Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Keep the Yuletide Gay: Saturnalia & the Puritan War on Christmas

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Garrison Davis about how the Church tried, and largely failed, to stop the wild revelry of the winter solstice.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. It's a podcast. The guest is Garrison, the producer is Sophie. Garrison, how are you doing? I'm doing very well. Excellent. Sophie, how are you doing?

I'm doing very well. Everyone's doing so well. I'm feeling so festive and cheery. I'm festively jovial. Let's do this. All right. Very Saturnalia chaos-pilled. Yeah. And our audio is done by Ian. Our music is done by Unwoman.

In part one, we learned all about the pagan shit Christmas borrowed from. Today we're talking about my favorite Christmas, which is medieval Christmas. Medieval Christians had not forgotten their pagan roots. They were, again, this is purely from my point of view, basically just pagan to like cross themselves and went to church sometimes. Because otherwise people were just talking to them at Latin and they just kept being doing whatever they wanted to do. This is my totally historical. I'm an anthropologist. Anyway, Christmas in medieval England was a lot of fun. For starters, there's 12 days of it, like the song.

On Christmas Day, there are church services. Then there was drinking, feasting, and games for about two weeks. The 12th day of Christmas was called epiphany, or sometimes just 12th day, and is more important than Christmas Day in medieval Christmas. It represents when the three wizards we talked about last time, who totally belong. It's like if you're reading a story where there's only one wizard, and then all of a sudden there's like a reference to three other wizards, and they're just never talked about again.

Because in Christianity, no one can do magic, but like God, right? But then there's just some fucking wizards. Yeah, I mean, there is a few other people who do magic in the Old Testament, but it's like, oh yeah, that's true. If you do it, you're basically working with demons or Satan. Like you can do it, it's just evil. Yeah. And then of course, like in Gnostic Christianity, everyone can do magic

because everyone is Jesus. All right. What's that meme? I would like to know more about your religion, and please give me a pamphlet. There's like a meme where people, like someone says something they think is cool, and it's not like a meme, like an image meme. It's like a thing people say on the internet. Maybe I'm the one who says it, where someone says something and you're like,

ah, I would like to know more about your religion. Please give me a pamphlet. Anyway, epiphany represents when the three wizards showed up, and we're like, damn, this kid is important. I think his dad is God, and a couple hundred years from now, there's going to be a big fuss about whether that means it literally or not. Because spoiler, early Christianity spent a lot of time getting into very heated debates with some death involved about whether or not Jesus was the son of God,

or God literally, or whatever any of that shit means. And unfortunately, the Catholics won that debate, and the Gnostics didn't. Boo. Boo. Although, would we be sitting here like right now, 7 to 100 years later, if the Gnostics had won, the Gnostics would have come into power, and they would have been just as shitty. But they would have been just as shitty.

I don't know. Because the Gnostics are way less hierarchical than the Catholics. Catholic Catholicism is so built on hierarchy. Like they built a hierarchy of angels. They built a hierarchy of hell, of reality. Whereas the Gnostics are like, everyone can be their own savior, and we should all fight the demiurge. We need to fight God and become our own savior.

Generally, way more decentralized. Right. But the Protestant Revolution was also the decentralization of religious authority, and it was at best a lateral move in terms of actual liberation for the world, because it made everyone cops instead of one cop far away that you can ignore. Yeah. I mean, Protestantism is- I'm not trying to come for the Gnostics.

I just think it'd be really funny and interesting if the Gnostics had won that fight, and then the Catholics have been like a cool underground one that people were like- Totally possible. That is definitely completely possible that the world would have been just as shitty, but there is no way to know because it's such a different theology. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for coming down that with me. So Midnight Mass has been part of Christmas since basically forever,

starting around 400 AD, because Christ, who's totally not the sun, was born at exactly the darkest time of the darkest night of the year, just when the sun starts returning. Totally unrelatedly. It's just a weird coincidence of when his mom got knocked up by an angel. Funny how that worked out. Yeah. St. Nicholas got attached to Christmas when the Protestants,

who were trying to phase out all the pagan holidays and fun in general, especially the Puritans, they crammed him into Christmas instead of his traditional day, December 6th, which was the day that everyone used to give people presents. People gave each other presents a lot during a lot of these times, but giving kids presents was like a St. Nicholas Day thing. In some places, I think it still is. And then they were like, no, it needs to be like,

the presents need to somehow be like God presents, not St. presents. So it got moved to Christmas. So we could put the Christ in Christmas, you know? And St. Nick himself was kind of interesting in his own right. His whole thing was that he gave shit away to people, which is like, all right. It seemed like he was kind to sex workers, which is nice, I guess. It's the main way to judge someone, honestly. Yeah.

