Stuff You Should Know - The Stuff You Should Know 2016 Christmas Extravaganza in 3-D!

Episode Date: December 22, 2016

It’s the most wonderful time of year again! Time for Josh and Chuck to take you on a cozy, hall-decked ride full of glad tidings right into the heart of the holiday spirit! 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.

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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. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there.

And this is the 2016 Stuff You Should Know super Christmas holiday spectacular glad tidings edition. In 3D. And stinko vision. Nice. Smell-o-vision, that was a real thing, you know. Yeah, it was, it was a great idea that didn't really pan out very well.

Don't know about that. Well, no, it didn't pan out very well. Well, yeah, funny. I know what you meant. So my friend, I look forward to this every year. Yeah, me too. Because as I've said before, I save up my vacation and take an elementary school break

for a solid three weeks at the end of every year. Right. Which also means you get a bit of a break. Yeah, it's a de facto decision on my behalf as well. And this is it. After in one hour roughly, you're not going to see me again till next year. Yeah, you know, I like to get small over the holidays.

That's cool, man. I don't blame you. I do too. Just hold up in the house. I'm secretly fine with you making that decision for me. I know you are. In this particular one. Yeah.

So are you full of cheer, glad tidings? Well, I'm in a silly mood. So this will, who knows where this goes. How's Jerry? Jerry, you feeling pretty happy? She is. She's good. Just gave a thumbs up.

Yeah. She's fresh-faced. But she tailed. Are her halls decked? Oh, yes. Double decked. Well, I guess we should welcome everybody, Chuck, to the Christmas spectacular.

Tell you first off, to be sure to start a fire somewhere in your house. Yes. Put on a sweater maybe. Put on some slippers. Put on pajamas. Make yourself some eggnog, hot butter room, something like that.

And just sit down and enjoy yourself. Yeah. And our holiday special of the year we'd like to cover. I'm always afraid we're gonna recover something, which I actually pitched something we had already covered. I've got a list, so don't worry about it. Oh, okay. Great.

Well, then let's ring in the holiday cheer. Hey, also, we should say, if there are any little true believers among you, you may not want to let them listen to this one. Well, yeah, I was gonna give a warning. They can listen to most of it, but there is one feature of the show where you may not want your kids to listen

to some of the detail. The deets. And we're gonna give you a warning before that comes on. Yeah. So you can... It'll sound like this. Ringlingling. That's the Christmas warning.

All right, let's do it. All right, everybody sit back as we begin our annual Christmas special. So, Chuck, we're gonna hop in our, over there sleigh. Head on over to Catalonia. Yes. You know, parts of Spain. Parts of Spain.

of Spain. And there's a Catalan tradition. There's a couple of them actually that are really interesting and are scatological in nature. And the first one is called Cagatillo. Yeah, I had never heard of this, but I put out, and you'll see later in the show, we put out a call on Facebook for some unusual family traditions from listeners. And a couple of people mentioned this, like saying, we don't do this, but I've heard of it and it's really strange. Yeah, it's definitely a thing in large parts of Spain, Portugal, even some parts of Italy, too, from what I understand. But specifically in the Catalan region of Spain, Cagatillo, which means poop log, basically, in Catalan, it's a Christmas tradition that

starts on December 8th when the family gets around. And while they've gone out, I think they've either made one or they purchased a Cagatillo, which is a log with a face on it. Yeah, I get the idea that part of the fun, and correct me if I'm wrong, Spanish among you, but part of the fun is making it with the family. Sure. But I'm sure you can buy them, though, as well, fully featured. Even if you bought one fully featured, there's still some ritual that you, the family, have to go through that would be kind of fun. Exactly. So with Cagatillo, with the log, he's got a face, but very importantly, he also has two front arms. So he's kind of propped up. Yeah. And when you bring Cagatillo home,

he also has that, that the standard Catalan red kind of overhangy hat. Yes, the batatina. Yes, exactly. And so the family brings him home and on December 8th, they get him prepared for the Christmas season, right? They wrap him in a blanket and they basically wrap him from what would amount to the waist down in a blanket to keep him warm. To keep him warm and to maybe incubate what dwells inside of the log. Yeah. Because that's where we're headed with this. They feed this thing, orange peels, a Spanish nougat called the throne. Is that right? Yeah. And apparently, as tradition is held, the more you feed the Cagatillo, the more gifts it will bestow to you through the traditional route, which

means out of the rear end. Right. So the kids every night while they're caring for Cagatillo, and I imagine probably more than just every night, I'll bet this thing gets fed a lot of orange peels and nougat. They feed it and as the Christmas, I guess Christmas day, I also saw Christmas Eve approaches. They prepare to extract the stuff from Cagatillo. And they do that by hitting Cagatillo with sticks. And they have a traditional chant. You want to give them the translation of the chant? Yeah. Not the original. In English, it translates literally as poop log, poop torone, hazelnuts and cottage cheese. If you don't poop, well, I'll hit you with a stick poop log. And so once they've beaten Cagatillo with a stick

