Answer Me This! - AMT392: Elf on the Shelf, Glitter, and the Holy Foreskin

Episode Date: December 3, 2020

Jingle those bells, it's festive AMT392, with questions about Elf on the Shelf, fancy advent calendars, CONTENT WARNING: the episode may not be suitable for children, as it contains contains information about parental deceit w.r.t. Christmas logistics, plus a thoroughly researched passage about Adult Material depicting Jesus. Find out more about this episode at . Tis the season for the AMT Christmas album, which you can get at , along with our other special albums, AMT episodes 1-200, and our Best Of compilations. Send us questions for 2021 episodes: email written words or voice recordings to [e-mail]. Tweet us Facebook Hear our other work: Helen Zaltzman's podcasts The Allusionist at and Veronica Mars Investigations at ; Olly Mann's five podcasts including , The Week Unwrapped, and Four Thought at ; and Martin Austwick's music at his Tom Waits podcast Song By Song at , and his new music'n'science podcast Maddie's Sound Explorers, hosted by Maddie Moate, at . This episode is sponsored by: The Great Courses Plus, the streaming library of courses on topics from chess to mystery fiction to yoga to formal logic to dog training. AMT listeners get a free month at . Squarespace. Want to build a website? Go to , and get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code 'ANSWER'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So this is Christmas and what have you done? Is there any good reason to get off my bum? Just before we get going on the actual matters at hand, which are Christmas questions, thank you everybody for sending them in, we should just issue our annual health warning on this, which is if you're a parent listening with younger children right now, you may choose to have the magic ruined for them through some other mechanic and turn this episode off and listen to it personally

in your own headphones, not with young company. Yes. Ho, ho, ho. Here's a question from Julia from Ottawa, but living in Dublin, who says, Helen, answer me this. Should I start the elf on the shelf tradition for my kids? My oldest child is just turning three. And my first thought was that elf on the shelf

seems like a completely fabricated tradition. All traditions are fabricated. That's true. God, that's profound. Whose main purpose is to stress out parents and or make kids feel guilty perfect on the other hand i'm looking for small ways to make the winter more festive without creating tons of waste and i can see how my toddler would be very excited by having a visiting elf oh i was unaware of elf on the shelf until a few years ago

when i noticed celebrities were doing it for their kids and posting it on instagram and what it is is like you have this little toy elf or a couple of elves and each night while the kids are asleep the elves go off to report to santa every day up till christmas whether the kid has been good or naughty then in their spare time when they've come back from the north pole they fuck around a bit in your house if people really really go for it, then the elves might have their own little bed, they might be getting drunk on wine, they might be cutting up bits of paper, and

each morning the kids leap out of bed to see what the elf's been getting up to this time. You can't touch the elf in case the elf's magic evaporates. Clever. That's what the elf on the shelf is. So hold on, so they're not actually on a shelf? I mean, they might be, but they don't have to be. Yeah, it's non-obligatory.

If they can get to the North Pole, they can get to the other side of the living room. So it's called elf on the shelf, but it might actually be elf in your knicker drawer. Well, elf on the shelf is trademarked. So if you don't want to tangle with that, maybe you want to go for elf in the knicker drawer. Trademarked by who?

Where did it come from? Well, it was trademarked by the author carol abersold and her daughters she wrote a book about the elf on the shelf based on a tradition her family had with a christmas tree ornament of theirs where it didn't go anywhere at all it just hung on the christmas tree but each day it would be watching them so apparently her family had been doing that since the 70s okay so she and her daughter wrote this book and um they self-published it because all the publishers said no so they got 5 000 of the books printed and they sold them in a box with a little toy elf for 30 each and it all sold out and that was 2005 that's how old

this tradition is just 15 years and she said after they published the book they heard from other families who were like yeah we always did too. But it wasn't a marketed tradition. It wasn't really a thing, apparently, until this book, because the book was so successful. What I don't understand is why Julia says that its purpose is to stress out parents. What's the stress? Well, I think it's just the pressure of having to think of things every day, different funny things for the elf to do. Oh, the elf moves around the house.

Right, so that's the point. Oh, God. Every morning, the kid wakes up and has to find the elf in a different place, doing a different around the house. Right, so that's the point. Every morning the kid wakes up and has to find the elf in a different place doing a different thing. Yeah, don't need that in my life. You see? Yeah. I enjoy reading the rebuttals of Elf on the Shelf where they're like, the elf

is an agent of the surveillance state. And there are lots of characters from Christmas mythology who are checking in on children to see if you're naughty and reporting back to Santa. We talked about Zwarte Piet, didn't we, in the show? Oh, the blackface one from Holland, yeah. But unlike Zwarte Piet, the elf is in your home. That's something to fear all the time, rather than just when you go to see Zwarte Piet ride into town. You're saying this like this is a bad thing. I mean, I didn't know about the elf on the shelf tradition. But I've organically created

a version of this myself, which is the whole is based on it's a riff on the naughty or nice thing, which is in pre pandemic times when we were able to go to places in sort of October, November, I would tell Harvey wherever we were, like, say, for example, we were in a shopping mall, and there'd be a security camera above us. I'd say that is Santa watching to see if you're naughty or nice. it's amazing how many things once you start looking for them are wall mounted to ceilings like you know little speakers anything that looks like it could be a webcam like an alarm sensor so that's been really useful to just be like be a good boy because santa is watching right now and like this is your

opportunity to impress him so i do that anywhere and i think it's quite a useful parenting technique has that created like a positive association for santa with your son or is he just like santa's a bit of a narc it's real judgmental yeah but you know what the end is don't you like the end is he's gonna get his present isn't he so i guess so yeah well then why does he have to behave because he's probably gonna get them even if he's because it makes november easier for me that's why like stop being a dick santa's watching that That's all. It's just useful. I read this fun essay where they're saying, while the elf may be part of a pre-Christmas game and might help manage children's behaviours in the weeks leading up to the holiday, it also sets children up for dangerous, uncritical acceptance of power structures.

