Distractible - Christmas Gone Wrong

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

The guys dive into how disturbing and strange some holiday traditions really are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built-in, so you can change the music. Oh yeah. Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with Tech Pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca.

This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection, free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH- ph balancing minerals and crafted with skin conditioning oils so whether you're going for a run or just running late do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't find secret and your mind to new views and new perspectives. The call of the wild, a crescendo of culture. Listen as a chorus of fresh voices moves you, taking you to greater heights.

Add your voice to the mix and let fresh answer back with perfect harmony in pure Michigan. Keep it fresh at michigan.org. Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible, a Woodruff production with your hosts, Mary Mark, Wishful Wade, and Benevolent Bob. Your nuts roasting on an open fire,

Jack Frost ripping through your clothes yuletide carols being sung by a liar and folks dressed up like mosquitoes yes this week the likely lads linger on the least loved leisure time christmas gone wrong please prepare thy mistletoe and enjoy the show hey everybody and happy holidays from us here at Distractible. We have another fun episode for you today. A podcast where we talk about whatever we want. I'm your host, Wade. How are you guys doing?

Mark and Bob. This has devolved so much. You know, I thought it was going to be like a special Christmas episode, but man. Really besmirching the name of Distractible. You want me to say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays? Is that what I did wrong? No, no, no wrong no no no no no it's just like it was it was after the monotone happy holidays and then the just like the two seconds of is this right but we're talking about stuff yeah well

i felt like it was more important to focus on the holiday aspect than what we're doing we're just a bunch of assholes ain't that the truth no it's not the truth it ain't we're good people we're good assholes i agree no we're good i believe in the good in us and i believe in the the the institution that is distractible the institution maybe that's not the right word maybe a better word better word the tradition that is distractible i believe in the prison that is distractible the wholesome family get together that is distractible exactly not a prison wait the wholesome get together the celebrated pastime of a nation that is distractible that's us man we're a global phenomenon that is distractible hoof hold on

universal really i guess interplanetary sensation sweeping the space station do you think there's an alien species out there that also does podcasts and they have one that's called distractible in their own alien tongue dude if we have to go to alien court if our introduction to aliens is us being taken to alien court for violating their uh copyright, that'd be great. Alien court. We had distractible in 1382 BC. They had Christ? No, before Chesilampadon. Your Honor, the prosecution will show in these proceedings that the human word distractible is in fact the same as

a beloved podcast of our people an idea stolen by these fleshy meat wads these aliens are kind of robotic in my head i didn't you couldn't get that from subtext but and slightly specious actually extremely specious they sound like hk47 from star wars irritated inquiry master meat bags yeah well space court aside i guess we're an institution now what do we do do we need to have a christmas party or something i don't know what institutions do what do institution what defines an institution what's an instant tuition i did not institutions society organized founded for a religious educational social or similar purpose similar similar we're similar to those i think we fall under similar that's a similar for a religious, educational, social, or similar purpose. Similar. Similar.

We're similar to those. I think we fall under similar. That's a similar. What's your purpose? Similar. Or second definition, an established law, practice, or custom. Custom. We're a similar custom.

Institutions include marriage, distractible, and also baseball. I don't know. If you've listened to distractible, you you're married to it and therefore obligated for the rest of your life to always listen to it yeah that's the stuff exactly that is our custom institutional demand requirement happy holidays everybody yeah similar this is great well since we're so deep in the holiday spirit already i figured this is a good time as any to have a fun episode where we talk about holidays kind of whatever we want to talk about holidays but um specifically weird traditions either you've heard about read about or that's in your own family or just weird stuff y'all do i know that there's weird things that happen around the world around christmas time so uh true let's sip on our eggnog grab our hot cocoa and

candy canes kick back and uh christmas it up in here yeah no you sure all right great yeah all right man i have all that stuff i'm gonna judge you guys based on whatever i feel like that's a criteria so similar similar similar to what it's similar don't don't question it i'm gonna judge you based on comparable similar you gotta poke holes in this yeah it's flimsy man don't poke holes in it it'll sink in a second if we had a building for our institution it's a cardboard facade that's not held up very well it's been rained on it's kind of curly at the edges and based on our current legal situation with the interdimensional podcast association we got to be careful how what words we use so i have a problem okay i have some concerns okay should i mute the recording for this is this private no no this is in regards to the topic revolving around christmas i've heard reports uh from around the neighborhood concerned

parents frightened children get rid of the kids solve the problem that there is there's apparently an old man keeping tabs on all the kids in your neighborhood you guys heard about this in my neighborhood in your neighborhood apparently everywhere i don't know if it's a network of old men yeah yeah he's supposedly incredibly fat so i don't think he's running around all over the place must have cameras or I don't know what. This guy, he keeps a running tally of everything that kids do and then like scores them. Good or naughty. Yeah. Is he part of OMN, the Good Old Men Network? I guess.

Okay. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I can start getting letters for that. I'm getting up to that age. I've heard of this guy too. And I've actually heard he's not slow. I've heard he's very fast. That's even creepier.

And, you know, he doesn't just keep tabs on people. He watches them when they're sleeping. How does he know when they're sleeping? He just knows. Okay. Okay. Usually, I mean, he probably like cameras, bets on night, you know, people usually sleep at night.