Anyway, medieval peasants, they remembered some of those pagan roots. And because of that, there was ritual transvestism as part of Christmas. Continuing to be extremely based. And there was feasting and merriment, etc. And the church didn't like this. They just couldn't do anything about it. They tried. They tried two different things.

It's the same two things that everyone uses to try and stop the power of Christmas. First, you try repression. And then when that doesn't work, you try co-option. If you can't beat them, join them. Yeah, basically. That is what happened is the Catholic Church didn't steal Christmas. The Catholic Church acquiesced and joined Christmas. Is how is my reading on this?

Yeah. In seven, the year 742, a bishop wrote to complain about the quote, singing and dancing in the streets in pagan style. Heathen acclamations in sacrilegious songs. Banquets by day and night. The wearing and selling by women of phylacteries and ligatures. Which I think means like sex charms and love charms. Okay, okay. They did better with co-option and they really worked on the sanitization of Christmas.

And that's the real war against Christmas is the sanitization of it. The gift giving got replaced, as you pointed out, by gifts of the Magi. And the whole thing was treated as if it was about Christ or whatever. But the cool shit continued to filter through. Take Christmas carols. The medieval versions of Christmas carols were based on a pre-Christian style of singing, where a leader sang a verse and then a crew of dancers sang and danced the chorus together. And this got lewd.

And I am so annoyed that I could not find more information in history besides it got lewd. Okay, okay. I would love to see, yeah, what... The two things in all of the history should I read, the two things that are written out of it, is fucking sex work and drugs. Like any hedonism and sex. Yeah, because all the people that write this stuff down are all nerds. I know, and they're all kind of nerds, yeah.

None of them actually do the cool stuff. They're all like, yeah. They're like, tee-hee-hee, it got lewd. I'm like, does that mean they showed their ankles or were their orgies in the streets? Yeah, because both are entirely possible. I know, people did weird shit. People still do weird shit. Right now, in any given town, you could go to a club where people are like, tee-hee-hee, I can see that person's ankle.

Or you can go join a weird public orgy. Like, it still happens. So, then there's the Feast of the Innocence, which is a feast day that gets assigned to a bunch of different days in different traditions and calendars and shit. It's usually December 28th and the current year, whatever. I'm going to call it December 28th. And the Feast of the Innocence is weird.

It's about when King Herod of Syria killed all the boys under two years old, like tens of thousands of kids. Probably folklore. It probably didn't happen. I don't know, like the Bible, I guess. And these kids are seen as the first martyrs of Christianity. And I've read two versions of what happens on the Feast Day of the Feast of Innocence in the medieval tradition. They are very different takes on what happens on this day.

One is sick. It's a role reversal for kids and adults. There's like just, it's just a chaos day. Yeah. Kids run around. The kids like run the Catholic mass. They tell everyone what to do. The parents have to listen to the kids. And there's another version of the Feast of the Innocence, which is like this shitty game of hide and seek where all the kids hide. And then the parents try to find them.

And if they find the children, they beat them. What the fuck? Whoa. Whoa. Those are so different. They're so different. What is going on? I don't know. The subtext of the beat the kids one is a little bit like,

the parents might not have tried to find the kids. It might have been like, get out of our hair or we'll hit you. Okay. We want to have like, Yeah, yeah. Mommy adult time or whatever. I don't know. I can't. I'm so annoyed.

I, you know, like, sometimes I, sometimes in these episodes, I wish I had like months per episode, you know? Yeah. Cause that is, that was, I mean, is it likely that just like both happened at different places? Honestly, that's my best guess. Yeah. Because we're talking about like medieval England. I'm talking about like 500 to 1500 in the entire continent of Europe.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Because it's like one of those is much more similar to like the Saturnalia role reversal thing. Yeah. And the other one is just child abuse. Yeah. Totally. And there's more role reversal.