enough times, they'll look under the blanket and see that he's pooped out a bunch of candy and treats and gifts. And it's an amazing, wonderful little Christmas tradition. It's wonderful. But that's not the only unusual poop-based Catalan Christmas tradition either, is it? No, I was kind of surprised to know that there was more than one. How do you pronounce this? The Cogunner? Cogunner. Cogunner. Yeah, pretty close. So this is just a, it's not a log. It's an actual carved or now, you know, readily manufactured sort of doll figurine that has dropped its pants and is just pooping. Yeah. And with the little traditional figurine, there's a little pile of poop beneath his

rear end on the ground. So not only is he pooping, he has pooped. And if it's the original version, it looks like a Catalan peasant. So he also has that red hat. He's probably smoking a pipe. And these things are designed to be put into the nativity scene as one of the figures along with the Holy Family. Yeah, that's great. And a lot of Westerners find that offensive and don't understand that it's not meant even in a joking manner. It wasn't originally. It was meant because the Cogunner represented things like fertility or good fortune or good luck. He has pooped it. But over time, it's definitely evolved. And now you can find Cogunner figures of all sorts of famous people from Barack Obama to the Star Wars

crew has a Cogunner collection. Yeah, of course. Did you see it? Well, yeah, I saw, I mean, there are all kinds of pop culture icons now with their pants pulled down pooping. But did you see the Star Wars one in particular? No, no, was it good? Yeah, it's pretty great. The C3PO has pooped out a nut, like a bolt nut. Not a nut like one might traditionally find in a stool. No, no. Like it's not a peanut. Like a walnut. Oh, man. Who knew this one was going to be so gross? Yeah, well, I guess we could have guessed. Yeah, you found this stuff. So, yeah. What else can we mention here? There was a world's record, of course, on December 10th. I'm sorry, December 2010. There was a 19 foot pooping figurine placed

in a shopping center and won the record for world's largest Cogunner. Yeah, in Barcelona. Pretty good. Yeah, I looked at a picture. I couldn't find any actual specs on it. But by my estimates, the pile of poop is about three feet tall. Oh, okay. Yeah, in the middle of the shopping center, the Mara Magnum shopping center in Barcelona. Nice. Well, my sister lives in Portugal now. I'm going to hit her up and see if she's seen any of this action. Yeah, for sure. Ask her to mail us some Cogunners. I'd love one. You can order one online. Yeah, yeah, but I'll bet she can get a better deal on one. Should we take a break? No, Josh, we shouldn't. Oh, yeah, we shouldn't. Because as per tradition, our Christmas episode is

ad-free. It's one small little thing we like to do. It's ad-free with 100% more Christmas schedules. That's right. All right, so let's pile on our sleigh and let's head on over and see how Dr. Krampus is doing. Yeah, over in the Alps, in the Alpine regions. Yes, of Austria. So, well, let's talk about Krampus. It's a weird thing, but then it's not any weirder than Santa Claus, if you really look at it. Yeah. Or bringing a tree into your home. No, it's really not. And it actually makes a lot of sense, too, because Santa Claus is so good and pure and happy and joyful and Krampus is all the opposite. So, as it was put in this one Smithsonian article I read, Krampus is the yin to St. Nick's yang. Yeah.

And they actually hang out together. And we should probably describe Krampus a little bit first, huh? Yeah, so here's the legend is that Krampus shows up. Krampus is sort of a beast of sorts. A demon. A demonic impish beast. With a long tongue and claws. His name, in fact, is derived from the German word for claw, I believe. Yeah, what's that? Krampen. Was it that simple? Mm-hmm. So Krampus, he shows up. He shows up in the town the night before December 6, which is also known as Krampus Nacht, or Krampus Night. And that's also Nicholas Taug or St. Nicholas Day, December 6 is. Right. So they show up on December 5, the night of the 5th. Yeah. And, you know, like the light in the dark, Krampus is like,

no, no, no. St. Nick can't just show up. I will show up as well and try and ruin the good time. Right. So what's interesting is like on Krampus Nacht, the St. Nick goes around and leaves little goodies in the shoes of good kids. Sure. And then birch sticks in the shoes of bad kids, ostensibly for their parents to smack them on the behind with for being bad. But there's another level reserved for the truly bad kids. And that's what Krampus is there for. He's there to abduct and torture and potentially eat the really bad kids. Yeah. He's actually going around with St. Nick, visiting people's homes. Yeah. So how bad are you? Do you need to be tortured and eaten? Are you bad or like Krampus level bad? And

this harkens back. The first thing I thought it was, of course, are episodes on the Grimm's fairy tales that very much sort of aligns with that where children are readily offered up as as food for beasts. You know, like no one no one cared back then. No, they definitely treated their children more harshly for sure. There's a lot more like getting lost in the forest and no one coming to find you going on. Yeah. So Krampus is obviously over the years there have been a lot of people who have been like, let's abolish this. This is not in the modern Christmas spirit. He is the son of the Norse god of the underworld hell, H-E-L. And during the 12th century, the Catholic Church tried to ban Krampus.

