The Luke and Pete Show - Beware of the Yule Lads - Christmas special pt.1

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

Christmas is just around the corner. As the preparations ramp up make sure you DO NOT drink that two-litre bottle of Fanta that has been bought for Christmas day.Elsewhere, we hear about a man that has found the baby Jesus in a pack of Revels and Luke educates Pete about some of the weirdest and most wonderful Christmas traditions from around the world.Want to contact the show? Email: [e-mail] or you can get in touch on Twitter or Instagram: @lukeandpeteshow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to a decidedly festive event, a festive expedition, a festive episode of the Luke and Pete show on Monday the 19th of December. Luke Moore, how the devil are you sir? Say festive again. Festive. Festivus. I'm good. Time to get festive man, it's time to get festive. I have already eaten so many candies, so many hot tamales, so many advent calendars, so many Ferrero Roches because the thing about Christmas is it's not just about the period of time where you're kind of eating in front of the telly and eating while you're cooking dinner and stuff like that and drinking wine and stuff. It's the weeks before where the food is in your house, but you, being a grown-up, you can't resist not eating the bloody stuff. Oh, my mother is an absolute nightmare for that.

An absolute nightmare. She buys stuff for probably a month, six weeks leading up to Christmas, puts it all around the house in the usual places. Yeah, okay. But you have no idea whether it's for Christmas or not. She doesn't even put it in a special festive stocking or bag. Not really. So it says, do not touch Christmas Xmas.

Not really. And there was a big set too with my brother-in-law, my sister's husband, about a week ago now, where she had bought him a two litre bottle of Fanta for him to drink soft drinks for Christmas because he'd be driving around

doing some bits and pieces and he wouldn't be able to drink so much. Okay. And it was like, at this point, it's probably about the 15th of December. No, actually, probably before that, actually. It's probably about the 10th of December. And he was down there with the kids for another reason. And he went to open this two-liter bottle of Fanta.

And my mum was like, what are you doing? And he's like, I'm just opening it. She's like, no, you're not opening that. And he said, well, hang on a minute, Carol, which is my mum's name. I'm the only person who drinks Fanta. You brought this specifically for me because I'll be doing a lot of driving and I quite like some now.

Can I have some now? And mum was like, no. He's like, okay, I'll buy you, I'll buy another two litre bottle between now and Christmas for me. But can I just have a glass of it now? No. Right.

And he said, your mom looked so wounded about the idea of it that i just didn't bother i just had some water yeah well look that that's fine but i just guarantee that at some point during the christmas season uh the festive time so to speak um there'll be some fanta left in that bottle and he'll be thinking himself that was mine i could have drank that when i wanted it i was cold i was hungry were you there were you there as jesus once demanded of someone was it was it jesus who demanded that one of the two big g or big j who's the other one god what god god himself said that i was hungry because if you're hungry and you're thirsty and you're God, that's on you because you're God.

Yeah, you can make unlimited amounts of Fanta. Yeah, people are praying to you all the time to sort them out. You're the one with the power here. If you can't keep yourself fed and watered, what hope do we all have, really? I mean, if God himself is hungry and thirsty, then what chance do the rest of us have? Drink a river, God. Yeah. They're everywhere. Help us out, have? Drink a river, God. Yeah.

They're everywhere. Help us out, mate. We've got melt and pour the ice caps. Get a big straw down and suck it all up for crying out loud. Do you reckon using a big straw, that would be amazing, wouldn't it? Well, I think his body could probably process salty water, I reckon. And he'd probably enjoy munching on whatever fish life come up as well. If you're listening to this,

it is traditional at Christmas to drink as much salt water as you can. It is, yeah. I think it was in the Bible somewhere. It was. Have a lovely glass of water, salty water. And the Lord and Saviour looked upon the salt water and said, drink deep, my children, for without drinking deep, the eternal damnation will be assured.