That's a hard thing to say. That is a hard thing to say. Yeah. Yeah. And medieval England. And again, medieval, oh, actually, well, this one I can give you a specific country, England. A random peasant would, you draw lots again. And instead of being the king of Saturnalia,

you are the lord of misrule. Okay. Which still sounds pretty cool. It is the single best title that one could possibly have, I believe is the lord of misrule. And they were in charge. And their job is to make sure the revelry was fucking chaos. Eat dinner at the altar of the church.

Fucking drink. People would complain because random strangers, I think like random richer folks coming to town, but I don't know. Maybe that's like me trying to be like, oh, it was like based, but who knows? Might have sucked. Who fucking knows?

It was chaos. Random rich strangers coming into town might get spanked and robbed. And everyone is, and people are of course, cross-dressing all over the fucking place. There is a chance that at the end of his reign, the lord of misrule was sacrificed, just like might have happened on Saturnalia.

And it's an interesting image and it's presented by like a bonafide folklorist and anthropologist who should know what he's talking about. A lot of people are real skeptical. I'm skeptical. I'm more skeptical about medieval England, human sacrificing the lord of misrule at the end of their week.

But, or at the end of the 12 days of Christmas. That'd be a funny and on the 12th day of Christmas, I gave you just literally you're dead now. Just fucking killing you. A lot of the like neat stories about weird wacky ways that people killed themselves and each other from like ye oldie times turned out to be just stories. Like the thing and the like Scandinavian thing

or like the Swedish thing about like old people trying to throw themselves off of cliffs in order to die, in order to like not take up resources from the community or whatever. I can't remember. It's used in that movie Midsomer. Spoiler, I guess. That's not real as far as anyone can tell.

That's like a, that's a story. It's a story, yeah. Whereas on the other hand, most of the stories that hint about fucking and drugs seem to actually usually be true and are never given enough detail. Yeah, because more people fucking do drugs. Yeah.

It's more sustainable than murder. Yeah, you can fucking do drugs more than once during your lifetime. You can only die one time. Yeah. Typically, unless you are again Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Yeah.

Or that guy, the first zombie. Who do you summon back from the dead? Oh, Lazarus. Yeah, that's it. And then also one of the reasons I sort of doubt this is that for all of the I really don't want to be like for good things that Christianity

culturally exported, but the overall Christianity cut down on human sacrifice a good, solid amount whenever it was around. And then they found their way to do killing in other ways. Oh, yeah, no, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, God, maybe

that's just all, maybe the Crusaders pent up, whatever. Anyway. So the Lord of Misrule ties into, but is distinct from the Feast of Fools which started probably in Central Europe and all of these names are so good.

I know. And they're all fucking cool things. It started in Central Europe. It's January 1st, which is still part of Christmas if you're doing the 12 days. And it was a day of the Feast of Fools was

Wildness and Folly and Role Reversal and like everything is permitted. Very like actually kind of like Mardi Gras is the sort of modern thing that people would sort of tie this into. And it's all happening like in the name of God, but the priests are sitting there being like fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

How do we stop this? Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. There was like in the name of God and they're like doing everything that Christianity normally says not to do. Is there having like a transgender orgy? Yeah. And it took a couple hundred years

for the church to successfully stomp out the Feast of Fools. Unfortunate, unfortunate. I know. It's like to me it seems like maybe how like a person who lives in England is ostensibly ruled by the English king and a Catholic is ostensibly ruled by the Catholic church.

But really people are just people and doing their own thing. And these authoritarian structures are just trying to claim authority that they only somewhat have. And that's how I feel about the like folk Catholicism of this time. Catholicism is this type of Catholicism is at odds with the church rather than being

in like obedience to the church. And this seems to be the Catholicism that was actually practiced by a lot of Catholics instead of what people claimed they should be practicing. So, wassailing. So, wassailing is when you demand stuff from people and do you know who else is demanding

stuff from us? From you, the listener? Me? Sophie Lichterman? Sophie Lichterman is demanding that in order to continue to eat food on a regular basis. And pay us. Yeah.

That we should shift over to hearing different voices, a diversity of opinions. I have these opinions about cool people did cool stuff. Whereas you might be about to hear an opinion that says that you should become a cop.