You're going to beat the odds if you bet someone's asleep at night, you know? Oh, I don't know if that counts as knowing then. Like if I appear in your window at 3 a.m., yeah're probably sleeping i didn't know that no no no the thing is he's always watching that's what you were saying but you have to sleep at some point so he knows when you're sleeping if he's watching you he knows the moment you fall asleep it's just messed up i feel like everyone's bought into this he has fans fans that cheer for his arrival. There's a parade on Thanksgiving that's basically in his honor. And listeners, I'm sure you've already got there. Yes, I'm talking about the Santa Claus. Jolly old

Saint Nicholas. Right. Jolly because he's creeping on everybody because he's watching. And also, I just want to know at what age does he's watching and also i just want to know at what age does he stop watching because i can be pretty childish but i don't want this old guy checking me out in my sleep makes me really uncomfortable uh to sleep in the nude which is my preferred way to sleep does he know when we're having sex oh yeah is that good or bad i don't even know how he how does he score that he has a naughty list he's got a naughty list so why is it sometimes good to be naughty but for why is it sometimes good to be naughty but for santa it's bad to be naughty when is it good to be naughty i don't know all those

advertisements for like lingerie and stuff like oh get on the naughty list this year yeah like if you do something and and and someone looks at you and you're like oh naughty boy that was good naughty right no that doesn't seem good if i did did that to you, Mark, wouldn't you be excited? No, no. If I took my hand and slowly brushed it up your thigh and I leaned in, so my untrimmed mustache whiskers tickled your earlobe, and I was just like, oh, you naughty boy. You know?

Wouldn't you be excited about that? I feel like I'm getting a little bit of it right now, and I don't feel very excited. Fear. Fear is what I'm starting to feel my heavy shoe scrapes the back of your calf because i'm trying to be delicate but i'm not the smell of monster energy and and talkies on my breath okay wait whoa now we're talking here the blue ones my fingers are blue too and for some reason my tongue is real blue under my shirt which you'll learn later i can only imagine the situation in which your tongue would also be covered in talkies dust that's the good kind of naughty mark there it clearly it exists everyone's

on the same page i think now okay all right can you use it in a sentence another sentence other than the one that you said in before i mean i feel like that was a pretty good sentence i want another one uh did you see how mark's cheeks got really flushed when bob caressed him that was naughty i feel like two separate sentences but whatever it's like a it's like a semicolon i've got one for you too naughty or nice those are the options I've got one for you too. Naughty or nice. Those are the options. There's a sentence for you. All right. Okay. I feel better about that sentence than the, I'm actually, my brain is currently purging what Bob was saying in the past few minutes. So I'm resetting down into a mental state. Oh, it'll come back around. Don't

worry. I got stuck on his unbristled mustache. Untrimmed mustache hairs. Against my earlobe. That's hot. Ladies love a mustache. I still can't get over why the talk is just on your stomach. Yeah, well, don't you want to know? Don't you want to hang out and find out? I guess, yeah, man.

Look, my point is the concept of Santa is weird and creepy. And I get that it's old, but bless kids for being so accepting if you told that to an adult right yeah if you met an adult who didn't know anything about the world and you were like yeah there's this guy watches you all the time knows when you're awake knows when you're sleeping tracks what you're doing at the end of the year gives you judgment good naughty and uh you either get presents or you get you know some bad stuff you like poop in a sock and one not the

worst punishment you could get for not being a good person that year but two even an adult who had no idea would be like i don't know about that yeah do i sign up for this is this is this optional but kids are just like okay so there's presents he lives in an isolated estate up in the north away from anything where he keeps an undersized workforce unpaid and working all year around he hides away and he keeps mrs claus locked up there she never comes out does mrs claus like have like a book club or something or does mrs claus get out i don't know let's find out what does mrs who would go to the book club the elves are always working who'd go uh the legendary wife of santa claus is known for making cookies with the elves, caring for the reindeer, and helping to prepare the toys.

So she scrapes up shit all year while Santa's like drinking milk and eating cookies. Yeah, pretty much. That makes sense. I mean, I feel like that kind of would be a full-time job. There's got to be a lot of elves. So I'm preparing toys. I meant the reindeer shit. Listen, it's not as glamorous as they make it out to be in the cartoons okay

the elves are all naked and they shit everywhere just like the reindeer it's a big open workshop with hay and and sawdust everywhere on the floor to soak up the juices and mrs claus has got to sweep that place out like twice a day minimum yeah you know uh the sidebar but do you know that movie is called Fat Man? Did you guys see Fat Man? No. I unironically loved Fat Man. If you guys haven't seen it at home, it's about Mel Gibson as a crotchety Santa Claus.

And he's got a gun. It's just like that sells the whole movie. But Mrs. Claus is amazing in that one. And just like Santa as a whole is awesome. Like people shit on whole movie. But Mrs. Claus is amazing in that one. And just like Santa as a whole is awesome. Like people shit on the movie. Like it doesn't have good ratings, but I loved it. I thought it was great. I had a great time with it.

