Stuff You Should Know - Josh and Chuck's Christmas Extravaganza

Episode Date: December 22, 2011

Have you ever wondered why the poinsettia is the official plant of Christmas or why we hang stockings by the chimney with care? Join Chuck and Josh for this very special Christmas episode. Who knows, maybe even St. Nick will make an appearance (he doesn't). Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Huck, you're the bells. A Christmas podcast. Yeah. This is a Christmas podcast, a holiday special. Lots of glad tidings here. Yeah. Your, uh, your buds are going to be bursting with them.

We have real muppets. I wish. I so wished. You just look so disappointed. I know. It's not for a second. Like, what are you, are you surprised? I wish. No, there's no muppets. Thanks for the let down already. It's like 30 seconds into this thing. No, instead, Chuck, this is our higher holiday special where we put together some little Christmas podcasts that we're going to do. Some shorties, some longies. We're going to dispel some myths. We're going to enforce some myths. That's right. And we're going to explain the origins of some things. And if you're all very good boys and girls, we may even read a story at the end. How do you like that? That's exciting. Yeah. So it's a little different. It's a little,

uh, a little, it's packed with at least 120% more holiday cheer than our typical episode. Yes. Like shrunken heads. Right. Maybe that one is up to like 180% more. And this one will come out. I believe on what? Like the 22nd? Yeah. Just say it's Christmas Eve Eve Eve. That's right. But you should be off work as far as I'm concerned already and like roasting chestnuts. But even if you're not, it's that time of year where like you're going to work and you feel absolutely great about things. You know what I'm talking about? Have you ever worked retail in the holiday season? Yeah. Even in retail, right before Christmas, you can feel terrific. I worked at the Gap. I worked at American Eagle. Really? Yeah. What was on your heavy rotation there?

Uh, Santa's got a brand new bag. James Brown over and over. Ours was, um, that Chrissy Hind one about. Oh, that's a good one. It is a good one, except when you hear it 800 times. Yeah. It was a good mix. Um, but yeah, and it was the same mix over and over again. What's your favorite? What's my favorite Christmas song of all time? Yeah. Gosh, that's tough. So I would have to say Chuck, my favorite Christmas performers are Johnny Mathis and Feronte and Teicher. Okay. Excellent Christmas album. Sure. Bing Crosby's Christmas album is possibly the greatest Christmas album ever released. Carpenters? Maybe. That's a good one. Definitely. Bing Crosby is at least tied with the Charlie

Brown Christmas special soundtrack. Oh, yeah. Sure. The, uh, Vince Giraldi trio soundtrack. Classic jazz. Vince. Um, and, uh, of course, William's Last Christmas. That's a good one. I'm not kidding. Like it's, it's good. It's probably the best contemporary Christmas song of all time. If you ask me, I haven't gotten it yet, but, uh, my morning jacket has a Christmas EP they just put out, which I'm going to get. And then I think it's the waitresses, Mary Christmas. Yeah. That's Emily's favorite and has since become one of my favorites. Yeah. It's a good one too. Very upbeat. When at the end of like the gong show or something you just did. No, no, no. It's the horn break in Mary Christmas by the waitresses. Yeah,

it's a good song. So is that enough palaver for the beginning? I think so. Let's get to it. We're doing this a little differently. There's going to be a little bit of Christmas cheer between some of the segments and, um, we hope that this finds you with a nice cup of cocoa. You're a warm fire. Or Scotch. That too. Um, if you're a night watchman. Sure. Um, the, the, that there are, you're surrounded by people you care about and who care about you. Yeah. Or at the very least, you're having a good time with us regardless of how you choose to celebrate this time of the year. We're going with Christmas because that's what we do. That's a great point, Chuck. Yeah, but we respect all religions and stuff like that. Right. We wish glad tidings to all.