Hopefully those ads are gone now. Yeah, I mean, we really don't have control over most of the ads. Yeah. So, we don't endorse them. But, here's some non-endorsed topics. They do make it so we can do our shows and pay people and eat food and have homes.

Yay, here's the ads. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm

hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys,

we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good

badass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Lance Bass

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I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Kreklev,

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And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. At the earliest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put

forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus.

It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back. Wasailing, traditionally done on the twelfth night.

Wasailing probably gets its name from the Norse. It basically means like hail as in like hail and well met or like hey what's up. It means be in good health. And it's what predates modern caroling. It basically means

go around and make the rich people give you nice shit by singing songs. It gets referred to as recipient initiated charity which is my favorite euphemism in the world. That's great. Because I would like to present a spectrum

of ways of engaging in power. You have top down charity in which the rich give to the poor usually in ways that maintain the power structure and you know not based on how you make them feel good about themselves. Then there's mutual aid which is people giving freely amongst equals

and then there's recipient initiated charity a.k.a. give me your shit. Unfortunately I mean there's a kind of a way of seeing all of this like revelry, this sort of negative interpretation of all of this stuff that I really like. I don't subscribe

to this belief but it is the danger of all this revelry is that it lets out pent up aggression. If you get to be in charge, if you're an ancient Rome and you're enslaved and you get to be fed by your master for a week

a year, you're less likely to revolt. Yeah this is the same type of thing we see a lot of the time and like it's the recuperation of like anti-capitalist resistance and selling it back to you in a way that is palpable but by

doing that exchange you feel like you are living in a world where there actually is actual resistance but a lot of it is paid for. Yeah like it's the one of the few good jokes from Rick and Morty is the

Simple Ricks wafers and how they start selling the Simple Ricks Freedom Wafers selects how you can buy this wafer and it gives you a taste of what it's like to be actually truly free and this wafer flavor was

designed by like studying the brain of someone who just laid a revolt against a factory and it's like getting this taste into the wafer and this person worked at the wafer factory so it's this company

that is like using this revolt to make more of their products and you can engage with it and it gives you a taste but then it's actually it's just going to prolong the amount of time that you're living under this because now you have this little bit of the taste.

And what I would argue is that when the government or the forces that be or whatever the fuck do this kind of stuff to us it's dangerous for them it's not as completely under their control as they would like to claim you know like

sometimes these things these things that to them are like controlled burns get out of control and and I would argue that as they like let the steam out of the pent up I mean how many metaphors can I possibly

use here but you know as they let the steam out or whatever right let out the pent up energy or whatever so that the whole thing doesn't explode it's still sometimes is like actually teaching us like sometimes you get that taste of that wafer

in your mouth and you're like you know what what if we had the whole fucking factory what if we had that all the time yeah no yeah like that's the same thing I think I was talking with this with people when the TV show Andor finished coming out we loved how did how

did Disney allow them to make this thing that's showcasing how to do all these various forms of resistance and there's a part of it that's like they're selling you back this version of right of uprising for us to consume and maybe if we just consume that

we'll be happy enough that we're that we're able to consume this thing that will forget that you can do this in in the real world but I don't I think that is a position with considering yeah but I don't I don't think it's it has the full picture yeah yeah I think

what happened there is that you have people who actually it's less that Disney was like ha ha ha this is our big evil plan I mean like what if there was like a single radio conglomerate that controlled like half of podcasting and all the radio stations and then wow

and then people got paid to talk about rebels on their network right yeah I would argue that they would be doing these hypothetical people would be doing it to make use of a power structure that exists

like rather than like for the sake of that power structure and it's a dangerous and complicated game but the the old cliche is that the the last capitalist will sell you the rope with which to hang him yeah and that doesn't mean he doesn't

he still gets hanged yeah yeah yeah yeah which is why I like that saying and people use that saying like to mean the opposite and I'm like no that's fine the catholic is still dying yeah yeah um anyway recipient initiated charity

big part of was sailing it's like the role reversal thing so peasants would go to their feudal lords or just like rich people and they would sing and demand good food and booze and sometimes just straight up money and this looked lots of different ways sometimes it's like you show up

and you're like give us your figgy pudding or we won't go away and they're like haha here's your figgy pudding and then you're like thank you sir and everyone feels really good about themselves and sometimes there's all these like people writing complaining about being like the rich people are afraid to leave their houses because

