like, why don't I just stick with the chocolate peanut butter thing I like? And then I finally ordered it. And now the universe is like, nope, not today. Anyway, that's why I drink. I'm so sorry. Sorry for the super long intro, everyone.

But look, y'all haven't heard from Christine for a long time. I know I derailed as well. But I miss you, Em, and I miss everybody. I miss you, and I'm about to make matters worse, and I'm sorry if you didn't like the tangents or the extra conversation, but you're about to get one last big chunk from us because, wow, we have something to talk about, Christine. What is it? I feel like we have, what is it? Which one? Are we allowed to now? Oh my God, we're allowed to announce that by now, it which one are we allowed to now oh my god we're allowed to announce that by now by the time this comes out and if not we cut it and m is by the way in case you're wondering and you're not watching this on youtube like most people aren't m is wearing literal tinsel like wrapped around their

shoulders like a giant over lengthened scarf darling yeah but like way too long like awkwardly long so it's just flapping around every now and then i just throw it on a different shoulder and so every time m kind of complains a little bit it's just like dangle dangle dangle there's just like this like sparkliness about them that it's hard to take you seriously there's a little vava voom to this episode there's tinsel in your mouth and a lot of vava voom um anyway would you like to officially verbally announce the news oh my gosh y'all we wrote a book it's so silly sometimes em and i text each other like did we really do that is that real yes and that is how i know that we were in quarantine

for way too long because yes i don't even read books and i wrote a fucking book i know emma's like when we agreed to do this em was like i hope you understand i'm not happy about this decision i even when we started meeting with our publisher and everything we i was like who luckily listened to the show so it didn't take a lot of convincing but i was like, who luckily listened to the show. So it didn't take a lot of convincing, but I was like, I actively say I don't like reading. So this is going to be real confusing for people. So it was in the fucking meeting with a publisher being like, by the way, I hate reading books.

So I just want that to be very clear before we start this process. I would rather be up front. And I was like, look, the only way I would read a book as if it were in like bite-sized chunks so you have to be on board that that is how this is going to be written yeah yep which i think it went fine it did and m you for somebody who does not read or like write books

on the regular um you're a an excellent writer i feel like i tell people this all the time i'm like what you haven't told me this you give give yourself no credit. Yes, I have. Because when you wrote like your little any sort of like bio or intro or whatever, I'm always just like, holy shit. Like you're you're very good writer. And I feel like you don't you sell yourself short. What else is new? Thank you. I did not know that.

No, you really are. And so it's really fun, guys. And it's like, yeah, like I said, we made sure to make it M legible. So it's like chunks. I want to read it. And therefore, there's nobody on Earth who cannot read it. It's like interactive, sort of. We tried.

We tried. And I'm sure we've got a lot more that we can talk about when you're back on. Should we say the name of it? You say it. Sure. Oh, damn. Oh, you want me to say it? It's a haunted road atlas is what it's called.

Okay. oh you want me to say it it's a haunted road atlas is what it's called and it's in different cities we just wrote a couple little blurbs of different stories that we like from those areas and we did ice cream recommendations and bar recommendations and obviously i love my roadside attractions so i inserted that whether or not people wanted it and i at the very end there's like different things you can do there while you're also checking out the spooky sites. Oh, and we wrote a, a true crime and a haunted story for, you might've already said that for every city.

So like M covered their favorite ghost story. I covered my favorite crime and a lot of them are new. Like some of them are from episodes, but I think most of them are new stories that we've never covered. Yeah. And there's QR codes in there. So if we have, if we make a reference to an old episode,

you can just scan the book itself and go straight to the episode. So in theory, if you were to be carrying this book around in a car while you're traveling to these locations, you can also listen to those episodes on the way. Oh, and it's illustrated. We have this great illustrator who did such a good job

and it's just super cute. Our little avatars are in there. I'm sure you're going to hear us talk about it a lot when Christine gets back because now we can finally talk about what we've been doing for the last year. Oh my gosh. I think we're both trying to be very conservative because we already covered so much ground in this. It's probably already been like 45 minutes of talking.

If anybody had a right to use a ghost writer, it was two people who thought who, who could say like we used a ghostwriter. Right. We actually fucking wrote the book. Oh, we actually wrote it. My poor family and Deirdre, for those who remember when like COVID, when like the first time I really traveled was in the Bahamas. Right.

That was bad. That was rough for you. I didn't see my family or Deirdre in literally a year and a half. And half of the vacation i was writing like the rest of the book yeah like i was up until the wee hours of the morning and then i would sleep for like a half an hour and then wake up and try to have a good day before i started writing again at night and then i because huh i wasn't sleeping and also i was now surrounded by people again i got a wicked cold so i it was sick anyway so we did actually write it we wrote it unless you hated

it in may by the way it's not out yet it comes out may 10th and we say we wrote it but if you hate it we didn't write it at all not we had a ghost writer entirely named walt yep we just found out about the book just like you did so um anyway there's that i'm sure we'll talk about the book a million times over but i wanted to let everyone know that we can officially talk about it. Oh, I'm so excited. It's been forever because we started writing it a long time ago. It feels like a long time ago. They're not kidding when they say that books take forever to complete.

What a process. Anyway, Christine, I knew we would chat a lot. And so my story today is a shorter one. Mine is too, because I also had the same inkling. Look at us. We are in sync, my friend. So I was trying to think up a Christmas story. And I wrote out like a suggestion box on Instagram for people to submit. I saw that. I saw that. I saw that. And a lot of people wrote in that I cover this, which is teetering on Krampus territory.

But if you remember, season nine-ish of The Office and Dwight Schrute dresses up as Belschnickel. Do you remember this? Yes, I do. Where he goes around and calls the co-workers impish or admirable and he calls i don't yeah i don't know anything about it i remember that episode though that's the that's i feel like a lot of people in today's generation only have ever heard of bel schnickle because of dwight who referred to him on the show, by the way, as a dirty, worse Santa. So here is the story of Belsnickel, a.k.a. Belsnickel, a.k.a. Belsnickel, a.k.a. Pelsnickel, a.k.a. Belsnickel, a.k.a. The Christmas Woman. Wait, I was not expecting that last one. You got me there. Oh, my God. A.K.A. Bell Sniggle, A.K.A. The Christmas Woman. What? Wait.

Whoa, wait. I was not expecting that last one. You got me there. A.K.A. A Dirty Worse Santa. I like that one the best. So Bell Sniggle, he was originally from folklore that stemmed from southwestern Germany. Oh. from uh folklore that stemmed from southwestern germany uh and when the reason that bells nickel's story ended up moving over to the u.s is because when people immigrated over here especially to

pennsylvania um that is how bells nickel's story landed in the u.s especially it's still very popular amongst pennsylvania dutch which makes sense why dwight shrewd was talking about it on the show total sense did you know that pennsylvania dutch has nothing to do with the dutch it's just a bastardization of the word deutsch for german oh fun fact so it's actually just pennsylvania you know german folk fun i didn't know that no uh do you know how many do you know how many of the pennsylvania are people who identify as pennsylvania dutch do you know how many of the Pennsylvania or people who identify as Pennsylvania Dutch, do you know how many of them are actually in Pennsylvania? No. I think it's 65%.

Oh, are the rest in Ohio? Because we got a lot here too. Maybe, maybe. I only saw 65% and ran with it. Yeah, that's surprising if you identify. I feel like a solid 90%. I would it. Yeah, that's surprising if you identify. I really thought it would be like a solid 90%. I would agree. Yeah, yeah. So in Pennsylvania at the time, when people were immigrating over, in Pennsylvania at the time, and I guess the surrounding areas, Christmas wasn't really celebrated.

And so these immigrants decided that they were going to bring over their own Christmas holiday traditions. And they ended up bringing over a lot of the like classic Christmas traditions that everyone still practices. I don't know. Did you know that? Oh, no. Including decorating a tree, nativity scenes. The pickle. Now we have to stop and I have to hear what you're talking about. You you know the pickle that you put on the tree obviously my friend i don't know what you're talking about are you serious what pickle this is such an american thing uh people hang a pickle on the tree if i'm sorry the german is telling me it's the american thing and yet the american is saying what on earth are you talking about eva text the group let me know if you know about this because I feel like a pickle ornament I've seen a bunch of people ornaments okay yeah it's a tradition I thought you would know this

um I don't know the story I I don't know it totally either but I guess you hide the pickle ornament and whoever finds it either gets like an extra gift or gets to open the first gift it's like a different tradition depending on the family. But people, I swear, almost every time during the holidays when someone hears that I'm German, they're like, oh, so you do the pickle thing. And I'm like, no, because like we didn't do that because I think it's more of like an Americanized thing, kind of like potato dumplings or it's not really German, but it's like a U.S. German thing. All right. Anyway, so I thought that's like a U.S. German thing. All right.

Anyway, so I thought that might be a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, the pickle. Honestly, maybe, but I didn't hear about it. I did not see that there. But Eva just says, okay, wait, I've heard about the finding of the pickle, but I think in the recesses of my brain. Okay, so it's like subconsciously somewhere. Yeah. It's there i

suppose i didn't know about it in that people often buy pickle ornaments or hang them but i just didn't understand why interesting you have to find it in the tree ah it's like a fun game thank you my salty little gherkin i'm so glad that i know now okay pickles no that's not one that i was gonna mention but i was gonna mention cancel that out yeah i was gonna mention like stringing popcorn i've never done that i i have i don't understand the is it just to make garland yeah you just make like you can hang it on the tree it's and then and then like three days later i'd eat it because i was a child who was always hungry and it like does not taste good, obviously. But that didn't stop her, folks.

It never did. It was always gone. Also, caroling apparently became a thing. I'm realizing how few Christmas traditions I've ever actually been a part of. I've never caroled. Really? Nor do I want to. It sucks, except for then oftentimes they give you hot chocolate.

I would just like take the hot chocolate and hide somewhere. Yeah. I don't love it. I would do a lot of things for hot chocolate, but I don't think singing to strangers is one of them. One time I went caroling with some people and they all ditched me. Like I didn't know I was in the front of the group and my job was to go ding dong in that one song. And so everybody ran and they opened the door and I just went ding dong. Probably one of the most embarrassing moments of the whole. I don't know what song I would be willing to sing.

I think I don't. Christmas time. Yeah. But just that part and I would be gone. So anyway, a lot of things the Pennsylvania Dutch brought over and taught us about Christmas christmas cute and one of the things they taught us about was belsnickle so belsnickle has apparently uh been around uh since the 18 early 1800s was best known obviously around uh phil or around pennsylvania but especially phil Philadelphia at the time. Which, fun fact, in the early 1800s, Philadelphia and New York City were the same population size.