And how would one pass into heaven without drinking some sweetie, but mostly salty, water? The saline is mine, O Lord. The saline is mine. That's the one thing about these kind of evangelical... This is a Christmas-themed episode, so I don't want to get too deep into the blasphemy. Not the time of year for blasphemy. But before we move on from the blasphemy section i would just say this um the evangelical types these kind of prosperity gospel preachers and stuff we do all this stuff yeah once you get into it if you've got a few buzzwords and key phrases and have a basic you're

nodding terms with the whole um christ um tradition anyone can do it it's what do you mean yeah but you've got to be good you've got because you've got a captive audience you've got to be charismatic and you've got to be yeah you could easily do it i've seen you upstage not doing ramble live you could easily do it you could but you could sort of but you've got to be really good and you've also you do have to know your Bible. You really do have to. Because I listen to Adventist radio. Is that because you've got all the other local radio stations closed down in the last episode?

Yeah. You basically campaigned for it to be defunded. That's all the Tories needed. I got confused about Radio Cambridge. If I go down from XFM or Absolute or whatever, a couple of notches, it usually gets to like an Adventist radio station.

And you do listen, and there's always a new fucking story in there, isn't there? There's always a new story, Old Testament story about how this happened and this happened.

And you're like, wow. And it's always like a young, funky preacher talking about it and they play some really well-produced kind of, you know's always like a young, funky preacher talking about it, and they play some really well-produced, kind of sound like the killers kind of Jesus music. And it's just incredible stuff.

There's always a new story. There's always a new story. So I've got a friend who is a pretty thoughtful person, and he did philosophy at university and then went on to do postgraduate qualification in philosophy. Very, very clever man. But deeply into this idea of the meaning of life and philosophy and

quite an earnest chap on that kind of subject. But very, very thoughtful. Probably the most interesting person I've spoken to about it. His parents are quite religious. He's got this quite funny, and to be fair, he can laugh at himself about it. He's got this quite funny attitude and to be fair he can laugh at himself about it he's got this quite funny attitude like completely unflappable attitude towards his christianity or his kind of form of christianity which is like he pathologically hates anything that tries to make

christianity cool or right so for him it's like a big part of the faith and the process i want to be on a sunday in a church i want to be uncomfortably cold i want to be sitting on a hard pew and i want to be seriously thinking about the good things i've done the bad things i've done nothing about this should be cozy comfortable pulling the wool over people's eyes, making it a good time. It's a serious thing and it should be treated seriously. And I want to know that when I go into the church, we're all going to be on the same page here

and we all know what we're in for. And I want to be uncomfortable to really establish my relationship with what I'm doing here because the rest of my life, thankfully, is very comfortable. That's not the point of this. So he cannot stand all this happy-clappy stuff.

It's not for him at all. But I guess it's kind of like that's to bring people in, isn't it? Yeah, I guess it's kind of like to bring people in. If you've already got the faith, make it as miserable as you want because you've got that higher calling.

But for me, I need a band that sounds like Evanescence telling me about Jesus. In every aspect of your life. Every aspect of my life, for crying out loud. Luke, I've bashed a little link into the running order at the top, rather untidily and rather late as we started the show. There's a man who's found baby Jesus in a packet of Revels.

And I thought, when you started talking about Jesus, I thought, well, that's probably a good new story to talk about. Yeah, there's basically a man, Miles Campbell, 38, Scottish bloke, was munching on a bag of Revels. If you're unfamiliar with Revels, they're kind of like it's like a grab bag of

different kinds of chocolates, pennies, circles. They taste pleasingly cheap as well. Yeah, they're very nice. They're made by Galex, I believe. But there's different flavours inside the bag. You know, there's like orange flavour, there's a toffee, chewy one. There's just a normal sort of solid chocolate one.

Good gracious me, that looks like the Baby Jesus. It does look like him. In his words, a wee Baby Jesus staring back at him. I mean, I would say that it all looks like a congealed lump of chocolate, like horrible reddish-brown chocolate, Revel style. But it does look like a baby in swaddling clothes. I would say that the eyes and the mouth of the baby do look shockingly close to a ballpoint pen. They've been drawn on.