gangs of youth are outside station to rob them so there's like a whole spectrum yeah of was sailing uh sometimes people would curse the rich people but you know totally not pagan just regular curses good christian curses yes yes all all

of those christian curses yeah sometimes they would vandalize the place and this is actually the root of trick-or-treating as far as I can tell trick-or-treating yeah that's what it was reminding me of yeah it's give me some candy or I'll egg your fucking house is like the once you're like 12 or 13

you know that's the level of trick-or-treating or whatever maybe that's just me uh clergyman from the time said quote men dishonor christ more in 12 days of christmas than in all the 12 months besides

great people would drink and gamble and feast and probably they fucked but you know the history books won't say plus they fucked instead they say they engaged in licentious behavior cross-dressing big part of it and

oh big part of was sailing so every single fucking little bit of tradition has people cross-dressing as part of it there's this book that rules it's called witchcraft in the gay counterculture and it was basically a love letter written to me and you garrison

it was by arthur evans probably robert's dad I'm not can either confirm nor deny and it talks about how everyone kept dressing up as weird shit quote so common was the practice of animal

masquerades in the middle ages that detailed condemnations were issued against them theodore a 7th century archbishop of canterbury centerbury maybe I wrote that wrong might be canterbury wrote if anyone in the colens of january goes about as a stag

or a bowl that is making himself into a wild animal and dressing in the skin of a herd and putting on the head of beasts those who in such wise transforms themselves into the appearance of a wild animal penance for three years because this is devilish and the same

book witchcraft in the gay counterculture says links between witchcraft and transvestism appear regularly in early christian europe in the 6th century the christian writer cesarius of aries denounced the pagan practices of ritual transvestism in the wearing of animal

costumes 6th and 7th century synods repeatedly condemned transvestism during the popular new year's holiday where men dressed as women quote a masquerade probably originating in a fertility right of some kind in 9th century a christian guidebook prescribed penance

for men who practice ritual transvestism a 13th century inquisitor in southern france denounced female worshipers of the goddess diana along with male transvestites this is all super fascinating because i just for the last episode of the tenacious unicorn

ranch series i was writing about there's been these attacks on drag shows by these christian far-right groups and particularly this past month there's been multiple attacks on christmas themed drag shows

which is just fascinating because like these christmas themed drag shows are more like traditionally christmas than all of these christians who are attacking them but it's also this interesting look on like this exact scenario isn't new

this is going on for thousands of years it's the same thing they're doing the same thing we're both following into our traditional roles yes these christians are attacking these other christians

these holiday drag performances in the same way that these christians are attacking this ritual transvestism it's the same shit and i love that the church has multiple times over the years

needed to say please stop cross dressing and or dressing up like cows and people just kept being like no no we're gonna do it can't stop me and i'm doing it in the name of god and there's also something in the last

line from that last quote about the inquisitor in france coming after female worshipers of the guys diana along with male transvestites and there's a bunch of things there one is that there were a bunch of women worshiping diana including cis women and trans women is more or less

what that's saying but also that like the modern terfs who want to like separate cis and trans women like the enemies have been demanding we burn together for a very long time yes okay more cool shit about christmas the welsh tradition

have you heard of mary lewd i don't think so it's not actually lewd like lewd it's l w y d okay so you take a horse skull and you put the horse skull on a stick uh you make like a hobby

horse out of it you know like a little kid's toy with a horse head and then you drape a sheet sort of over it like kind of on the neck so that you can hide under the sheet and so it's just a horse head on a stick with a person underneath it and that's

that's your christmas uh wassailing thing that you bring around so wassailors would take this horrific awesome horse skull around them with them as they were fucking up the rich and getting drunk and historians have

no idea whether this welsh tradition the the mary lewd is the gray mare i believe is what it translates to they have no idea if it's pre christian or not or rather lots of people have ideas about whether it's pre christian or not but no one can like prove it um the records of it go back to about