Oh, shit. So while Philadelphia was kind of enamored, if you will, with the idea of Belsnickel as a Christmas character, New York City, which was the same size at the time, was really enamored with the newly found Santa Claus. So they were both, they came into, wow. Okay, that's interesting. They competed at one time.

They had to duke it out. And it was Santa Claus won. So because they were on the same population size, around the same amount of people knew either of the characters. around the same amount of people knew either of the characters but by 1820 uh new york city's size doubled while philadelphia stayed roughly the same holy shit so double the people cared about santa plus it was post-war and they decided they were going to use santa as a wholesome character in marketing campaigns newspapers and basically they oh i think they also got santa like a pr gig with macy's officially and so uh and so ever since then santa beat out bells nickel for popularity for as a christmas character tragic isn't it though i know especially because they used

here's the really tragic part is that bellsle who we will learn about if you can gauge at all his person out his personality um he is not like a perfect dude if dwight shrewd really likes him yeah fair and so you would think like oh of course people like santa more for christmas because he was like more wholesome and pure jo Jolly. Jolly. But apparently Santa originally, I would love, I'm going to consider Santa a cryptid just so I can cover him one day. Oh, fun. Which like, if I think the Tooth Fairy is a cryptid,

Santa for sure is. I mean, you're right. I mean, he's real though. Not like the Tooth Fairy. Right. Yes. He is as real as can be. And, but he is a cryptid that I will be covering eventually because I didn't get too into it yet

but I guess Santa originally had a checkered beginning because he was once known as quote a lusty frisky elf shut the front excuse me and now because he I guess they wanted to pick a character who was super wholesome and like get people feeling calm and safe again after the war. And so they revamped his image and made, we're going to calm you all down and remove the sexual aspect of this old man so that you feel more comfortable. Everyone wants to feel safe after the war. So look at this lusty,

frisky old man. He's here to, to bring, to break into your home and bring presents to your children. He's very over sexualized. He's a very he's a very horny elf who comes to see your children. Yikes. Why don't you sit on his lap? All of it is suddenly really tainted.

I think all of that's why they were like, we have to get ourselves together and Santa has to revitalize his reputation. Yeah, his PR team was top notch, clearly. Their collaboration with Macy's was one of a kind. So even though Santa was more popular, Belsnuckle was still heard of, especially in the Pennsylvania area, up until the mid-1900s, which was after World War II. And I guess after World War II and the Germans were not favorable in the U.S. Why? Just kidding. Don't answer that. Okay.

So I guess because they were very aware, like, oh, shit, like, people are not a big fan of our hometown right now. shit like people are not a big fan of our hometown right now um so i guess they tried to separate themselves from their culture and their history and very quickly backed away from traditions like bell snickle got you so as santa was getting more popular bell snickle was almost intentionally forgotten about wow so that's kind of the quick history, but just to give you, and I, there's a lot of, I don't want to say rumors as if there's just like gossip in the locker room about Belsnickel, but there's a lot of versions of like who Belsnickel is. Um, one of them is that he could either be another German character called Necht Rpert have you heard of him that sounds really familiar how do you spell the first part k-n-e-c-t connect i don't know i don't know i don't know why

that sounds familiar i have no idea it's servant it means servant was servant in german oh i don't know that wasn't the one i learned it's next obviously so they say that bells knuckle could be necked rupert or servant rupert i've also heard that servant robert oh like is that like krampus's right hand man it's maybe this guy seems aha so this they all seem to be their own little squad don't they we're like they do there's a lot of overlap and i would like to mcu style try to like eventually figure out the timeline and how they all became buddies and foes because every time i tried to look up next rupert i also got either krampus or some other there some other december character you know so basically what i'm trying to say now that you've let me know you already are aware of these people all knowing each other these all these cryptids being friends or foes is that a lot of

the bell snickle theories is that he is either one of those characters with a different name or from a different region, or he was like companions with them. So I don't really know if he was Necht Rupert or if he if they were buddies and different folklore historians have different things to say on it so um some people also think that a belsnickle was actually originally one of saint nicholas's aides um some people think neck rupert is one of belsnickle's aides uh some historians say that they're all the same person the main difference being that neck rupert is named neck rupert neck rupert is from North Germany, while Belsnickel is from Southwest Germany. So they think they might be the same, just regionally different stories. Interesting. Also with just two wild names.

With just two wild names. And also the historians who think that they're different people and they were buddies. One of the arguments to that is because there's a poem called christmas time in the land of bellsnickle and it very directly tells you that bellsnickle and his servant rupert oh were in cahoots to cause mischief in town on christmas eve oh okay i guess they would just break into people's houses and like oh good it's just like kidnapped children um it's classic it's just like a beaten, kidnapped children. It's a classic. It's not funny. It's just so fucking like, it just fits every time. It tracks, it tracks, it tracks. I feel like I'm just shocked that you're not here to give me a play-by-play of what Renata would tell you as a child.

I keep thinking about it and I'm like, she really has never told me anything about this character. Like, I don't know anything about it zandy has obviously been on the show now and he was telling us i don't know what episode it is so it might not have come out yet but he was talking about how your father was singing him a nurse chanting at him oh yeah a nursery rhyme that was all about a serial killer and so i'm just kind of shocked that bell snickle didn't have his own little rhyme, you know? He comes over and he's like, Dad was singing this lullaby and it turns out it's about a murderer. And I was like, I don't want to know about this anymore. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

In this poem, Necht Rupert is described as, quote, Donned in the same manner as Belsnickle, only he is even dirtier. Blackened from the soot of many fires and smudged with the grease of many meals so yum rupert just sounds like he needs to take a bath um fun fact uh another theory about bell snickle is that jacob grim of the grim brothers says that bell snickle could have been inspired from the tradition of hunting down the wild man, which was a common tradition at the ancient Roman Saturnalia festivals. Oh, yikes.

So I guess they would chase down the wild man. And the wild man was dressed in furs with pants, quote, pants made of pine cones and was used to, and he was used as a cautionary tale to scare bad children just leave him be he's already suffered enough with those pants i don't think we did he it sounds like he got it fresh off of etsy like that's fair okay that's pants made of pine cones is a is an intentional purchase very eco-friendly though sure is i i like to think all the little leaves are like kind of

like like oh that's kind of cute yeah and just kind of kind of like fans out fish scales yeah yeah so uh the wild man that jacob grimm thinks that bell snickle was inspired by the wild man also had many names and one of them happened to be boots, but Bootsy Bercht, which apparently he was a horned devil. He was a horny devil. Oh no, that was Santa Claus. So that was a little silly elf who got a little too playful.

I think every Christmas, but yeah, so I guess the wild man was all, one of his descriptors was he was a horned devil and therefore that could be the inspiration for Belsnickel. Especially because Butzeburt and some of the other names are Butznickel, Belspopple, Belsmummel. It all sounds kind of similar.

Sounds like a bunch of gibberish but it's german is it like i'm like i don't know what any of this is i mean it must be it's also german being read by someone who is just butchering the language so who's never found a pickle in a tree so i don't know what kind of authority you have here i just apparently as uh john mulaney put it, I just sit in the corner and eat crackers. One day I just came out here and started talking. So Belsnickel has, just like how there's some overlap with other Christmas characters, Belsnickel has a lot of similarities to St. Nicholas, which I think is why people think that they might be companions on the journey of Christmas together. In that they both come to visit kids in december apparently one article actually called bells nickel tells nickel which

translates to nicholas with fur oh yeah like a pelt like a yeah that's interesting and so they think it might just either be saint nicholas in fur or it's inspired from saint nicholas and it's just a a guy that likes to dress in fur coats i guess what the fuck okay interesting twist somehow this this man found a way to combine santa claus and the devil because there's a traveler named william howitt who in the 1840s was talking about bells nickel and said quote although many have assumed that the name is a reference to saint nicholas because of pel's nickel right others have contended that it was equally an expression of der alt nick or old nick which was an epitaph for the devil.

So German sources also point to this connotation and equate the Belsnickle with Beelzebub. Interesting. And that would mean that the Belsnickle is seen alternately as the furry Nick or the furry devil. That's cute. A lot of far reaching theoriesaching theories yeah yeah but yeah and in some lore uh bell snickle is actually considered an assistant or companion of santa claus but in other versions he actually works alone oh okay it hasn't don't get it twisted bear to bear to none relation to santa i got you okay bells nickels also sometimes compared to krampus except uh when people say oh are they the same character krampus

actually existed for much longer and so uh bells nickels lore is much more new a lot of people which i'm in this camp is that bells nickel is sometimes seen as a combination of krampus and santa because he quote marries the torturing and rewarding practices for children into one judgmental character so just like just like how santa will reward good kids and krampus will punish bad kids bell snicklekel does both. Okay. So. Much like Santa and Krampus as well, Belsnickel reminds children to behave all year long or else. But unlike Santa and more like Krampus,

kids actually get to interact with Belsnickel when he comes to your home. Oh, because he's carrying like whips and bags and will kidnap you. Because he's a German cautionary tale. Yes, you nailed it. Oh no. If you don't have a pickle on your tree, you better forget it. Belsnickel's pissed. So just to describe Belsnickel for people,

just look at Dwight Schrute in season nine. Or he is a giant figure in fur clothing his face is covered with soot or charcoal he has a very long tongue and he wears a mask which i don't understand why um no that was not explained well enough he's sometimes draped in bells outdoor foliage antlers anything pine cones anything natural i suppose that's terrifying he shows up a couple weeks before christmas usually around december 6th i think that's when the saturnalia festival is okay or it's when saint nicholas day is yes that's what it is that's what it is so he shows up December 6th. Okay. He brings with him a bag of goodies. Uh-oh.

These goodies can... No, no, no. The real goodies. Okay. The goodies contain cakes, candies, fruits. Okay. We always got oranges on St. Nicholas Day. Oh.

Well, there you have it. And walnuts. And nuts was the next thing. Ah! Okay. Okay. I'm on the right track. Oranges and walnuts. What a specific combo when you can have really anything.

What a boring thing to receive. Like, you know, you put your shoes out. Did you do that? I didn't do it, but I do know what you're talking about with that one. Okay, I don't know if this is another pickle situation. But yeah, you put your shoes out, and of course I would take my stepdad's boot and put that out. So it's like, that'll be filled. But then it was always like walnuts and oranges. And I was like, it stepdad's boot and put that out. That'll be filled. But then it was always like walnuts and oranges. And I was like, it's 6 a.m. on a school day. Like, and now I have to eat and I have to eat walnuts out of my dad's stinky fucking boot. I didn't make that one.