And then more recently in the 1930s, when Austria's conservative Christian Social Party came in, came around, they definitely tried to get Krampus outlawed, but people would not have it. They needed their Krampus. Yeah. I mean Krampus predates Christianity. He has some staying power. You know, he was originally like a Germanic demon of pagan folklore. Yeah. Yeah. He would be tough to get rid of and probably now more so than ever because some sort of weird Streisand effect apparently happened. And now more people are aware of Krampus than ever before. Yeah. And he's celebrated big time. People love him. Oh, they're moving. Especially people. Oh, yeah, there was. Yeah. A good horror movie.

Well, I can't say if it was good. I haven't seen it, but it looks good. But people who get sick of the holiday spirit being crammed on their throat for, you know, after X number of weeks usually turn to Krampus to kind of find some relief. I looked up this other thing because at the end of this article, it mentions a couple of weird things, demons in other countries, Christmas demons. And the one in Greece, Calakans or I, did you look that up? Yeah. Yeah, this is crazy. These are little impish demons that speak with a lisp and eat worms and frogs and things. They only come out at night. They're afraid of the sun, the fire, holy water. And then the rest of the year they live in the

center of the earth and attempt to chop down the tree of life. Right. But at Christmas time, they emerge to wreak havoc above ground, right? Yeah. And apparently one of the legends of the Calakans or I is that they can only count to two. Did you see that? Oh, no, I didn't actually, but I'll bet I know where you're going with this. Well, they won't say three because it's a holy number, supposedly. So they only count to two. So if you want to guard your home against these little imps, you leave a colander on your doorstep. So they go mad trying to count the holes. They just go one, two, one, two over and over until they commit suicide.

That's pretty standard. It's very strange. You know, you know what is strange though, too, is that that's a remedy for protecting yourself against vampires. The original vampires couldn't count and they would just go nuts trying to count like seeds, I think you're supposed to leave out. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I remember we covered that. They were like, they originated in Greece, too, I think. Yeah. So it's all, it's all a surefire remedy that just works for everything. One size fits all. Yeah. Did you see the one about Danny, the South African ghost boy? Yeah, that was really, this one's just like scary. So if you're a kid in South Africa around Christmas time, you need to keep an

eye out for the ghost of Danny, who is a little boy whose grandmother made a batch of cookies for St. Nick and Danny just couldn't help himself. He ate the whole batch of cookies so his grandmother murdered him and now his ghost haunts Christmas in South Africa. It's a weird tradition. Yeah, it really drives home that we're at an all time high in terms of regard for children in the world. Yeah, you know, we're finally doing it right here in 2016. Yep, no children's murdered children's ghosts on our watch. You ready for the next segment or you want to? I'm so psyched about this one. Let's get in the sleigh. Yeah, let's let's ride on over to TV land. Yeah, which exists in

our imaginations and in Culver City, California. That's right. Of course, we're talking about a Charlie Brown Christmas. And just a little bit of its history. It's one of my favorites. After all these years, I still love watching that show. Yeah. And after all these years is right, it's been on every year since 1965, which actually makes it the second longest running animated cartoon special in history. Yeah. After it's in second place after Rudolph, which came out the year before and has run every year since as well. The Rankin' Bass Rudolph. Yes. Which is kind of sad. Charlie Brown just can't come in first. But it's a very Charlie Brown thing now. Yeah, it's kind of reassuring. Well, that's one of the things

I always loved about Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang was the, and this article points it out as the melancholy behind it. It was never just some happy, go lucky, dumb kids thing. There was always just so much melancholy and pathos in those characters that really look, I don't know, it spoke to me as a kid. Yeah. And so I guess the executives at CBS and the ad agency for Coca-Cola were expecting something totally different from everything that Charles Schultz had done up to that point with this Christmas special when they worded it, right? Yeah. Well, it almost wasn't even ordered. There was a producer named Lee Mendelson who did a little documentary short about Charles Schultz called a boy named Charlie

Brown. And for the first time for that little documentary, they just did a little animation because previous it had been a comic strip only. And so they just a little bit of animation by a guy named Bill Melendez. Yeah, exactly. And so they put that famous jazz piano score by Vince Garaldi, which is amazing. And people saw it and they were like, Hey, maybe this would be a Christmas special. And they said, No, no one wanted it. Yeah, they, they, they, somebody though heard about this documentary, which apparently was just lost to history pretty quickly and said, Have you guys ever thought of just doing just a straight up Christmas special? And apparently Lee Mendelson heard the first rule of Hollywood, which is you

answer yes to every question. Yeah, of course. And he said, Yes, of course we have. And apparently rung up Charles Schultz the next day. And that next day they had basically all the rough outline points of what would become the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Yeah, like we need this music because we love it. We want some ice skating. We want a Christmas pageant. And we want the theme that well, sort of a religious theme, like Charles Schultz apparently insisted on that. Well, he was, yeah, he was pretty religious. And yeah, he definitely insisted on it. And again, the, the executives who were waiting with baited breath for this thing to be delivered to him were like, this is awful. Like what's going on here? Like

this is super religious. It's not, it's not hilarious and joyful. It's like you said it has pathos, but it's a children's animated Christmas special. Where's the laugh track? They wanted to put a laugh track in. Yes. And they definitely wanted Linus reading from the Bible out. Well, yeah, they definitely did. And Charles Schultz said, Nope, it's staying in. And they also wanted to cast adult voice actors. And it kind of occurred to me that I never knew who did any of those. So just four quick shout outs to some of the characters. Charlie Brown was voiced by Peter Robbins. These great classic iconic voices were just little kids. Linus was Christopher Shea. Sally was Kathy Steinberg and Lucy was

