Stuff You Should Know - The Stuff You Should Know 2015 Jolly Christmas Extravaganza

Episode Date: December 24, 2015

It's the most wonderful time of year again! Join Chuck and Josh as they explore Christmas traditions around the world, tidbits about Elf, holiday foods and lots more joyous stuff in this glad tidings-packed episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and welcome to the podcast, right?

I was like, this isn't the Halloween episode. You sound sad. Do I? You sounded sad. How do I sound now? Awake. Yeah, but happy too. Yeah man, this is one of our two favorite shows of the year.

And we are celebrating, we're drinking a little wine. A little bit. How about that? Yeah. You never know what's gonna happen in here. No. Actually, you usually know what happens in here, which is no wine.

Yeah, and gaminess, it gets gaminess in here. Although they fixed the AC. Yeah. And by fixed the AC, we realized that they turned it on for the first time in here. Yeah, they're like, your flaps closed. Right, oh, dead raccoon, there's your problem. Yeah, if only.

It's usually a dead raccoon. That's right. You know? Well, since we said dead raccoon, that can mean nothing else than the fact that this is our 2015 holiday extravaganza. Woohoo! I don't remember what we called it.

I think we've called it something different every year. Yeah, but I'm saying like, I don't know what we called this one yet. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. But that's not bad. Yeah. But here we are in November.

Sure. But we have that Christmas spirit. It's well within us. It is alive in our bones. And we cobble together. I thought it was starting to get thin. Really? But when you start digging around,

you can find plenty of good holiday content. Yeah. You know? Oh, I see what you mean. As far as like finding something to fill an hour. Yeah. And we didn't know, we couldn't remember, because we've done, this is like,

I think the fifth one that we've done. Okay. We couldn't remember which ones we've done. Yeah. Because we had a document which really helped. Went back and listened to all of them. And it's like, okay, we covered this. Did we cover that?

Yeah. There were several things that I was surprised to find that we had covered. Surprised and dismayed because we can't do them again. Nope. They're done. But we have put together a blog post on stuffyoushouldknow.com called the Christmas Suite.

And it has all of our Christmas specials. Wow. So you can go listen to them all in one place. Yes. And as we do every year, we would like to encourage you to gather the family. Sure. Build a fire. If you have a fireplace.

Yeah. Not just on your hardwood floor. Or not out of your hardwood floor. Yeah. Unless you're into that. There's a free country. Even still think it through. It's a free world.

You probably don't want to do that, you know? No. So gather the family around, light the eulog, pour up some hot buttered rum or whatever your... Boozy eggnog. Or your non-alcoholic drink of choice. Sure. Sparkling cider.

Everybody loves that. Yeah. Cold duck. And then listen. Cold duck. Yeah. What's that? It's like a non-alcoholic sparkling wine.

Called cold duck. Yeah. I grew up on it. Weird. I guess it is a little weird now that you think about it. Cold duck. It just doesn't sound like something you'd want to drink. No. Yeah.

If you don't have a choice, that's what you drink then. All right. Support some cold duck. And settle in and let us take you on a Christmas journey through the ages. And thanks to Jerry, by the way, as always. And our friend. John Begin.

Yeah. He did the jingles for this one. Yeah. So, yeah. Thanks for always gussing this thing up and putting us in the Christmas mood. Yeah. Way to go, Jerry. All right. Let's get to it.

["Jingle Bells"] Chuck. Yes? You were raised in the United States of America. That is true. I was, too. Did you know that? Yeah. Toledo's in the US.

Toledo is in the US. Still? For now. And so we were kind of raised. Even though you were in the South, I was in the North, the Midwest. Our Christmas customs were fairly similar. Sure.

Well, we're children in the 70s, essentially. Yes, for sure. So we were raised with macrame Christmas. Oh, man. You and the macrame. So if you go around the world, though, Christmas is celebrated all throughout the world among Christians, non-Christians, secular, humanists,

everybody. Not everybody, a lot of people celebrate Christmas. Yes. But since it's in different parts of the world, there's different traditions. I bet even Anton LeVe has given and gotten a Christmas gift. Yeah, he was like, who doesn't mean anything. All right, it's a studded leather collar.

I'll take it. Right. He's like, you have to open it upside down. That's right. It is celebrated all over the world in here. And segment one are a few customs around the world that I had never heard of. And most of them are pretty interesting.

Most of them, I thought, well, you know. Actually, they were all pretty good. I thought they were great. Yeah, agreed. All right, let's start out. Maybe let's get not in the wayback machine, but just our space travel pod. And let's go to India.