What a bad experience. Maybe I was being punished. That's just going to ferment the fruit as far as I'm concerned. I think I was being punished. That's just going to ferment the fruit as far as I'm concerned. I think I was being punished after all. So he would bring a bag of goodies, which consisted of cakes, candies, nuts, and fruits. And he also, on the other hand, had a bushel of switches. Oh, no. Oh, no.

So it kind of was a take your pick situation. I'll take the walnuts. The clean walnuts. That my, the clean walnuts. That's how you know you lived before COVID. When you were like. I'll eat these out of a shoe. My dad's used shoe. That's so disgusting.

So there's a lot of versions to the story. These were kind of the most condensed versions I found. Version one of Belsnickel is that with this bag of goodies and with this bushel of switches, Belsnickle would leave toys and small goods and candies for good children while leaving switches and stockings for bad children, which I guess is like a here, mom and dad, you do it so I don't have to abuse the kids. Yikes. I guess is like a here mom and dad,

you do it. So I don't have to abuse the kids. Yikes. It also, I can see how people relate him to Santa Claus because it's like leaving coal in your stock. Yeah. True. Version two is that he would bring gifts for good children,

but for bad kids, he, this comes from, I think that poem with him and servant Rupert, he would bring gifts to good kids, but for bad kids he would drag them out of bed and into the forest and they're oh jesus and they're never to be seen again unless they pay for their bad behavior so this is how they pay for it he would demand them to

perform for him uh either sing dance or recite poems to get themselves out of trouble one could argue that was some sort of like uh very dark archaic uh inspiration for a christmas caroling where like you sing because you're a good person okay and i just go ding dong and he's like you're punished that's not you don't hear me here you suck at singing you didn't redeem yourself off to the forest you go i'm leaving you in this forest version three is he will this is the i think the most common one i saw is that he will come up to the house he will um usually up to a window of the house he will i did not know he was wearing chains up until this point maybe it was his bells, but I saw that he rattles his chains. Maybe he rattles the bells.

And he taps on the window with his switch. Yikes. Keep in mind to make this as authentically German as possible. This isn't just a story. We literally have, it's a common tradition of the parents that will reenact this for the children holy shit this is like that creepy clown documentary we watched where that guy hides under the bed to like scare bad children usually it was a dad or an uncle or an older brother who would be gone on an errand or something and he would go dress up as bellsnickle and then people wonder why people

have like trauma and like fear of the dark and i mean what the fuck do you think tapping on the window with his switch infuriating the kids obviously shit their pants because they see this bell snickle out in the window about to potentially beat them drag you to the woods and beat you and make you sing a song. A small price to pay, by the way, like if I want to not get in trouble. All of a sudden I will sing. You will perform an entire opera for this man. So then the kids are freaked out. They're trying to hide.

They scream for their parents to lock all the doors. The parents instead open the window and welcome the beast in come on let them inside through the window actually i don't know if they're like go around back and then they just like let them through the front door oops i think it would be funnier if you made like your old ass uncle climb through a kitchen window and a bell snickle on it good luck with all those fucking chains and stuff then they would either have bell snickle or the parents themselves are like all together as one really creepy fucking team they would go gather the children who are now hiding from bell snickle force them to go sit down on a couch together

and uh this is when bell snickle will ask the kids about how their behavior has been all year long. Again, very sick and twisted Santa's nice or naughty list and seeing how your behavior has been all year. At what point do you go, Uncle Frank, is that you? Like, at what point? Because I feel like eventually if they're talking to me, I'd be like, wait a second. I would imagine they all have practiced their Belschnickel growl or something. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Also, if you're scary enough, no kid gonna wonder they're not saying anything they're not saying a damn

thing to be right you're just like you're completely right yeah so uh he'll ask about their behavior have you been good to your parents have you been good to your siblings have you been good to your friends at school have you been honest on your tests have you cleaned your room blah blah blah blah, blah, blah. Goes through the whole interrogation. The kids answer the questions. And if they have truly been good, I guess because the parents are there to like nod or be like, no. If they were good, then he will hand them gifts and candy.

If the kids are dishonest or were even openly bad behaviorally that year then they will get the switch and i guess it was if you were at least honest about being bad the punishment was less severe than if you lied about being bad and you weren't i guess that's fair i don't yeah and and whatever version of horror horrible right right so then version four which i think is i mean this is all bad and like not actually funny but in the in terms of like the most ridiculous to visualize uh bell circle comes inside through the window and he just throws candy all over the floor and i guess all of the kids can lunge at the candy it's like it again this feels a little like a like a pinata or a trick-or-treating situation of like take take the candy. And then all of the kids who lunge for the candy that the parents report were bad that year are the ones that get swatted because they don't because they don't deserve the candy.

Well, OK. Version five is that he throws the candy on the floor to test all of the children's impulses. And if you grab for the candy at all, you get switched. They're children. all of the children's impulses and if you grab for the candy at all you get switched their children okay if anyone knows anything about like culty fundamentalist christianity that sounds a lot like blanket training on like uh i could get into it forever but it's just a form of abusing your children early so that they never ask questions or or doubt god or anything like that but it's uh the concept of putting your kid on a blanket when they're like a baby baby baby like cannot understand

anything yet and then you like try to taunt them off the blanket with toys and treats and things and then if they leave the blanket then you hurt them in some way what the fuck and it's the concept of the blanket is a symbol of like you know uh religion of like don't ever leave don't ever fuck don't ever wonder what what else is out there don't question mom or dad just obey obey obey it's a very sick and twisted thing but oh my god i got a lot of like just because i'm'm always primed, I'm always ready to talk about that shit. So I was very quickly primed to think blanket training of like, oh, here's candy, here's candy, here's candy. And then if you touch it at all, whether you were good or bad, you miss. They're like training, they're like, wait, what's the word? Baiting you, like baiting you to eat. Yes, yes. Oh, that's terrible.

Oh, that's terrible. So, and then the last version, which is the nicest one of them all, is that there are families out there who don't want to terrorize their children. And so they said that Bell's Snickle is actually very good and leaves gifts in your shoes. And that's it. That's it. It just leaves gifts in your shoes. And so I guess that storyline has taken off in recent years compared to the others. I wonder why yeah but so there it then means that there's two different camps where some children are terrified

of Belsnickel and some of them love him because they grew up in a world where Belsnickel just gives you presents like what if you go to school and you're like oh Belsnickel came by and everyone's like oh my god yeah and you're like I had a great time I ate nuts out of my dad's shoe. What are you talking about? Dirty nuts. This is great. So, okay. I just have some fun facts really quick that if you happen to be someone who's interested in the story of Belsnickel, he now appears at the annual Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas program, I guess called Christmas on the Farm, which reminds me of the Christmas movie Dolly on the Square

starring Dolly Parton. Same difference. Same thing. And each year, the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, they're the ones that host Christmas on the Farm. And you can always see Belsnickel there and someone dresses up as Belsnickel. And I think one of, they use Belsnickel as a way, this is what I got from, I think their tourist website. They use Belsnickel's appearance there, quote, to raise awareness of the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect. Interesting. I'm assuming they all play that Belsnickel is just a loving, caring little monster.

Children aren't getting like chased in corn mazes. Another fun fact is that a lot of Pennsylvania breweries will use Belsnickle as a Christmas beer. Oh, that's fun. Or the name of Belsnickle. How do you spell Belsnickle, by the way? The way I'm using it, instead of spelling all those other versions, I'm doing B-E-L-S and then then nickel like a penny dime nickel nickel okay okay

bels nickel interesting and it's one word yep okay and then there's now a tradition which is why when i said earlier like oh if you sing you can get out of the forest or if you're if you sing you're a good person or you can get rewarded for it in some way. There is a tradition in some areas, all the way into Canada, called bell snickering, as part of your Christmas tradition now, where it's kind of like a more fun version of caroling, where I think of it as Christmas trick-or-treating, where people will now dress up in disguise so you don't know who they are, and they will go from house to house and do Christmas caroling or any version of entertaining. So it's not just singing. It's dancing or putting on some sort of little skit.

Some like teenage boys will run around like rattle chains. It's like spooky Christmas kind of. How fun. And the point of it is like you're completely hidden in disguise. And the point of it is like you're completely hidden in disguise. And I guess you have to be like in a completely collaborative, participating, consenting neighborhood to do this. But you show up completely disguised and you sing and perform for neighbors. And at the end of each one, just like how they would give you hot chocolate, they'll give you gifts or food or something. Almost as if Belsnickle would give kids treats for doing good deeds.

Oh, my God. Okay, that I can do. And you got to keep getting gifts and foods from that neighbor until they could figure out who you were underneath the disguise. That's fun. And then only then would you move to the next house to get rewarded again for a new actor. Okay, I like this game now.

This is fun. I like that a lot.. Okay, I like this game now. This is fun. I like that a lot. It's called Bellsnickling. It's also called Klausentrieben, or it's also called, you do it on Bellsnickle Night, which I guess is, I wonder if it's also St. Nicholas Day or whatever.