Tracy Stratford. And you can go look up the rest of the cast if you want, but that would be weird if we read out like 18 people. Right. But the other kids actually, so the ones you named were professionals. The other kids were actually neighborhood kids and Bill Mendelson, the animator and directors neighborhood. Yeah. So they were like, not just kids, they were legit kids. And not fake Hollywood kids. Right. Exactly. Who are actually like 35 or 40. Yeah. But the use of kids was unusual for sure. And they hadn't really thought it through from what I saw because some of these kids were so young that they didn't know how to read yet. Like the kid who played Linus didn't know how to read. So he had to be told what

lines to say. Yeah. Because he couldn't read the script. Yeah. And Snoopy actually was the only one not voiced by a kid. He was voiced by the animator himself. Right. So that's kind of neat. And it was a huge hit despite the doubtful nature of the network. It was a big hit on Thursday, December 9th, 1965. It was seen literally by half of the audience available in the country. Yes. Almost half. Yeah. Basically, everyone who had their TV set turned on at I think eight o'clock or whatever on that date watched it in the entire country. That's pretty astounding. And it's like you said, it's the exact opposite of what the execs thought was going to happen. They thought it was going to air once and

then just be gone. Yep. It won a Peabody. It won a Emmy Award. This really says something about the time it finished second place only to Bonanza, which really says that Americans loved Bonanza. Man, they really did. I watched it. You watched Bonanza? I never did. Sure. I mean, reruns. Yeah, I never got into it. Well, I mean, it was probably not a little hokey for your taste probably by that point. You were more sophisticated. I was a very sophisticated eight-year-old. I wore cravat. And here are a couple of interesting tidbits about the Charlie Brown Christmas. There have been some scenes cut throughout the years, notably sponsorship inserts, notably Coca-Cola even, had a full-on Coca-Cola sign animated

into the show that Linus is thrown into. And they cut that out after, I'm not sure how long. They said several times is, I guess, just the first few years. Yeah. And they cut that Coca-Cola sign out of there. Yeah, because other advertisers were like, what the heck? We're Pepsi. Where's my sign? We're Royal Crown Cola. We don't want to advertise on your Coca-Cola ad. What else? So something else that wasn't added until 1997, right? Well, they had cut out the Peanuts Gang throwing snowballs at a can on a fence scene to make room for more ads. And it wasn't restored until 1997. Man. Yeah. Well, they did the right thing. Yeah, that's an important part. And I'll be watching it this year and every

year to come till I die. For sure. Charles. Yes. Charles. It would not be our Christmas special if we didn't teach people how to make booze in new and interesting ways. Yeah, this has become a bit of a tradition around here. Oh, yeah. A holiday drink. Oh, yeah. Have you had this one? I cannot wait to make this one. No, I haven't had it yet. Yes, you always follow through. I don't. Yeah. Although I have to say, I've still not had a hot buttered room. Yeah. See, my whole problem comes, it's an effort thing. Like I get out the bottle of bourbon and then I'm just like, oh, well, I'll just pour this. I really don't even need a glass. I can cut

my hand and like bourbon. Yeah, I should really put in the effort. This one does sound like a little bit of effort until you really think about it. It's not that bad. So down in the Caribbean, it gets so hot that you wonder, do they know it's Christmas time at all? Yes, yes, they do actually. And in the Caribbean, in Jamaica in particular, there is a drink, a refreshing cold punch called sorrel punch that apparently screams Christmas. It's part and parcel with Christmas down there. But again, since it's hot, they need something that's cool and refreshing. So we're going to go with Jamaican sorrel punch this year as the Christmas drink because it sounds pretty great. All right. Well, should we just start

with the ingredients? Yeah, and we should say the first ingredient, sorrel, can be really confusing up here in the States. Yeah, what's the deal there? So sorrel is apparently a part or a flower of the hibiscus plant. But it's not what those of us in the United States would think of as the hibiscus flower. It's a different flower and you can't use hibiscus flowers. Or you'll die. You'll be haunted by Danny. You want to use straight up dried sorrel plant flowers. And you can actually find them online for like five, six bucks on like Amazon. Or if you have an international market, you can probably find them there and that whole like cellophane dried herb section from other parts of the world. Okay, they're

probably going to be there. But you want to start with those. All right, a couple ounces. Yep. All right, that sounds good. I can do that. You want to get some fresh ginger? I can definitely do that. You should be able to find that anywhere. You want to make two one inch cubes peeled and then finely chop them. Mm hmm. Three cloves is a good, good next ingredient. Yeah, I can taste it in my head. Yeah, it's it's got like coming together Christmassy spices. And then this guy didn't use this this in his recipe. But I also saw that you could at this point add orange peels without the pith. You never want to use the pith with an orange peel and cinnamon sticks. And you take all these things and you put