And he basically found that in about July. the baby do look shockingly close to a ballpoint pen. They've been drawn on and he basically found that in about July. And he said, I'm keeping that in a bowl in the fridge until the metro come and knock it. Until the metro come knocking. Miles said that eating it is completely off the cards and that his children know

it's off limits too. I couldn't bring myself to eat it, he says. It still lives in my fridge. My children know not to eat it. They don't touch it. I don't know what type of revel it is. It's maybe two or three of them joined together.

And then he goes on to say it could be an orange cream or a coffee cream. But I wouldn't like to disclose that because a lot of people don't like the coffee cream. He's a maniac.

Is this guy pissed? Is he pissed? He sounds like a man who likes a drink. I'm not going to... I don't think that's massively besmirching the good man's name, but it's a lot of fun.

What's he going to do with it, though? What would you do with it? I understand why you wouldn't want to eat it, because it feels like a bit of a shame. But how long is the media tour going to continue for before he goes, right, we've got to move on now? I would probably... I'd probably pop round the church, give it a chomp.

It's the best place to do it, isn't it? Give yourself a Hail Mary and chomp away. Maybe just squeeze it between all the communion wafers and the lucky winner gets the... Yeah, the lucky guy gets the best of Jesus. There's a book... The entire body of Jesus. I think I mentioned this before, but I'll just briefly recap.

There's a book called Nina Simone's Gum by Warren Ellis, who is the right- man of nick cave who rescued nina simone's chewing gum from a meltdown festival i told you about before there's a whole book about that piece of chewing gum it's not dissimilar yeah that's fair yeah she's rather more high-minded and perhaps you know dare i say fallen into the hands of a slightly more talented man but still the same principle um peter that's that's a traditional thing isn't it the media always find something always find the face of jesus or something in something around christmas it's like a media thing it's it's just so traditional um it's as traditional i would say as finding what the media thinks are the most attractive young girls who've just passed their A-levels.

Yeah, yeah. They make them jump in the air. Hip, hip, hooray! They do. And the rest of us basically only watch for someone getting really disappointed live on camera. And then the follow-up, the second sequel, I suppose, is someone talking online about how they don't have any qualifications but they've

still done brilliantly in their life like jake humphrey for example um anyway so that's traditional i want to talk about some christmas traditions from around the world i think what we'll do is on thursday's show we'll do our listeners traditions and our listeners christmas themed emails like a bumper episode of that but for now here i want to do christmas traditions from around the world and i've drilled into some pretty interesting ones and i'm it's going to culminate in a couple of icelandic things that i think you'll be interested in peter before i do that do you have any traditions yourself that you'd like to share with us because i know that you're forging plowing a new furrow after Ratgate,

fancy Ratgate, and now you'll be spending Christmas with the part that you've got access to. We'd loaded the dog down in Essex. What have you got planned? Well, I mean, traditions. I've been playing a lot of Tetris on my arcade machine. The spirit of Christmas, everyone. I think, yeah, I i think you know russian culture

needs our help that's all i'm saying um the at this point i i like the idea of coming downstairs with like a box fizz in my hand and while everyone's open you've got that upstairs the box fizz you've not even come that you're walking down the stairs with it already so you've got that next to your bed I've come downstairs there's some Buxfizz in the fridge I've mixed some up I've made some

everyone's got a glass we've got we've got our niece two nieces staying with us oh good so we'll no doubt be we'll be full of flu

by the end of the day at least you're looking forward to it that's the main thing I love them but that's they've got a poorly household they've got they've got prescriptions of antibiotics they're not willing to it that's the main thing I love them but that's a they've got a poorly household they've got prescriptions about antibiotics

they're not willing to take yet because there's a literal antibiotic shortage in Cheadle Hume which is just great stuff yeah post Brexit Britain very nice

post Brexit Britain thanks everyone is the pauliness of it the Donaldson curse or is that too harsh I don't know I don't know really it's yeah

it could be it could just be a general a general Christmas malaise. But yeah, they're pooling at the moment. So hopefully you won't get too ill. But I'm planning on having a bit of breakfast. And while everyone's opening their presents and messing around, I'm going to blast out some Tetris, some final Tetris on my arcade machine. I just think it's the spirit, Chris.