1800 but they talk about it being a thing from before then another thing that predates mary lewd is the concept of advertisement so true so true yeah

we can all make it through it together during the summer of 2020 some americans suspected that the fbi had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations and you know what they were right i'm trevor erenson

and i'm hosting a new podcast series alphabet boys as the fbi sometimes you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy each season will take you inside an undercover investigation in the first season of alphabet boys

we're revealing how the fbi spied on protesters in denver at the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse and inside his hearse was like a lot of guns he's a shark and not in the good and bad ass way

he's a nasty shark he was just waiting for me to set the date the time and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven listen to alphabet boys on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast i'm lance bass

and you may know me from a little band called in sync what you may not know is that when i was 23 i traveled to moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space and when i was there as you can imagine

i heard some pretty wild stories but there was this one that really stuck with me about a soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down it's 1991 and that man sergey krekalev

is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth his beloved country the soviet union is falling apart and now he's left defending the union's last outpost this is the crazy story

of the 313 days he spent in space 313 days that changed the world listen to the last soviet on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts what if i told you

that much of the forensic science you see on shows like csi isn't based on actual science the problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science

and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price two death sentences and a life without parole my youngest i was incarcerated after her first birthday i'm molly herman join me as we put forensic

science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in csi how many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus

it's all made up listen to csi on trial on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts we are back you could also wasail an orchard in case you were ever wondering

you were like could i wasail an orchard well the answer garrison davis is that you could if you would choose what type of things would be at the orchard at the end of december so i think this is wasailing now taken

out of christmas time i can't i can't tell it still might have been because you're not like going and getting the apples at this point you're blessing the orchard for better harvest and then you're to come yeah okay yeah

and so it actually still could have been midwinter i i really kind of like i don't know i spent a while trying to figure out exactly when they were wasailing orchards okay so yeah you can wasail orchards which even up into the 17th century was really fucking pagan i mean folkloric

or superstitious people would march from orchard to orchard led by the wasail king and queen to the orchard and drink to the health of the trees and scare away evil spirits in order to bring about a good harvest they would lift the wasail queen up into the boughs to place booze soaked bread in the

branches yeah totally christian yeah this is yes this this doesn't sound like folk paganism at all no no just a christian thing other wasailing traditions included drinking mold cider and various types of booze from a wasail bowl

which is a big communal bowl that everyone drank from and the drink was called wasail because they're really original namers nice and it's been a bunch of different drinks at different times for a while it was mead with crab apples later it was cider like what people drink Christmas

now other times it was like ale with baked apples in it basically it's like some combination of like apples of some variety and alcohol and stuff like this has has continued on today yeah this this this style of tradition yeah yeah

and I really like it is like one of the things that I'm not talking about that in the script that I still genuinely like like the real at my heart the reason that I never actually like didn't like Christmas even when I was like a baby anarchist and spent all of my time rallying against consumerism and

like that and I still believe the same shit I believed but in a slightly different way noted noted fan of consumerism yeah but like the idea of gathering together with your family in the darkest day of the year and like at the darkest time like and it's not just that the

light is returning but it's that the cold is setting in and how hope returns even as things get worse and I think about this a lot with the current rise of fascism right even when we turn the tide on fascism things will continue to get worse for a while

but we can't lose hope we know that as the light returns eventually delayed so will the warmth I really care about both solstice and Christmas and I like I really I'm very blessed and then I come from a wonderful family and

and enjoy gathering them and so I feel like I need to like shout out that like another important part about Christmas is something that does get held on to through all of it which is fucking family togetherness and tradition and all that shit anyway

that's my my little earnest moment for the week medieval Christmas I'm all for it medieval Christmas is the best of all Christmases a lot of people weren't for it the real war on Christmas is the war to sanitize it it's a war that's been mostly one

the middle class in the U.S. in the 1800s is a big part of the war against Christmas for some reason they didn't like drunken poor people showing up at their house demanding shit and vandalizing their houses overall the U.S. started by fucking Puritans kind of missed out on spicy Christmas

yeah which is a shame the traditional Christmas of as we've discussed be gay do crime cross dress be a furry worship the old gods while pretending like you obey the church and the Christian God of your Roman conquerors and now I want to talk about the first real

I mean I've been talking about the war on Christmas being the 1700 year long thing I want to talk about the first time that Christians almost got rid of Christmas the war on Christmas of the 1640s in the 1640s England they had this whole fuck off civil war thing

it should have been cool but it actually sucked it should have been cool because it was a commonwealth resting power away from a monarch but it was also they were Puritans and they deposed a slightly more religiously tolerant king and then they turned around and genocided the shit out of Ireland