If you overanalyse things about Christmas, and we certainly have for 14 consecutive years. It's a very complex occasion. Exactly. I'm not sure this is any different to any of that stuff like it's just another mind fuck to put into the big christmas cauldron isn't it like if people enjoy it doesn't bother me maybe it'd be easier just to get a surveillance camera affixed in your house i wonder how many people do elf on the shelf given it is still relatively new yeah i think in the probably not many. I vaguely heard those words, but I don't think it's part of everyday parlance, is it? I mean, I've got primary school age

children. I've not come across it as a growing trend here. Have you come across any of the parodies like Mench on a Bench? And it's a toy that looks like a rabbi. I haven't, but that sounds like a stocking filler someone would give me. So I will act surprised when they do. Here's a question from katie in upton who says i work in the nhs and christmas is the one time we allow foreign objects into the otherwise sterile walls of the wards and we put up christmas trees and other decorations much like everyone else at this time of year we also tend to end up making decorations from the things we see lying around the wards we have made made Christmas trees out of gloves,

Rudolphs out of piss bottles, snowmen out of medicine pots, and wreaths out of blood bottles. Ingenious, Katie. And I have to say, they're actually really good. I bet they are. I've seen those piss bottles and they're a great shape for putting characters on, preferably if they don't have piss inside.

Well, Katie says as a cross-reference here that we should Google hospital Christmas decorations to get a sense of the kind of thing she's talking about, which I did. And I found a hugely enjoyable photo of a hospital ward where they've taken some green tinsel and hung it in like an up and down formation so it looks like a reading from an ECG. Wow. That's cool. That would cheer me up. Also some Christmas lights made out of prescription bottles which i mean genuinely look

like young british artist era concept art that would sell for millions katie says while this is all good fun i am unsure ethically about whether we should be doing this ollie answer me this in an underfunded and tight nhs is it okay to be wasting resources on making decorations she's asking me she's not asking the health secretary. But yeah, okay. Given the current cabinet, I would trust your opinion on this about as much and it's probably about as well researched. Hey, I'm an Oxbridge English graduate.

I can run the country. Or is the impact so tiny that it is acceptable to bring some happiness to otherwise miserable patients? I'm not sure either way. I think you can probably judge it in your own medical environs, actually, Katie. I mean, I think in some places, you know, if you know, for example, at the moment in the current climate, that there is a lack of PPE in your local region, then clearly it would be in questionable taste to use what little you have to make a Christmas display.

But if you know that a particular product is in plentiful supply, possibly there's even a surplus because people have overordered because of the crisis this year. And you know that it will bring a smile to countless patients and staffers. What cost a smile, Katie? What cost a smile? And what's the health benefit of a smile, huh?

Yeah, absolutely. So go for it, I say, generally. Also, if someone needed two piss bottles at a time when they probably could have used one, you wouldn't think twice about using the piss bottles. The original lyrics to Celine Dion's Think Twice. When I was in hospital, everything was disposable, including the scissors. So when they had to cut dressings for wounds,

they would use these disposable scissors that were also shit scissors because they were disposable scissors. So they'd have to use two pairs of scissors just to cut a plaster so there is also quite a lot of wastage built in yes i know that this year there's been so much talk about like ppe and the shortages of that and not wanting to waste that and and how stricken the nhs has been about that but i would assume katie's not talking about like using thousands of masks to make a glacier landscape for example the packaging that the stuff came in you know know, you could use that. That's a good idea.

I mean, that is literally landfill, isn't it? There's a lot of cellophane. You could make like paper chains or snowflakes out of that. Yeah. Martin, when he was working in medical physics, used to bring home items that were no longer sterile so they couldn't be used for patients, but they also hadn't been used on patients so they were safe. Like the pens that you draw on a patient uh before surgery he also

brought i did ask i didn't just like tea leaf them from the bedside of someone having an operation for breast cancer but it was basically like if the pen had been opened even if it hadn't been used it couldn't be used anymore which meant free pen for martin he once brought home this very large needle that was um purposed for thrusting into someone's perineum and shining a laser beam off it that's right yeah for what purpose uh to cure cancer no no i understand it's intended purpose why did you bring it only i brought it home because it was out of date so even though it hadn't been opened it couldn't be used right for what purpose why what did you want to do with it well you just don't know until you uh have one one didn't wasn't there a reason i got it for you i think you just thought i could use it

for crafts and i used it for curling the hair of a doll i was making well there you go and who knows what else i'll use it for in time good here's a question from richard from loughborough who says i started to wonder about the turkeys that are given a pardon on thanksgiving by the standing president i wonder about that every year richard and then i forget to google it so i'm glad that you brought it up all i know about it is what can be summarized in an and finally story on the news at 10. so helen asked me this what happens to the pardoned turkeys are they fattened for another year and then eaten anyway no it varies what happens to them i think in in the year 2020, they are being sent to Iowa State University.

Of course. Of course they are. I think because the turkeys came from Iowa. Right. What is pardoning the turkeys about at all? Okay, from the late 1800s, people would send the president gifts of turkeys, particularly turkey farmers. Why? It probably was quite good promotion for your turkeys. Okay.

Out of generosity it was a valuable bird as we've ascertained on previous answer me this is and the pardoning it's an oldest tradition but it's not really been like that set until fairly recently i think reagan was uh the first one to do it regularly and apparently it was to uh deflect difficult questions about oliver north he's like haha haha, well, I'm going to pardon one of these turkeys that the president's been sent this year. But I think JFK also did it, but didn't use the word pardon. So people are like, well, does it count when he was just like, I don't think we're going to eat this one this year, send it back to the farm?

Yeah. So to actually use the word pardon, it's a good point. It's quite a subversive thing to do, isn't it? It's quite a surprise in a way that a Republican president would have been the person to do that. Because it's like, it's slightly undermining the whole presidential authority to be able to pardon actual people who you know might be facing execution to say I'm going to do it with the turkey yes I suppose it is trivializing the whole thing I think it became really codified under George Bush the first and I can't remember what his game is but it it often seems to be the president would use the turkey. Like going back decades, the president would mention the turkey and be like, we're going to reprieve this turkey to stop people asking them political questions.