I need my time to play as well. So that's the kind of thing I would have got in trouble for when i was about 14 so you're bringing you're bringing it back you're three times that age and you're bringing it back it's in the front room though you know i can see because i've all i've bought uh the littlest one some pepper pig uh play sets and then the older one uh has got a tortoise that does his shit how long how much enjoyment can you get out of that i don't know i mean i saw it in the toy has got a tortoise that does his shit. How much enjoyment can you get out of that? I don't know. I mean, I saw it in the toy shop

and I was like, well, that has to be bought for me or the child. But it's like a little tortoise with a sort of long neck out of his shell and he sings, oh no, got to go,

oh no, got to go and he does his shit. What's the shit made of? I don't know. I don't know. I think he sits on his toilet and he does a shit what's the shit made of I don't know I don't know I think he sits on his toilet and he and he tinkles out the poo I think

I think that's how it works I've not I've not unwrapped it she'll find out the glory of of Christmas Day taught us doing this shit something to look forward to

something to look forward to who's on Christmas lunch duty you er I I would say she's not gonna let me do it Sarahah bless her uh but she did make it clear that she did drink too early uh last year because she was making gravy and she realized it

was completely cold yeah she hadn't boiled the kettle i think i should at least take over gravy but uh yeah i i i think we we're pretty're pretty good at separating church and state when it comes to different jobs on the Christmas day. So you're cooking for six then? Yeah, I guess I am. That's going to be – can't do that in an air fryer. Yeah, well, actually, I saw something in the Sun newspaper, which was – The Sorroway Sun.

The super Sorroway Sun that we all love. Let's be honest it was almost certainly financed and lobbied for by some kind of air fryer manufacturer by ninja yeah um but someone did their whole christmas dinner in an air fryer and the um right and the the angle was that um you know the demand for an air fryer because they're so energy efficient has gone up three thousand percent in 2022 so this lady journalist did I don't know why I said lady journalist there

this journalist it's just pictures of her all over the place yeah the picture you've got a lady lady, your brain was going that's a lady, yeah I don't really know why I said that sorry about that, have I ruined Christmas for everyone I'm sorry about that, well done kids are crying, yeah kids are crying now because I've said the sexism about journalism.

But anyway, so she does the whole Christmas dinner in an air fryer. I don't want to be rude because this is going to be something that could come down to the skills of the person using the air fryer. Now, I've never used an air fryer, so I'm sure I would be just as bad, if not worse. All of it looked terrible. All of it. Right, yeah. It looks... If you want something that looks dry,

I mean, because you can, like, turn on the air fryer really low and dehydrate something. If you want something very dry, it is perfectly pitched to absolutely dry out every bit of food you can put in there. Because at one point she's put a mince pie in it.

Yeah, well, that's all right, though, isn't it? I put a mince pie in it last week. That's all right. That's fine. Just warms it through, doesn't it? Lovely. So is it... What I'm getting confused about here is that...

Is the name air fryer just quite a confusing name for it? Should it just be called an air cooker yeah probably probably should be really i suppose yeah it's it yeah it doesn't really fry does it it just circulates the air because if someone says to me do you want a fried mince pie i'm gonna say no well it depends on whether you're north of the border it depends on how many drinks i've had actually deep fried um but so yeah i think that um if you're going to do all in an air fryer i don't think that's going to work that well for you but there is a big difference between cooking for say just two people and cooking for six right yeah yeah i yeah i don't

think you can really get away with it with that sort of thing i think i think the the uh the the lj as we called it earlier on, cooked is very much just for, it looks like it would be good for like two people. Bit of carrot, bit of parsnip, and a tiny bit of turkey. Yeah, basically. Right, let's have a break. When we come back,

I'm going to do Christmas traditions from around the world, Pete, and you're going to bloody enjoy them, and that is an order. And I'm sorry again to Katie Doherty, who looks like an excellent journalist. I don't know why I brought her. She's working for The Sun.

Don't worry about it. She works for The Sun, Luke. I mean, you could probably step the foot off the brake a little bit. Yeah, all right. Tell you what, Katie Doherty of The Sun, get fucked. Yeah. Ta-ta. Oh, it's the Luke of Peach Shore.