them in a heat proof bowl. Mm hmm. And you boil five cups of water in a sauce pan. Okay. And pour it over the sorrel mixture. Okay. So basically what you're doing is making a sorrel tea because you let it steep for at least four hours or overnight. You're putting together your roux. I guess. Just kidding. I would say tea is closer than roux. The mother batch. There you go. You're making the mother batch. None of these things are applicable. So you let you let the mother batch tea roux sit overnight and just steep, right? Oh yeah. And then you want to make a simple syrup. Yeah. I mean, I would say if you make your own central simple syrup, if you have your own favorite recipe, you can just use that

right? Sure. Yeah. It's special. No, it doesn't have to be special. You just want to make a one to one simple syrup. And since this is the Caribbean, you probably want to just go with demarera, that raw brown, not brown sugar, but brownish in color. But demarera sugar is probably a good one to use. But you make a simple syrup. Not a complicated syrup. Nope. A simple syrup. You get yourself some good amber rum. Yeah. I would recommend getting the good stuff because this is Christmas, guys. Yeah, it's once a year. And then you add, you take the tea that you've let steep for four hours or overnight and you strain out the ingredients in there. You just have the tea. And then you add to it the simple

syrup and the rum. Stir it up, little darling. Nice. And then you add some ice cubes and then garnish with lime and orange slices. All right. So as far as the amounts, we're talking a couple of ounces of the sorrel flour. We already said that how much ginger, three whole cloves, five and three quarters cups of water, three quarters cup of sugar for your syrup, one and a half cups of amber rum, a little more if you're, you know. Yeah, two tastes. And then, you know, garnish at will. Yep. It sounds delicious. I might have to make that this year. I can't wait, man. I have the sorrel ordered. Oh, you do already? Mm-hmm. Oh, all right. Well, I'm making it up. All right. Maybe you can bring it to

our holiday sound up party. You got it. I'll bring all of added roux to it. Some flour. Flour and butter. It's just floating in clumps. Oh, man. That sounds good. Yeah. All right. So let's hop back in the sleigh. It's cooled off a bit because that took longer than I thought. Yeah. So let's heat this sucker back up and head over to another part of the internet. All right. So we're back. We're out of the sleigh and into the frying pan. Actually, that's not true because that made it sound like we were about to cook something. You are in a silly mood today, aren't you? I am. I think I've mentally gone on vacation. You're giddy with delirium. I am. Totally. I like it, man. You should mentally go on

vacation a lot. It's a good fit. So we're going to talk a little bit about Mrs. Claus. It sort of occurred to me when we were putting this together. I was like, you know what? You hear about St. Nick all the time and nowadays you see his wife in the photo some, but where did she come from? Who is this woman? And I didn't know, but she has not been around the entire time. Santa used to be very much the batch. Yeah, I didn't realize that either. This article puts it as kind of a loner, which is funny. Yeah. But yeah, he was given a wife finally for the first time in 1849 and there's an American author named James Reese and apparently there's an author named James Reese that's working today. Oh, yeah. He's hogged up all

of the Google search engine pages. Cannot find any mention of the other one, but there was apparently an author named James Reese who wrote a short story entitled The Christmas Legend and it was published in 1849. Yeah, I wonder what gave him the right. Don't get me wrong. I love it. But why did he get to say like, you know what? I'm going to just write in a Mrs. Claus. I guess literary license. Yeah. Yeah. So is it Canon? Did this get approval from? I guess. George Lucas? I think that just gets worked out over time, you know. Yeah, I guess so probably. If enough people buy into it. Yeah. Although it sounds like she was kind of a device that he used because he out of necessity because in the story,

Mr. and Mrs. Claus are like delivering presents to a family, right? And it turns out that there is no Mr. and Mrs. Claus. It was really a friendly couple that the family was friends with who had dressed up as Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Yeah, the burn bombs. Right. So the guy turns out to have no imagination whatsoever for a short story writer. Yes, but she did stick a little bit and then she really started sticking in later years. She started kind of popping up more and more in magazines and stories. And then she showed up in a big way in a picture book by Catherine Lee Bates. And this is when she really took hold and everyone was like, hey, I love saying I have a wife. She's super cool. She's a strong lady. She is the woman

behind the man and the backbone of that whole operation. Right. And who can argue with that? Nobody. I mean, everybody liked the fact that Santa had finally settled down. He wasn't just sowing his oats across the world and chimneys all over the world. Seriously, baby, I'll give you a ride in my sleigh. You know something that struck me that I hadn't really realized, Chuck. Mrs. Claus does not have an official first name. Well, I looked into that. Did you? No. Did you find one? Apparently with artistic license, you can just name her whatever you want. Right. Okay. That's what I found as well. And they're like, you know, Monica, Erica, Martha, Jessica. Martha, which apparently is a typo. Was it? I don't know.