So let's get it started. Shall we? Yes, let's. So Josh, to kick this extravaganza off this cheer fest, as you call it. Yeah. Let's, uh, let's talk a little bit about a Christmas caroling. You ever do that? Uh, I have as a child, definitely. I'm going door to door singing like Christmas songs, narco ballads, whatever. As long as you're doing it door to door in its winter, you're, you're in the clear as a caroling. I don't know about that. But you know, originally they started out as very secular. They weren't religious necessarily. Well, that's true. And in fact, the, the word carol itself, uh, lies not in song as Sam Abramson, our old little buddy has

to say, but in dance, uh, an old French carol with an E at the end means a kind of dance in Latin. Carola means a dance into a flute. And in Greek, a caroles means a flute player who accompanies the choral dance. So it was all about dance early on. Uh, and some were religious early on, but generally there were secular dance tunes, right? American bandstand. The, uh, 11 lords are leaping. You could consider them caroling, especially if there was a flute that they were leaping to. Good point. Uh, so like a lot of Christmas, uh, traditions, which if you go back and listen to last year's how Christmas worked, I think it was in past tense for some reason. Really? Episode. Yeah. Cause we killed Christmas. I guess. Yeah. Um, Silent Night, Deadly Night

happened. And that was it. Uh, the, you'll find that there is a lot of, I guess, stealing going on through Christmas traditions from pagan holidays. Yes. Specifically Northern European pagan holidays, specifically the winter solstice festival of yule, which is where we get yule tide, yule log, all that stuff, all the yules. But they think that caroling originally has its roots in the yule festival where a lot of Northern Europeans got together and said, let's sing, let's dance. Maybe there's a flute. Maybe there's not, but there's probably wassall. Yes. Wassall is a thick, hot, spicy beverage that, uh, they would give travelers, you know, to, to keep them warm and to wish them well. And it became a holiday staple, obviously,

because of the weather. Have you ever had it? No, have you? No, but I want to typically, it's like cider, brandy, clothes, cinnamon, nutmeg, oranges, apples, honey, sugar, yum, and hot. The orange. Just take a, take a crock pot, an ancient pagan crock pot. If you can, that's customarily how it's, how it's heated. Well, and from that word, uh, jolly bands of churchgoers would go door to door and it's an old Norse term. They would call it, uh, wassaling or wassailing. Yeah. Is it wassailing? I think so. And they would spread, uh, the joy through hymns, Christmas hymns. Right. And that was, although, see, I thought that would have been the origin of caroling, but Sam says here, we don't really know. Yeah. Sam kind of bounces

all over the place in this mini article, but it's Sam. I wonder if he listens. You know. If you, if you're listening, Sam, we miss you, buddy. Glad tidings to you. Sam used to work here, by the way, if you haven't picked up on that. So, um, Chuck, it's possible. There's, well, there's different aspects to it. So you have the carols, right? Yes. A lot of carols like, Oh, come all ye faithful guy, rest ye Mary gentlemen. I saw three ships of sailing, that kind of stuff. Silent night. Silent night. They're very, very religious, very, very Christian. They are talking about the nativity, right? The birth of Christ. Exactly. Um, like I said, carols were originally secular,

although I'm not exactly sure what they were singing about necessarily. Right. Maybe like, it's cold. It's really cold. Can we have some wassals? Right. And that was a carol. Sure. But in about the fourth or fifth century AD, carols were written in land. They were very solemn, serious, not necessarily associated with Christmas. It wasn't until the 13th century when St. Francis of Assisi, um, said, you know what? I need to jazz up my congregation. I'm going to make some up the up tempo carols. They're going to be about the nativity, but they're going to be happy and I'm going to make everybody sing them on Christmas. And that was the birth of the Christmas carol as we know it. Exactly. And there were very energetic, as you said, and that spread

through, uh, across Europe. And of course, anything that spread across Europe was eventually going to root down here in the new world. That's right. The United States. Yeah. And, uh, eventually little Chuck's going to find himself as a 15 year old going door to door in snow mountain with his youth group. That is nice, Chuck. It was nice. I'll say you're such a supportive, like, fellow youth group member. Oh, yeah. Like you really, you really nailed that carol. I've been paying attention to you at practice and you really nailed it. Oh, I didn't overdo it though. That's the key. Well, that's not overdoing it. These days, a lot of groups do this for charity, like I said, churches. And, uh, I didn't get for charity though. They hit people up for money or something.

