Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The Christmas Bullet *LIVE IN LONDON*

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

This is a preview. To listen to the entire episode, click here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/133103053?pr=true

planes were going to be developed into a weapon of war, soon more than just the rights would be trying to sell their shit to the government. And that brings us to our main character of the story, Dr. William Whitney Christmas. Oh, fuck off. Fuck off. Sorry, getting scammed by Dr. Christmas is just like, yeah, the lesser known Mega Man villain. Getting scammed. He's throwing presents at you. Get equipped with plane that kills you. No, don't hold that thought. Dr. Christmas is the most Protestant version of Santa. He doesn't give you gifts, he just flies on and tells you how mid of a person you've been. Christmas was born in 1865 in North Carolina. That's sin number one. By all accounts at this part of his life it was normal. He attended and eventually graduated George Washington University

Medical School by 1905 and this is the last for sure thing we know about his life because if there's one thing Dr. Christmas loved more than his name and money it is lying about his life and everything he ever one thing Dr. Christmas loved more than his name and money, it is lying about his life and everything he ever did. So he's just a charlatan through and through. The old timey guy that, like his practice gets shut down in North Carolina and it just pops back up in South Carolina

and nobody knows why. Yeah, this is the era where you could just abscond with your ill-gotten gains and like a zeppelin in a huge bag of money And be like haha, catch me if you can! Like that probably happened multiple times in this guy's career Hey, he had to move, you know the bunt would fall out the snake will mark it You know I mean the idea of him jumping in a zeppelin twirling his large mustache, which he did have And flying ways really Mega Man villain maxing it doesn't get more villain than that maybe having a plane in North

Carolina is more of a Shelbyville thing he had to leave yeah I think the only like more villainous thing is if he like flew away in a hot-air balloon yeah a good getaway vehicle you know cuz it's like oh look it's going exactly where we expected it to go straight up I now by 1908 he reappears and he's telling people y'all here the Wright brothers right first to fly but you know who is second me there's no fucking evidence of this the man had never flown a plane before he had never even been in a plane before, and he's like, nah, fuck those guys, I'm number two and my plane is better than theirs. Then people would of course ask, well where's the plane? Well you don't understand, you see. I built this plane, but thanks to the

gangsters and the patent mafia from the US government I had to burn it yes I love I love old-timey liars like it's it's so much more fun before proof existed my plan was my plane was made out of ivermectin and I had to burn it because they didn't want you know how good it was no if you fly, you'll have no worms. And people believed him. People straight up believed him. It's like, well, he's a doctor. He seems trustworthy. Why would he lie?

Would a man named Dr. Christmas lie? Both those words are good things in my book. Put them together, you get an even better thing. People back then were so fucking trustworthy. It's like, oh, the man says he built this revolutionary aircraft, but he can't show it to me because it goes to a high school in Canada. But.

I mean, the game was so much different back then because the concept of aeronautical engineer hardly existed yet. So like, well, this man has an education. He's a doctor. Of course he could build a good airplane. I mean, at this point, I think it was maybe 60 odd years beforehand Hunter Beaufort scale to measure the speed of wind had just been invented

No need don't need it. This plane can go faster than that. The wind is fake wind is fake People don't know his wind is fake. Everybody knows that the larger wind lobby is involved in this But yet like you were saying I mean there wasn't anywhere near of the kind of standard of measurement things back then It's like you could be, there wasn't anywhere near the standard of measurement things back then. You could be told by actual, not Dr. Christmas, but real medical doctor, like, no, this patent medicine that's just simple syrup and cocaine will cure all your ills. Oh, you're sick? Take this heroin syrup. You'll feel better and then die. I mean, this is an era where people were designing things on, effectively, napkins, slapping them together because there's no concept of testing before actually flying it. And they were fucking made out effectively napkins, slapping them together because there's no concept

of testing before actually flying it. Under a fucking made out of napkins as well. Also yes. And then it would crash, like okay, well we'll work on it. So it doesn't crash so hard next time. That's pretty much how developing a plane worked back then. So the fact that this guy was saying this, he sounded no less insane than the people

who were actually doing it. So the idea that he could have built a plane, not that far-fetched. And the idea that he was a practicing doctor, though he admittedly had not been practicing for several years for reasons that nobody can entirely nail down, of course he would have a better idea of these things. So when Christmas told the story about being forced to burn his plane, he would then jot down a quick sketch on what he claimed his plane looked like. And what he would draw was the design of someone else.