I have some bias against Cromwell that will work its way through anything I talk about history when the Puritans took over England in the 1640s they didn't like fun that was kind of their whole thing not fun enjoyers and so Christmas

became a culture war issue during the lead up to the civil war the middle class parliamentarians opened their shops on Christmas to say fuck you to the holiday Christmas was clearly a holdover from Catholicism and therefore a holdover from paganism

and the Puritans don't like paganism or Catholicism plus revelry and gender bending no fucking good am I right so true for the most part commoners wanted nothing to do with either side of this war they were like

the king or the rich people I'm good I forget the name of it in my civil English Civil War episode I think I talked about them there was this whole group that was basically the band of brothers from Game of Thrones there was this whole group of people who were like we're just going to defend our fucking towns

from both armies because both armies are fucks yeah the commoners they didn't want anything to do with the pissing match between the royalists and the parliamentarians and they didn't want to lose Christmas so in 1643 a bunch of apprentices rioted and smashed up the shops that were open on Christmas

and they were trying to deny society it's weeks of feasting and merry making you have to fight for your right to party which is the only Beastie Boys reference I will ever make in the entire run of this podcast I do love a riot to ensure the continuation of Christmas

yeah so the Puritans came out ahead in the Civil War and they had King Charles I in jail in 1647 they banned Christmas in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland no mince pies like literally they banned not just Christmas

but they banned mince pies, plum pudding no hanging holly no excessive drinking or parties and you're required to keep your shops open no fucking free commerce here you have to keep your shops open on Christmas this didn't go well no this doesn't sound like

people would respond to this very nicely no, there were demonstrations and riots all over England and probably Scotland, Wales and Ireland well Wales and Ireland was busy some other shit around this point in London, armed soldiers had to break up

an unruly crowd to stop the crowd from hanging holly in Norwich 40 people were killed when the city's ammunition stockpile caught fire in the riot oh my gosh in Ipswich which is totally the name of the town supposedly a protester named Christmas

was killed which then got turned into propaganda which the history book I read was like and then this happened, I don't believe it I straight up don't believe it I know that propaganda was made about it but I don't know that actually some protester named

Christmas was murdered I am at the very least skeptical yeah people in Canterbury which is actually a city in England and not just the name of a book I was supposed to read in high school they rioted these are called the plum pudding riots the mayor

went through the market and forced everyone to open their stalls for fear like he would throw you in the stocks if you wouldn't open your stalls at the market so an angry mob followed behind trashing every shop that opened so these shopkeepers they're just fucked, if they open their shop

it'll get trashed, if they don't they get thrown the stocks the crowd caught up with the mayor and threw him down into the mud but he got up and he managed to order the crowd to back off and then in a move that sounds like someone making fun of England the crowd produced some footballs

and started this massive game of football across the whole city with no rules that dragged everyone into the game or to hide in their houses which was basically a Christmas tradition was Calvin ball okay Puritans who tried to stop them were pelted with mud

and the pro-Christmas rioters took their city back from authorities for the day later some instigators were rounded up but the grand jury refused to indict them so the Christmas rioters got off scot-free again, all for traditional Christmas seize your city, party for 12 days

cross-dress, drink other people's wine play sports that don't have rules the main fallout for the cancelling of Christmas was pretty much the end of the religious component of Christmas people were like, alright we just won't go to church on Christmas, we'll do all of the other stuff but we won't go to church

they also cancelled Easter not the protestors but the Puritans I don't really care much about Easter cancelled culture strikes again I know eventually you've got the Reformation and people got a king again which was once again a lateral move, should have been a

make things worse but fucking lateral move and they also got Christmas back it wasn't as cool as anymore though Lord of Miss Rule was gone and forgotten Lord of Miss Rule died in the Puritan war on Christmas what a loss, I know

it's funny to me because it's the exact same sorts of people in the 17th century England banning Christmas that are so adamantly defending it today but the thing that they're not defending Christmas they're just Christofascists trying to defend Christian hegemony they're trying to set up a Christian

dominionist state that's what they're actually doing totally later in 1659 the Puritans in Massachusetts they banned Christmas too quote whoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas

or the like either by forbearing of labor feasting or any other way had to pay a five shilling fine which was about three days wages for the average skilled laborer so that's like 300 bucks today a few hundred dollars