That's so weird. I didn't even know Mel Gibson was acting again. Yeah, he kind of came back with a few things here and there. I haven't really been following, but just like this movie was just interesting. I love that Hollywoodllywood doesn't give a hot damn about what the content is anything that exists eventually someone in hollywood will be like okay it's a gritty reboot right this is a dark santa he's got guns he's an alcoholic he has war flashbacks and he's hard to deal with touching turnaround story of how he still saves christmas

despite being a horrifying man yes that's the movie i never even saw the billy bob thornton one what was that bad santa bad santa yeah i never saw any of those either well that guy wasn't really santa and this one mel gibson is actually santa okay yeah i kind of want to watch that now yeah yeah you you definitely i think it's a good watch but maybe my my taste might be shit but whatever anyway back to the concept of santa as a whole yes is is nightmarish is terrifying i think that leads into what crompus is because crompus is probably the good guy well in in kind of the cosmic sense where people say like well maybe satan's the good guy you know like i don't know who's to say

cleaning up the the ne'er-do-wells. It's a thankless job. But Krampus, right? Like, Krampus is the kind of counterpart. I don't know where Krampus came from. I don't even know, like, the origins of the modern-day Santa. I know it's, like, originating with Saint Nicholas. I know in Austria they have Krampus. He's, like, an evil counterpart to Santa in Austria. I don't know if that's the origin of it, but I don't know why I know that,

but I know that's a thing in Austria. I love the Austrian tradition with Krampus. Krampus. Krampus. Have you guys heard of Krampuslauf? Krampuslauf? No. Lauf in German means to run or to throw.

I don't know. Anyway, Krampuslauf translates, I guess, as Krampus procession. It's like the running of the bulls, except it's a pack of Krampuses. I love that. Children and adults line the except it's a pack of krampuses i love that children and adults line the streets to watch a herd of krampus run past yeah which is just wholesome or something does sound wholesome and or terrifying because if like you're coming out of preschool at the wrong time on that road and you turn your head and a herd of krampi are coming at you i mean you're gonna wish you were a little better

that year and i think like it's fascinating because the counterpart to like santa claus the whole concept of like they're always being like an evil counterpart to something is kind of lost in today's stories that we tell children because back in the day like when things in the forest could actually kill you i mean they still can today but like it was you know more prevalent there you go in the forest you might die of parents just scaring the absolute shit out of their kids with all these stories in the woods like with the gingerbread house which you know hansel and gretel like all these like nightmarish stories of the past having some evil thing that was like if you're not a good kid you will literally be stuffed in a bag in the middle

of the night and I will never have to deal with your shit again. So you better be good. Yeah, dude. Did kids used to be way wilder than they are now? I don't know. Like, kids are still crappy. I worked in a school for a couple of years at K through 12 school.

And like, kids could still be just terrible. Like, you're talking about all the old, like, German, you know, folk stories and stuff. The Grimm. Yeah, the Brothers Grimm stuff. It's dark man yeah kids were so bad the parents were like what do we do what do we do oh my god he won't stop bringing goats into the house and then killing them all over our furniture oh god okay we need to invent some stories where kids get their like hearts ripped out through their buttholes or something if they're not good you're gonna really scare these idiots yeah like what happened man geez i mean maybe that's why i don't know kids are bullies and stuff now maybe kids were like so well behaved back then

because they had they got told one of those stories and they were like okay well they needed to have something to distract the kids the parents were so busy on their stone tablets and stuff they weren't really paying attention to god no i tried not to laugh but it came out but seriously though like what the modern version of like the brothers grim stories would be i don't know graphic robocop will come and shoot you if you're not a good kid i don't know like it'd be weird man my favorite grim fairy tale that doesn't happen a big scary police officer's gonna shoot you if you don't behave it's pretty much what a robocop is but he's a robot he's right right i mean he's a cyborg or is he a robot uh cyborg i'm not a big lore fan of that franchise but he's cyborg is robocop different from judge dredd yes yes and i'm

insulted that you had to even ask that i was asking on behalf of some of our audience i knew the answer right of course clearly you are not the law because he says that oh yeah eagerly awaiting the next the sequel to uh the latest dread movie which was great it was good it was good i liked it it was okay what's his face what's his face what is uh uh mr man mikey no the guy who played dread what oh still alone no i mean yeah he did but in the recent one vin diesel no vin diesel vin diesel would make a terrible like judge dread um other vin diesel other vin diesel there's two no the guy who kind of looks like vin diesel but he's not vin diesel hang on carl urban carl urban yeah yeah carl urban that's what i said i definitely didn't have to search that one up i would have searched it but for some

reason my googling ability has died. Literally. Oh, I'm still on the call with you guys. So my internet's not gone, but what's something good? Okay. Carl Urban. There we go. Now it's working ish. My internet's been a little spotty at my house.

Anyway, I'm waiting for the sequel of that movie to come, but I know it's never going to happen because it didn't like make a lot of money. It like broke even, but then Hollywood, that means it lost money because of the funky accounting that happens for movies so that's probably not gonna happen but it was good i liked it yeah it was a fun watch it's very fun watch what were we talking about crumpus oh modern modern terrifying stories oh yeah it'd be creepy pasta yeah do they even call it creepypasta anymore? That's like a, that's like an old internet term. I mean, but that's not, yeah, that's not a thing. What would that story be like?