Maybe. I wasn't sure. I didn't know if that was just a variation. No, I'm sure it was a variation now, but at the time it was probably a typo. Gotcha. So the printer didn't have an R, so they were just like, eh. Right, exactly. Just forget the R. It's the 1920s. No one cares. Sandra, that Sandra Claus, that sort of rings a little bit. Who would you pick? What's your favorite? Probably Rita. That's what I was going to go with. Yeah, or Mary. Mary Claus? Yeah. But because I mean also you could say Mary like M-E-R-R-Y. Oh, sure. The one I do not agree with, I should say the two I do not agree with are Monica and Jessica. Those are not Mrs. Claus' names. Monica Claus? Yeah. That's weird. It's a

little odd. Nothing against the name Monica, but just for Mrs. Claus. Come on. Yeah, I agree. Even Monica's can agree with that one. Yeah, I think so. And then Jessica, that's just too, that's Jessica Rabbit's name. That has no business being part of Mrs. Claus. Charles. Mm-hmm. You found something else great on the internet that I just found very heartening. Yes. It is a, it's a way. Oh, oh, sorry. Warning. Warning. Jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle. Yes, parents, you may not want your kids to hear this part. It is not dirty and filthy or weird in any way, but depending how you run Christmas in your household, if you know what I'm saying, we just want to give you fair warning. So

we'll give you, let's just do a little Christmas music for like five seconds. Oh, good. Okay. All right. Hopefully you are not a psychopath and you got rid of any little kids who still believe. Yes. And hopefully Jerry inserted the music from the movie Psycho instead of Christmas music. That would be wonderful. Yeah. Cause people would be like, what are they, what happened? Let's go and understand it until we came back. All right. So I found this thing. This is actually new this year on the social meds. This lady named Charity Hutchinson had a Facebook post that has really taken off. Last I looked earlier, it was, geez, had about 30,000 likes and has been shared quite a few times. And she had a solution

in her family on what the conundrum parents face by lying to their children bald face lying for years about the existence of a real human Santa Claus as a person. Right. So she, I guess, tried this with her oldest, her first born recently and they bought it in the last couple of years. Yeah. They fell for it. Her client and senior. And in a way, it's a really great thing to do. But at the same time, you're basically, you're getting out of one lie by creating another different lie. Right. Oh, not really. Okay. All right. Well, let's let everybody judge for themselves. Let's describe this. Okay. So, so Charity says that you start off by taking your kid out for coffee. I didn't realize that was the thing that you do with

kids these days. Yeah, I didn't either. But apparently it is. So you take your kid out for coffee or wherever. Maybe a milk. Sure. Yeah. Well, let's go with one of those two. But you take your kid out and you just basically say, Hey, you know what? I've noticed you're doing a lot of really great, kind, compassionate things this year. For example, this and that and the time you beat up that bully who pushed down that smaller kid, that kind of thing. Yeah. The time you laid on that bird who had no chance of surviving without its mother. Just some nice stuff, right? And you say, you know, son or daughter, I think you have become compassionate enough and old enough to become a Santa Claus. And you drop your

mic and you leave your kid in Starbucks and you just walk down the street feeling good about yourself. You get in your car, you drive off to California to start a new life with a new name. So no, you say, I want you, you're old enough to become Santa Claus. And then your kid is like, what? Yeah. And you say, get ready for your mind to be blown, kid. Because guess what? Here's the deal with Santa. Santa is a construct. Sort of. Kind of. Basically is what you're trying to do is say, you can become Santa because Santa is someone who just very kindly and unselfishly gives something to others anonymously. Yeah. Being Santa is anybody could be Santa as long as you want to give to people just

for the sheer joy of making other people happy. Exactly. That is Santa. And anybody who does that can be Santa. And so, hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you try starting starting it out this year? Like just pick somebody that you know and like and say, find out without them knowing what's going on, something that they really want and then go get it for them and wrap it up and leave it for them. But here's the key. You have to say that it's from Santa on the little card or tag and you can never tell them that it was you. That's pretty great. Yeah. And she backs it up by making the point that being Santa is not about getting credit. It's about just giving for the joy of giving and making other

people happy. So you just never tell. So in that way, you become Santa. Yeah. And it gives the kid all these lessons, you know, understanding about what's going on around the world and in their own neighborhood maybe. This article says it gives some providence over their own innocence. That's a great point, I think. And she said that it works so great with her older kid. Now that kid is in on it. Yeah. Trying to help the new batch about to lose their innocence. Yeah. But the thing is, Chuck, and I don't maybe you know and I don't, but is there some standard way that besides this that people recommend breaking the news to kids? Well, I don't know about a standard, but there's lots of different

opinions on that. I put up a Facebook post tangentially, tangentially related to this and people were just kind of throwing out their ideas and one of them, I think they got the most likes was this guy that was like he does has never described Santa as a person. He said he is always from the beginning described Santa as a like I said, as a construct, as you don't say construct, you're three year old, but you as just a part of the Christmas spirit, it's a thing and not a person who literally comes to your house and he was like, I can't tell any difference. Like they love that just as much as I did thinking it was a real guy. And he said, you know, they see the Christmas specials and they get that it's

a made up thing, but it's just a part of the whole idea of Christmas. So he was just kind of truthful about the whole thing. And they're still delighted with Santa and when they seed Santa in the mall, they aren't like, you're a construct. Although that would be great. It would be. Some part of you would be pretty proud of your kid for that. Yeah. I think it was interesting though. I mean, I don't know what I'm going to do yet. So I got to think this over. Yeah. Because I mean, there's probably parents listening right now. They're like, Oh man, yeah, I don't want to do this, but this is a pretty good out. So everybody give charity Hutchinson a pat on the back.