It's nearly Christmas, and Luke's got some Christmas traditions for you. Imagine being, like you and I now, are on basically the equivalent of Santa's sleigh. I'm going to go to several countries around the world and observe, with our listeners in tow, of course, because it's a magical Santa sleigh, so all the people who listen to the show can fit on it as well. Delicious. And they can hear me, and it's not going to get too cold so you're having a lovely time

um we're going to go around the world and we're going to observe and appreciate and possibly perhaps even say some pithy comments about some Christmas traditions from around the world the first stop is Austria Austria Austria. Okay, right. That's kind of close to home, I would say. Austria kind of feels like a Christmassy place anyway, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, I think so.

It's where all of the best sort of folk tales would come from. Exactly. Well, that's not true because Denmark is, but Austria do their fair share. Yeah. Have you heard of Krampus? Krampus. Now, have I sort of got krampus mixed up with

that one that dwight shrewd has that germanic one that dwight shrewd does in the office not seen it but it could be the same thing krampus are you wicked yeah krampus is like a terrifying thing i think you'd make a brilliant krampus essentially they have this like terrifying monster that stalks the streets throughout december to frighten children to behaving well and some um adults even wander around with this kind of horrific monster masks on to kind of play the part and it looked i'm not 42 and it looked awful i some of the photos i saw particularly in that kind of that light where it's just getting dark and they're at the end of the street with this mask on it's frightening for me you should not be doing that for kids well it's very sort of like it's a lot of these sort of folk stories

a lot of these kind of traditional Christmas pastimes are like it's more like scare scare them straight in it really it's just like scare scare the kids straight scare them into being you know productive citizens and good people and stuff like that. So it's kind of like... Is that ethical? Yeah. Yeah, no, no, it isn't. And, you know, you talk about...

We may find out that, like, a lot of, like, like, learning issues that children have are just from our shitty folk tales and stuff. That fear, that PTSD of doing the wrong thing and having your life plunged into chaos by this malevolent beast that is Santa Claus. You know what I mean? Or Krampus or wherever.

It might, you know, a lot of the difficulties that kids have or adults have as we get older may sort of stem from how we were treated as as children how we were told that if you were bad um there was this kind of force that would absolutely ruin your christmas horrible yeah there's and there's also i mean listen there's nothing more frightening for me than opening my eyes first thing in the morning and seeing you wandering down your pants with a glass of bucks fizz on on the go. But Krampus is a definitely... Let's drop some blocks.

I'm shouting, let's drop some blocks, Lukey. Krampus is a close second. There was a film made of Krampus as well in 2015, a horror comedy film. It stars the excellent Tony Collette, and also Adam Scott, who obviously did Parks and Rec and loads of other stuff. So that might be worth watching if you want to kind of exorcise your Krampus demons but the actual basic folklore

is just, it's hard to think of something more Christmas themed that's frightening than that. Next up is Ukraine, popped into Ukraine, going for a tough time at the moment to say the least but in Ukraine apparently it's traditional to have a big shining spider web as a

christmas decoration which again is also based on a folk tale but you know when a spider's web gets snow on it and it looks really beautiful it's traditional to have one of those up in your house in ukraine yeah okay what do you think about that okay what do you think about that sorry explain that again so you know a spider's web

okay let me take it back do you know what a spider is yes I know what a spider is because remember I don't know where they live we did a Christmas one

a couple of years ago and you forgot how Jesus died so I wanted to check that you know what a sniper was it yeah God said

this is going on too long this is going to um spider's web with snow on it is a beautiful ornamental pretty thing right so what people do in ukraine is they as a christmas decoration they put their own snow bait like snow kind of covered spider's web up spider's web it but is it a real spider's web? obviously not, people can't fucking shit gossamer out of their arses can they? no but if they found a frozen because it's cold out there, it's cold everywhere