Uh, I think that people sometimes give them tips in lieu of wassel because it's kind of hard to come by sometimes in the average house in Michigan. Sure. They don't necessarily have wassel there. So sometimes people give people money. There's like an exchange of something. It's almost like a Halloween, but you're actually giving somebody something in the form of like well wishes or glad tidings. Exactly. But you're earning your keep. Uh, as Sam pointed out, this could have come from the feudal tradition of singing for your supper. Another idea of possibly where caroling began or going door to door, especially singing for your supper. Right. Sure. Because it's not just the caroling. There's the thing of going door to door. Why are people going door

to door? Why don't they just stand in a central location and make everybody come to them? Yeah. You can, but you're not really doing the whole thing. There's another legend. Sam says probably isn't true. There's no basis for it, but there was a young girl named Carol Poles and she was a little English girl who went missing very sadly in London during the holiday season in the 19th century. They went door to door looking for her singing to declare their good intentions like, hey, don't shoot us in the face. We're really just looking for little Carol. But Sam goes on to say that there's really no basis in fact for this. It might just be legend. So you want to talk about a few carols? Yeah, we'll mention a couple of days of Christmas. I mentioned 11 Lords of Leaping.

A lot of people say that this is an ancient means of secretly teaching children, Catholic symbols and values and beliefs from a time when you couldn't practice it. That's bunk. Well, or teaching them memory at least and how to recall things. Well, that's true. That's true. But the Catholic parts fault, right? Right. And 12 days of Christmas came about around 18th century in England. So it makes it something of an old one, but definitely not the oldest. What about Otenenbaum? That's one of my faves. That's a classic. AKA O Christmas tree. That's right. That is a German in origin. And we're going to pick up on that in a later story, by the way. Yeah. The exact roots are not known, but the melody might be familiar to you if you live in Iowa, Maryland, Michigan or

New Jersey, because your state anthem is sung to the tune of O Christmas tree. Yeah. Who knew? Chuck, let's get to the bottom of probably one of the greatest mysteries of Christmas. Yeah. What is figgy pudding? If you're in England, you're going to say, well, of course we know what figgy pudding is. Right. Because it's British in origin. If you're in America and you're familiar with the Carol, we wish you a Merry Christmas. And the line, we won't go until we get some. We won't go until we get some. Now bring it right here. I think that R.E. figgy pudding comes after bring us some figgy pudding, I believe, is the more on the nose line, which precedes it. Right. Sure. I said R.E. figgy pudding. Oh, okay. Sorry about that. It is British. It's a dessert.

It is sort of like carrot cake meets custard, but it's got chopped figs in it and spices and things. I don't know. Does it sound good to you? Yes. Oh, really? Yes. I love carrot cake, but I love custard. I'm not a big custard guy. I would definitely try it. All right. They said it's unique in the texture and taste and I'm not going to doubt that. So while you're sitting there by the fire, maybe now that we've kind of given you roughly the recipes for wassel and figgy pudding, you go make this. We'll be right here. Someone should send us figgy pudding. They should. All the way from England. Chuck. Josh. I'm sure you being a sentient person have noticed that there are, there's a plant,

a Christmas plant, as it were, like probably the official flora mask out of Christmas. The cactus. No. No. The poinsettia. Yes. The very brilliantly colored red leaf plant that you see everywhere this time of year. Did you say red leaf? Yes. Well, that's good that you said that, Josh, because a lot of people, because the leaves are so gorgeous and red and shaped like stars, think that that is the flower and the flowers. In fact, the little yellow thing in the center. Yeah. The flowers like I wish somebody would pay attention to me. I know, but I'm small and yellow. So this is, you agree then that probably the official plant of Christmas besides mistletoe and really that's just a cutting. The official plant with a root ball

of Christmas. To the tune of about $200 million in sales every holiday. But the crazy thing is, as much as it's associated with Christmas and snow and sleigh rides and things like that. Sure. The poinsettia is native to Mexico. I had no idea. Did you? Not either. No. It grows to heights of about 12 feet. Yeah. It's a shrub, a tropical shrub. Yeah. In southern Mexico. And actually, it turns out that it's a Christmas, it's associated with Christmas thanks to America's first diplomat to Mexico. A guy named Dr. Joel Roberts Poinsett. I wonder where they got his name after. Okay. Yeah. In the 19th century, he went down to Mexico, 1828, discovered the poinsettia and thought, hey, this is really, really pretty. I bet this would look great on my mantle and my hearth