So the last thing I'm going to say is that in 2020, there was a movie that came out called The Christmas Chronicles 2. 2 okay is it hallmark original it feels like it i should it's on netflix though okay and the i guess christmas chronicles 1 was more of a blanket christmas movie but christmas chronicles 2 they had to really step it up with some plot points and bell snickle was the enemy of this movie the foil it starred real life couple kurt russell and goldie hawn as santa and mrs claus excuse excuse moi what and it was all about uh bell snickle wreaking havoc and trying to destroy christmas although he wasn't in furs

and pine cones and antlers this time he bell nickel was wearing leather fingerless gloves and a backwards hat and i tried watching it and no offense to uh the christmas chronicles i myself could not get through it without there being like a partner to laugh alongside of so um what i am going to do though is uh give a shout out to den of geek and i'm just gonna read the the long synopsis of this movie because it was it was very hallmarky and a child would just eat the shit up i love it it's long but it's worth it and that's the end of my story at first bell snickle was an elf who nursed a healthy mistrust of humans but santa and mrs claus took him under their wing more so than other elves treating him as a surrogate child as belsnickle hit his teenage

years he grew jealous of the claus's care for the world's human children and began acting out in ways that saint nick would definitely call naughty i'm sorry if that if this was zach biggins naughty naughty unfortunately for elves if they break the five-part elves code they will be cursed oh no and once Bell Snickle demonstrated the or he broke the five you cannot these are the uh the elf boundaries yeah uh once you have demonstrated all five of those he was transformed into that which he hated most a human do you want to know what the five part elf code is absolutely it feels a i guess it's a christmas movie so i'm gonna let it slide but it feels a little like the seven deadly sins envy okay lying okay selfishness okay viciousness oh and ego okay yeah so not to do any spoilers on christmas chronicles 2 but he is gonna do all five of those things and he becomes a human as a curse

for that bell snickle is bell snickle is santa's outright enemy waging war on christmas and trying to steal the christmas star that powers the entire village and in his in his battles with santa he demonstrates his knack for invention with one scene involving a race through the skies pitting santa's sleigh and reindeer against bell snickle's souped up engine guided by jackalotes jackal coyote hybrids like the anti-reindeer oh my god but while bell snickle caused chaos in santa's village and endangered christmas itself for all the world's children he clearly was acting out of pain and resentment and wasn't entirely evil he expressed concern over dasher after he unleashed yala y Yule Cat, which I have covered very briefly in a past episode, but I will cover extensively at one point. So he unleashes the Yule Cat, which is like

one of those like Icelandic elves that I covered at one point. It's like, I think the Yule Cat's like their mom or some crazy thing. Anyway nearly kills dash or the reindeer no like many a teenager acting out all bell snickle really wanted was enough attention to be understood and the final showdown is not a huge battle but an emotional confrontation where bell snickle explains how he was hurt and santa presents him with the first invention they made together a mechanical flower that opens up to reveal a clockwork butterfly that's what we made together i don't know why we did it don't you remember realizing that santa never forgot their bond bells nickel is able to let go of his toxic feelings and is rewarded by being transformed back into an elf toxic feelings and if that sounds like a movie for you please go

check out the christmas chronicles too i'm gonna go fucking watch it can we facetime and watch it yeah and that's the story of bell snickle wow um there you go merry christmas fucking tale that is thank you and uh i haven't gotten to say this in a while but oh my gosh it's your turn christine yay wait who plays bell snickle in that movie uh i knew you were gonna ask and then i actively chose not to look it up uh christmas chronicles 2 his name is julian dennison okay i don't know who that is he looks not to like pigeonhole someone or like what's the right word where you like they're always cast as the same typecast yeah that's not the typecast but i feel like he would play a really good evil character he's got like not that his face is particularly evil but he's very expressive

the eyebrows he's got eyebrows he's got eyebrows for days i feel like he's you know ready to play bellsnickle he was made for this role. That's the truth. That's the truth. Wow. Well, that was a wonderful story. And I feel like I have a kind of good companion tale here. I'm going to cover Santa crimes. Christine Cooper. I have known for a long time i wanted this and i didn't

know when it would come but i because i i feel like i you can guess that there's at least two people out there who dressed like santa and did oh there's so many oh my god so i was i hoped that one day this would come but then last year you really tricked me because i thought it was gonna go santa crime and then oh yeah ended up being jim carrey and green it was jim carrey all along do you know how many people by the way said that for this christmas episode i should just cover the grinch again like i was afraid of that i was when i saw that like that thing you put on instagram i I was like, people are going to try. It was literally everyone just saying, do the Grinch. And I was like, it's been done, my friends.

And then everyone was saying that I should just give you a report on the Herstein Shifter cub that's recently been born. Aww. I was like, cub. What people don't know is I actually already sent all of that to Christine. I sent a whole document. And it was 2 a.m. my time. So I think I was just, I always have my phone on Do Not Disturb. So I didn't see it. And then like two

days later I went to text Em and I was like, what are all these messages? And like this screen grab of my baby. And Em had written like an entire folio, like an entire report about the Hercene Shifter cub and its many qualities. There were whispers in the cryptcene shifter cub and and it's uh it's many qualities there were whispers in the cryptic community that the cub had recently been born and uh we were still trying to figure out through the sce if there were any if the photos had been doctored or if they were valid one eye open which is like what i do when i'm like either drunk or tired you had one of her with her eye open. That little baby. I love how days into being born,

she has so much of your personality. It's really frightening. Just can't keep her eyes open after she drinks. It's so fun. I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it. It's a little scary, but yeah,

so I do have, well, they're more like Christmas crimes. I started with Santa crimes and then I sprinkled in a few that were just kind of Christmas crimes in general. Okay. So I have a couple, let's see this. I have a couple of different websites I used. Um, this first one is from a website called lawandcrime.com. And, uh, it was a list of different holiday themed crimes. I think they actually might've been like full on Santa crimes. But this first one was, also a shocking amount of these took place in Ohio,

which like, I guess at this point in my life, I shouldn't be surprised, but just a lot of them were in Ohio. So just keep that in mind. It's like Ohio is Christmas Florida, you know? Yeah, yeah. You know what? Ohio and Florida, I think have more in common than I care to admit. Question. mind it's like it's like ohio is christmas florida you know yeah yeah you know what ohio and florida

i think have more in common than i care to admit question will any of these stories happen to be uh you doing a retelling of the movie bad santa with billy bob thornton no but bad santa the billy bob thornton photo of bad santa was in a lot of these articles as like it's like the photo they used to i don't know bad Bad Santa was one of the first movies that I would secretly watch because I wasn't allowed to watch it. And I would like, I, back, remember when TiVo was a thing?

When like we first could record things. I remember I recorded the movie and then recorded a bunch of other garbage on top that way. To hide it? So that way no one would ever know. And then in the middle of the night, I would watch Bad Santa. I don't know what's wrong with me i was so ashamed too i felt so dirty afterwards why weren't you allowed to watch it i feel like you're because there was a i think there was an in the car sex scene and it was billy bob thornton and it was

called bad santa and it was rated like like nc-17 or something it was a pretty gnarly sex scene for someone who had never seen a sex scene before and i while your mom is like teaching you how to use condoms and it's like oh but you can't watch she held off on that until i was 14 but i will say she waited until it was me and several of my friends and as like her own sex ed class took us to a gas station and bought like a hundred dollars worth of condoms and then taught us how to use all of them and then she made us taste them so that way because she there was i forget what the anecdote was but it was something about like there was some i i like to think there was some sort of educational reason at one moral to A moral to the story. Something about how like they don't

taste good. I don't know. I don't remember why she did that. There's something that like she could probably go to jail for today. But like it was educational. Hey, literally me and all my friends from that day on, she hammered it in like condoms, condoms, condoms. And I've never had in the zero times I've used a condom. It's worked 100% of the time. Okay, what I was going to say, but like if you were in a scenario where you needed a condom, I feel like I would be so like in my head because I'd be like, all I can think about is my mother making me put this in my mouth. Like I feel like it would really screw me up about condoms. Honestly, that's such a good point that like she probably made everyone never want to use a condom.

Yeah, I'd be like, no, that's terrible. She got ones of all different sizes because she also was trying to prove that like. Oh, I love that. When people put like a pineapple in a condom and they're like, nice try. Yeah. Because she was like, if a guy ever says that it won't fit because it's too small, she may just like fill it up in the sink to see how big it could get before it broke. That's kind of fun.

That's a fun game. She made her favorite. She still mentions it. So like I know it's happened because she remembers one of my friends putting like her whole arm through it and just like it still like had so much give. And then I guess it accidentally broke

and my friend was like, I'm pregnant. Like it was like, she was like, I think in that moment she realized that she was in a room alone with a bunch of 14 year olds. With children. She was like, what think in that moment she realized that she was in a room alone with a bunch of 14 year olds. She was like, what am I teaching them? Whatever. She just turned on Bad Santa and was like, this will be your education.

You don't need to learn any more from me. I don't know really what she was thinking, but it worked. So whatever. I mean, listen, again, I don't know anything about parenting, so I shouldn't criticize or judge. I mean, maybe I'll be calling her in a few years to be like, help me figure this out. I will say zero of my friends have had, like, a surprise pregnancy when we were in high school. We all evaded teen pregnancies, so she did something right. Okay, you know what?

That speaks for itself. Let's leave it there. Let's leave it there before someone calls a service or something yeah let's just drop it and pretend this was all satirical joke anyway billy bob thornton is not one of the topics you will be covering i got it it's not but he seemed to represent a lot of these because it was the photo they used in pretty much every article uh so you're on the right track here so we're in ohio uh for most of the story in vandalia ohio in 2011 an 11 year old boy spotted a 44 year old stranger in his home he had broken into his home oh shit the man was it the grinch it was a Grinch. The end. No. Unfortunately, this one is real life horrors.

So this man, Terry Trent, 44-year-old Terry Trent, apparently had gotten high on bath salts, had broken into this home, and put up Christmas decorations. Oh. I mean, in terms of ways to react to hallucinogenics. Right, right. More wholesome than you expect Yeah So he hung up a bunch of Christmas decorations

lounged around, he lit candles he hung a wreath on the garage door and he then kicked back and watched TV and I like to think he watched Christmas Chronicles 2 but it doesn't say it doesn't say what movie but he kicked back and loudly watched TV

meanwhile this 11 year old boy is in his house like who is that man like decorating my home also like how many hours was he sitting there wondering this well so it turns out his mom was next door at the neighbor's house so he was like home alone and this guy's just wandering around his house like decorating oh god and so thank god he was able to call his mom who was next door at the neighbors and he like told her what was going on so of course she calls the police she rushes over apparently this 44 year old man ended up being very polite he said to the child i'm sorry i didn't mean to scare you i'll get my things and go and he just left the house all decorated and uh

and left so we've talked a lot about if there were like ghosts that had to haunt us we would pick like obviously we want that ghost who's like cleaning up after us and making our bed and doing our dishes that's the criminal you want in your home a hundred percent for free you just did all of my christmas decorating also where did he hang on where did he how did he know where to find the christmas you know i was wondering that and I was wondering if it was like he was in the garage and he like found it and just hung it up or if he brought it. Like, I don't know. I like to think I feel like realistically the most obvious answer is like he had a one track mind and he saw the lights and went, oh, these need to be hung up and just went for it. Right, right, right, right, right, right.