OK. Isn't it nice? It is this balmy. It is, but it's lovely. The people are great. Sure. There's a lot of them. The food is amazing.

Oh, man. I didn't agree with my stomach, but I'll still eat it. Really, you have trouble with Indian food? Sure. I will mint that for you. Yeah. Indian food is tied for first with Japanese food, I think. Oh, wow.

Yeah. It's good stuff. So you'll notice, Chuck, that there are 25 million Christians here celebrating Christmas in India. I can tell. Significant amount of people. And the thing is, they don't have any customary type of tree that you decorate.

Sure. So they use mango and orange trees. That's right. You know? So if you look around, you're going to see decorated trees on the streets. You're going to see, if you go into a house, you're going to even see the leaves of these trees

used as decorations. Yeah. Yeah. It's like garland, basically. Yeah. And by orange, I meant banana, of course. Oh, did you say orange? Yeah.

That was my customary holiday slip-up. That's right. Yeah. So India is great. Everyone, I love the decorations. They're getting in the spirit, even though they don't have the, because you know what? I'll remember we covered it.

Christmas trees started out in Germany. Oh, yeah, the Tenenbaum. Yeah, they're lousy with fir trees. I can leave in the Tenenbaum. So we're going to leave India for now, and let's travel over. In our space pod? Uh-huh. OK, good.

To one of your favorite places, Japan. Wonderful. Well, they have a very unusual, to me, Christmas tradition. Oh, it's unusual across the board to everybody. Eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. Kentucky Fried Chicken is the traditional Christmas Eve dinner for Japan. Crazy.

And it has been since about 1974. So apparently there are some American travelers who were stranded or visiting Japan. That's what it was. They were stranded? They weren't stranded. It was they were visiting Japan around Christmas, and they went to try to find a turkey dinner.

Yeah. They don't have turkey in Japan. Oh, really? You've got to be beyond rich to find turkey in Japan, basically. Wow. So it just so happened, KFC had been there for a couple of years. It had just broken through starting about 1970. There was a big expo.

Yeah, it wasn't called KFC back then. It was Kentucky Fried Chicken. Right. And I guess these travelers alerted KFC that they had decided to go with Kentucky Fried Chicken instead of a turkey dinner. Colonel Sanders went, hmm. Sounds, I'll say, sounds like a good idea.

Yeah. Was that your Norm MacDonald or your Daryl Hammond? It was my Norm MacDonald. That's not bad. If it was Daryl Hammond, terrible. But so Kentucky Fried Chicken decided to capitalize on this. And starting in 1974, they created the Kentucky for Christmas campaign and basically established

a tradition among Japanese people that you go line up on Christmas Eve Day and wait in line around the block for your turn to buy your pre-ordered bucket of KFC, your cake, and your bottle of champagne. Yeah. And I think it's champagne now, but back then it was wine. Yes, it was wine.

And then they got classy. That's right. And today, more than 240 buckets or barrels. 240,000. What did I say, 240? Yeah, you stopped at 240. No, that was just at the main location. 240,000 barrels or buckets of chicken

are sold, which is apparently five to 10 times the normal monthly sales. And it's a big deal. And these Christmas cakes are a big deal there, too. Yeah, and they dress Colonel Sanders up as Santa Claus out front. It's a huge deal. It's wonderful.

It is. So Kentucky for Christmas. Kentucky for Christmas. All right, let's get back in the space pod. All right. Let's jet on up to Finland. The people are nice and the taxes are heavy. But the health care, that's so bad.

Well, yeah, they pay like half your money in taxes, but it's the best place in the world to live. And I'd take that. It's one of the few places on Earth where people live that you can just see a reindeer walking around. Yeah, exactly. How's that for Christmas spirit? And also, Chuck, have you ever seen Rare Exports?

No. You haven't seen Rare Exports? What is it? The Christmas horror movie? No. Oh, man, go see it. It's set in Finland. It's awesome.

Really? It's actually a Finnish movie with subtitles. And it's a Christmas classic. Is it what year? 2012. Oh, OK. The already a classic. Yes.

So in Finland, despite their penchant for enjoying the holidays, they have a little darker side, you might say, to Christmas. Because they visit the graves of their ancestors and they put candles on the graves. It's very nice. It's not exactly dark if they, like, dug them up and cut their heads off or something

after their first Christmas underground. I'm not saying, yeah, it's not dark necessarily, because it is a tribute to their deceased loved ones. But it is unusual to me on Christmas to visit the cemetery. Sure is what I'm saying. But apparently, cemeteries, because when they visit, they light candles for their deceased loved ones.