in December. In South Carolina. Is that where it was? Yeah. South Carolina. And so he brought it back and it wasn't initially, didn't catch on like wildfire initially, but over the years throughout the 20th century, it became the mainstay of Christmas. It also suffered some indignity in what it was called before it finally landed on Poinsettia like the lobster flower or the Mexican flame leaf. Like lobster flower. And then, well, actually down in Mexico, they consider it a holy plan as well. It's called the florist de noche buena in Mexico. That's Spanish for flowers of the holy night. And that's based on a Christmas story that's told down Mexico way about a little girl who's very, very poor and who was there at the birth of Jesus and all she had was weeds to bring

him as she showed up. The weeds bloomed into the beautiful poinsettia plant. Hey, that sounds like a good story. It's a great story. I don't buy it. It's better than the lobster flower story because in that version, it turns into an angry lobster. So that is generally where people think that they got the Christmas tie, right? Well, that and the fact that they bloom in December. Right. And another interpretation is that it's a symbol of the star Bethlehem because the leaf looks like a star in a way. And then the real interpretation is that they bloom in December. Exactly. So is that it? Well, no, there's a lot of scorn heaped on poinsettias that they are in fact poisonous. It turns out that they will give you diarrhea if you eat the leaves,

which are called bracts, the upper portion of the leaves. Why would you do that? Because you're a little kid and it's red. Okay. You will get a little case of diarrhea. You're telling me will hurt, but it's not fatal. Apparently, scientists somehow figured out that a little kid would have to eat about 500 poinsettia bracts for it to become a toxic dose. So you want to keep them away from the poinsettias anyway, just so they don't have diarrhea this Christmas, but you don't have to worry about them dying at least. And as my wife pointed out, oh, but they're toxic to cats. I looked that up. They are somewhat toxic to cats, but I don't know if they're deadly. And the website I found said cats aren't going to really like

the taste that much anyway. So you really don't need to sweat it. But if your leaves drop off on the floor and you got cats, you might as well pick it up and put it in the trash because you don't want to make kitty sick. It's true ever. La Ron and the wizard are poinsettia free. Although my house is riddled with them with La Ron and the wizard now with poinsettias. Well, Chuck, we missed it this year, but next year we'll now know also December 12th is national poinsettia day in the United States a.k.a. go out and buy some poinsettias. Yes, the war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'd love to sit near the ocean and drink. Join me, Brendan Francis Nunum for Not Lost Chat, a new season of the travel podcast that The New York Times, The Economist and The Atlantic named best of the year. In each episode of the new season, I'll share an audio postcard from where I've been, talk to a travel writer about their work and invite a famous frequent flyer to come by and answer your travel questions. If I'm sitting in the seat and the person beside me is acting irate, I'm going to call a flight attendant before I stick my size 13 foot up their tiny ass. Ah, the joys of air travel. Listen to Not Lost on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. So that's poinsettia. It is. And I want to take this opportunity to wish Merry Christmas to the wizard and Laurent. Yeah, thank you. The other stockings. What I'm hoping is that because of this podcast, there will be tens of thousands of people all over the country saying, Hey, did you know the poinsettia is actually from Mexico? I hope that happens around dinner tables all over the world.

Chuck, it's time for probably my favorite Christmas story. My favorite. Do you like this one? My new favorite. You weren't familiar with this until recently? Well, I sort of was. Here's the deal. I saw the movie Midnight Clear. Have you ever seen that? Yes, I have, but not for years. I forgot about that. Really good movie and not so much based on but inspired by the story. And it was always one of my favorite movies, but there was actually another movie that hits this one on the head from five years ago. It's called, it's a foreign film called Joy X Noel, which means Merry Christmas. Yes. And it tells the story straight up. So the story that you're talking about, I want to explain to you is called The Christmas Truths.