But it wasn't annual, I think, until Bush. But now it's a whole thing. So there's a presidential flock of contender turkeys. I think it's like 50 or 60 of them that are all hatched and raised in the same conditions as commercial eating turkeys. Then they winnow it down to 15 to 20 turkeys. I think they choose the ones which seem to respond the best to handlers and how good they look. Because they've got to look like a real classic turkey in the photo shoots. But of course you're not going to eat them because they're celebrities then, aren't they?

I mean, it's basically the plot of Charlotte's Web. They kind of train them up to be used to crowds and lights and to standing around having their photos taken. So all this is quite traumatic. They're showbiz turkeys. And then the best two get chosen to go to D.C., whereupon I think they stay in a hotel. You're coming to D.C. You're in the final of America's next top turkey. Yeah, America's next dead turkey. I suppose it would pay to be the less delicious looking turkey, wouldn't it?

Because that means you're more likely to be spared. I don't know really what motivates people to vote for one or the other. Maybe they like the name. Maybe one of them is more beautiful to them. Who votes? It's open to public vote. There's like an online poll. And then they were sent to different places.

So Ronald Reagan sent the turkey to a petting zoo. And then for years, they were sent to a place called Frying Pan Park in Virginia. It doesn't sound like a place I'd want to be if I was a turkey. Right. Sometimes they were sent to Disney World or Disneyland, I guess because they're celebrity turkeys. This year, Iowa State University, for the last few years, they retired at Virginia Virginia Tech there was a little retreat for the turkeys called Gobbler's Rest at Virginia Tech College's Department of Agriculture and Life Sciences I'm now thinking of that Ben Affleck Jennifer Lopez sex scene with Gobble in it oh god what in Gili yeah and and then they live quite a cushy life but they don't live for very long

usually only a couple of years because because Because they're in showbiz. That's how it spits you out, doesn't it? They've been bred for eating. So they've been raised to grow very fast at the beginning because eating turkeys tend to be quite young. Oh no, do their legs break and shit? I don't know whether it's that or whether just their organs are not built for longevity. Might be a live fast, die young kind of life.

So maybe it's better to be eaten. Get shat out by the president. podcast at googlemail.com You must read this podcast at googlemail.com So retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday, we bring you the real story of the mutiny on the bounty. On Tuesday, the anniversary of the day somebody

invented the meatball, but who? On Wednesday, the iconic British car that ripped off an iconic American car. On Thursday, how American airlines invented air miles. And on Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America. We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors. Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a question from Nick from Michigan who says, Ollie, answer me this does jesus porn exist every porn exists doesn't it yeah well that's the law of porn i want you to know that we ummed and erred about whether or not to include

this question well you did i thought it would go well yeah but you weren't the one who was going to then spend half an hour before we record the show watching porn as research no that's true that was going to happen anyway ollie to be fair my concern was is this going to really put me in the right frame of mind to focus on the important matters that we discuss on the show um but uh i took one for the team as did jesus pardon he took one for the team the team being all of humankind i see frankly nick you could have typed jesus into porn hub yourself but anyway i've done it now and uh let me tell you what i found so some fetish stuff first of all uh which jesus was just a

keyword in so nuns getting it on obviously breaking my vows which is basically a twist on cherry popping it's a married woman saying look i'm gonna have uh extramarital sex for the first time it'll be on camera so that that somehow involves j Jesus because I suppose it's slightly kind of looking into viewers who have a fetish for religious shame. And then I did find quite a disturbing video. I wouldn't necessarily suggest that you click on it, but it was a lady being tackled quite hard by multiple sources while saying, praise Jesus. Right.

She wasn't being tackled by all the disciples? No, they weren't in costume. It was just men. I should say, I had sound down um because my wife and children in the next room the things you do for this show i didn't see the the full video as it was intended i got that i pretty much i mean on pornhub helen you do get a very good idea of the of the content within a few seconds so that's essentially what it was but what what I didn't find is someone, you know, dressed as Renaissance art Jesus, which is interesting, I think. What if you searched for Christ porn?

Did you get different stuff? I searched for everything, Helen. I appreciate your diligence. And it seemed to me unlikely that there was so little Jesus porn that it seemed to me that actually Pornhub had probably intervened to censor or cancel some of the search terms around that. I don't have any evidence of that, apart from circumstantial evidence that I'm describing,

but it's interesting when you bear in mind that they actively promote videos that use incest as a keyword or racially demeaning words in their descriptions that they seem to have filtered out some of the jesus porn that that seems to be the case do they have any other religious porn like is there like moses porn bang by buddha i did not search around for that uh i felt like i'd done my bit but what i did find when you look into the world of gay porn there is an example it's from 2007 uh it is from a studio called dark alley and it's a film they released called passio i think the year after the passion of the christ was released in cinemas if you're

interested in watching this um it is available on dark alley's website behind a paywall uh but as i was looking purely for research purposes i i will admit that i did find it for free on x hamster anyway in that video they do depict the last supper where the disciples and the jesus figure and i'll return to that in a minute because it's not really jesus i think oh the jesus figure consume grapes off each other before a hot session and also bagels bizarrely i mean that's not historically accurate and the final scene is uh jesus on the cross being whipped with a leather flogger by a priest. So sort of cock worship, kind of subdom stuff with Jesus tied up.

But then at the end, which is interesting, I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen in the New Testament. The priest unties Jesus, who leaps down off the cross and begins dominating the priest and comes on his ass. Oh, that's maybe lost in the translation of the gospels it's a happier ending than the one i recall i mean maybe not for all of humanity but for jesus certainly so what i found interesting was that that seems to signal to me that it's not really um jesus porn it's obviously a jesus fetish isn't it but it's not really jesus because it's not it's not the story well it would be a bit of a downer if your porn ended with someone dying from crucifixion. I mean, they have to take some liberties.

But also, when I talk about the Jesus figure, he is a skinhead in this. He doesn't have a beard. He doesn't look like the Jesus we're used to seeing in Renaissance art. The white Jesus. He looks like Richard Fairbanks circa 1990. That's what he looks like. Wow. Does he say, I'm too sexy for this cross at any point?