And even people who are near their deceased loved ones, they'll still like light a candle. So by the time midnight rolls around on Christmas Eve. Houses are burning down all over the country. Right, exactly. It's apparently quite a sight to behold. It is. And not only that, but at home, and this is kind of sweet,

they sleep on the floor to leave their beds. You know how we leave cookies out for Santa. They leave their beds open for the ghostly spirits of their ancestors to sleep in. To sleep in for the night. Here, you take the bed. I'll take the floor. And apparently, it's the same with saunas, too.

So most families have their own sauna in Finland. Sauna? Sauna. OK. And after sunset, they leave that alone for their dead ancestors to enjoy as well. Yeah, but before sunset, it's naked family party time in the sauna, which is not gross or dirty.

That's just how it is in Finland. Sure. What are you going to sauna in, like, a bathing suit? That's weird. Well, that's what I do, but I'm at the YMCA. I'd get arrested. You know? There you are.

Venezuela. Let's hop in our little space pod and travel over to Caracas, Venezuela. So we're in Caracas. And on Christmas Eve, the children do kind of an odd thing. They tie a piece of string to their big toe. And then they run the string out of their window and hang it down the side of their home.

So far, so weird. Yeah, which is a little strange. Then the following morning, they go to early morning mass. They don't. Other people do. Sure. Grownups do. And they close off the streets until 8 AM, so people can

roller skate to mass. And if they see any of these strings still hanging, they tug on the string, which supposedly, or I guess logically, would tug on the big toe of the child. And wakes the kid up for Christmas morning. Pretty neat. A passing by roller skater tugs on the string to wake you up for Christmas morning.

Yeah. That's a pretty cool tradition. And finally, we will travel from Caracas, Venezuela over to Sweden. Really, we should have ordered this differently. We could have really saved some space gas. Yeah, but sky miles. Oh, yeah.

We are wrecking them up. Totally. So we're in Sweden now. And this is my favorite one, I think. In 1966, a 13-meter tall goat of straw was erected in the town square of Gavel. Yeah, it's called the gavelbocken. Gavelbocken?

At the stroke of midnight, that first year, some kid thought it would be funny if he burned it down. And now it's a tradition. Yeah, it is. And so it's not a tradition in Wicker Man, where the town gathers to set the man on fire or the goat on fire. The town does not want the goat to be set on fire. Instead, the town hires security guards.

Apparently, one year it was particularly cold, and all the guards went in to get warm at once. When they did, vandal struck, burned it down. They fireproofed the stuff with a substance that they used to fireproof airplanes. And people still managed to burn this down. Apparently, between 1966 and 2011, according to our friends, Honkyat, where we got this article, by the way, it's

been burned down 25 times. It's what, about 50% or so? Oh, yeah. Not a bad rate. Not a bad burn rate. If you're a vandal, if you're a town elder, that's terrible rate. So that's segment one.

And thanks to who? Our friends at Honkyat? Honkyat. Oh, Honkyat for that. Not Honkycat. OK, that's Elton John's sub-site. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends,

and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted

Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm

here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, that was a nice little interlude. Yeah. Have you ever been in New York?

I know you've been in New York. No, at Christmas time. OK. Do you remember the time we were the guests of, like, discovery for a Christmas party? Yes, at the Campbell apartment at Grand Central Station. Yeah. One of the great corporate parties I've ever been to.

There was a pit bull there. Yep. A parolee who owned the pit bull. Yep, we drank martinis. Yes, we did. Lots of them, or I did. I don't know. Would you have whiskey, or would you have martinis?

I think I had martinis. Yeah, it was good. We were hot shots back then. We were, we were up and coming. Yeah. So at the, during that stay, I walked around and visited, like, shop windows, my sacks. Yeah.

I think I hit barnies. And I, at the time, I'm like, I'm so clever. What a cool thing to do. What I didn't realize is I was engaging in, like, about a 150-year-old tradition of traveling to New York to see these storefront windows, the Christmas window displays. It's actually a really old ritual.

That's right, and this story is called, not really old, but kind of old. This story is called the history of department store holiday window displays by Victoria Lewis. And I am not ashamed to admit that I had never considered the term department store and what that meant until I read this. And I was like, wait a minute.