Oh, listen, little Billy, you know, the parable of Jeremy and the broomstick creepypasta. He kicked his friend's juice box over and then stomped on it and it sprayed all over his MacBook and it broke his MacBook and it cost his parents $800 to fix it. So the broomstick creepypasta slithered out of the cabinet and climbed up inside of his butthole and stole his happiness. You're talking about the broom broom man? Broom broom man.

Are you referring to the broom broom man right now? I'm going to Google this and I'm going to be very mad at you if I get terrible, terrible things in my browser. The broom broom man right now i'm gonna google this and i'm gonna be very mad at you if i get terrible terrible things in my browser the broom broom man you hear a gentle sweeping as he comes to lurk into your bedroom at night when you come into your room and everything's dusted and your mom didn't do it for you you're already dead parents tell you to clean your room and you don't but it gets clean anyway.

You know he's coming. The broom broom man is already in your closet. I love the idea of, it doesn't anthropomorphize or anything. The broom just awkwardly is clearly thrown across camera as it moves. Like it's a shot of a broom in a closet and then a zoom out shot of the closet and the broom is just like,

chonk onto the floor. And this floor like a broom being thrown around the house until it stabs the kid in their bed while they're sleeping yeah you get this like close-up wrestling scene of a kid in a broom and he's like throwing the broom around like no and then just like close-up shot of broom going through a shirt and blood just rustling noises you get close up with the kid's face and he just like close-up shot of broom going through a shirt and blood just rustling noises you get close up with the kid's face and he's like no and then close up with the broom and it's just like this is gonna date me a little bit but this reminds me of a movie i always wanted to rent it like blockbuster but i never did where like the cover it's like a horror movie but the cover is just like a tire a wheel yeah i i

literally have that googled up right now rubber do you i was gonna talk about that yeah that's exactly what this reminds me of tell me about it yes and it reminded me of that too have you not seen that movie no i've never seen it i haven't seen it either but like i know all about it let's watch it together yes oh my god wait the summary of this movie is so good yes oh i mean only only need one sentence to know that i absolutely need to watch this now read it this is a 2010 movie is there an older version of it because i swear i saw this in no 2010 horror comedy yeah rubber is a movie about a tire that kills people with its mind. It's pretty high concept stuff. This is the next sentence.

I swear I'm having one of those things where like, I have a vivid memory of seeing this in a blockbuster, but there's no way I saw it after 2010. I suppose, yeah, you're probably right. No way in a blockbuster. Maybe like as you're going through a store and it had like a DVD rack. Yeah, you see that like the grocery store

in the bargain bin or something. Yeah. It's just like, it's one of those movies there's another one uh that i've seen someone do a review of that's like where this murderer someone gets killed while they're trying to be apprehended by struck by lightning or something and they get put into a drone and so like they are a drone like literally like a dji phantom 3 drone that flies around and kills people oh my god i looked up movies like rubber so this holiday season if you guys are feeling the christmas spirit and you've already seen rubber you can watch other classics like killer sofa possum or butt boy or thanks

killing what boy butt boy it's just it's a guy in a blue robe it's called butt boy i have no idea what it's about but it's recommended butt boy 2019 thriller comedy what do i i'm not gonna google that no it just comes up with an imdb page man it's legit no i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna do that i think two of us trying to access the butt boy imdb at the same time is crashing the site now everyone at home listening to this is googling butt boy don't deny it we're calling you out listeners we know you're doing it shame look at the image for killer sofa while you're at it killer sofa yeah oh oh wow killer sofa that's really a thing oh boy there's also one called wrong cops that's recommended where just like a police officer showing his like uh likes to eat the same kind of food i do chest that is the directed by

the same director as rubber oh okay wow that is in their filmography oh wait velocipaster you know velocipaster yes velocipaster i heard about veloci pastor a while ago this same channel that like did a rundown of that other movie i was talking about also did a rundown of veloci pastor and it's just it's about a priest that can turn into a raptor a velociraptor and i don't remember what the actual trigger for turning that into it but he fights ninjas and like he falls in love oh my god and it's like it goes places and i haven't seen it myself but i heard about it like two years ago and then recently it started actually like gain traction and people it's like a little bit of cult classic and if you guys have seen it at home maybe you know what it's about but it's just abby you gotta watch it inhuman which lamageddon what have i not heard of any of these things

lamageddon oh wait no i've i've heard of lamageddon actually inhuman which is another one inhuman which oh wow it's it's funny because some of the like the posters for these is pretty good uh that one's not good okay it looked good small and then i zoomed in on it and it's not the facial expressions of the people on the inhuman witch poster are top tier yeah like i don't know if probably it's 50 50 where 50 of the people that making these movies are like we know it's going to be bad and we're doing it just to be bad and it'll be fun and then the other 50 are like this is my masterpiece this is my magnum this is what's gonna get me into the industry and you know that happens i just want to say thanks killing i think has several sequels thanks killing wow all right

listen my point is that santa's creepy right yeah no agreed santa let us down this line we end up with thanks killing when we went for Santa. So yeah, I'd agree with you. Yeah. I mean, it's all pretty concerning, but. The lyrics to his theme song. He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake.