It was called the AEA Redbird, built by a guy named Thomas Selfridge, who was famous for... Does anybody know who Thomas Selfridge is? Alright, he's famous for being the first human being to die in a plane crash. Hahaha! Uh, like... So, he did not even die in a plane crash, sorry, he did not even die in a plane that he designed, rather he died while being a passenger of Orville Wright, in Orville Wright's plane. So, off topic here, I'm originally from Michigan and there's a National Guard airbase in Michigan called Selfridge Airbase for some reason because Selfridge is not from

Michigan. He's never been to Michigan and he did nothing in Michigan. So we just kind of stole him. Selfridge Airbase has the same kind of energy as Mahatma Dada Airlines. Like famously, you don't need to know how to land. Either did Selfridge. The air base doesn't have a landing strip. It just has like a cavernous hole that you have to try and land in. I mean, you're like-

Trying to land over there with the rest of the wreckage. But North Carolina does have license plates with like commemorating the Wright brothers' first flight on it. So I'm just imagining you get like a different plate from North Carolina's like DMV of just remember Thomas Selfridge it has like the right plane but it's smoking on the ground. Christmas had nothing to do with Selfridge, his company AEA, or anyone else. From what anyone can tell the two had never met but he had seen his plane in the newspaper and just kind of stole it? So he claimed to he claimed to have built the man the

first man who died in a plane crash his idea for a plane before the man had gotten 9-eleven by Orville Wright. I mean this is a whole spin on the Wright brothers kind of hagiography now doesn't it? Well it's more of a John Denver situation I suppose. The joke is appealing to you too. I've heard of a second band. Then Christmas formed the Christmas Aeroplane Company in 1909, managing to secure the princely sum of $2,500, which is a fuckload of money back then, from three backers to build what he called the Redbird II.

So not only did he steal Selfridge's design, he then stole his design and continued numbering it after the man had died. I mean Lynyrd Skynyrd does keep touring so this is an American phenomenon. And much much like Lynyrd Sky Skinner he should have seen the writing on the wall and stayed away from airplanes. Christmas insists the Redbird 2 was built and even flew multiple times though these flights never have a date, a pilot's name is never given and there's no photographic evidence this plane even fucking existed but he did steal about ten thousand dollars worth of money to from people that he was said I'm absolutely gonna build this plane

with this and then just vanish like a fart in the wind he's doing like Irish local politics procurement fraud I'm like the Healy Rays own pretty much every contracting business in Kerry and also all of the contracts are given to them procurement fraud. How like the Healy Rays own pretty much every contracting business in Kerry and also all of the contracts are given to them by their cousins who are on the local council. So like they're making the potholes, they're filling the potholes, they're paying for the potholes to be filled. The only reason we know that Christmas is not Irish Americans because he's not a cop in Boston. Though he was a super racist. So what happened to all of this money?

We don't know, but we do know that Dr. Christmas suddenly bought a very large mansion in North Carolina and several servants. I'm just imagining Dr. Christmas as like the homeless guy that like is a millionaire in the Simpsons. The fact that you have to address Dr. Christmas as a serious character in this story, like it just keeps coming across like,

well, I'm not a millionaire, I'm a cop, I'm a cop, I'm a cop, I'm a cop, I'm a cop, I Simpsons. I just, the fact that you have to address Doctor Christmas is a serious character in this story, like it just keeps coming across like. Well unfortunately he actually was a doctor, so calling him Mr. Christmas is just not nice. He didn't spend four years in Christmas medical school to be called Mr. He's doing surgery on little presents to open them up and not tear the paper so he could reuse it. Yeah, shout out to him for giving the elves universal basic healthcare, you know?

No, you know those elves were dying in horrible, horrible ways. Yeah, they have the NHS. Yeah, those elves are experiencing like industrial revolution-level accidents, being mangled in like wrapping machines. We've brought the black lung to the Antarctic.