It's also not filmed outdoors, the crucifixion scene, sort of Life of Brian style. It's filmed in a barn. So it's obviously not period in that sense. Maybe they filmed it in a barn because either weather or they didn't want to be filming a crucifixion or pornography in the open air. Yeah, there are other reasons for not wanting to film porn in the open air, aren't there,

which are nothing to do with their religious sensitivities. So it seems to me like they're just trying to push buttons. And I looked into it and the director of the film has since admitted that it was a publicity stunt when their porn studio was a startup. They thought, essentially, how can we create some controversy with a limited budget? And, you know, to do that scene, it's a few planks of wood, isn't it, for the crucifixion startup they thought essentially how can we create some controversy with a limited budget and you know to do that scene it's a few planks of wood isn't it for the crucifixion and the tablecloth for the last supper yeah so i think it was just about stirring up shit i don't think it was really

um tapping into jesus porn fully like they could have put a beard on him but they didn't do you what i mean so it was just a case of let's just do it because it's funny i wonder whether there is any jesus's conception porn where it's like women getting fucked by angels well i mean i'd argue that something quite close to that is madonna's like a prayer video yeah and even then like you look back on that and you think because at the time it's very controversial like oh madonna's kissing black jesus but actually the very fact that they cast a black man as the saint in that video again like takes it away from someone

actually having sex with renaissance art jesus that's the thing that i really struggled to find which i do find interesting well she's sort of like simultaneously transgressing that like the interracial boundary isn't she and also you know reframing jesus as black whilst going oh it's not jesus he's a saint yeah she sort of gets it always if you excuse the expression but why wouldn't jesus have been a black man well he probably was that's the point but that's she's saying that but she's not saying that at the same time she's got she's got to get out yeah when the christian right comes after her she can be like no no no it's saint whoever do you think the controversy over that video was so much that pornographers are just like i can't be arsed with the problems that this will make well i mean having watched passio i would say that performers very much can be arsed but i think it might just be that actually

the realities of filming porn is that actually when the performers get to set they don't necessarily know what the scenario is going to be that they're doing even yeah and possibly it's a bit much to ask them to dress up as jesus yeah but if say, look, this is a fantasy, we've decided to frame it a bit like the crucifixion. Also, there's possibly just not that big a market for it. A fun fact I found out is that Christmas is the lowest ranking day for porn video streams in the USA. Wow, I wonder whether that's just because people don't get enough private time.

I think so, because the second least popular day for porn video streams in the USA is Thanksgiving. Yeah, right. But then the two most popular days are December the 27th and Cyber Monday. But yes, it does suggest that it's sort of bottled up and people can't find a moment, and then as soon as they can, back to normal routines. Also, maybe it's just waiting for the big meals to wear off. One more fun fact that I discovered along the way related to my search inquiries here

across europe during the middle ages there were at least 12 holy foreskins i'm sorry what i know it sounds like something that batman and robin would say wouldn't it were they selling the relics was it that kind of thing yeah a baby's foreskin from one and a half thousand years before i reckon would have been disintegrated it had been preserved but i don't know to what extent that's possible with human skin that's right so at the time uh churches in paris boulogne metz nantes antwerp and bruges all at some stage claimed to own jesus's foreskin or a piece of it and in 800 a.d uh the first holy foreskin was given as a present to the Pope. Wow.

By the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne. The myth was that the Virgin Mary had kept the holy foreskin in a leather pouch before giving it to St John. And then for the next seven centuries, it remained in the pouch before someone, possibly an angel, gave it to Charlemagne. What did she suppose St John wanted to do with it? Well, what does one do with a foreskin of any kind, holy or not?

It's a party trick at best, isn't it? If your friend's mum gave you your friend's foreskin, what would you say? It truly is a bespoke gift, I guess. Why are all Yaz fan sites just about one thing? The only way is up is not the only song she sings. What about Abandon Me, One True Woman or Good Thing? Going a single from 96.

You should make your own Yaz site to fill in the gaps. Since you seem to think all the current Yaz sites are crap. Go to squarespace.com, build your Yaz site and put yaz back on the map the only way is up super duper festive thanks with bells on to squarespace for sponsoring this episode of answer me this squarespace have just introduced a new feature where you can have uh member areas and that's not a penis thing but it can be yeah i guess so it doesn't have to be what it means is that if you're a podcaster say and you wanted to have a special podcast that were only available to members you could do all that through squarespace and you can have different

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our code answer hi helena nollie katie from christchurch in new zealand here i am thinking about advent calendars because i love evan calendars especially as gifts whether received or given i've made ones uh with different tea varieties and ones with novelty international snacks before answer me this what is the best alternative advent calendar that you've ever come across and also what one do you wish existed that someone might make for you oh that's nice that she's making advent calendars for people that's awesome i think a homemade advent calendar is a great idea yeah i made my friend claire one with um she was very into men with beards and this was 2003 so there weren't as many of them around as there are now

so i made her an advent calendar full of pictures of men with beards that's great i remember that it was a novelty in the 80s to have a chocolate advent calendar yeah totally rather than just one with pictures of like angels yeah i had one of those really boring advent calendars in the 80s to have a chocolate advent calendar yeah totally rather than just one with pictures of like angels yeah i had one of those really boring advent calendars in the 80s and i was a jew like i had the ones where you just open the flap and you get a picture of a candle and a line from a carol the chocolate ones i waited for years to get one because my family was so anti-sweets so when i did i was thrilled but i quickly wished for the ones which had no sweets in but just good pictures because they tended to be the same underneath whatever the cover picture was yes and then a few years ago martin got me one i think it was a pretty cheap one wasn't it no it's very expensive

okay he got me a really good one for the record possibly as much as two pounds and um it's just pictures of dogs it's so good that um i've got it out each year but also the main picture above the windows is of a really cute dog. It's of a dog with like a top hat on. And like this little tongue sticking out. The point is, I'm as happy with an advent calendar without things in it as long as the pictures are good. But that's the shame, isn't it? Is that the premium advent calendar trend has actually made it so that I bet if you went into Poundland,

you wouldn't be able to get one that was just pictures, even though that would be the perfect emporium to buy the fun one with dogs i bet they just sell crap chocolate do you know what i mean i always used to save mine up from the chocolate ones like i saved them all up i'm not all of them but like a lot of them so i had a really big chocolate tree on christmas day although you get chocolate for christmas so i don't know why basically charlie bucket yeah i think that's quite a small vandagram isn't it like what's the thing that you want one of every single day for 24 days? Vitamins. And it's got to be fun.