at the moment, I reckon because you do see spider's webs that have water droplets on them which freeze I thought there would be some way of getting them off it's just believed that spider's web will bring good fortune and luck for the upcoming year like a dream catcher basically yeah i think i think they kind of do it in poland as well i think polish people think that spiders catch the good vibes let the bad vibes out yeah kind of but traditionally spiders are symbols of goodness and prosperity, apparently. And there's a big thing in Western Ukraine called the Legend of the Christmas Spider,

which I think, and the reason I brought this to the table is because I think, well, some historians believe, or kind of cultural historians believe, that that's actually where we get tinsel from now. That's where it comes from. So it's basically been adapted over the years and it's now seen as tinsel. Because if you think about it, tinsel is quite weird, but that's basically where it comes from so it's basically been adapted over the years and it's now seen as tinsel because you think about tinsel it's quite weird but that's basically where it comes from

yeah good stuff Japan Japan guess what I picked out for Japan KFC yeah

yeah classic absolutely probably the best marketing campaign of all time surely it's got to be up there

with diamond before Ratner fucked it diamond rings that was never a thing was it no that was like campaign of all time, surely. It's got to be up there with Diamond, before Ratner fucked it, Diamond Rings, that was never a thing, was it? No,

that was like a big marketing thing at the start, wasn't it? I think Santa Claus himself is a Coca-Cola marketing thing as well, but since I think, certainly the red version,

he didn't invent the red version of it. Since, I think the early 70s, it's been traditional for the Japanese to eat some sweet KFC on Christmas. Because I don't think Christmas is a national holiday in Japan.

No. It'd be quite weird to experience that, I think. I'd enjoy it, because I'm in Japan and I love that place. But I think it'd be quite strange. You do get these big buckets with a Christmas dinner in them. So you get mash. Oh, really? You get mash and a turkey.

I don't know whether it's a turkey or it's a big chicken uh but it's just a massive thing that you put in the microwave with gravy and cranberry sauce and you know all the all the like a shit approximation of the trimmings but you have to pre-order these buckets they're like 60 quid right so you have to pre-order them have you ever done that no no No. No, I've never been there at Christmas. Of course. So I think that I'm right in saying that it originally started out as a marketing campaign in the early 70s. The people at KFC or whoever run their marketing said,

look, let's make this a thing because the Japanese don't celebrate Christmas in the same way as the West. And it's still given. It's the gift that's given 50 years later almost, which is an incredible return. It certainly is. Next up is Venezuela, Peter. You'll never, ever get this, 50 years later almost which is an incredible return you've got to be honest next up is Venezuela Peter

you'll never ever get this but in the capital of Venezuela which is as you well know uh K starts with a K correct it's Caracas Christmas Caracas Christmas Caracas

they it is traditional to skate on roller skates to the Christmas mass on Christmas morning. So in Caracas, you see loads of people, some of them dressed in Christmas outfits as well, all roller skating to church. I have no idea why. I couldn't find out. But it definitely happens because I've seen loads of photos of it. I've got a lot of time for that. I'm just absolutely at no point is anyone turning around going why are we doing this why are we doing this why is this why has this become a

festive roller disco what's going on i think it's because if people i think people thought because obviously a quite deeply religious country i think people thought that back in the day church faster if jesus had roller skates he could have got away from his enemies more easily but he could have pulled a skid killed a kid you always bring that one out and it always makes me laugh

he shouldn't be on wheels the final one before we get to the MVP of Christmas traditions which is Iceland is the Netherlands and my friend Tommy is half Dutch

and he remembers this happening as a kid his mum was Dutch and he spent a happening as a kid. His mum was Dutch and he spent a lot of Christmases in Netherlands. Is it one of them racist ones? Well, they've changed it now. It was very racist, but they've changed it

because it was basically revolving around blackface, which of course is entirely unacceptable. But I think they've changed it from Schwarzer Peter, which is Black Peter, to Bad Santa now. Bad Santa? What, like the film Bad Santa? No, and what they do,

and this to me feels almost astonishingly brutal, and I think I've got this right, but if not, by all means get in touch and let us know. The naughty kids don't get presents. They get sticks in their shoes. So when you wake up in the morning and come down, or I think i think they might even do it on christmas eve in in that part of the world but when you come down in the morning