And it is a true story, as you're saying, and it took place in World War One. World War One, Chuck, humans had gotten pretty good at war by the time World War One came around. World War One, the more I hear about it, it sounds like perhaps the most brutal of the World Wars. It gave us our first understanding of PTSD, which we used to call shell shock. It gave us mustard gas, phosphine gas, chlorine gas, chemical warfare is another way to put it. Machine guns that could spit out 600 bullets a minute. Airplanes in combat. Mass bombings.

Dropping bombs on civilians. And most pertinent to this story, trenches, trench warfare. Yeah, this is nutty. Trenches made their debut along the western front in Europe, apparently to great success. Too great of a success. For example, the Battle of Verdun lasted nine months. There were 300,000 deaths and almost no changes in the positions between the two trenches. I mean, war was so enthrallingly basic back then.

It was literally just like gaining ground foot by foot. Right, yeah. But this was the first step toward modern warfare. It was that, but it was the first step toward modern warfare where you could kill a bunch of people at once. And a lot of people did die from World War I. 8.5 million people died from the war, including civilians as well. Well, you make a really startling point in here. And this is your article, right? Yes.

With the trenches, sometimes these things were as little as 30 yards apart from each other. And out of all the hundreds of miles of these trenches, there was an average of four soldiers. Or no, a soldier every four inches. That's the average. That's what I read. Wow. Isn't that astounding? Boy, that is some close quarters.

It is extremely close quarters. Well, and it's not just close quarters. Boy, that's inconvenient. Close quarters to be scared out of your mind or wounded and dying. Yeah, or to see somebody next to you die. It was horrific and one of the things that naturally comes about when you dig two trenches and are fighting one another is a space in between. With a lot of dead guys. And that's, yes, that's called no man's land.

Yeah. The space between two trenches is called no man's land. Is that where that term originated? Really? Yes. Oh, cool. And so World War I was already in full swing by the time Pope Benedict the 15th was elected Pope. And one of the first things he did was say, hey, let's have a truce this Christmas day.

Yeah, good idea. Apparently the Germans said, okay, all right, we'll think about it. And the Allies said, no way. We're not going to give up any fortification or even a single inch. We just got to keep going. I get the idea that word got around, though, at least. Yeah, he had called for it. Even though it was turned down.

And for the most part, for almost everywhere in the world, there wasn't a truce on Christmas Day except for one little part of the trenches in Flanders, Belgium. Chuck, this is such a great story. If you've seen the movie, you know that what the Germans did, well, first of all, they all got gifts brought to the frontline. Soldiers did tobacco puddings, maybe figgy pudding at times. Chocolates, just little tokens of appreciation that the Germans got their little tannin bombs with these little small Christmas trees. And in the middle of the night, these Germans put up their little trees. On Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve, lit their little candles. And the dudes, I don't know if it was 30 yards, but the dudes across in the other trench, the Allies were like, well, hey, that looks kind of nice. And then all of a sudden they saw these signs from the Germans that said, you know fight, we know fight. That's adorable. And the British held up signs that said, Merry Christmas. They said, what the heck are you talking about? I think what originally got them was the Germans with their little Christmas trees on the tops of their trenches that everyone could see started singing carols. And carols are kind of universal.

They're pretty old. Sure. And I imagine they were probably singing, oh, Tannin Bomb, which sounds to the English like, oh, Christmas tree. And the British soldiers started singing back to them. Football fight songs. Yeah. And the Germans then sang Stila Nacht. And they're like, you're not picking up on what we're trying to do here, guys.

Put the whiskey down. But what ended up happening was, little by little, they started poking their heads up, saying, you're not going to shoot me, are you? They're like, no, I'm not going to shoot you if you don't shoot me. And then they met up in No Man's Land and partied down. They had Christmas celebration in No Man's Land in the trenches on Christmas 1914. They shared tobacco? Yeah. And their puddings?

Yeah. They exchanged them as gifts, pretty much. The soccer match broke out. Yeah. And the Germans won three to two. I bet as cheery as it was, anytime England and Germany gets together to play football, it's not a very pleasant scene. So I bet you there was some elbows being thrown. Maybe a little bit.

Although I'll bet it was kind of like, hey, sorry, sorry. Right, right. Yeah. But they still wanted to win. Yeah. There was a juggler at one point along the front, and he put on a nice little show. German guy, right? And in a lot of circumstances, there were places where fighting did continue.