What is the, there's departments as in, yeah, the boys' department, the ladies' department, the sports department. Oh, Chuck. I had just never dawned on me what that meant. You just took it as like, that's what it is. I don't know. On its face.

You know how it's one of those things. Yeah, I understand what you mean. For sure. You know we're in an old department store right now. Yeah, Sears, yeah. Absolutely. Had terrible window displays. It did.

So here's the fascinating history of department store window displays, which I really enjoyed this article. Yeah, what was it from? Well, initially it goes back to the industrial revolution, the late 1800s. And like anything, it's usually some weird innovation that leads to something else. In this case, it was the innovation was plate glass windows.

Yeah, up to that point, up to the industrial revolution, shopkeepers just kept their wares behind plywood. And no one could see it. So once they figured out plate glass windows, they were like, this is much better. And so the passers-by on the street thought it was much better as well. Yeah, because that's literally where the term

window shopping comes from. And they said, we can have these great window displays where people on the street could walk by and fantasize if they don't have money about buying this stuff. Thanks to our enormous see-through class. That's right. The best kind of class. And apparently it was Mr. Macy.

Mr. Macy had a great name, Roland Hussie Macy. That's right. Who did not live up to his name. It was quite a prude, frankly. And Roland Hussie Macy opened Macy's. He tried four times. So I should say. To open Macy's?

Yeah. Wow. And tried and failed, I should say. The fifth time, I think, on 6th Avenue between 13th and 14th Street in 1858, Roland Macy opened his store with opening day sales totaling $11.06, which you're like, oh, well, it's 1858. Sure, that's $3 million today.

$280. Not good for a department store. So back in the day, these stores were what are called dry goods stores, where you could find everything that wasn't wet. You know, chaps, lasso, stuff that wasn't wet like that. Wheat flour. Wheat flour.

Sure. All this stuff. And these were the progenitors of department stores. And a lot of them grew out of dry goods stores into department stores. And over time, they got savvier and savvier. And again, R.H. Macy was one of the first to get super duper savvy.

And he was apparently the first to put up these elaborate displays around Christmas time. Not only that, my friend. He was the first in 1862 to feature an in-store Santa that children could come in annoy. Yes. And if you want to know more about the life of an in-store Santa, you should listen to last years,

because we went into that in depth. Absolutely. So in 1874, he says, I'm going to step it up a notch. We've got this plate glass. So I'm going to create a window display, porcelain dolls from around the world, and sort of weirdly, scenes from Harriet Beecher Stowe's great book, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

It's all the rage. Yeah, it just seemed an odd choice for the holidays. All the rage. But I'm not going to second-guess it because it won't. It would be like making a Star Wars special holiday special at the time. You know what I mean? Yeah, agree.

All the rage. So it really caught on by the early 1900s. All the big retailers were doing it in New York, Chicago. All the major cities. And window shopping was a legitimate thing at this point. Yeah, thanks to things like, again, the plate glass window. People actually putting up displays we're seeing. And then later on, electrical lighting.

So that you could see these things long after the store had closed. And that attracted people to the displays, just for the displays' sake themselves. It made them a destination so that 150 years later, Yokels like you and me could be walking around New York saying, yeah, I'm going to go check out the Sex Fifth Avenue window. It looks like real snow.

1938, Lord and Taylor were the first to actually not even worry about showing merchandise in the window. And just say, you know what, this is something cool-looking that will attract people to our window. Well, the cool-looking thing they did, too. At the time, it must have been mind-blowing. You have to put yourself in their shoes. But it was automated bells that moved in time

to a recording of the sound of bells playing, which sounds about as primitive as a monkey turning a crank. But it actually, that must have been pretty mind-blowing at the time. We're talking 1938. Agreed. And even before that, I think it was Neiman Marcus and Dallas used freon in air-conditioned copper tubings

to basically create frosted trees in their window display. That's what they call, for people who read books on airplanes, a game changer. And not to be outdone in the 1950s, Washington DC's Woodward and Lothrop. Which I've not heard of, have you? No, never. But it totally sounds like either a law firm

or a department store. It does. And they put live penguins in the display. This is clearly before animal rights activists had to say and things. They're like, how can we make our window display cruel? And over the years, many famous artists have even been involved, including Andy Warhol, Murray

Sendak, Salvador Dali, and Jasper Johns. Imagine it pays pretty good if you hire one of those artists. Or maybe they were up and coming at the time. They were up and coming, actually. I think they also hire famous people to come in. Oh, they definitely do sometimes, for sure. Yeah, you're right. So apparently, today, it's spread around.