or whatever it is and you see presents you're basically if you see sticks in your shoes it means you've not been good enough you've not got any presents now i don't know if in reality families actually do that but that's certainly something that is kind of done as part of the of the christmas tradition yeah okay i mean how big are the sticks are we talking not big could could we have like hepatitis situations you know are we risking our children uh i don't think so time of the year i don't think it's that serious i i think um they're quite small sticks you probably get presents alongside a little trick that gets played on you because i think we had a similar thing here didn't we because wasn't it traditional to

put a piece of coal in your christmas stocking if you're a kid that had been naughty yeah okay that's fair i think it's the equivalent of that but i mean i'd rather have sticks in my shoes and have that mad monster chasing me around for sure and then um finally i wanted to settle and finish on iceland because there's a couple of things in iceland and one of them is absolutely brilliant the first one I want to talk about is this thing called the Yule Cat, right? Yule Cat? What, like a Yule log, like a cat? Yeah, but a massive

cat that apparently, according to folklore, roams the frozen countryside in Iceland and if it finds someone that hasn't got new clothes on, like a new jumper or something, it eats them eats them so as a tradition in iceland now it's very very um common to give clothes for christmas and in the lead up to

christmas as well you tend to gift clothes to make sure the yule cat doesn't get you right and um my my impression of iceland when i was there i know you've been there as well pete was it like this place is awesome because it's not entirely, but a large part of it has evolved completely independently from other countries' influence. So it's just a bit mad. Yeah, they're kind of the very definition of an island nation, aren't they, really?

They just get on with it. Because you know that traditional thing where they take a lot of cubes of shark they take a shark they cubed a shark up and they piss all over it or they put sharks piss all over it and they bury it in the ground for like three months and it's do they put piss in it i thought they just buried it it just it becomes fetid i think it i think i think it's very i think it's sort of stored in the shark's own urine or something like that. Right. And they dig it up and they serve it.

It's a delicacy, right? And I was thinking to myself, that's quite interesting. I wonder what that's like. I probably wasn't realistically tempted. I bet it was fucking disgusting. Yeah, I wasn't tempted, but I could see people did do it. And then some guy, some guy in some restaurant, some Icelandic guy, I don't know if this is true, just said to me,

yeah, that was dreamt up about five years ago just just just for a laugh so you don't know where you are with them i was thinking to myself they've been doing this oh they probably did this because back in the 12th century you know some massive viking leader said i'll show you how tough i am apparently it was just made up i don't know if that's true or not but someone said that to me in iceland anyway but maybe maybe they'd sort of like uh maybe they've actually got like you know 60 million people on the island but they just they just pretend that they've only got 200 000 for a laugh i wouldn't be surprised i would not be surprised and the tradition in iceland that really kind of caught my eye was alongside the yule cat but separately to this they have um they basically have 13 yule lads

right you there's 13 yule distinctive individual like uh mischievous lads that turn up at christmas at different times and do different schemes like comic mischievous schemes to all the people who live in iceland right i'm gonna read you through them one by one right the first one is uh called the sheep coat clod who sheep coat clod who arrives on the 12th of december who is known for harassing sheep but um he's not very successful at harassing sheep because he's got stiff peg legs right right this is the tip of the iceberg so he just runs like two stiff peg leg he just sort of runs with his legs sort of straight out harassing sheep harassing sheep but isn't very good

at it and always falls over because he can't bend his legs the second one is the gully gawk who hides in little gullies waiting for

an opportunity to sneak into your cow shed and steal your milk okay that's fair and every single one of these has got like a

manifestation like a little kind of puppet type manifestation these are a little bit like the old yokai in Japan. They've got little ghosts, little demons that cause issues left, right and centre. So one bloke will come through your window and lick the ceiling.