And in some circumstances, commanding officers established a formal impromptu truce with the opposing commanding officer. Right. In some places, commanding officers said, you need to keep fighting, and soldiers from both sides just defied their orders and stopped. I love that. And then in some, commanding officers just kind of looked the other way or didn't do anything about it. But soldiers were there in the middle of No Man's Land, who they'd just been shooting at just hours before. It's crazy. We're now playing soccer with and making jokes and smoking with and hanging out.

That's pretty awesome. Yeah. Because you think, I mean, I don't know, it's crazy for our generation to think about these World Wars in Europe, because if you ever traveled around Europe, just to imagine these what would be equivalent of our states just going at it, when in fact, Europe is, you know, it's its own small, smallish place. Yeah. Right there across the border. And they're like, you know, hey, dudes, we're not so far apart. It'd be like Tennessee fighting Kansas. Yeah.

That's great. We're Georgia. Well, no, I'm just saying like Tennessee and Kansas could fight too. Well, sure. I was trying to keep aside. Okay. We're Switzerland. I just thought you were giving a Kansas shout out.

No. Okay. No, but I should, huh? Yeah, sure. Merry Christmas, Kansas. The sad part about this is that, of course, there was a war to be fought at the end of this truce in 1914. They had to go back to fighting and killing each other. Yeah.

The same dudes. They were just playing soccer within hugging and drinking. Yeah. And sometimes shots picked up, you know, on Christmas or the day after Christmas. But in some places, some of this truce went on beyond New Year, into the New Year. That's awesome. It is very awesome. But what's crazy, Chuck, if you ask me, is not that the Christmas truce happened on that Christmas in 1914

in the trenches along Flanders, Belgium, but that they ever went back to fighting again. Agreed. And that is the story of the 1914 Christmas truce. Good night, holy night, sung by the neighbor Quackett, Edith and Rickhoff. So, Josh, that is part three. Was that part four? In the fog of the Christmas spirit, Chuck, I can't even count. I'm so giddy.

Let's move on to one of my favorite parts about Christmas. It's not the big gifts, but the stocking stuffers. Right. One of my favorite parts growing up was getting up on Christmas morning, going downstairs. Scott, Michelle, Chuck, each had their own individual stockings. They were not like, they weren't even the same. They were styled differently. Oh, okay.

Yeah. And seeing what was in there, and because it was my family, it was the occasional small action figure or a bobble. Generally, it was things like toothbrushes and deodorant and socks and these like necessities of life that my family should have been providing me with anyway. Sure. But they were stuffed in the stocking. And I always get a good crack up about that, thinking about that.

Yeah. I didn't get deodorant. My family had matching stockings. They were all macrame made by a family friend. Oh, sure. But yeah, there would be stuff in there like little, like chapstick or something like that. Oh, yeah. Great stocking stuffer.

But we always got an apple and an orange. Oh, yeah? Yeah. We got candy and stuff. We get candy as well. And I'd be like, why is there an apple and an orange in here? Who wants this apple and orange? Yeah.

This is not candy. True. So I would give mine away. Right. And I'm probably less healthy today because I didn't eat that apple and that orange on Christmas morning. But you're eating them now. I am.

My faves were the little hollowed out plastic candy canes with the little tiny M&M-like things inside. Oh, yeah. That was a very distinct flavor. Which was not M&M flavor. Exactly. But Chuck, I remember being a young lad and getting my stocking down and being so excited and just stopping and being like, this is insane.

Where did this start? You remember thinking that? And now I know. Now I understand where the idea of stockings came from. Well, we have the answer, Josh. St. Nicholas, originally St. Nicholas goes back to the third century. I remember we talked about him and how Christmas worked. Yeah.

So a brief recap. The ancient town of Myra and what is now Turkey had a shrine dedicated to Bishop Nicholas. Over the centuries, a tale sprung up about how generous Bishop Nicholas was. And this is where we first got the idea of St. Nick being a gift giver. So that's where it starts. The actual stocking part of this whole story is Nicholas would go by the homes of these ladies that were too poor to have a dowry, which is the dow that your family has to give to your husband.