It's not just New York. And it's in London, too. It started in London in 1909. Thanks to an American, the guy who worked at Marshall Fields, and then came and started Selfridges. But today, if you ask Lord and Taylor, about 250,000 people pass their holiday window display

every day. That's crazy. And between Thanksgiving and Christmas, they'll attract 8 million shoppers to their store. Yeah. New York is great. And it's awesome during the holiday season. Because you can go broke, but you can also not spend a dime

and just walk around and look at all the cool junk. Yes. New York, I love you. And you're giving me chills. All right, moving on to the next segment. The night, the night, the night. All the time, all the time, all the time. All right, Josh, now we're moving on to something,

believe it or not, I have never even tasted in my life. Really? Never tasted fruitcake. I would be even more incredulous if I hadn't either. Right, have you? That's what I'm saying, I haven't. Oh, OK, I was trying to make sense of all that. Sorry.

So neither one, Jerry, have you ever had fruitcake? Wow. Jerry says no. Noel's like in the window with a fruitcake in his mouth. We've got a fruitcake in my pocket. All right, so fruitcake is famous for one thing. Sucking. Yeah, which is being a maligned food product that

is generally made fun of as like a brick or a concrete block or a door stop. So much so that there's a town called Manitou Springs, Colorado, that at the beginning of January holds the great fruitcake toss every year. And you throw a fruitcake as far as you can. It's kind of like pumpkin chunking, but with fruitcakes, basically.

You know what they should have, though, on the landing side, they should have plate glass and just see how much the fruitcake, like maybe layers of plate glass and see how many layers it can smash. Yeah, like that once ice breaking scene in Karate Kid 2. Exactly. So the fruitcake, it's not much loved. Not a lot of people like it.

The people who do like it are just trying to be ironic, by the way. Or elderly. Yeah. And being genuine. Maybe. Yeah. I can't tell.

Elderly people, it's tough to pin down whether they're really secretly being ironic. And it's just a big performance piece. But it is, in and of itself, ironic that fruitcake would be so maligned. Because it started out as a distinct luxury item, for sure. Because the stuff you find in fruitcake today, and you're like, oh, what is this terrible stuff,

is actually an assemblage of, if you go 1,000, 1,200 years back in history, you will find these are the most sought after items on the planet. Sure. Spices, nuts. Fruit. Fruit. Cake.

Ginger. All this stuff coming together to create some very rich delicacies. Wow. Thank you. It did not begin as a cake, though. Supposedly in ancient Rome, they used pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins.

And then they folded it in some barley mash. This is before ovens. They didn't really bake into a cake at this point. Was it before ovens, though? I took issue with that. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I think they had bread back then. People have been baking bread.

Remember, it uses a starter for beer for thousands of years by then. All right, so official issue taken. Ovens. Sure. We'll look that up. And then they started adding other spices in the Middle East. Honey.

Ginger was a big deal in the Middle East before it spread to Europe. One of my favorite things in the world. Ginger? Fresh ginger. Oh, yeah. Sure. Love it.

Get your hands on some good fresh ginger. You're like, this is good. I do. I do shots of it. Oh, yeah. Hot stuff. For health? Yeah, health and wellness.

Do you drink it hot or cool? And it's like hot, spicy. Yeah, I mean, have you ever done a ginger shot? Yeah, sure. It's super hot. Yeah, it'll burn your throat. So fair warning to all you juicers out there. But if you're a juicer, you're way on the ginger tip.

This is nothing new to you. This is the hippest Christmas special. We've ever recorded. Anyway, I love ginger. And they loved it in the Middle East and eventually spread to Europe in the 15th century. Then they added some butter, some sugar. Sure.

They said, we have a lumpy, dense cake on our hands. We will. We definitely have ovens. So we're going to bake them. Bake it. Yeah, and now there's apparently a couple of bakeries in the United States. One here, right here in Claxton, Georgia.

You knew that, right? I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Claxton fruit cakes are huge. Yeah, one of the big two, right? Yeah, the other one is in Corsicanna, Texas. That's Collins Street bakery. And if you have a fruit cake, look at the label.

I guarantee you it's one of those two. I'm going to start giving them for gifts. Ironically or sincerely? Both. Nice. Because it's all in how you take it. Sure, it is. Someone might say, that's pretty funny, Chuck.