We spoke about that in the first Luke and Peter thing. Similar. Lick the ceiling. Lick the condensation off your ceiling for you. Or Beto Betoson follows you down country roads and stuff. There's been absolute dickheads. These ones for me, because Iceland is such a kind of mystical and quiet kind of atmospheric place,

even though what I'm reading to you is quite silly, they're also quite sinister. Yeah, I agree. The third one is Stubbyby who's abnormally short um but steals your pie so he can eat the crust right there's spoon liquor who steals and licks i'll just i'll just give you the cross then don't worry about it but i just don't like the cross when i'm talking about being there being like a sinister undertone to this listen to thisoon licker steals and licks wooden spoons, is extremely thin due to malnutrition.

Oh, he just wants to get some proper food, licking the spoons, honestly. And there's a couple of more benign ones, like pot scraper who steals leftovers from pots. Door slammer who likes to slam doors during the night to wake people up. But then you've got bowl licker who hides under your bed waiting for someone to put down their bowl which he then steals and licks right sausage swiper who hides in the rafters and snatches sausages that are being smoked um skier gobbler which obviously skier is an icelandic yogurt he obviously gobbles up your uh your skier um yeah window peeper who looks through your windows in search of things to steal and then they start to get like

the candle stealer which is a kind of similar thing but but they they follow children home to steal their candles and the two worst ones for me the final two like doorway sniffer who has an abnormally large nose and an acute sense of smell and he stands in your doorway sniffing to locate your bread right and the final one meat hook who comes into your house and uses a hook to steal all your meat i mean i don't know i don't know if i'd like christ if I was in Iceland. I'm not sure I'd be into it. What a strange thing, right? I mean, just to have that. But how kind of popular are these kind of folktales?

Is it something that's an ongoing concern? Are they depicted in sort of Christmas media, Christmas television, Christmas books? Or is it just one of those things that, yes, it did exist in our era? Well, they're all kind of... What's interesting about them is they've all got specific days they arrive and days they leave so i think they kind of go through the traditional time of christmas with these different yule lads at different times but some of them apparently used to be other ones like there was one who um used to steal all your melted fat and shove it up their nose like it's just it's very very strange

stuff don't put up your nose that's hot it's still it's still not as terrifying as you with the bucks fizz on the go in the kitchen playing tetris playing tetris at one hand banging the pots and pans around with the other but just i just thought it was quite interesting to show to show people um how christmas is is kind of observed around the world if you are from iceland you'll listen to this and i've got any of that wrong please do get in touch and correct me and let me know if you've got any stories based on it um but i just thought that was an interesting way to to look at christmas through the eyes of some quite maniacal icelandic people i think that's fair to say it's good stuff well done

that's a lovely little bit of research you did there I'm proud of you a little Christmas miracle before you go right before we go look at this picture of the Icelandic

I've just put it in the in the laps chat on whatsapp look at this picture of a couple of Icelandic traditional Icelandic Christmas trolls that walk up and down

the street during Christmas look at it. I mean, it just shows you what you're dealing with. It's absolutely terrifying. It looks like Hoggle out of Jim Henson's Labyrinth, but absolutely huge. That's how they get stuck into Christmas over in Iceland. And if you're under any doubt of how sinister Christmas can be in Iceland,

the troll on the right, the female troll, is known for leaving her cave, hunting children, carrying them home in her giant sack, and then eating them as her favourite snack. It's the spirit of Christmas. It's what everyone would like to think about at a family time. I love Iceland. It's an amazing country. That is a bit mad.

Yeah. I'm just confused why they eat hot dogs all the time anyway and they're good hot dogs as well they are good hot dogs good hot dogs well that's about it for us for another pre-christmas episode we'll be back with uh with more pre-christmas fun uh on the next show on thursday show we won't be doing batteries but we will indeed be uh giving you a little pre-christmas treat uh by by going through some of your messages and tweets about Christmas traditions. So thank you for everyone who's got in touch and maybe we'll sort of create some of our own this Christmas under your direction.

That'd be very nice. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, so we'll be back next time around with some of those Christmas traditions from you. I'm hoping that there'll be someone from Iceland getting in touch so we can have a little bit of a crossover, but we'll see. But until next time we'll see you we'll see you soon and uh do do uh spread the word five star reviews wherever you listen and hello at luke and peach.com is our email address and we are at luke and peach show on the old social media

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