It's got to be a treat. It's not going to, if you did it every day, it would kill you. Like, I don't know, like a big block of cheese or something like that. Well, they do do cheese advent calendars. Are they just tiny little cubes, like in a sort of 70s cocktail party? Yeah, they're like baby bells. Like, if it comes with a giant slab of cheese, that would be concerning. If it comes with a whole parmesan wheel. But yeah, I can't remember when I first noticed the deluxe ones. Maybe about 10 years ago?

The first of the truly premium ones was Liberty, the historic London department store. They started doing their premium beauty calendar in 2012. 2012, right. So that seems to have really inspired the trend because now premium calendars, so-called, account for two-thirds of advent calendar sales on the high street in the year. But is that for total of money? Because some of those advent calendars cost like 150 quid. So it makes sense that they account for more of the sales

if you're talking about total money rather than units. Yeah, the Christian Dior one one is 350 pounds and you call yourself christian huh like the liberty one is really clever because they put inside what were effectively i mean they're very she-she high end but nonetheless free beauty samples that's what they were they put in the calendar stuff that had you spent 100 pounds on a liberty beauty counter on something else they might have just chucked in the bag anyway. So it didn't cost Liberty anything to get those samples. And then they charge people to sell it to them

and make it feel special rather than promotional. I suppose now they're even potentially charging the people who are supplying the samples, aren't they? So that, you know, they're getting the exposure of being in the limited edition calendar. That's what I was wondering, whether companies are really jostling to get into the liberty calendar or like the cult beauty one or john lewis because then they get people into a product oh it's really

pretty though it is pretty that's how they get you martin i wouldn't mind just having the calendar and all the shit the liberty 2020 calendar by the way is retailing for 215 pounds care to guess how much they claim the contents are worth which include full-size products 10 000 pounds it's less than 10 000 pounds they'll claim 600 789 yeah calling bullshit on that well why wouldn't i just buy the thing i wanted but i suppose as adults maybe we want a present and we want the serendipity of it not having totally been a present that we chose for ourselves. But I remember when I was young, my mum was like, well, it's stupid to buy a chocolate advent calendar.

It's much cheaper to buy you a slab of chocolate. Here it is. So Alison Zaltzman. Why are you opening little doors to look at a picture? Just look at a picture that's on the wall. So I suppose it's not a rational urge but it is that treat urge i mean treating yourself is the problem for me yeah because the really extravagant ones i don't know about you but like my kind of personal spending limit on an advent

calendar for myself that i'm buying myself yeah is maybe 20 quid but probably 15 i wouldn't spend 50 quid or 100 quid on myself for an advent calendar it'd be a nice gift to receive but then who gives a gift on the 1st of december i've never allowed myself to think i would buy myself you know like i like bath bombs um so i'm sure there exists a bath bomb calendar where every day you get a bath bomb but it would be 100 quid and i wouldn't spend that on myself and would you want 24 bath bombs well i wouldn't use them on 24 consecutive days if i'm honest sorry that's the rules it's in the gospels from the beauty ones i feel like it evolved quite quickly into the booze ones and then like socks lego lego ones look cool actually so well the lego ones i've not done

lego i've done playmobil and what it was it was like build your own stable it's a nice idea because every day you open a different piece of playmobil and then at the end of it you put the whole thing but the problem is the plastic waste so day one horse like a whole playmobil horse you're like this is gonna be great yeah day two bucket okay horse needs to eat from the bucket we'll keep that toy day three like little plastic shards that are supposed to be petals that go on the floor of the farm that's just going in landfill isn't it and like there's lots like that like at least five days where it was just like this is supposedly the water that goes in the bucket isn't no that's just going in

the bin just tiny miniature plastic shards basically lots of things for a little child to swallow god yeah exactly yeah i saw one which was um sewing supplies and i thought that's cool but then i looked at what is in there and it's if you like sewing you will already have these things because it's like pins a tape measure i mean that's where beer is quite useful isn't it because if you like beer you probably get through more beer exactly you can keep it in the shed for six months can't you until you're ready to drink it so that's at least it doesn't go to waste i've also seen this year pork crackling wow popcorn which i thought was a bit of a swizz yes because we all know that the profit margin is uh large astronomical yeah there's quite a lot of stationary ones now

which i thought you might like there's paper chase ones there's a bick pens one different pen every day what is the most boring premium advent calendar you can give someone stationary has to be up there i saw in a little a socket set one and i was vaguely tempted because i was like well it is useful to have a socket set wow uh there was a sex toys one yeah i love honey do them don't they but i just think there's a lot of pressure on people you know to have sex every day in the build up to christmas which presumably that isn't a treat for yourself is it is that you give it to your lover and then it's a bit like i want to have sex with you every day you know i suppose just giving you options and surprises and maybe that would um be exciting you're like well i

wouldn't have bought myself this but on the 12th day we've got it wasn't the problem the quantity there isn't the problem like i wouldn't have bought myself 24 different sex toys because that's that's more than i need i'm not sure it's about need martin well again it's about the sample isn't it like oh i i didn't know whether I'd like cock rings, but this way I can try an egg and then I can try a cock ring. Now I've got 24 cock rings. I saw one for dogs and it was a big piece of wood in the shape of a bone with little hollows in which you put a bone-shaped dog biscuit for each day

and you refill it each year. And I thought, like, that's open to the dog just leaping up wrenching it off the wall and dogs don't give a shit about advent do they we've bought uh our cat alvin a catnip cushion for chris well i say for christmas actually for hanukkah it says happy hanukkah on it um but it's difficult to know where to hide that around the house obviously doesn't understand the concept of the holidays yeah but he will smell out catnip and try and eat it and and hump it and do the things cats do so like where do you put that so uh i've had to bury it between cushions at the back of my wardrobe but now of course all my shirts will smell of catnip and he'll probably claw me to death you're going to be irresistible

to him if only he's not interested in me so prefers prefers my wife. Well, there's the way to get him interested in you. A reeking of catnip. I'm Humphrey. And on the Twitters, I follow at Helen and Ollie. I should clarify. When I say at, I don't mean the preposition at. I don't mean the preposition at. I mean one of those A's with a surrounding circle of the sort that used to designate the

price of fruit per fruit. Thanks to The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring Answer Me This. The Great Courses Plus is a gigantic online library of thousands of lectures from experts on all sorts of different topics. And you can sit on your arse and learn.