Yeah. And someone might say, this is delicious, my friend. Yeah. And then you go, you are on my nice list. That's right. Moving on, what is another Christmas food that we can talk about? This one was kind of surprising to me.

So sugar plums have nothing to do with plums, it turns out. And there's a lot of confusion, I guess, in the fact that it uses the word plums. So you would think, well, a sugar plum is a sweet plum. And food historians say there may actually have been some sort of fruit producing shrub that produce something that you would call a sugar plum, a plum-like fruit that was very sweet.

We don't have any evidence of it. It's all conjecture, apparently. But sugar plums themselves were candies. They were sugar balls surrounded with nuts, or spices, or seeds, or some combination of that. And they had nothing to do with plums. Plums never made an appearance in the actual sugar plum. Yeah, and apparently, a lot of dried fruit is called plum.

Right. Which I didn't know. That's where the confusion comes from. Yeah, and plum pudding in England apparently doesn't even have plums in it. No, it can have raisins, currants, all that kind of stuff. Doesn't have any plums whatsoever. They're plum-like.

It's just from, I think, about the 17th century on, plum became a widely used term to describe certain kinds of candies, certain kinds of sweet desserts. That dance in your head. Ambrides, I read. Oh, really? Yes, so if somebody gives you a bribe, you're like, that's quite a plum.

Right, I can put it in my fruitcake. Right, or that's a plum job. Sure. It's something like super sweet, something great. Like you, or a bribe. I'm asking for a bribe right now. Oh, OK. I wasn't picking up on that.

I'll slide this $5 bill across the table. Thanks. Gingerbread is one of my favorite things. Oh, you like gingerbread? Love it. I meant to tell you this in one of the fairy tales episodes. Hansel and Gretel is based partly in fact. You know that?

There's a woman named Katerina Shredderin, who in 1618, she was a renowned gingerbread baker. She was so good that a local rival tried to marry her to get her to quit baking and undermining him. She refuses advances. He accused her of witchcraft. The town came and burned her alive. Holy cow, that's true.

Yes, it is true. And they think that she became the basis of the witch in the Hansel and Gretel story. Wow. Yeah. How about that? But she was really good at creating gingerbread. And she was in Germany, which is the whole point

of what I was just saying. That's right, because it started in Germany like so many Christmas-y things. Sweet, spicy cookies, cakes, breads, ginger flavored, which you know is one of my favorite things. Like you said. I don't pick up on it a ton in like. Gingerbread?

Not as much. No, the molasses definitely dominates. Absolutely. But try eating gingerbread without any kind of ginger in it. You'll spit it out. Really? Spit it out on the ground. It involved into the Christmas treat we know and love,

because early on it started to be known to be something you would serve at a special event. Right. And I guess that dwindled down to the holidays. And then some people got smart and started cutting it out to fun shapes. Yeah, pretty early on the medieval bakers, including probably Ms. Caterina the Witch,

would cut them into, like if you were having a coronation, you could probably, in Germany, you could find gingerbread cookies in the shape of a king. You know that kind of thing. Right, and that evolved into Christmas-y things, and it became associated with the holidays. Gingerbread, thankfully. I really want some gingerbread right now.

On the podcast, Paydude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the co-classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week

to guide you through life, step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And then lastly, Chuck, have you ever did you get oranges as a kid and you're stocking? I did, weirdly. Wouldn't you just reach your hand in and be like, oh, this is great. I like this candy.

And then your hand would hit that familiar cold wrinkled skin. And you'd draw it out and hold it up accusingly to everyone and be like, who did this? Yeah. And your parents would be like, Santa? Yeah. Santa was Santa. And you'd just glare at him, that kind of thing.

And I'd say, I think I saw these in the kitchen yesterday. Right. It turns out that oranges are actually a longstanding tradition, and they used to be an amazing thing to get in your stocking. Because until the 1880s, if you lived outside of Florida or California, you were SOL as far as oranges went.

Yeah. So it was a special treat, which I guess caught on. I don't buy this other theory at all. Apparently, they said it may reference a Christmas tale when St. Nicholas left bags of gold in stockings. Sure. And in place of bags of gold, they put an orange. And you'd think lemon.

Yeah. Like a lemon instead. I don't buy that. Everybody wants to suck on a lemon on Christmas morning. Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. I might be wrong. I could see it. But either way, it became a special Christmas treat

that somehow endures to this day. Lovely. Josh, if you know me, then you know I love the movie Elf. I suspected that's why you selected this. Do you like it? Yeah, Elf is good. OK. It's not my favorite.