All right, Chuck, it's almost time for Sorrel Punch. That's right. We're going to wrap it up here. We crowdsourced some Facebook traditions from our listeners. I asked for specifically unusual traditions and I wetted through, waded through the 90% that were not unusual in any way and managed to find some pretty interesting things. Oh yeah. So I was, I don't know what percentage. I didn't see what percentage of the actual ideas submitted. This is, but some people have some pretty cool little traditions that I just love. Agreed. So you want to start? Yeah. So Victoria Kroom, she says that on her father's side of the family, he was,

I think he was Polish, his Polish roots. And so in order to honor their Polish roots every year, their father makes a poppers meal for Christmas Eve instead of, you know, some big lavish extravagant thing. They made sauerkraut soup and pierogies and the most reasonable priced cold water fish available. Yeah. Because it kind of honors like the humble roots that their family has. Yeah. That's great. So Victoria Kroom, good on you for that one. Nice. So how about Emily Ruth VanderArks? Yes. This was actually a lot of people had this. So this is a thing.

So his, her mom hides a pickle ornament on the Christmas tree somewhere, right? And on Christmas morning, everybody tries to find it. Whoever finds it first gets a gift. And Emily said that it started out just being like, oh, here's a piece of chocolate and the person would just be like, just throw it to the ground. But she said that it's gotten better over the years. So now it's like up to like a Starbucks gift card. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. I saw a lot of people with this pickle thing though. So obviously it's a thing. And she said, I bet it's regionalized.

She said that her husband is a master ace at finding the pickle now. And he wins it every year. So champ pickle finder. Emily's husband. Emily's husband. So thanks. Emily Ruth VanderArk. That's a great name. Jessica Evans Toten, Toten. This is pretty good. I love weird dads. After my parents got divorced, my dad was in charge of getting and wrapping his own Christmas presents for me and my three older sisters. And he had a hard time knowing what to get us. So he

made a tradition of buying us a Barbie doll every year along with a gift receipt. And he called it a creative gift card. I just love that. Basically like, I know you're going to take this back, but here, here's something at least. And he also has a really fun time rejecting traditional Christmas wrapping, right? So he would just put it in a garbage bag for him. I love this guy. And then apparently in his older years, he's like, I can, I can do better than this. So now he goes to like thrift stores and vintage shops and finds old carpet bags or old brief

cases. That's awesome. And puts them in there. Yeah, that was really cool. Which is super 80s, like delivering a Barbie doll in a briefcase. Yeah. And he's still doing it. They still get the Barbie. They're well into adulthood now. She points out and he still gets them the Barbie every year. So I think that's a really

cool thing. And Mr. Evans, if that is your name, sir, I salute you. Yep. So Catherine Joy Figgly. Yeah, this is a good one. She said that her husband's family wraps presents. They also reject traditional Christmas wrapping paper. So they kind of have like a friendly competition or theme going where they find the weirdest thing they can wrap it in. Yeah. My, my favorite is the unused diaper. Yeah.

That's good. My favorite's birthday wrapping paper. Oh, yeah. I like it. It's aversive. It is extremely saying like, yeah, I'm going to use wrapping paper. I'm just not going to use it for this particular holiday. Yeah, I like it.

So that's from Catherine Joy Figgly. Keep that going. All right. Check. There's this cat named Nick Meller who has a great Christmas morning tradition with his mom, who he calls his mom. So he probably spells color with a U. I think it's a lady too. Nick. Oh, it could be Nicole, I guess. Yeah. I think she's from Australia. Oh, okay. Well, every Christmas morning, this would actually make a lot of sense that she would be from Australia. Every Christmas morning, her mom and she get up very early and they

go to the beach. And this is where the Australian clue kicks in before the hordes of people get there. These are not very popular in the Northern Hemisphere in Christmas time. But she says that they grab a bottle of champagne and a huge bucket of cherries and that's what they have for breakfast. Yeah. That's so neat. That's a great Christmas tradition.

Let me see. This one I love. Tanya Floyd Ellis. Growing up, my mom and father-in-law, my grandpa, would pass to each other a bottom bug can. They both relish disgusting and sorry, and disguising the can. Don't worry, it gets disgusting. To make it unrecognizable as a rat present and some of the more memorable additions to the can, like you put junk in it, was a year's worth of grandpa's toenails in there. That was very nice. A pile of dog poop gathered in January and left to cure until the next December. A clump of ketchup packets held together by one broken packet now acting as glue. I love that. Thank you, Tanya Floyd Ellis.