Or eat your lunch. I ate a cauliflower salad this afternoon whilst I learned about screenwriting. Well, that sounds very wholesome. Educational and high in vitamins. The lecture wasn't that wholesome, actually. It had lots of discussions about the Godfather. Okay. The lecture was interesting because the guy who teaches it who's um a lecturer from ohio state university the examples that he uses are really useful because they're films that everyone knows so it's like he talks about jaws and annie hall and star wars and pulp fiction and the lecture that i was watching was about toy story he was saying that the way that toy story was written was reverse

engineering the story from the final page of the script which spoiler on a 25 year old film is about mortality and that the film starts with woody knowing that he's being replaced by buzz and ends with woody and buzz both recognizing in each other they're going to be replaced by a puppy and if you know that's where you're going to then you reverse engineer all the scenes back from that basically right right and of course you know you don't think that analytically about stuff when you're watching it but i understand that when you're writing it it would help you avoid writer's block because you're thinking okay these are the goals now let's write the bits in between well uh the great courses plus is offering you our precious

answer me this listeners a free month of unlimited access to the entire library there's not just stuff about screenwriting there's so many subjects to choose from. And you can take out that trial by heading on now to thegreatcoursesplus.com slash answer. That is thegreatcoursesplus.com slash answer. Hi, Helen Olley, it's Shaq here from London. In Christmas films like Miracle on 34th Street and The Santa Claus, the plot is always kick-started by the parents telling the kids that Santa Claus isn't real and that it's actually them that buys their presents and then the kids get upset and they stop believing in Santa Claus. But then of course it turns out that

Father Christmas actually is real and he does deliver loads of presents to every kid in the world every single year. So why is it that when the parents come down on Christmas day they're not wondering where the presents have come from are they just assuming that their significant other bought all of the presents and didn't tell them about it answer me this where do the parents in Christmas films think that the presents have come from and why do they never question it well two possibilities firstly if it's one of these 80s films probably the parents are poor communicators so one does probably just assume that the one buys all the presents and never thanks them for it which is weird in most

relationships that wouldn't be very functional is it the dad like of course mom has bought presents and the mom is like wow dad did a thing well i don't want to mention it because he might be angry that i'm suggesting that i'm surprised he's done a thing for our children. Plus, that's my annual allowance of him doing a thing. Yeah. The other possibility is a little more complex. And I think that probably there's less evidence for it. But it is that maybe the truth is that when you get too old, Santa stops bringing you presents. And the parents, rather than saying that to their children and hurting their feelings and being like, well, you're too old, so that's why Santa's going to stop bringing presents,

they pretend that Santa doesn't exist as a way of saving their children's feelings. Or is it that the parents are like, well, I still bought the majority of your presents and I'm sick of someone else getting the credit? Isn't it more that they've typically in these films been on a journey, haven't they, where they too have learned the real value of Christmas?

So I guess to some degree all the parents in these movies like all protagonists in all christmas stories ever since the christmas carol are basically scrooge aren't they so like yeah on christmas day they're bewildered by the magic of christmas there's no place for cynicism and they're probably literally not thinking about that even though on boxing day maybe they would face that hard reality like they'd sit around the dining table like that was weird wasn't it but they're dazed on christmas day, maybe they would face that hard reality. Like they'd sit around the dining table and be like, that was weird, wasn't it? But they're dazed on Christmas Day. Or maybe they've become so inured to Santa and to Christmas cheer

that they can see the presents right in front of their faces, but are not truly acknowledging them mentally. The presents, E-N-T-S, not the presents, E-N-C-E. Yes. Yeah. There's a mental block on the whole thing. Their denial of santa is indicative of their own depression and malaise and feeling of disconnection because why would they also tell

their child that santa didn't exist unless the child was quite old and they were like it's a bit fucked up that our 25 year old son still believes in santa it's a bit fucked up that that is the premise of so many christmas films though isn't it bearing in mind it's the one thing people are a bit sensitive about like what's the age at which we start discussing this you know there's a risk isn't there that the kids watch the film and start thinking about that seems to be a big crown blocker to me well it's like a crisis of faith isn't it it's a way to say to the kids like well you get a bit older and maybe you start to doubt these magical things that happen but look what happened to these kids they doubted that even their parents doubted it and look we showed them there's santa doing cool stuff i

remember taking it on the chin when i found out that santa wasn't real but it was partly because of being the youngest person in the house and the last to know and i just needed to catch up and be like yeah sure i've always known yeah yeah but you're someone who wanted to just so desperately be an adult you're probably like that's another thing ticked off the list well because i was too vulnerable in my ignorance that's why i wanted to be an adult you're at risk when you don't know things and everyone else knows them well let us ruin another thing about christmas for everybody it's a question from simon from gosport in hampshire who says with the impending yuletide season and the realization i had made a mental note to recycle the many boxes of old decorations in the loft back in january

i set to it after some time sorting through everything i emerged from the loft coated in a fine layer of glitter and dust i presume if you've been up in the loft glitter and dust that's evocative isn't it sounds like a bet middler album that's all the life there is to life ollie glitter and dust due to its apparent negative suitability for recycling yeah as i was finding glitter up my nose for a day or two afterwards ollie answer me this what are the health implications of inhaling these tiny bits of plastic that's disillusioning for a start isn't it that glitter's tiny bits of plastic disillusioning because it ruins the magic you mean what did you think it was made by fairies in a in an elf farm well i thought it might be tiny bits of shiny metal or