He knows if you've been bad or good. So be good for goodness sake. Creepy. Yeah. But you know, I feel like it's missing without that other half of Krampus because the kid can just be like, well, I guess I'm going to get coal. It's pretty valuable missing without that other half of krampus because the kid can just be like well i guess i'm gonna get coal it's pretty valuable i guess what does krampus do i've seen the movie so like i know what he does in the movie but like actually like what is krampus snatches kids doesn't he i think yeah pretty much that and what eats them sacrifices

them i don't know raises his own they don't come back i guess yeah just just take some all right just not a lot not a good enough kid yeah you're done now they actually there's an scp that i believe is krampus i'm pretty sure um scp 4666 spooky oh i see what they did there but in that one it like details what happens pretty explicitly and so they steal a kid and uh they take them to make toys. But the toys are often made of the bones of the other kids. And they'll like eat an arm of a kid, eat a leg, eat a kid, you know, and then just basically will appear outside of your house around the Yuletide time and kidnapping murder. Kidnap murder.

I love that. Kidnap murder. You love that? That's great. You love that for them? Yay for Christmas. Yay for Krampus. But I would agree they're both kind of weird like a lot of traditional things are weird i found one this is not well no it is related but it's not necessarily krampus or anything

in catalonia apparently they have this tradition that involves creating a character out of like a log drawing a face on it giving it a hat and they spend a fortnight feeding it fruit nuts sweets and on christmas eve the family beats the log with sticks and sings a song that translates to basically if you don't crap well i'll beat you with a stick until the log excretes all of its treats what and they decorate nativity scenes with small pooping ceramic figurines usually like well-known people from like throughout the year or something where their pants around their ankles just pooping they sing about pooping as they beat this log until it excretes the sweets within they beat their logs while pooping until

it excretes sweets i don't know much about this log i think the log is like a piñata basically yeah it sounds like a piñata that's just being described as pooping. Yeah, but they actually decorate like they've got figurines of characters pooping that they decorate around with. Uh-huh. Where? Catalonia. Catalonia.

I don't know how to pronounce this. It's like a cagatillo or cagatillo or defecating log is the Catalan tradition. Wait, is Catalina where there was that boob ghost? Catalonia. No, no, no. Malaysia. Sorry, I apologize. Catalina's addressing.

Catalonia is the place. The Catalan log that poops nuggets at Christmas. Wow. NPR.org. Wow. Sure, sure. All right. Well, I feel like you've described as much as there is to describe on that one.

I just wanted to throw out another one. Get us back on the Christmas spirit. God, the illest, the pictures, when you go to the images of that particular Google search, this log is not what I thought it would be. It's kind of like if whoever designed Mr. Towley from South Park was told to design a log that poops treats and was like okay i just this image that i linked it's just like it just feels this feels wrong this feels like i shouldn't it feels like i'm on the wrong website oh no dude the lady's face on the left of that cart it's like a cartoon image of a lady in a purple dress holding down the log on a pile of something yeah there's a guy with a

green striped shirt they're both holding sticks beating this really sad log with a pinocchio length nose yeah and then there's another picture same artist of just the text if you don't poop and then it's like it's the most threatening image i've ever seen in my life god those faces there's another one of the same log just sitting there and it just says poop and he's happy oh god well i man the only thing i have comparable that that we do in our home is just the hiding the pickle you know thing oh you guys do that i heard about that and i had never heard that before yeah i had never heard that before either you've never heard of it yeah so we every christmas we've always done it as far back

as i can remember there's just always been a pickle somewhere on the tree and whoever gets it first gets a bonus present that's pretty cool i don't know where it comes from i don't know what started it but that's just the thing and that sucker is hard to find that thing's real tough oh it's green and the tree is green hide the pickle seems like somebody would try to convince like a date of like the third date like hey we play a game called hide the pickle is it on the tree or is it and it's like on it has to be in the tree somewhere so usually when we did we hung it it was what we had was an actual ornament right so is but we would hide it somewhere near like some stuff and i i stopped doing it when i grew up but you know they still

do it i heard about that i was like an interview or something someone brought that up in like the last couple weeks and i never heard so are there rules about when you can look for it can you only look for it with one eye because if the rule was find the pickle get a present as soon as the tree was up i would just be like well i'm not gonna stop looking until i find the pickle no no no it's gotta be like on christmas at agreed time so you don't know where it is sure everyone's on the same page and then you all rush the tree all at once does the same person always find the pickle because it's just hanging out you probably find it do they put it on right before you look for it i guess yeah exactly yeah okay so me and my brother would do did it first way back when and so it would just be us two but then you know like i get this big extended

family now so it's like a rush of these 12 kids that go sprinting for the tree all at once and basically knock it over and then someone's real pissed when they don't get it so uh yeah i looked it up and apparently in the 1880s woolworth store started selling glass ornaments imported from germany somewhere in the shapes of fruits and vegetables and pickles might have been among it and around the same time it was claimed the christmas pickle was a very old german tradition and that the pickle was the last ornament hung on the tree the first child to find the pickle got an extra present but not many people in germany seem to have ever heard of this so it's unlikely that's a true story i mean i do feel like it's one of those things because cincinnati is like a german had a lot of high Germans population, German traditions and whatnot.