That's a good one. All right, so how about Sara Flora Montes, Christmas tradition? Yes. So every year on Christmas Eve, her whole family has an ice cream eating contest with all of her cousins. So whoever can finish a half a gallon of ice cream within an hour, and here's the key, without throwing it up, wins a substantial amount of cash. She says she didn't say how much. She does use the word substantial. So she says that it's nearly impossible to do this, and it's only been done three times before out of probably a hundred attempts. I'm thinking that they haven't been doing this for a century, but just if

you take the number of people who've tried it over the years, you come up with a hundred, she means. Yeah, I think so. She says that a lot of people can finish, but not hold it down, and that's where that key comes in. So there's a lot of vomiting going on at Sara Flora Montes' house on Christmas Eve. Yeah, and she posted pictures too. She posted a couple, one of the entire family sitting around with each with a gallon, half gallon of ice cream in front of them, and then one

of a couple of people doing that with her grandmother just like bitter and staring at them. She said her grandmother hates it, so they're going to do it as long as she's around. It's very nice. Here's one from Norma Mullen that's really, really neat. This is not gross or anything. Our family has a tablecloth that goes on the Christmas dinner table every year, and everyone signs it with a fabric pen, and they've been doing this since 1994. So they use the same tablecloth, and they're able to look back every year and look at all these memories along with obviously people they've lost over the years and people that they've

gained over the years. So that is just super cool. It's older than most of her cousins, and she can see how much their family has grown year by year. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's really nice. And then how about Ryan Bradfield's? Yeah, that's a good one. Ryan Bradfield's mom's family, who he says is a large Sicilian bunch, they have a wind-up ET toy that they got in the 80s, and somehow it just became family tradition for them to dress up the ET doll as different characters. And then they use it as a Christmas tree topper

for their grandparents' tree. Yeah, that's pretty great. So ET's been like Elvis, NBA player, Dolly Parton. Her favorite. Yeah, a showgirl. And it turns out, obviously, weirdly. But one of Bradfield's cousins married a friend, I guess, of the Spielberg family. So they're trying to get them pictures of the ET dressed up over the years. I'm sure no one's ever tried to get Steven Spielberg a funny ET picture.

This one is very sweet. This is from Holly Henderson of Portland. She and her husband bought their first house four years ago, just outside of Portland. And on the very first night there, on Christmas Eve, they spent the night in a mattress on the floor next to the Christmas tree. And she says, now, we do that every year. We bring that mattress back in the living room on Christmas Eve and sleep on the mattress by the tree. That is very sweet. Lovely. And then the last one, Chuck. How about Chelsea Allen-Lenzies?

Oh, yeah. The Christmas Roo-de-Baga. I love weird families. So her family puts a Christmas Roo-de-Baga out in the living room along with the tree every year. And the whole thing started from a car trip when they were living in the UK. And she says that her grandparents and her aunt had come to visit one Christmas time. They were all in the car and everything was just going nuts and crazy. And apparently, Chelsea's mom started calling the whole thing, Roo-de-Baga's on parade. Yeah.

And I love her mom. She bought a Roo-de-Baga and put it on the dashboard of the car for the rest of the trip. And then when she got home, she made a face for it out of clothes, put a wreath on it, and then it became a Christmas Roo-de-Baga. Yeah. This is not just weird dads. Weird moms are great, too. Sure. But you know, I got one more because I forgot, Michelle Greenwald, I want to be in her family because they have a holiday they invented called pajama-kas.

Oh, yeah. And I think you all see where this is going. It's the day before Christmas Eve, even. And she said it was necessary since we were traveling for Christmas Day and didn't have a day that was dedicated just to the four of us and our family. So pajama-kas goes down like this. It's an immediate family. They get each other pajamas and change into the pajamas altogether. Well, they're all wearing the pajamas, in other words. And then they watch Christmas movies and eat breakfast for dinner, which is one of my favorite things. And it's like a no-hold bar breakfast for dinner.

Yes. Yeah. She says they cook all day and have a huge breakfast spread, like latkes, waffles, poached eggs, brioche, you name it. Yeah. Whatever you want, you get to have for dinner. Yeah. I don't know where the Greenwalds are, but I want to come over for pajama-kas. Yeah. It sounds pretty great. So just invite me and I'll be there. Get me pajamas with feet. Oh, those are good. I got nothing else.

So, oh, okay. Well, I guess this is the outro then, huh? Yeah. Wow. This is great, Chuck. I mean, it's officially now Christmas time for us. That's right. And another wonderful year of stuff you should know, 2016. We're going to close the books on this one and thank everyone as we do every year for your support because without you, there would be no us. We really, really don't take that for granted. And actually a very special birthday shout out. I know people that are born around Christmas

always get jipped off in the birthday department, but one of our most delightful and oldest, most supportive fans is Gail Koontz. It's her birthday on Christmas Eve. And her husband, Mark, was kind enough to email me because he knows what a big fan she is. And Gail is wonderful. So happy birthday, Gail, from Ohio. You're the best. Hope we can all meet up someday. And sounds good, right? Yep. So happy holidays to everybody. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. Tip top, Tet. All that jazz. You guys have yourselves a wonderful holiday season from all of us here at Stuff You Should Know.

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