magic dust no it is tiny bits of plastic and the reason that it has health implications for humans because actually most of the stuff about glitter not being recyclable focuses on the reason that it has health implications for humans because actually most of the stuff about glitter not being recyclable focuses on the fact that it can affect wildlife because yeah the glitter particles can then pass through sewage treatment filters and then they can end up being dumped into the ocean and then the fish can eat them but of course what then happens is we then eat the fish so it can end up back in our stomachs which is actually i think for a lot of people especially people who are meat eaters something that's maybe would give you more pause for thought than simply just saying glitter can't be recycled is realizing that you might end up eating it and it might be part of the reason

behind the alarming microplastic pollution that's been found in tap water glitter oh so in terms of like what it could do to you ingesting glitter i suppose it could make your stools kind of funky but worse than that it's foreign chemicals in the ingesting glitter. I suppose it could make your stools kind of funky. But worse than that, it's foreign chemicals in the lungs and bloodstream, basically. So it's not necessarily any worse than, I don't know, standing next to a car and inhaling the fumes, but it is potentially as bad as that.

And also it can give you blindness if it gets rubbed into your eyes. Yeah, a friend of mine got a scratched cornea from glitter eyeshadow. I feel sorry for the people who are like just opening a present and then some glitter flies into their contact lens and that's it you know there is glitter that isn't made of microplastics right which i've only just discovered which is made from vegetables and seaweed and minerals and biodegradable stuff like that but the price is the problem so like in tesco a pack of six tubes of glitter is a fiver if you buy a six pack of of eco-friendly glitter it's about 40 quid maybe that's the price of glitter or i might even make it at home helen did you know you can make glitter what how what when take all your plastic

belongings and chop them into many pieces put them in the blender bond them with aluminium you stir food coloring I'm not taking responsibility for this recipe. It's from Huffington Post. You stir food colouring into salt and put the mixture in the oven until the liquid disappears and bake for 10 minutes and you have something that's a bit like glitter. I wonder if it's actually sparkly or whether it is just like colourful grit. Here's a question from Rob in Manchester who says, I have an older sister. We get on, but we're very different people and with very different tastes. We're siblings, isn't it?

She could be described as a bit live-laugh-love. Oh, well, I'm happy for her. And we don't have much in common. She tends to buy personalised presents and has discovered the idea of having photos blown up onto canvas as a go-to gift. Okie doke. The first time she did this for me and my wife she sent us a link so we could choose and upload our own picture so at least we had that level of control over it

but even then it was something that only found its way to our wall when she visited right i do sort of sympathize with that because there is something a bit naff about a canvas photo isn't there which i got one free once as a promotion and so obviously i took them up on it but i i did it as a picture of the cat and I put it in the utility room of the cat's bowl. Nice. I thought that was a good compromise. I once got printed on canvas one of Martin's photos of a bison drinking some water out of a puddle. However continues Rob when we got married she presented my parents with a massive canvas of a photo that she took of my wife and I at our wedding. That's a lot. I thought this was a bit weird and it meant that neither us nor my parents got to choose which of our wedding

photos was most prominent and massive in their house. Wow. But I let it go. We had a similar thing like our friends gave us a montage of photos of our wedding. It wasn't a canvas thing. Yeah. But obviously because they gave it to us it included photos of them and i'm not sure if we'd have chosen the photos from our wedding that we would have included those photos of them in our montage of our day's memory they're not preventing you from making your own montage with your own montage pic they kind of are though because you i mean actually as it happens i like the montage and it is up in our house and i never think about this anymore but in in 2016 when i I was thinking about it, I did think I wouldn't have chosen those photos. And now I can't choose any others because how many pictures of your own wedding do you want up in your house?

Our friend Alex, who took a lot of pictures at our wedding, got one of those Apple photo books printed out afterwards of his pictures. He's good at pictures. And I thought, oh, that's nice. Yeah, photo book. Photo book doesn't go on the wall, does it? No, it does not go on the wall and i was very happy to have alex's editorial eye in it because it's like here's how alex perceived the wedding day yeah photo book's totally different okay six months ago continued rob because this email is only half done yeah we had a baby and as my family

haven't seen much of him due to lockdown we've been sending my parents and my sister a pretty much endless stream of pictures. Oh no. It's putting paraffin on the fire, isn't it? It's bait for your sister. When our son was a couple of months old, my sister gave one of these pictures the same treatment and gave it to my parents as a present. Not a picture we would have chosen. And again, I felt it wasn't really her place to do this, especially as we had planned to have some of the nicer ones printed and mounted for my parents,

but then felt the idea was a bit redundant once the, again, massive picture was there. You can't even pretend you broke it. Right. Because canvas pictures are hard to destroy unless you have a house fire, which would be a problem in a different way. They can be slid down the middle with a knife, but how would that happen by accident? Oh, you know know we were just stabbing the picture of our grandchild whoopsie uh i hoped it would end there says rob i'm guessing

it didn't yeah it's all gonna end with his sister buying a billboard in times square i think and you guessed it she has sent me for my birthday a picture that i sent her of my own son. There are literally hundreds of objectively better pictures of him that we have and have given to her, but he happens to be wearing an outfit that she bought. I see. Oh, so it's thoughtful of you to send her that picture. Yes. And take the risk that the picture would then come back to you. So Helen asked me this, how do I get my sister to stop using my life as material for her presence i definitely couldn't just come out with it without major ructions i know she means well and doesn't take setbacks or confrontations well on the other hand it's weird and annoying and i want it to stop what do i do you're gonna have to stop her getting access to photos for a start

or send photos where the baby is like you've colored in its eyes red so it looks like a demon watermark them watermark your photos getty images logo across it copyright robin manchester do not print under any circumstances yes the first stage of any addiction is to admit that you have it isn't it i don't know if photobox have an equivalent of uh you know when the fun stops stop but maybe there's some sort of chuck out policy for ordering too many canvas prints that they could help implement the thing is it sounds like she is very well meaning and this is quite sweet however i think buying someone the same gift repeatedly effectively is also after a point a bit inconsiderate because like your wall space is finite yeah even if it's something that they liked the first time like i'm conscious of that like i used to give my grandma