It's a good new classic. Yeah, agreed. It's no Christmas story, but it's good. It'll hold up over the decades, I guess. This is a great article that I found called 10 Things You Didn't Know About Elf. And we're going to go over those right now, because it's one of my favorite things.

Will Ferrell in the classic movie about an elf that is really a human that realizes he's a human and goes to New York City to find his real papa, James Kahn. But he's not insane. He actually is an elf in Santa's workshop, which he has to leave to go find himself. Yeah, but he's not really an elf, because he's super tall and goofy and everyone, that's the joke.

Right. And everyone else is elf-sized. So if you haven't seen elf, pause this episode, go watch Elf, and then come back. Yeah, tell me what the sunlight looks like outside your home, because you've been living under a rock. So initially, apparently, Chuck, the script for Elf is pretty old.

I think it was originally made in 2010, 2007, 2008, somewhere around there. And it was actually written in 1993. And back in 1993, Will Ferrell was basically in diapers, even though he was a grown man by this time. But the script was initially written for Jim Carrey, or with Jim Carrey in mind. And it was offered to him, and he turned it down.

Yeah, no good, I say. With Jim Carrey being? No way. I can't see anybody, but Will Ferrell doing it. Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of those things where any time someone is ultimately cast, you can't picture anyone else, except for Tom Selleck. You could still probably picture as Indiana Jones.

Sure, yeah. Or Christopher Columbus? He played Columbus? Oh, he did? Did he or did he play King Ferdinand? In the movie adaptation of 1491, your favorite book? No, it was 1492. So Jim Carrey out, Will Ferrell in classic now, because of

that. Great move, sentence fragments. Ralphie in a Christmas story. Peter Billingsley appears as an elf. He's buddies with Favreau, has produced a lot of his movies. And there he is, little Ralphie, all grown up. Makes a cameo. So does Ray Harryhausen.

He makes a voice cameo. And he, if his name sounds familiar, he was the guy who basically pioneered stop motion animation and film and motion pictures. So like if you love Clash of the Titans, you loved Ray Harryhausen's work. That's right. And John Favreau very smartly said, you know what?

There's a lot of people out there who love those Rankin' Bass Christmas specials, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, and others. And he said, let's have that same look so we can echo that beloved style. And it really paid off, I think. It's one of the reasons it's such a classic today. Yeah.

So instead of doing it CGI, which you totally could have, you can make it look stop motiony using computers. He's like, no, I want to shoot it that way. And just as an additional nod, he grabbed Ray Harryhausen and said, why don't you do one of the stop motion polar bear cubs? Yeah. And he voiced it, which is pretty cool.

Very cool. And an additional nod was the costumes that the elves wore, where the exact costume replicas from the original Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer stop motion film. Yeah. So another nice little nod to the past. So if you find yourself just like overwhelmed with nostalgia and weeping when you watch elf, these are

probably the reasons why. What else? Oh, the famous scene, one of my favorites with the Jack in the Box, when Will Ferrell is testing the Jack in the Box. I had to go look it up and watch it. It's pretty great. And those were genuine reactions, apparently.

You can tell. Yeah. He wanted Will Ferrell to not know. So he had even though I think he had the last one rigged to not even be attached to the Jack in the Box. He had the control off screen. Yeah. And he wanted it to seem like it wasn't going to open at all.

So yeah. In the movie, Will Ferrell's elf. Yeah. What's his name? Buddy. Buddy is he's been relegated to having to test Jack in the Boxes for the little clown to come out. Is it Jacks in the Box?

Jacks in the Box. Yes, you're right. Jacks in the Box is. OK. And he's the tester, the quality control guy. And while when they were filming it, yeah, John Favreau had a remote control. So he had no idea when they were actually going to pop out.

And you can tell when you watch it. His reactions are delightful. Yeah, they really are. The huge burp that he has after drinking the two liter of Coke was done by a voice from a very popular voice actor named Marisa Lamarch who voiced everything from Egon on the real Ghostbusters to Brain on Animaniacs. And apparently was really good at burping.

He's a belching champion. He's a belching champ like Booger from Better Off Dead. Was it Better Off Dead or Revenge of the Nerds that he burped in? Well, it was Revenge of the Nerds. OK. He was better in Better Off Dead. Yeah, agreed.

This entire mountain is made of pure snow. All right, let's go with one more here. OK. Will Ferrell actually worked as a department store Santa at one point. Years, not to train for or wasn't a method actor like this is years before when he was with the groundlings in Los Angeles.