I like to think he had a whole Santa bag filled with it, but probably not. I also like to think it was like February and they had just taken everything down. Yeah, that's even worse. Okay, that's the worst criminal. You just take all the lights down and suddenly they're back up. Yeah, depending, that's a criminal word depending on the time of the calendar year. You either really hate them or really appreciate them. No, you're 100% right. It really, you really you need the context yeah so a lot of these are

just mini stories so that's one of them okay in 2013 a 44 year old woman named helen williams in charleston south carolina apparently flew into a rage when her husband came home on christmas eve Christmas Eve without any beer. Okay. Okay, so Christine lives here, okay. She had sent him out to get beer on Christmas Eve, and he went out and realized all the liquor stores were closed. So he made the mistake of coming home empty-handed. And she

was pissed. And she was like, that is not a good enough excuse. So she picked up a ceramic squirrel and stabbed him in the chest it's not funny it's not funny it's so bad but it's like just so wild the ceramic squirrel so obviously that's the funny part that's the hysterical part and i wonder like did you find just one squirrel was it a set of nature memorabilia was there a bell snickle why don't they tell me more they don't they don't tell me anymore that's all i feel like the person who reported on that knew what people were going to ask questions about and still chose to not give

answers still chose to leave us hanging you know what's weird is i actually have two separate ceramic skunks oh and i don't know i can't give you an answer so maybe that's why you're like that goddamn journalist all over again one of them it was actually um it was oh it's not it's not a ceramic it's bronze because i uh i got it for allison's birthday it's a trophy it's a skunk trophy it says you stink wait that's actually very cute and then the other one is uh um it's a trophy it's a skunk trophy it says you stink wait that's actually very cute and then the other one is uh um it's it was a set it was two skunks and amanda from wine and crime has the other one oh oh friendship skunks it was the little skunkies we got them um the same we got them from the same antique store we got your little bears the. That's the haunted bears. That was the main intention.

I told Amanda, because we were about to have a show that night, and I was like, I want to go get something really fucking freaky and surprise Christine on stage with it. Little did you know you'd find three. And a ceramic skunk. And a friendship skunk. That's a win in my book. Well, be careful, because apparently they can be used as weapons. I was going to say, now I'm wondering, did that person's friend have a ceramic squirrel that's a win in my book well be careful because apparently they can be used as weapons i was

gonna say now i'm wondering did that person's friend have a ceramic squirrel like and now a friendship one and now it's all by itself because one of them is covered in blood covered in blood so that's literally amanda if you're listening i'd be pissed if you were someone with our friendships come here stab anyone with so inconvenient for me so inconvenient and like such a like a stain on your friendship you know you know you know um so yeah so she stabs her husband with this uh ceramic squirrel in the chest and then of course like eventually police show up the guy's alive he's he's okay um he's very injured but he he's okay and when they asked what happened she claimed he just fell and cut his chest open.

Yeah. And also don't get an x-ray of him because you'll find a squirrel in there. You'll find a tail, a squirrel tail inside. Yeah. So then they were like, well, lady, why are you covered in blood? And she was like, this is someone, this is other blood. This was there before. Right.

Two different traumas happened at once but they are not related there's just a lot of blood happening in this household so fortunately she was charged with domestic violence obviously and the man survived and that was you know the end of the story but apparently she said when asked about it she said we were just having a bad christmas which understatement of the century i was gonna say she's not wrong she just wanted a beer a heineken man you know could have solved it hey not to be like a total perfect sponsor for heineken but like heineken maybe uh do a christmas ad and that husband would have known where to get some beer he would have they would have found it somewhere unfortunately everywhere else was closed in south

carolina so So next up, a few weeks after Christmas in 2015 in Post Falls, Idaho, a man was busted for a DUI after he was observed driving the wrong way on the road. The 67-year-old man was a resident of Washington State legally named Santa Claus. No, you're wrong.'s technically a santa crime so that's true and i are you gonna tell me at some point if this was by birth or by choice i don't know again the same reporter must be just really leaving details out because i like to think it's the same reporter at every santa claus crime there's ever been yeah he just gets like a he's pager she's a pager and like it's like oh there's another one in idaho i gotta hop on a plane again as john mulaney would say madge what's the scoop and it's like there's another santa i

can't keep track of them they're everywhere there's so many santa crimes i swear every different article i read had probably its own list like completely different ones it's just bananas so this guy, he pled guilty. Thank God nobody was hurt because he was driving, I think it was down like a freeway, like the wrong direction. So he really could have caused some more damage. But he was charged with misdemeanor, reckless driving, pled guilty, paid $700, apparently had been like drinking and was totally wasted. So that is, he's not giving his his name whether it's by birth or by choice a very good reputation yeah and also i want to say like it's too late now but

warning you know if you have children with you um this might ruin their lives uh hearing about santa cruz so i apologize i should have said what a specific trigger warning i know i don't know if it counts. It's going to be doomsday if they're listening. Sorry. I ruined your holidays. I'm so sorry. As Anna would say, you've kind of set off an eternal winter everywhere.

Oh, my God. I've really just ruined it. I wonder, does this come out before or after Christmas? What? Well, this is our Christmas episode. So I think it's the one that comes. Oh, the 26th. I have a fun fact that you probably already know but i learned it for the first time tell me this weekend which is actually now like several several weekends away oh far away um i took

allison to solving for oh i've always wanted to go there so it for people who don't know it's this tiny little like uh uh danish town and it looks it looks like a little danish village they haven't changed the architecture since like the 60s and they're all the immigrants that came over were the ones that built it so it's exactly based on their culture and there's all these museums everywhere all the restaurants are danish food and um they are obsessed in this little town with hans christian anderson because he was from denmark and i guess they he wrote all these children's books including the ice queen which is what disney got inspired to do frozen from and did you do you already know what i'm about to say no okay so apparently their nod to hans christian anderson in it is that they named the characters hans christoph anna and sven

oh my god so we put them together it sounds hans christoph anna sven is hans christoph hans christian anderson what i learned that on a trolley ride you did in solving oh how cool no i never would have known that that's such a fun fact thank you anyway just to bring some joy to this before you ruin it again with more i like the only like i like the only actual name hans is the only yeah one that's like actually part of that name there could have also been like christian and anderson but like whatever but no they're like that's too obvious too on the nose and then there's elsa the main character and olaf wow no i had no idea that's that is a very fun effect. Yeah. I've always wanted to go to Solvang, but I never actually went.

Oh, well, you'll have to send me photos. We can go next time you come here. I would love to. I would love to. Okay. So in 2018, a 31-year-old man in Cleburne, Texas, showed up outside of a church's Breakfast with Santa event and started telling kids that Santa Claus wasn't real. Oh, God. That's just like how this episode seems to be going. I know. Breakfast with Santa event and started telling kids that Santa Claus wasn't real. Oh, God. That's just like how this episode seems to be going.

I know. I am that man. I am that large man. But Belsnickel is very real. I am Belsnickel. Right. Yes. He is Belsnickel showing up to ruin everyone's Christmas. His name is Aaron Urbanski, and he was one of three people protesting this Breakfast with Santa event, was one of three people protesting this breakfast with santa event presumably because it's not christian to be celebrating santa and so the protesters in very like uh i don't know evangelist whatever style were like you shouldn't be celebrating santa jesus is the reason for the season blah blah blah the other two people with him left the premises when the police told them to, but Aaron Urbanski refused. So he was arrested for criminal trespassing.

And the mayor took this opportunity to make a little, like, statement. And he said, quote, don't mess with Santa. Guess they wanted coal in their stockings to go with a court appearance. Vote mayor 2020 okay okay mayor um but so yeah so this guy was literally arrested for telling children santa was not real what apparently there were multiple of those i was gonna say what's the charge what's the name of the charge? This one was criminal trespassing. There was another one where a guy apparently slicked his hair into horns with hair gel and screamed at a bunch of children during a Christmas parade that Santa wasn't real.

And he was arrested for public disturbance. Okay. That tracks. That tracks. Yeah, that tracks. I would also charge him with that, I think. I charge him with that from my citizen's arrest standpoint. Wait a minute, Christine, talk about your little hand socks.

These little shirt thing. OK, listen, I'm going to give them a shout out because the company called Kindred Bravely, who I wore their clothes like exclusively during pregnancy, they reached out to me on via email one day after I had the baby and we're like congratulations we'd love to send you a few things and i was like i'm a huge fan of your brand and so they sent me a bunch of and look it has little zippers on my boobs for nursing nice oh so it literally is a boob pocket yeah it's like a full boot pocket on both sides um But yeah, it has little hand socks. I love a hand thong. I love a hand thong.

They're so fun. I think they're so fun. A thumb thong. It is fun. Is that what it's called? TM, TM, TM. Yeah, they sent me some like cute stuff and I felt like I never really gave them any sort of shout out. So, you know, they're cool.

Thumb thongs all the way. Thumb thongs. Okay. So now there's another. So that most of those stories were from a website. Oh, yeah. Law and crime. So this next one is from a website called The Richest, which I guess talks about like stories about rich people.

And I don't know. It's a very niche website, I think. Interesting. Okay. I don't read that i don't read really i'm in it just kidding i loved it though hey i liked it thank you uh so this one i don't know why it's on this website because it's not about a rich person but um 49 year old elkin clark was working as a mall santa in mall Santa in Atlanta in December 2004 selling Hershey's chocolate alongside elderly 74-year-old Christian evangelist Annie Nelson.

According to Clark, he became enraged when Nelson stole 29 boxes of Hershey's chocolate from him. It's just such an absurd story. 29 boxes? Yeah, while they were there selling it together also you're not going to go for the full 30 okay that you didn't even round up yeah although police said no witnesses could support this claim clark said of the incident she was stealing my stuff i asked her 10 to 15 times not to touch my stuff according According to witnesses, Clark struck Nelson over the head with a two-by-four and then hit her twice more while she was lying

unconscious on the floor. And she died of her injuries six weeks later. He was convicted of malice murder as well as simple assault, and his conviction was upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2013. So, a mall Santa attacks a woman in the mall while selling chocolate.

Don't touch my chocolate either, just so we're clear. But also, what was it? A simple assault and malice murder? Malice murder and simple assault. I was like, hmm. I feel like he got charged with two polar opposites. Opposites. Like, what's simple about that?

I guess a two by four is pretty simple. I don't know. But other than that, it doesn't seem pretty simple to me. No. But yeah, so apparently he said she stole all his chocolate, but nobody could actually confirm that. So... One time, one of my friends tried to eat some of my waffle at Waffle House, and I stabbed

her with a fork. So is that simple assault or like some sort of almost malice murder? That's an incredibly complex assault. Was that Deirdre or somebody else? It was self-defense, to be honest. It was self-defense. You're right. I'm pretty sure it was Deirdre.