I feel like this is something that Americans in German, like maybe Germans pranked Americans to be like, oh, yeah, we hide the pickle all the time. My German accent is not good. My favorite German accent. Oh, yeah. Please keep going. You guys go for it. No, no, no. It's not just going to be me.

Oh, yeah, we hide the pickle all the time. That's the one. Every year, we put the pickle on the tree. We hide the pickle on the tree, laddie. My favorite German accent. Get out of my tree. You're German, right? Oh, yeah.

Oh, hi. I'm German. Oh, jawohl. Wink, wonk. Let me get you the pickle from the cool trunk what do you mean gentlemen I'm from Moscow we have babushka here

okay I'm Japanese this is why we agreed not to do accents yeah when did we agree I don't know I feel like that's just a general rule that we have out in the universe that none of us should distract the bylaws yeah one of our enshrined institutional north stars is that you shouldn't do accents because don't do that yeah you right you right what was i thinking what's my punishment that's a lot of pressure though

like a lot of holiday traditions and stuff from around the world are just like they seem funny like they seem like really and i always have in the back of my mind i always wonder if like a german guy just got to america was just moving in and settling down and his neighbors were like hey klaus how you doing good to have you in the neighborhood you know we're just getting ready for the old christmas season wonder if you had any uh any fun european german traditions and he's like oh i don't know we just do christmas you know tree sing a song i don't know and then oh come on you guys you germans you're wacky you must do something fun and he's like okay okay uh if it hides a pickle in the tree yes i don't know we got nothing man it's not interesting like because all of this shit who comes up with this how does it get to this place and why i don't know there's no way it was thoughtfully curated

like someone was like yeah we put the pickle in there and then we tell the kids there's a pickle in there humanity is one big game of telephone that started from the time the first word was spoken and continues to this day so like as soon as someone says some bullshit to a gullible enough person, they're gonna believe it and they're gonna pass on that bullshit information in whatever way it was distorted in their head. And thus you have civilization and where we are today.

That's kind of it. So you're saying some dumb American was walking past a couple of Germans talking and the German guy was like, yes, yes, I have three pickles. And the American was like, tree pickle? What a weird German tradition. And the German guy handed one of his three pickles to his friend and they walked away.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense that we're the idiots at least. Yeah, yeah. It always boils down to us being the idiots and trying to co-op something that doesn't make any sense and call it tradition. Do you have any weird Christmas traditions, Bob? Weird ones? I mean, so my parents, I don't know if this is the right name for it because I think this is something else.

My family would play this game called, I guess we call it the White Elephant game sort of thing. I guess we call it the white elephant like game sort of thing. Uh, yeah. Okay. So we play like a version of that where basically you buy a bunch of like tchotchkes and, you know, candies and random stuff. You make like a pile of a big pile of like a, all bunch of little presents. And some of them are big, but you know, they're like big box with one thing in it or whatever. It's the idea is that you have no idea what the presents are. And then we play this card game where basically you're trying to get a pair. The first person to get a pair gets to pick a present and you can pick a present from the pile or you can steal from someone one of their presents that they've already picked. And like you just keep playing the card game. It's really fast paced, passing cards around and eventually all the presents are gone. And then

there's like one final round. You can like, you know, exchange stuff. You can't open can't open anything but you can guess and try and you know get the best stuff or whatever and then at the end uh you just open the presents and it's like oh i got a candy and a book about birds of ohio or something and like you know that it's really fun the presents are all just little things nothing super cool but yeah the game is really fun that's probably my favorite like tradition that my family does we've done that in the past that's not like a yearly thing we do every year but on my side my great aunt i don't know if she started this or if this started like with her family or what but like for as long as i can remember whenever we've had our family get together we all have a thing where um we do like the number drawing thing like where you just draw a number and you go pick a prize and the next person can steal yeah she always comes

up with some unique thing we have to do is like a family where we split into groups the first year molly ever visited and met my family like i've just seen her in person for the first time like the day before christmas eve i think she came in like the 23rd she like met my mom my siblings and the next day we went over to celebrate christmas eve with my my dad's side of the family basically and my aunt had us divided into groups where i wasn't even on the same group as molly so she had to like go get into a group with just random family members of mine and we had to dress up into like different costumes and perform a song uh like dance along we'd have to say we'd like dance to this song

with like a dance routine there was a year we had to do like a cook-off where we had like different recipes we all had to cook stuff and see-off where we had like different recipes. We all had to cook stuff and see whoever could make like the best dish. I can't remember all the other ones we've done, but like throughout the years, there's just always been different like little mini competition things that we've done

where they're lighthearted. They're not like try-hardy things, but it's still like kind of bizarre. And I don't know where that originated from. That sounds kind of fun. You know what? Tradition doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense with the groundhog day yeah ah yes that shit is the most confusing thing if a groundhog

comes out of its hole and sees its shadow there's gonna be six more weeks of winter if it sees a shadow is or if it doesn't see the shadow if it sees its shadow and gets scared back into its hole six more weeks of winter if it doesn't see its shadow and it stays out, no more winter. What if the day is cloudy? What if it's cloudy that day? Like, which groundhog? Any groundhog? Like, I know they do Punxsutawney Phil.