Goat. Which I got no dowry. Are you going to get a dowry? No. No. I don't believe so. My dowry is in happiness. Exactly.

That's what Emily always tells me. And then the Bishop would throw these gold coins down to these poor maidens down the chimneys and they would fall into the stockings which were already hanging there to dry at a fire and boom, there's a little bit of trivia. And I went back and looked and I was like, were there stockings in 3rd century Turkey? There may have been. Sure. If you consider socks stockings, but they would have been a new invention because socks

were invented by the Romans in about the 3rd century. And stockings, they didn't proceed that at all? All of it was an offshoot of socks, in my opinion. I would have thought socks would have been an offshoot of stockings, but I don't think so. It shows what I know. The other closer to home temporally idea is that we put stockings out because we're mimicking little Dutch children who for their center claws, who rides a horse, they tend to leave

in their little wooden shoes, hey, for the horse, for center claws is horse. Is that why we leave out cookies and stuff for Santa? Yes. For the reindeer. We left beer. We left old Milwaukee and Christmas cookies and a carrot. And your family did? Yeah.

Really? Yeah. See, beer wasn't allowed in our household, so we left milk and cookies. My father strongly encouraged us to leave beer for Santa. I wonder why? An old Milwaukee paw boy. But the, so Dutch children would leave their little wooden shoes out with hay, and then Santa would take the hay and feed it to his horse and in exchange leave presents in the

little wooden shoes. And they think that it started in America in the early 19th century, and it was from emulating this Dutch custom. Pretty cool. That's where we get stockings. So let's just roll this one right in. I consider this next one almost a companion piece. Oh, you do.

Because we're talking about Christmas Day, so we're going to talk about an odd thing that happened in Atlanta last year. We actually had our first white Christmas in a long, long time. We did, didn't we? It was very, very cool. It was very sweet. Well, Chuck, White Christmas, you know, I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. It's a song that was written by Irving Berlin in January of 1940.

Yeah. So he's obviously still in the Christmas spirit. It's in the Guinness Book of World Records for selling 100 million copies, which is a lot of copies. Wow. Remember I was telling you that I think being Crosby may have the best Christmas album ever. Yeah. It's a great version.

Yes. This popularized it. He's the one who really kind of got it on everybody's radar. But the carpenters you mentioned, Willie Nelson. Oh, God, what a great Christmas. Yes, Gerald Louis Armstrong, pretty much everybody's done White Christmas. So he did it? Yeah.

And NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. What? What's that got to do with Christmas? They got in on the White Christmas thing. If you search White Christmas and NOAA, you're going to come up with a pretty cool map that shows your chances of having a White Christmas based on weather data from 1961 to 1990, I think. So it's just a historical record.

That's all it is. We have a prediction based on that, yes. So like here in Atlanta, we have a less than 5% chance. Yeah, it shows how lucky we were. But if you live in Calumet, Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula, and that's I think the Upper Upper Peninsula, you have a greater than 90% chance of having a White Christmas. Ohio, this is where I go every year to Akron, obviously. There's always snow on the ground, whether or not snows or not is kind of hit or miss.

I remember those, though, as a kid growing up in Toledo. Pretty great. I think the White Christmas was, it didn't matter how much snow was on the ground. If it was snowing on Christmas, it was insanely comfy. You know where it stinks? Where? LA. Like 1%, I think.

I didn't even look, but I lived there for five years and they do their best. In fact, LA kind of goes overboard with the decor, from what I remember. I think because it's sunny and has palm trees and stuff like that. But it's really, really tough to get it going out there in a Christmas sense. I always felt it when I came home. It's like that in Apache Junction or something, too. Chuck, in London, they take bets on whether it'll be a White Christmas and I licked it out.

Of course they do. SkyBet is giving odds and the odds are 11-2 for White Christmas for London this year. I bet London is lovely in the snow. And then every once in a while, no matter what your bet is, no matter what Noah predicts, no matter what Bing Crosby and Irving Berlin say, there is a fluke, a fluke White Christmas. And that happened in 2004 in New Orleans. New Orleans had its first White Christmas in 50 years there. Wow.