I don't remember. I feel like I remember this story. It was a home. I feel like, to be honest, if we're having honesty over here, I have stabbed a few people with forks if they try to eat my food. So I can't tell you which time it is I'm specifically referring to. There's like a whole anonymous group out there going like, I was also stabbed by Amschultz. Their little sign is like the four little prong marks on their hand from

when I once got them. They have a little support group, I bet, 100%. Okay, so now the next couple are from a website called pedestrian.tv. I honestly don't know what these websites are. But they had fun listicles. So in Chile, a 50-year-old woman named Angelica Navarro Pereira was busted by police after they discovered her Christmas tree was actually a six-foot marijuana plant surrounded by presents. Christmas time is here. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, wow. wow wow she's having a good time so she got arrested for that now this one's pretty wild the owner of a pet store called delta pets in slidell

louisiana arrived at his shop in december of 2011 to find the back door had been pried open he realized the cash register was missing along with a 600 ball python and two boa snakes oh so three snakes had been stolen out of his pet store 31 year old donald lagast was later arrested and charged with the burglary and when asked why he stole these snakes he told cops they were a christmas present for his son oh my god can you imagine being a kid and opening four individual boxes and they each have different massive killer snakes and snakes and your dad is like that one's worth six hundred dollars can you imagine if on the third box you're like please god don't be a snake please i already don't want the other two maybe the snakes were tied up as the

bows on the boxes for other snakes i don't know and the the thing too is like i would be like dad you were in a pet store grab me a gerbil like why are you grabbing me a fucking snake like there are other pets in there that i could probably deal with like a gerbil not a fucking boa constrictor yeah where are the bunny rabbits where are the right where's the cat like i why on earth I mean like we're probably we're probably offending the snake community out there but I can openly say I just don't like snakes and I'm so sorry I'm sure they're lovely I'm sure yours in particular is just the best one there has ever been I don't like snakes I don't like that they don't blink I don't like that they don't have

legs and therefore I don't know which direction they're moving I don't like that they don't blink. I don't like that they don't have legs. And therefore I don't know which direction they're moving. I don't like that. They have that little tongue that goes, you know, that sound. I don't like it. I don't like any of them. I don't like the feeling of if they feel like a,

like a rubber tube became alive all of a sudden, like a, like a hose. Yeah. It feels like snakes feel like children drew them and they came to life and they freak me out same with i i just i can't i can't take it and so the idea of opening a box and seeing one and then doing that three more times or however many more times i just can't tolerate it's like a circle of hell like you just keep opening presents and they're all

fucking snakes and okay you know what like I understand I don't have I don't have any sort of I don't have a negative opinion about snakes but I feel like if if your dad who is not a person like I feel like if snakes are not part of your world and then all of a sudden

you're opening all these boxes filled with snakes and they're now part of your universe they world and then all of a sudden you're opening all these boxes filled with snakes and they're now part of your universe now they are your universe all of a sudden it's sort of like dad what the fuck are you doing and also like you probably don't know how to take care of them and your dad doesn't i got it on a sale like yeah it was on sale at maizey's like okay dad the 600 ball python i'm sure nobody knows how to take care of it. Yeah. So I agree with you. Bad gift idea.

If anyone's wondering. Bad gift idea. I also, I once apparently had a snake as a kid. Really? So like, yeah. Well, my dad had a boa constrictor and I guess one day I was holding it and I went up to my mom and I went he's hugging me and stop it also let's not forget the New Orleans experience of trying to hold a baby alligator and it slithered through my fingers nobody made you do that you went on your own volition onto

that damn boat um I was sleeping I went on that boat being very misled and that there would they didn't tell me until once we had been on the boat for an hour and then they pull out a little cooler and i was like oh thank god they have water bottles no they had a little baby alligator in there this whole time and they were like why did they keep it in a cooler that's not very nice why aren't they keeping me in a cooler it was 120 fucking degrees and then And then they were like, okay, now we're going to pass it around and everyone can hold it. And I was like, even if I don't hold it, it's going to be passed across me to the other person. I didn't enjoy it. The alligator didn't enjoy it.

No one had fun. I just don't like things that don't have fur, if I'm being completely honest. If it's an animal that doesn't have fur, I just really am not interested. What about rats? No, because it has to be a hundred percent fur. And have you seen their tails? I love rats as pets. They're such smart animals.

No, that's not having it. Love that for you. Not my journey. Not my journey. Oh boy. Okay. Well, anyway, snakes, just don snakes, just leave them where they are. Leave them alone.

Leave them alone. Don't try to give them to children. So next up, we have Christmas 2010 in Seattle. A 23-year-old man named Sean Chanel attempted to break into a house via the chimney. So this is a full-on Santa crime. He tried to climb down the chimney to break into this house. Unfortunately for him, he got stuck in the chimney and local firefighters spent 45 minutes chipping away at the brick to pull him out so they had to like full-on like hammer like they had to use like a like a like a

stone masonry group and they had to break apart like dismantle the chimney yeah uh so they finally got him out and they were like what the hell were you doing and he said oh oops i dropped my backpack in there so i climbed in to get my backpack and they were like i'm so sure if only you couldn't just walk into the house and grab it from the chimney and also like where's your backpack uh yeah it didn't make any sense so they he tried to say he dropped his back which like you were on their roof okay whatever so he says he dropped his backpack down the chimney and uh he tried to get it and they pulled him out and he was naked so oh nobody knows why but he was

also naked because he was the original santa claus he was the horny little he was the frisky one well poor guy was sentenced to 17 months in prison so didn't work out well for him um and then here we have in south carolina in 2006 a woman called the cops when she learned her 12 year old son had unwrapped a nintendo game boy advance a few weeks early even though he wasn't allowed to open his presence yet. And she had him arrested for petty larceny. Oh my God. That's some shit my dad would have done. Yeah, right?

You're literally going to go to jail. Learn a hard lesson. Because if you don't learn now, you'll have to find out a much harder way later. Yeah, and you're going to go to real jail now. This is your easy lesson. This is why people should have kept B snickle in in the zeitgeist like if if if that kid thought bell snickle might show up for stealing you wouldn't have to go to jail you know fair point you would never open that game boy early

okay so this is the last one before like my main story because i have like an actual santa claus crime to cover too but this is from a website called Only in Your State, which- Oh, I love Only in Your State. Me too. And wasn't it really helpful? I don't know about you, but for me at least, it was very helpful when we were writing the book because it- Sure was. It's so expansive. They just do a really good job. So shout out to onlyinyourstate.com. Yeah. A lot of my sources were that website.

Yep. So in Florida in 2007, an 18 an 18 year old girl stole a ceramic baby jesus from a nativity scene and this is a florida story so you know it's gonna be good god so she stole a baby jesus and this is like a classic prank or whatever during christmas time unfortunately for her uh she didn't realize the baby jesus had a gps tracker in it i was literally gonna say did baby jesus have like a camera because jesus is always watching yes oh i don't know if he's always i don't know if it's because of that but that's a good call because apparently they put a tracker in it because they

knew someone was going to steal it um so they outfitted this porcelain jesus or the ceramic jesus with like it's happened so many times they had to literally put a tracker on the baby Jesus. And do you think that, I think that whoever set it up was waiting for somebody to steal it. Like I went through my tracker. Well, because someone else was like, that's unnecessary. And they were like, you fucking wait. A hundred percent.

They were like, that's too far. Also the most stolen book in the world is the Bible. That, what a beautiful irony that is i know that's why i remembered it i was like that's silly that is a silly fun fact yeah um yeah and i bet i bet you the most stolen ceramic figure is either a skunk a squirrel or a baby jesus it's gotta be one of the three it's certainly one of the three but so they tracked it and they tracked her down and arrested her and she had to give her baby jesus back so that guy was vindicated whoever put the tracker in there and she had to repent i'm sure she had because jesus is always watching

as m knows i know it do you know it. Okay. Little afraid. Thanks for reminding me. Okay. So now I have a final story that's like an actual true crime story and it is pretty bananas. So this was a story that I originally saw on onlyinyourstate.com. Then I went into like kind of more of a deep dive and found more info on Wikipedia, the Texas State Historical Association, et uh etc and it took place in 1927 the day before christmas eve december 23rd santa claus and three armed men robbed the first national bank in cisco texas i like to think he sorry immediately jumping in here i like to think it's that that one kid aka me in high school for like people were, people were just, like, going to go to the movies. But, like, they had to, like, have the spotlight and, like, unnecessarily dress in a weird way for no reason.

Just be, like, the one. Yeah. Like, we're going to rob a bank. Okay, I call Santa. I want to be Santa. They're like, it's not a costume thing. It's not. Like, Santa wasn't even on the roster.

And he's like, no, I'm only either I'm Santa or I'm not doing this. Yeah. And it's really weird because it doesn't really I don't really get why. Like, I don't know. I guess it sort of comes into play, but not really. You think it would just draw more attention to you. Whatever. So he and his three armed guys rob a bank in Cisco, Texas, and this robbery would become one of Texas's most infamous crimes and actually invoke the largest manhunt ever seen in the state of Texas.

So this is like a huge fucking deal. And it's like the stuff of legend there now. So to pull off the heist, the crew let the main guy, his his name was Ratliff they let him out several blocks from the bank dressed as Santa and I guess he got the Santa outfit from the woman who ran the group home where he lived so he took the Santa outfit put it on they dropped him off a few blocks away and he started strolling down the main street in Cisco Texas which is called Avenue D and he played along with his Santa part there were children like running up to him to be like santa santa and he played along he answered their questions he was

like patting them on the head like he played this creepy part of like the local santa claus and um everyone was in this christmas spirit nobody thought it was odd that, like, down Main Street, the Santa Claus was walking down the street one day before Christmas Eve. And, like, disturbingly, he's walking toward the bank and all these children are, like, following him and are like, oh, we want to talk to Santa. We want to, I don't know, hang out with Santa. So they fucking follow him into this bank that he's about to rob. follow him into this bank that he's about to rob. See, I was going to say, like, it feels extra stupid to dress up like Santa at a time where you absolutely need to come off as inconspicuous as possible. Yeah.

You're just a glaring neon flare at this point. Everybody is like, especially in 1927, it's not like everybody and their mother can go to Michael's and get like a Santa hat. Like, he's running around with these children following him. He doesn't seem to care. He's playing along. He walks down the street. He meets his three accomplices in an alley next to the bank and they walk into the bank and a bunch of children follow him in. So they're literally armed walking to this bank to rob it. And a bunch of children follow him inside. He shows up, he walks up to the teller. and of course they don't know that this is a robbery so

they say hello santa how stupid do you think they felt afterward are you looking to deposit some kris kringle cash today what are you doing oh my god it's like cole's cash but just so much sadder it's pringle cash it makes it's it makes you feel jolly despite being robbed how sad how nice for you at least there's a redeeming quality i guess yeah so they're like hello santa and he did not respond so just then ratliff's accomplice robert, enters the bank with a pistol and yells, hands up. Then the second accomplice, Henry Helms, also enters brandishing a gun. And then the third man, Davis, enters with a gun. And Ratliff goes behind the cashier's drawer, opens it, pulls out a pistol, and he sticks it in his Santa suit.