the same bottle of perfume every year and then I noticed that she doesn't use it that much. I was like, how much perfume does she need? I'm going to switch. And she got a cupboard with 20 bottles of perfume in it. Probably, yeah. You can't even sell this gift on eBay either. She could sell the perfumes, but Rob can't do that. You might need to collude with your parents. And I don't know whether she takes this kind of thing better from them. If she was going to their house and they just had the pictures like stacked behind the sofa and she's like why haven't you got the pictures up and they'll be like well dear we thought we'd uh seen

enough of uh this picture for a lifetime i'm just thinking of how my grandparents would have done it or how my parents would is that less offensive i think that's more gut-wrenching i don't think you can do this subtly unfortunately no i agree with that. But I think some straightforward blunt words from the brother is probably better than the parents doing it. You could say, yeah, we have a no physical presence policy this year because we just don't have the room. Yeah, but it goes on the wall. Yeah, but not everyone has infinite wall,

especially if she's printing some huge. Yeah, but she knows. She knows how much wool he has. That's the problem. My mum is this person in the sense that she loves a photo-based gift and she doesn't always choose particularly amazing photos. However, what she does do is that she goes for a different product each year. So last year it was scatter cushions, this year it's jigsaws.

So I feel like if there's a year where we think her photo- present is a bit below par it just goes in the drawer but most years it's okay and we've only got one photo base gift per room and you've got the uh the interest of what will she think of next will it be one of those two-way sequin cushions it looks like just sequins and then you brush it with your hand and your child appears i mean obviously if this was a sitcom then you'd respond by getting a terrible photo of your sister and turning it into a wall of her house as a mural and then she'd learn but that's probably not a sensible solution is there anything funny that you could do with them like could you take a paint brush to them and like redo your child so they're wearing like shakespearean dress that is fun but then might that encourage her to do more if they're having so much fun with her presence i think

unfortunately it is going to involve a polite conversation, isn't it? Just be like, sister, you've been so sweet, but we can't accommodate more blown up photo presents. Or if you're thinking of getting us a present this year, this would be really useful for us rather than leaving it for her free choice, which would be a blown up canvas portrait. You're not saying you don't like the ones she sent.

Don't tell her that. Yeah, go in with gratitude and also a firm stop. And I think your parents backing you up would be useful. Because it's possible she'll just get double the amount for your parents, particularly if she already ordered them. Yes. And I think also stop displaying them. It's a subtle clue.

But if I'd bought someone something decorative and I didn't see them in their home, I would infer that they did not like it. Yeah, it might take years though, especially this year year I don't know how often she's been around to the house yes but yes in a few years time she might get the get the hint yeah well the perfect gift for you to give us this year is of course more of your questions for us to answer in answer me this in 2021 you can email us or you can record yourself on a voice memo and email that to us that's probably the best way to get your voice questions to us because we do love hearing things in your voice. But Skype is increasingly unreliable at delivering those messages.

There have been a lot where I just get an error message and I can't hear what you have to say. And if you forget our email address, it is emblazoned upon our website. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com And also, what an excellent time of year to listen to the Answer Me This Christmas album. I'd say we're in peak listening to that time right now. Perfect.

Yes, we may have recorded it in 2013, but the answers within it remain perennial, don't they? Why do we kiss under the mistletoe? Why are we still eating Brussels sprouts? What was the biggest Christmas TV special of all time? Still current. Still worth listening to. And many of you do. We love it when you tweet us pictures of you listening to the answer me this christmas album and our christmas album along with all of our albums

are available at answer me this store.com yes and uh also at answer me this store.com you can buy our 2020 release answer me this home entertainment and there is a link there so that you can buy it on itunes now as well if you would rather give apple your credit card information than us yeah help a massive corporation out rather than your independent podcast of friends it is that time of the year and you can also listen to our other work holly the modern man usually has an absolute banger of a festive episode what have you got for us this year yeah well at the time of recording this we haven't yet recorded the modern man christmas spectacular for 2020 but there will be one and i'm sure it will be supremely festive because it always is um but actually if you want to look back over all the christmasy

episodes that we've done in the past i've spoken to uh the uk's most prolific celebrity santa i have spoken to someone who writes most of the pantos that get put on each year i've spoken to someone who writes most of the pantos that get put on each year. Wow. I've spoken to a vicar about managing Christmas in modern-day London. I've put all of the Modern Man episodes about Christmas, so there's loads of them, onto one page of our website. So if you go there now and you want another festive hit, it is modernmanwith2ends.co.uk slash Christmas. Lovely. Martin?

I've got an EP. It's called Unwavering sentinels of dreaming i'm surprised you've gone for such a commercial title martin and uh you can get that by searching for pale bird wherever you get music or you can also get it at palebird.bandcamp.com oh and there's a video there's i did a song called many moons and i drew this video it looks really pretty so search for that yeah it's a nice song it it's a pretty video. Okay, handmade this video. The Illusionist has multiple Christmas episodes in the back catalogue, which are really, really fun ones sometimes. Why is Dickens the Christmassy guy?

And about the unfair deal that the word winterfall has. And this Christmas episode is going to be very song-based, but it's not out yet. But recently I released a quiz in which every answer is a swear. So you listen to it and you shout out the answer. So it's basically an opportunity to shout out swears and being like but it's educational which i think might be a useful thing for people over the festive period to release some tension my personal favorite is wind fucker oh yeah i found some incredible facts out about um okay that's a free answer for you right away. Windfuckers. On which we will be back on the first Thursday of January with an all-new edition of the show.

And in two weeks' time, we will drop into your feed something from the vaults, but for one month only. But you have to subscribe to the show. Got to subscribe to get it. Yes, search for Answer Me This on your podcast app of choice and hit subscribe. And good luck in this festive season, everybody. Bye!