That's crazy. And then in 2006, Chuck, two years later in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia, there was a freak snowstorm on Christmas morning that brought nearly a foot, a foot of snow to some areas in Australia. And the reason why this was such a strange occurrence was because Christmas falls on Australia's summer because they're in the Southern Hemisphere, so that really was a weird White Christmas. Oh, that is weird.

I bet they were partying it up that day. I'll bet they were, too. You know the Aussies. So that's White Christmas. You can go to search Noah, NOAA, and White Christmas. Slash stockings. Well, that's how stuff works, one. Yeah.

No, I mean, the story was like, don't forget to put the slash stockings.htm for your search. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that and I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just, like, looting? Are they just, like, pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like, what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Who do we become when we travel? I have never flown without wearing a suit in time. I refuse to do it.

Who are we allowed to be? Those blue American passports, as powerful as they are, it doesn't work the same for everyone. And where is everybody going? I do love to sit near the ocean and drink. Join me, Brendan Francis Nunum, for Not Lost Chap, a new season of the travel podcast that The New York Times, The Economist, and The Atlantic named Best of the Year. In each episode of the new season, I'll share an audio postcard from where I've been, talk

to a travel writer about their work, and invite a famous frequent flyer to come by and answer your travel questions. If I'm sitting in the seat and the person beside me is acting irate, I'm going to call a flight attendant before I stick my size 13 foot up their tiny ass. Ah, the joys of air travel. Listen to Not Lost on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All of us be merry, gentle men, let your being you dismay. Bring men of Christ our saviour, was born of Christian faith.

To save us all, come save us all, when we were gone astray. Oh, baby, come, come, come and enjoy. Chuck. Josh. I believe that everybody has been good enough listening to this episode that they should get a story of some sort. On Donner. On Dancer.

Yeah. All right. What we're going to read here is called Twas the Night Before Christmas, alternately titled A Visit from St. Nicholas, and it was written by a guy named Dr. Clement C. Moore, who loved his kids and loved writing poetry. And one Christmas in, I believe, the early 19th century, he put the two together and wrote A Visit from St. Nicholas for his kids as a poem. And it caught on and was printed in a newspaper first, and then a magazine, school readers,

and then it was turned into its own little storybook with very cute drawings. It was translated into French, German, Braille, Swahili, probably. It was probably the greatest-known Christmas poem of all time. So Chuck. Agreed. You're really good at this. You're very good at reading stories as everybody's ever listened to the Halloween episode knows. I think you should start this off.

All right. So we want to encourage everyone, turn it up, gather the children around the fire, pour up a hot toddy, or some wassail if you got some on hand, and let us take you away to a different time and place. And we want to say to everybody listening, thanks for joining us. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, glad tidings to every one of you. We hope this Christmas finds you safe and happy. Absolutely.

Twas the night before Christmas went all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. The children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads, and Mama and her kerchief and I and my cap had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap. I went out on the lawn, there arose such a clatter, I sprang from the bed to see what

was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow gave the luster of mid-day to objects below, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer. With a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted, and called them by name. Now Dasher, now Dancer, now Prancer, now Vixen, on Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen.

To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, now Dasher away, Dasher away, Dasher away all. As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky, so up to the housetop the coursers they flew, with the sleigh full of toys and St. Nicholas too, and then in a twinkling I heard on the roof the prancing and pawing of each little hoof, as I drew in my hand and was turning around, down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes, how they twinkled, his dimples, how merry! His cheek were like roses, his nose like a cherry. His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard of his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, and the smoke had encircled his head like a wreath.

He had a broad face and a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, and I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself. A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, and filled all the stockings in turn with a jerk, and laying his finger aside of his nose and giving a nod up the chimney he rose.

He sprang to a sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, and away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, airy drove out of sight, Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The HowStuffWorks iPhone app has arrived.

Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. Are they cops, are they just like looting, are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move

or being robbed, they call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's today's Fortnite weather report, iHeartland has been hit by a major blizzard. The snow has turned iHeartland and Fortnite into a winter wonderland. With new festive games including a winter themed escape room, a holiday obstacle course, ice skating, hidden holiday gifts, and more. Look out for upcoming special events from your favorite artists and podcasters all month,

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