And now he's also armed. So all four of them are now armed. And he orders the assistant cashier to open the safe. armed. So all four of them are now armed. And he orders the assistant cashier to open the safe, and he begins stuffing money and bonds into a sack that he had sort of like a Santa sack, like hidden beneath his costume. Now the costume makes a little sense. Right. It's a little sensible now, I guess. And so the others are kind of covering the customers and keeping everybody in place. And he's grabbing money from the tellers he forces one to open the vault and they empty the vault and meanwhile unseen by the four robbers a bank patron and her six-year-old daughter had

entered the bank because they had seen santa go in and they said oh santa's in there let's go see him oh it's just terrible it's just luring in all of these hostages. Seriously. And by the way, they take hostages. So spoiler alert. Yeah. Yeah. And so he, so this woman walks in with her six-year-old daughter and she's like, let's go see Santa. Well, she didn't know, obviously there was a robbery in progress.

So she immediately realized the danger and she charged through the bookkeeping office with her daughter. Like she walked in, saw what was happening, and just fucking booked it. Good. And, like, ran. And she reached for the door to the alley, threw her daughter out, and screamed, run. And the robbers... Whoa.

I know. It's, like, really freaky. And the robbers kept saying they were going to shoot, but she didn't care. She just, like, kept going. Sure. So she threw her daughter out, screamed run. And then as they were screaming, we're going to shoot you. She also booked it out. She made it out the door and escaped herself. And she was the one who was able to run down the street to the police and say, someone is robbing the bank. Wow. Cause they obviously

didn't have like the emergency panic buttons back then. Sure. Wow. Like, thank God for her flight or fight because, or fire. Seriously. Couldn't be me, but I'm so glad someone else out there had the ability to do that. I would have walked in and been like, okay,

we're in a robbery now. This is my life. I would have. And now I'm shutting down. Now I sit here and wait for my, and now I get robbed. Yeah. I would literally be like like can i just throw my

wallet at you and just like just get out of here because i'm a hostage it's fine i've been waiting for this moment yeah so she runs to the police she tells basically the whole town that they're being robbed and the chief of police so they're able to come respond to the incident um so the chief of police and the the rest of the force show up and nobody knows who shot the first bullet but all we know is that a shootout ensued and more than 100 shots were fired at the time and then yeah and later they said more than 200 bullet holes were found in the bank itself so like really fucking wild even for texas is yeah right extreme shootout is that bank still standing so the bank has been re uh it's like restored moved to a different building but they still

have like a memorial to it up and they still like i hate to say celebrate it but they still like it's part of their local legend and lore sure but i don't know if the original building is i don't know if the original i just know a lot of big shootouts like that they love keeping a piece of the wall with the bullet holes you can see the wall yeah see the bullet yeah yeah which with 200 of them you'd think one one can stay yeah one can stay yeah so i'm not sure but i do know the bank's in a different building now but they still definitely use it as part of their like local history so there's like this massive shootout with hundreds of shots fired ratliff the guy dressed as santa

killed two men including one police officer as well as the chief of police himself and that guy died on christmas day so two days later so it was like he's in trouble now yeah especially now right yeah he and his three accomplices then escape with two little girls as hostages wow okay holy shit okay yeah so i really thought like no one was gonna get hurt and no nothing bad was like they'd take hostages but no one was getting hurt. Yeah it seems like it would go that way but it just gets darker than you expect. Yeah so they take two girls which that also proves that that woman knew what the fuck she was doing being like I would rather throw you out a window into the alley than truly like keep us in this building. truly like keep us in this building so they take two girls as hostages and they literally use them as shields to get to their getaway car and like hold them up and thank god nobody like they weren't

hurt in that scenario but so they take the girls into the car and they drive away in their blue sedan their getaway car but they realized really quickly they forgot to fill up on gas before the robbery oh my god i mean stupid they don't they sound like dummies by starting this by being dressed like santa so i'm like right that's very lucky for the kids holy shit yeah so they start to run out of gas and they are at the edge of town and they're getting chased by police and one of their tires is shot out by a shot from police and they're forced to pull over and they because there's this like standoff happening there's another car just some innocent dude driving by and they stop him with guns and force him to get out of the car and they take the hostages they take the loot and they climb into

this old mobile that they just stopped on the side of the road. But they don't realize when they get in, speaking of dumb criminals, that the guy that they force out of the car had taken the keys with them. So they get in this car and then they're like, wait, we don't know how to start it. So somehow they managed to get back into their blue sedan with the girls. with the girls and this they take the girls back to their car that's almost out of gas and leave the oldsmobile behind and they leave one of their guys in there because he had passed out and he was unconscious because he had gotten injured during the shootout okay so they just like leave him behind in this oldsmobile but they didn't realize they left all their loot there too so they left all the money they stole in the car with davis the guy who got hurt so got it it's already a big flop like their stupid robbery

didn't work they have two little girls and no money stupid so they take the girls they get in their old car and then they start driving again somehow they're still able to get away um and as they are driving they They eventually decide. It's not worth keeping the hostages. So these two little girls. They just like throw out the car. Leave them behind. Honestly thank God.

Thank God. Yeah. Best possible scenario. Yeah. I mean terrifying and terrible. But best possible scenario. Yeah. Just leave them behind.

And they abandon their car as well. Because it's out of gas. And they just like peace out. They're just not good at this they just go like say yeah and just like start kind of like jogging next to each other down the road just like get out of the car and go by foot yeah you would think if you're going to do something as crazy as rob a bank you need a getaway plan you need it yeah with a gas with a full gas through a follow-through on the plan because i feel like they thought like oh we'll drive away and then didn't think like what you got to do to

drive away you know yeah and like we should keep the money too on us not like leave it in the trunk of an oldsmobile stupid so they abandoned the the car they abandoned the hostages thank god and uh they take off by foot so this the money is immediately returned back to the bank so their plan failed uh already but the trio had fled so a manhunt ensued and it ended up being the largest manhunt in texas history um and now i have a picture that i'm going to text you this is the picture that uh authorities released to the public. Christine, it's like when I was covering the Hersey Shifter and I was like, here are its tracks, its track prints, and it was a Rothy's shoe. A pair of Rothy's.

They literally, and this is not like a joke, like they actually released this in all seriousness to the public it's a an illustration of a jolly santa claus literally like not even an attempt at a sketch of someone dressed as a real person it is literally chris kringle old saint nick fresh out of the north pole like they took them they took it off of like a cookie package or something yeah it looks like it's off a market like speaking of macy Yeah, it looks like it's off a marketing... Speaking of Macy's, it looks like it's off a marketing pamphlet. And they released this and said, we're looking for this man. And it's like, that's not... I'm sorry.

I know Zandy has a newspaper's account. If he could ever get a copy of that real article, that's the only piece of true newspaper i would have printed and framed yes wait that's genius i'm gonna ask him that's a christmas decoration right there because then people will be like who is this man like what do you need that for and you'd be like it's literally he's a criminal it's literally a mugshot he has hostages yeah it's a mugshot he has hot tissues yeah it's a mugshot yeah so that's the literal picture i think that's the funniest picture you've ever sent me it's so absurd it's so absurd i um who it's just

keep going i can't take it it's so funny they really and it's also like old timey. Like it's clearly like from the 1920s, like just an old Kris Kringle illustration. So it's like the exact picture of Santa that would be on a like a stationary from your grandma. Yes. Or like a cookie tin from 1925. Yeah. So they released that and they were like, we are looking for this man. And so the like largest manhunt in Texas history ensued looking for this Kris Kringle character. Looking for literally Santa Claus.

For literal bad Santa. Which is so wild because clearly once there's a manhunt and they're looking for this guy. Now again, the costume is making more sense because once you take it off, no one knows who you look like. Fair. Because now you are just the generic Krisris kringle bad santa yeah now they're just looking for literal santa claus because there's no defining and like obviously you don't still look like that people who aren't who still don't know it's literally a picture of like of a real santa like they it's someone at the time had google image like santa claus and used that as

their so like there was no like like looking at this picture isn't going to help you figure out what at least like the face of the person clearly this picture of santa claus is like an old man and the guy who robbed the bank was 30 years old so like it's not even the same and he probably didn't have white eyebrows or rosacea but like like, you know, but they kept it in. They thought it would work. So weird. It's so weird. Oh my God. Yeah. So this giant manhunt ensues. Largest manhunt in Texas history. They're seeking, they're asking the public to help identify the criminal who is Kris Kringle. And meanwhile, the local children in town are like fully traumatized for obvious reasons. Apparently on Christmas Eve, a man dressed as Santa entered a local church as like part of like a Christmas thing.

And a little boy burst into tears and yelled, Santa Claus, why did you rob that bank? Okay, I thought it was about to get much darker where that kid was actually one of the hostages. That would have been, okay. It actually turned out to be such a funnier, cuter version of how that could have gone where I thought like all of a sudden that kid had PTSD from seeing a Santa Claus. Oh no. But yeah. Can you imagine like just dressing up now as a Santa Claus and you look exactly like that mugshot or that that wanted sign you know

I feel like that was a bad move on their part to like have a Santa Claus come in a day later like the next day yeah like they probably should have I don't know rescheduled yeah read the room read the church read the wanted sign okay he can't be here. The very obvious wanted sign. Yeah. So after a long manhunt, they eventually did catch Santa. And he had six gunshot wounds and was carrying six pistols. So despite the wounds and the fact that the men had not eaten in days, apparently they only had oranges. And that's basically all they had for three days. They all survived to face trial. Wait, all they ate were oranges?

Yeah. Why? That's all they could, like, they were, like, hiding out. And that's all they managed to get their hands on. Did they literally put them in their dad's boots? Wait, you're right. That's so spot on. That's so weird.

They didn't even have walnuts for protein. They just had oranges. That really sucks. At least they weren't having scurvy, you know? That's fair. Yeah, they saved themselves that medical ailment. So one of the guys, Helms, who was the one who actually had shot the two police officers, was given the death penalty. He was executed by electric chair on September 6th, 1929 in Huntsville, Texas.