I know, but that can't be how it originated, right? Yes. Who was the first person that told another asshole, hey, if that groundhog sees a shadow, it's going to be six more, and then bet their entire farming schedule around that because that's what it was right here you go i got some information for you okay on february 2nd of 1887 groundhog day featuring the rodent meteorologist to celebrate this is from history.com in pennsylvania in 1887 according to tradition if a groundhog comes out of its hole in this day and sees the shadow gets scared and runs back into its burrow predicting six more weeks of winter groundhog day has its roots in the ancient christian tradition of candlemas when clergy would bless and distribute

candles needed for winter the candles represented how long and how cold the winter would be germans expanded on the concept by selecting an animal the hedgehog as a means of predicting weather once they came to america german settlers in pennsylvania continued the tradition although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs which were more plentiful in pennsylvania it literally is that someone made it up mark oh yeah this says that climber freeze just went to apparently the pre-existing punxsutawney groundhog club which is a club of groundhog hunters in punxsutawney pennsylvania and was just like hey you guys want to go to gobbler's knob and see if this groundhog scared or not and then predict the weather it's like the the have you seen the bones

or no bones thing that's going on right now yeah it's the exact same thing but this is like 1887's version of this viral weird shit where groundhog something random like a groundhog seeing its shadow or a dog that does or doesn't eat i'm not saying it's it's cute you know the dog getting the bones and stuff but like it's still weird people are like oh it's a no bones day the first time i heard i was like what are you talking about like it's gonna be a bad day it's a no bones day it's a no bones day it's the same idea it's like it's gonna be a long winter groundhog didn't see its shadow it's a no bones day yeah exactly we're still just as dumb as we were 200 years ago and then in 200 years from now they ritualistically rip the bones out of a small animal to determine whether or not it'll be a good day or not.

Ah, a bones day good. Excellent. May it forever hence be a bone day. I like Groundhog Day. Doesn't have to make sense. No, I'm not saying it's not like cute and all, but it don't make sense. I will say I appreciate something like Groundhog's Day more than something where it's told to have come from real experiences.

Like you hear about Groundhog Day and you're like, okay, but why would the groundhog? And I was like, he wouldn't know. It's just a fun thing. There's a groundhog. It's arbitrary. If there was a tradition where it was like in the ancient times, groundhogs used to have the most acute sense of all of nature's creatures. They would be able to predict accurately what the weather would be in the near future.

And ancient hunters came to trust groundhogs. They would find a groundhog den and wait for it to come out. And that would tell them the weather for the next couple months. And then they would know, maybe should we go on a further expedition and push our luck? Or maybe we should turn back because winter is here to stay or like whatever like if that was the story of groundhog day i'd be like yeah sure fucking right that doesn't mean anything to me that's stupid but that's some white guys in pennsylvania we're just like you guys want to fuck around with a groundhog and get drunk once a year i don't know we go to this place called gobbler's knob it's fucking

hilarious and just check and just see what happens. Like, yeah, dude, I would do that. It's just the groundhog guy constantly trying to rope his friends in to go hanging out in Gobbler's Knob with groundhogs. Here comes Groundhog Gary again. Oh, jeez. No! For God's sake, no! Better than Ferret Frank.

Frank's idea is just to let a ferret into your pants and see what happens. Yeah. Do they name the turkeys that they know how we do? Like the president pardons a turkey or whatever around Thanksgiving. Do they name the turkeys? Are they just like, what happens to the pardoned turkey? They get eaten. Isn't that the point?

They're not supposed to. Nah, they get eaten. The turkey is on stage next to the president or vice president, whoever's doing it. And they're like, I jeffrey c turkey on this thanksgiving go and and be free and then the chef literally takes that turkey into the kitchen and it's just like all right let's eat this bird that's how chefs say the word beard apparently bear have you seen like the white house chef i don't know if it's still the same guy what have you seen the white house chef no no have you not the like the reason you'll see why i bring this up are you talking

about this absolute beefcake of a man yes i am talking about this holy absolute beefcake he's enormous who is this andre rush yeah is that his name yeah andre rush the white house chef with the viral biceps. Dude, he could kill a turkey just by looking at it. Yeah, so when you went, rush, like, yeah, that was exactly what happened. Oh, my God. The image of him with the frying pan and the big, like, fish spatula looking over, glaring like he's about to murder someone. He is jacked, man.

Dude, he's looking at the turkey right now he's like all right pardon me come on that's where the stage is he's in the back making gravy staring at the turkey just like get over here i'm waiting for you turn the cameras off turn the cameras off all that dude does is work out and then cook food for the president and his family. Yeah, pretty much. I think he was the chef during, I believe, Obama. I'm pretty sure. The current chef is someone by the name of Christeta Comerford.

I don't have time with that name. Wow, that is a hard name. Christeta Comerford Ford. Comerford. Comerford. I don't know. Wow, that is a hard name. Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris...

Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris...

Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris...

Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris...

Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris...

Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris...

Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... Chris... didn't even think there were trees i thought it was just ice so i don't know how commonplace this is there i don't have like statistics or anything but uh apparently they take uh small arctic birds i think they're auk i don't know how to pronounce it but they take small arctic birds and they wrap them in like seal skin bury it for several months and then i guess they pull them out dig them up and eat the decomposed flesh good i bet it's delicious to them it's whale skin a combination of raw whale skin and arctic bird wrapped in seal skin this dish is apparently called kiviak kiviak a seal delicacy i think i've heard this describes it as a bunch of hundreds of dead ox birds stuffed into a dead seal and left to ferment under a rock for around three months oh okay same idea different imagery it seems to be a traditional dish of the

native population of the area of greenland i guess the inuit population i'm not sure if that's correct but meanwhile apparently kfc is taking the monopoly for food in japan i guess they've convinced a lot of people in Japan that Americans eat fried chicken on Christmas. Oh, yeah. No, that is a thing. Yeah, so I didn't know KFC was big around. Apparently, yeah, around Christmas time, KFC is huge in Japan.

Yeah, it's just like marketing. They managed to do it. That's the same as the hide the pickle Scottish German man from Japan. He went over there and was like, Oh, hi, you guys try this KFC. I'm an American. american weird there's some weird stuff out there i like spain's way of celebrating where they have a bunch of people run around wearing their red underwear like just underwear it's customary to wear red underwear on

new year's eve so after christmas you get your red underwear out let's see it's a small town in spain la font de la figuera uh i'm probably pronouncing that wrong pick on the tradition one step further new year's eve run with runners wearing just their red underwear they also apparently allegedly this town has the highest incidence of pneumonia in the country though may or may not be related to running around in their underwear on new year's eve it's a good fact you know that's a great fact very fun i like that well um all right i guess i should probably bring this to a close unless you guys have anything else you want to talk about i I'm still hung up on the Kiviak. Yeah.

It seems like one of those things that maybe you don't appreciate it until you see it in person, but I... It's just the way that you eat this food is described as traditionally you pick the birds clean, I guess, and clean the outside. And then you bite the head off and suck out juices of the bird. Sure. Hell yeah. Sounds good, man. And then you bite the head off and suck out juices of the bird? Huh? Sure. Ha!

Hell yeah. Sounds good, man. It must taste better than it sounds because that sounds crazy. I just want to picture the person who's just like, look, here's what we do. We grab a, oh God, I have a dead whale line here. Okay, dead seal. Scrape some of this.

Put this, look at all these birds. Blam! All right, cool. Let me stuff these in the seal with the whale and we're gonna put this in the snow for a couple months and then we eat it who pitched it i mean i mean yeah you gotta understand like in most of these spaces it's just ice it's kind of just ice you gotta make sure food whenever you get it yeah keeps so like a lot of the dishes just like you go for fermenting because it works and it keeps it relatively edible so that it won't kill you when you eat it you know you control the types

of things that are growing in it and when it comes down to food like if you grew up with that stuff that's what you like i mean it's just what it is you can get used to anything you can like become accustomed to anything if you grow up that's true there's fermented foods all over the world who knows that's very true it makes me want to try it because i feel like i'm not appreciating yeah you know i'm not appreciating it but i also feel like some stuff no matter how open-minded you are you're going to try it and if you didn't grow up eating it you're going to kind of be like i just eat bird juices there's juice in the bird and i eat it yeah yeah oh if it's of your culture i'm sure it's delicacy that dish is eaten mainly on special occasions

so it's like christmas birthdays yeah it's fancy yeah let us know out there if you guys like have any of these traditions or other ones like let us know on the reddit or something like let us know some other weird ones and stuff or if you guys do these and if we're getting something wrong because i'm curious like how many people out there if you're in greenland like do you do this if you're in catalonia do you have poop statues like i don people out there, if you're in Greenland, like, do you do this? If you're in Catalonia, do you have poop statues? Like, I don't know. There are 50,000 people in Greenland. I'm not 100% sure if we have listeners in Greenland,

but it's possible. Greenland listeners, go to the Reddit. Prove us wrong. Show us you're there. We have to have at least one Greenland listener. Oh, definitely. No question. Maybe.

I know you're out there. The one holdout. But all right, I guess I'll bring this to a close. Hope everyone out there has or had, depending on when you listen to this, happy holiday, Merry Christmas, so on and so forth. Be safe and smart out there and let us know your crazy traditions.

I have to pick a winner. Hmm. You know, based on something said very early in the episode, Mark, I'm giving you the win. I don't remember what you said, but it made me laugh or it made me like, oh, that's good points. That's the only time I thought about points the entire time. giving you the win. I don't remember what you said, but it made me laugh or it made me like, oh, that's good points. That's the only time I thought about points the entire time.

So therefore, you win. Aw, thanks, man. Yeah, if anyone can remember what I thought of where I didn't say anything out loud, let me know also what it was. They're going to listen back to the episode and be like, oh, that was Bob. Bob's back.

Uh-oh. It's too late for that. Thank you for for the win i appreciate it and i earned it probably probably fine great good episode everybody we do have merch out there if you guys haven't already checked that out if you go to store.distractfulpodcast.com you can get yourself a little squeeze ball fridge shirts and more with more stuff coming soon check it out thanks to my co-host mark and bob for a fun episode merry christmas everybody and until the next episode podcast out