Christmas was functionally banned in Massachusetts until the 1800s when I was a kid learning US history I always heard about the Puritans as this like poor oppressed minority that fled England presumably fearing for their lives or some shit they never taught us how Puritans in England soon took control of England

or the fact that one of their sticking points had been the reason they felt oppressed is that they didn't tolerate other religions and literally one of their problems with the king is he was fairly religiously tolerant and married to a Catholic the religious freedom that the Puritans were fighting for was the religious freedom

to not allow religious freedom which I don't know might sound familiar to the modern listening one more group that tried to get rid of Christmas Stalin really I didn't know this

in 1929 the USSR banned Christmas they banned it in the same way that the Catholics banned Saturnalia and Yule and tried to ban Christmas which is that they tried to ban it and that didn't work

because people just kept celebrating Christmas so then they co-opted it the ban lasts from 1929 to 1935 when they realized what everyone has always realized people need a fucking holiday in the middle of the goddamn darkest time of the fucking year especially in Russia

I know those those poor Russians so the Christmas trees got rebranded New Year's fur trees gift giving was moved to New Year's too and in that totally materialist absolutely rational figure

grandfather frost was the one to bring them people feasted, people dressed up in costumes totally secular fun times for all the non-religious people in the non-religious country it was probably a little bit bland, a little bit sanitized

like the US version of the holiday and I totally get why revolutionaries came for institutions of power which include the church yeah and I get why people wanted to destroy the vestiges of religion but people want midwinter celebrations

and frankly it's gonna feel religious, whatever fucking religion people don't care, it could be Sol Invictus it could be the horned god, it could be Odin it could be Yahweh, it could be Marx fucking ever, give us our figgy pudding or we'll break your fucking windows and that, Garrison Davis

is the true meaning of Christmas give us our figgy pudding or we'll break your fucking windows I've never had figgy pudding but I'll take your word for it yeah I don't know what figgy pudding is I assume it's pudding made out of figs that actually sounds good now that you mention it that does make sense

I looked up a thousand things for this episode because I didn't grow up in a very religious household and I didn't look up figgy pudding I looked up what was in Waseil but I didn't look up figgy pudding figgy pudding does indeed have figs

alright, well that makes sense, is it a pudding? because there's also blood pudding no, it's a pudding in the sense of like a British pudding so like it's like a dessert it's like a more congealed bready type thing alright

yeah you know I would say it probably tastes good but I've had some British food yeah it doesn't look great okay, everyone google this on your own it looks like meatloaf that is nicer than what I thought it looked like

it's kind of it's kind of fruitcake-esque yeah, exactly I mean it is a fruitcake but with like there's usually figs and like some a lot of times there's many people are saying this to me

a lot of times they put like brandy in it okay and sometimes there's other dried fruits and stuff but you know, figgy pudding that's cool and on that note, that is

the Christmas cool people who did cool stuff in which we talked about Christmas which is the cool people who party no matter what whatever they get told to do or not do yeah, the people who are going to be throwing hardened figgy puddings through windows

yeah if they don't get allowed to take their tree up three flights of stairs and shove it in their apartment yep because if it's cold, they're cold bring the tree spirits inside which is like

it's like a very like a Miyazaki type true and if you want to save money on candles you can also just sacrifice people and leave the bodies in the window

I'm not sure if that's going to catch on anymore I don't know past the ship sailed we're having to fight for for like drag queen Christmas I'm not sure if we're ready to fight for the dead bodies in the windows

we're ready to fight for a thousand year old Christmas but not ready for two thousand year old Christmas we're going to defend our traditional values go out there everyone and defend your traditional values of people's this part's not sarcastic people should be allowed to fucking drag shows Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck is wrong with people

yeah, that's what I got end of your plugs anyone or fuck it all fuck it all Lord of misrule but survive the week that is your duty

each and every one of you bye everyone, see you next year he was just waiting for me to set the date the time and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen listen to alphabet boys on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast

did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut he's a man who drives a silver hearse and inside his hearse was like a lot of guns but are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them he was just waiting for me to set the date the time and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen

and Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut that he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow hoping to become the youngest person to go to space well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass and I'm hosting a new podcast

that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down with the Soviet Union collapsing around him he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world

listen to the last Soviet on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts what if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on

actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price two death sentences and a life without parole my youngest I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio app

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