And I have his last meal for you here. Oranges and walnuts from his dad's tree. I already know it. No, but that's such a good guess. Nope. He is said to have had cabbage. Also pretty German and lame. He's said to have had cabbage, sausage, tomatoes, coffee, and pie.

What a gross last meal. I'm like, that actually sounds pretty good. That's his last meal. I'm like, that actually sounds pretty good. That's his last meal. So that's pretty depressing. And Ratliff, the main guy, Justice Santa, was convicted of armed robbery and was also sentenced to 99 years in prison. And during the trial, 10-year-old Emma Mae Robinson, one of the hostages, testified. And she identified him as the man who had robbed the bank and kidnapped her. And that helped solidify his fate.

So on the way to his cell, I kept this in. It's just weird. On the way to his cell, apparently he muttered, that's no hill for a high stepper like me. I don't know what that means but okay i kept it because i thought it sounded old-timey it sounds like something santa claus would say like to himself a high stepper like me like an affirmation or something yes an affirmation exactly so months later on march 30th ratliff was sentenced to execution for his role in the murders um although

nobody could testify that they saw him fire a gun at the bank so he appealed his case and when that failed he started behaving oddly in the hopes of an insanity plea and he uh his mother filed for a lunacy hearing because they tried to play the like insanity plea card. Sure. And at this point, locals were pissed because A, he was not being executed. He was only convicted or he was only sentenced to 99 years in prison. And now they're hearing this insanity plea situation and they're just like he's not getting the justice he deserves. situation and they're just like he's not getting the justice he deserves so while awaiting execution uh ratliff he knows he's in trouble so he feigns paralysis and he somehow convinces his two jailers

that he's fully paralyzed and they start feeding and bathing him and have to take him to the toilet and so he has tricked them into thinking he's paralyzed and while they're like escorting him somewhere he like runs grabs a gun from uh one of the office desks he shoots one of the jailers and kills him and begins violently brawling with the other jailer whoa and probably the most disturbing part is that everybody around could see in. There was a window where the jailer that he was fighting with, his daughter was outside this window and could literally watch this happening. But it's a steel grate, so they couldn't do anything except shout and watch it happen. So they're having this hand-to-hand combat.

And one of the jailers has already been killed and so they start brawling and he shot a few rounds but fortunately missed the jailer guy and the whole town now is like helplessly watching through the bars of the jail and uh eventually the jailer is able to pin ratliff down and beat him into unconsciousness and then drag him back to his jail cell wow so that could have been such a worse story yeah especially if he had gotten out with the gun yeah it could have been really bad so a crowd of nearly 2,000 now they're like ultra ultra pissed uh 2,000 angry townsfolk like I'm picturing full-on pitchfork situation gather outside the jail clamoring for ratliff and the jailer is refusing their demand saying like

i'm not going to drag this guy out to the public but he the jailer is overpowered by 15 to 20 men who rush into the jail drag ratliff out tie his hands and feet and carry him to a vacant lot behind the local majestic theater on mulberry street whoa and weirdly the theater is currently at the time was putting on a play called the noose oh so they drag him behind this theater that's playing the noose and they take a rope yeah yeah and they throw it over uh the wire between two telephone poles to basically hang him to recreate the movie playing in the play exactly like the literal theater play so their first attempt failed the knot came loose he fell to the ground so they went and got a stronger rope this guy literally is like a

cockroach like he just he i know a thing or two about cockroaches you do you're an expert literally like every time you're so close just being done with it it's like he just keeps getting up he's like nah nice try but i'm i'm chris kringle so you can't do anything to me i have the christmas magic within do Do you? The holiday spirit. No wonder this whole town is probably traumatized. These children. It's terrible.

I, by the way, like I wish people do what my desktop looks like because all I have on my desktop right now is us in this Zoom meeting and that fucking picture of the wanted Kris Kringle. The wanted Kris Kringle. So every time you talk about something happening, I'm just like, this little guy? It's literally Santa's mugshot. Like, it's just, there's nothing

more to it. That's all that it is. I can't wait to post it on Instagram just so people know how stupid this picture is. How, like, worthless it was, Santa's mugshot to finding criminals. Let's put it this way. If I were a criminal and someone wanted to draw a mugshot as accurate as this they could have just done a fucking smiley face on a stick body and called it a day we're looking for this man

oh my god okay anyway he's so they're still trying to hang a noose. Oh, yes. Yikes. So they're at the noose playing at the theater, and they throw a stronger rope to hang him, and this time they were successful. His last words were, forgive me, boys, before he was hoisted 15 feet in the air, and 20 minutes later he was pronounced dead. Wow. So, yikes. Big yikes. The First National Bank still stands in Cisco, although it's in a new building.

So the bank itself features a painting of the robbery, which I find very interesting. I feel like, okay, I guess celebrate it inside the bank. Maybe commemorate it. Yeah, yeah. It's just weird. Like you go to like take money out of the ATM and you look up and there's like a Santa with a gun on the wall. Like it just seems like you go to like take money out of the atm and you look up and there's like a santa with a gun on the wall like it just seems like an odd painting and also this was i'm sure this was before today's world but i have insane crowd anxiety specifically because i'm always

worried that i'm gonna unfortunately be one of the people in a active be in one of those scenarios yeah yeah and banks historically are you're more likely to see a shooting there than other places yeah uh although i'm sure there's not any changes these days but throughout time people like oh yeah there's a shooting at the bank and so the last thing i want to do as someone with crowd anxiety i would don't want to look at a mural of an exact thing i'm afraid of that's already exactly you're like pulling out money at the whatever minding your own business and there's I don't want to look at a mural of an exact thing I'm afraid of that's already happened. Exactly. You're like pulling out money at the whatever, minding your own business, and there's like four people with guns on the wall. Like it just seems like not the thing you want to see.

I don't know what the painting looks like. Maybe it's much more delicate than that. Maybe it's just Santa and a stick figure holding hands. Maybe it's the fucking mugshot. It could very well just be stick figures. I think that might be whoever drew that mugshot might have drawn the mural on the wall. Didn't get the assignment. Like was like, oh, okay, I'll draw it.

And they're like, that's not what happened. It's not what we asked for. I need you to get together, Kristen. I'm sorry. I can't. get together, Kristen. I'm sorry. I can't. It's too late. So they apparently still have a big painting of it on the wall. And they also have a collection of newspaper clippings, which now I would like to find on the newspapers.com account, like you suggested.

And pictures of the people involved. and then i think i i also think it's probably because the two girls the hostages were not harmed that maybe it was less of just a traumatic thing like yeah you know it's still terrible obviously but people people were people were still murdered yeah but yes thank god two of the victims were not little children yes yes, yes, 100%. I don't know how to make that sound better than what I said. No, no, but it's true. I mean, it obviously would have been way worse if two children were killed as part of it. And thankfully they were, you know, obviously probably went through a lifetime of dealing with the aftermath of that, but at least survived it, were not killed.

So, you know, for what it's worth. But, yeah, so they have pictures of everyone involved at the bank. And then in 1967, the state, the Texas State Historical Survey Committee placed a medallion on the bank commemorating the robbery. And that is the story of the Santa Claus burglary. Wow. Or bank robbery or whatever you want to call it. I mean, a mess is what I call it. A big fucking mess. Wow. Or bank robbery or whatever you want to call it. I mean, a mess is what I call it. A big fucking mess.

Wow. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Christine. I feel, Merry Christine mess. I used to always write when we would like make Christmas cards. I probably talked about this before. We'd make Christmas cards for like the nursing home, an art class, an elementary school or whatever, or like the hospital. And I would be like writing

in block letters or like in cursive. And I would always accidentally write my own name. And so I would have a whole stack of cards. I would say, Mary Christine. And like, it took me forever to be like, oh my God, I'm just writing my name because the first five letters are the same. Well, also in general, happy holidays i am holidays precisely reminded because i'm literally sitting next to my mensch on a bench love it um and i also am literally a jew so i should probably stop saying very christmas last year when i was like oh happy hanukkah and you were like it's hanukkah and I was like to this day I it's every like clockwork my mom and her like when did Hanukkah happen like it's well apparently it's already happening as we

record this I'm pretty sure shut up I don't know I could be wrong but that's what I thought we're not very good at that at our at our own culture our own family it's okay the the the Christian person will remind you I'll'll give you. Just like how the German was teaching me about the pickle, please also teach me about Judaism. Anyway, me and my mensch on the bench and all the others that are in my closet, because so many of you have lovingly given me mensches on benches in the last year. We all wish you happy holidays in general. So many mensches on benches so many at this point i'm gonna have a whole temple of them it's gonna be crazy um but thank you christine for coming back

for the christmas episode and we're gonna we will see you in another few weeks after we're after you're back from your maternity holding down the fort i know it's already like getting great reception it was only eva's episode out now but i know that got great reception i'm sure everybody else will just love everything that's coming thank you for letting me crash the party it's your it's literally your show by the way no but i feel like you had a whole system and i was like i want to show up for i did i did try to be like i i went into it with the mindset of like christine's gonna be gone and i'm gonna be in charge so let me let me make moves and then i made the moves and then

christine was like oh can i come back for the christmas episode i had no idea there were like let me make different moves well i assumed like i was supposed to be making the moves because i was the one leaving so i was like fuck i haven't done anything so I'll try and like schedule it and then I was like I already got it homie and I was like oh this actually I think is the also thank you for saying it exactly like how I would too you did yeah full-on I only say that when I'm quoting you yeah thank you well I think this is actually exactly a halfway point or somewhere around there right so this is kind of a perfect intermission I'm sure people were missing your voice so they're getting a little they're getting a little taste of you. Actually, you know what? I think it's much closer to the end because all that's left is January at this point because it's

the end of December. So it's just one month, a few weeks after this. Yeah. Just a few weeks. And then when you come back, when people hear your voice again on the podcast we will be in the thick of touring again we'll have a book coming out and wait we're we're very bad we still are predicting things that have yet to actually oh shit yeah no you know you're right no you're completely right not a single tour nothing at all we don't know what's gonna come we don't we have it we have no idea you should have seen poor allison because she did the last listeners episode of the year and so i was about to predict the upcoming year and she was like no no this just this will be a year that will exist and that's it focus on the now oh yeah we've learned we haven't learned our lesson we have we literally were just

about to say how much fun we're gonna have in february and february could be like another whole plague so another apocalypse yeah we should really learn our lesson anyway until then christine uh we all love you and happy holidays oh i love you too i miss you i can't wait to see you really soon and that's why we drink