That's like Second City kind of. Sure. Or UCB? Sure. And he and a fellow groundling named Chris Catan actually got the same gig. Will Ferrell was Santa and Chris Catan played an elf, and they both ended up on Santa Night Live together.

Can you imagine being in Los Angeles and Will Ferrell is your Santa and Chris Catan as an elf and you have no idea? Right. Yeah, or watching Santa Night Live five years later mean like, wait a minute. Wait a second. And Ferrell has even offered a boatload of money to do a sequel to Elf.

Yeah, like almost $30 million. Yeah, and he said no, which I think is great, a great move because then you have the untainted classic and like a Christmas story part two, you never have to suffer through something like that, or Anchorman 2. Oh, you know. Although Dude Who is in our TV show was in that. He has speaking part.

Matt, I don't remember his last name, but he played the paramedic in the episode where you get stung by a bee. Yeah, I know Matt. He's in Anchorman 2 and he has like a little speaking role. Oh, no, because they shot there in Atlanta. Yeah, it's great. He does good. I haven't seen Anchorman 2.

I avoided it because I didn't want to taint the original. I heard it was so bad. I take issue with that. I don't think a sequel can taint the original. The original stands on its own. You know what I mean? I disagree with it. And I could be wrong.

Well, no, it's your opinion. Thank you. So you can't be wrong. That, Chuck, for your Christmas Eve, isn't it? That's the Christmas spirit. You want to end this thing? Yeah, let's do it with our traditional reading. Yes.

So everybody, if you didn't have the Eulog going yet or you didn't have the family gather around, if you didn't take Chuck's advice at the beginning, you probably should now. Because it's... Woe unto you. Yes, woe. Woe, everybody. It's time for our Christmas reading.

And we read all sorts of stuff. We found the most obscure Christmas story of all time written by the guy who wrote Wizard of Oz for last year. Oh, yeah. We've done Twas the Night Before Christmas. We did some story about Naked Elves a few years back. You remember that? Yeah, we did.

Did we do a Cobbler gift of the Magi, maybe? Yeah, we read the entire gift of the Magi. Twas the Night Before Christmas? Yeah. So this time, we are finally... We cannot put it off any longer. We are going to read... We're going to read a selection from the movie Boogie Nights.

All right. The word Christmas is used but out of context. That was good, Chuck. Thanks. We're going to read a very classic letter, a real life letter, that was written to the New York Sun on September 21, 1897 by a little girl named Virginia O'Hanlon. And this really happened.

Yeah, how about this? I'll read the little girls and then you can read the response. Oh, wow, really? Yeah. Wow. Are you sure? We have to take our roles here. OK.

All right, New York Sun, September 21, 1897, people. Dear editor, I am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, if you see it in the sun, it's so what he means is the sun newspaper, not look directly into the sun because you'll go blind. Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus signed, Virginia O'Hanlon, of...

Well, should we read her address? I think she's long gone. 115 West 95th Street. Man, if you live at 115 West 95th Street today, you should know that that's a very legendary abode. Yeah. All right, and here was the reply, which was pretty great. This is from the editors of the New York Sun who wrote,

we take pleasure in answering first prominently the communication below expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of the sun. This was their reply. Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.

They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect and ant in his intellect is compared with the boundless world about him as measured by the intelligence capable

of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. And you know that they abound and give your life its greatest beauty and joy. Alas, how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus?

It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus. You might as well not believe in fairies.

You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus. But even if you did not see Santa coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world

are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not. But that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes a noise inside.

But there is a veil covering the unseen world, which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world, there

is nothing else real in abiding. No, Santa Claus. Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. How about that? Pretty great response.

Yeah, slightly scathing at times. Yeah, take that, you little non-believing kids. All in the good name of the Christmas spirit. Yep, so in the good name of the Christmas spirit from us, Chuck and Josh and Jerry. And Noel. And Noel and a little sick from Casey too. Casey, Emily and Yumi, and Anna.

Sure. Nice. Ruby Rose and your hands. Yeah, we've had it to the family. Wow, I know, it's been a great 2015. It's pretty sweet. Who else, anybody? I think that's everybody.

That's the whole stuff you should know family. My mistress, Natasha. All right. Can't forget her. She says, had it all. We want to wish you guys a happy holiday season. Merry Christmas. Yeah, be safe out there and enjoy each other.

And hey, we'll see you again in 2016? Well, we'll see them before then. Merry Christmas, everybody. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, hey dude, the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

Tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.