The Pure Normal Project Radio Show. Carry your hosts Scott Allen and Christina Bowen.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Paranormal Project Radio Show.
This is our special in between Christmas and New Year's show. It's actually pre
recorded, but we're glad to be here tonight with a very special guest.
Hi, Christina, how are you doing? Doing great? Going a little
crazy with the holidays, but I know, I get it, I get
it. But it's almost over. Then we'll be in the dead of winter
and praying for Memorial Day, which is what January first. So our guest
today I don't want to waste any time, is author, explorer, podcaster,
storyteller, adventurer Jeff Balanger. And you know he was on our show,
I don't know last year or the year before now, and he has
a new book out, The Fright Poor Christmas, so I thought what better
time of year to bring him on to talk about his new book. He's
also the host of the new England Legends series on Prime and PBS, and
he also has the podcast of England Legends as well, so we're going to
bring him out. Jeff Balanger, Welcome to the show. How are you
hello? Good to be back with both of you. I am so glad
to have you with us today. How did this How long you been working
on this book? And how did this come out? Yeah, so it's
funny. The it started really about ten years ago, when it was an
early and cold December day and I was hanging lights outside for the holidays.
Half of them didn't work. They worked when I put them in the box
eleven months ago. They are not working now. And then I was putting
a Christmas wreath on my front door. The wreath was plastic, fake,
Everything about it was fake, except the pine cones, but those were still
sprayed with plastic. And the crafting wire I used to attach it to the
door knocker was old and rusted, and it broke and fell to the ground,
and I was just like, humbug. I didn't say humbug, it
was. It was like a string of swears that like somewhere news nowhere hadn't
been invented yet, and you know others were old classics, you know.
I dusted off the hits, played them all, played them all, and
as I sat stood there with my fingers like numb, I was just like,
why am I doing this? I'm a Halloween guy. Why am I
out here in the cold putting the lights up? Why the lights? Why
the evergreens? Why December twenty fifth? Why Santa Claus? Why do we
go into hawk for this one day of the year. Why so much trouble?
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? And I'm the kind
of person that once those questions start knocking around in my head, I don't
really sleep well until I start to find those answers. And then that old
there was a Christmas lyric jumped into my head in that moment, Andy Williams
singing, They'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long
long ago, And I went, all right, what was Andy Williams talking
about? Because when I grew up, I had Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer
and not much else, And so what does he mean scary ghost stories?
I'm a Halloween person. Why should I should just skip this holiday? But
then I started diving in, and I said, all right, I'm gonna
have to break this thing apart into all its original pieces and put it back
together again so I could understand it. And I started to dive in,
and I went, oh, dear Lord, I was always a Halloween person
because I like spooky things. I like spooky, creepy things. And I
would learn through this journey that, oh my, have I been loving the
wrong holiday all these years? Yeah, because Halloween is the second spookiest holiday
of the year. It is a distant, distant, distant second, and
it can't hold a candle to Christmas when it comes to fright factor. And
so it sort of started there. And then I was asked to give a
talk on Cramp this the Christmas Devil, and I went, well, I've
been meaning to look into the old guy a little more anyway, And one
thing just sort of led to another, and so this was all born as
like a stage show where I was telling the story of Christmas and the monsters
in the darkness around it. And then a couple of years ago, publisher
contacted me and said this should be a book, and I said, yeah,
I've been meaning to get to that, and then but I don't want
to just be like another book, and they're like, no, no,
no, no, we want this to be like full color, hardcover,
beautiful, like gift book. And I just went really twisted and sick.
I'm in, I'm in, let's right, Yeah, that's kind of my
wheelhouse, so let's do this and so so it was really it was like
ten years in the making, and many of the stories were crowdsurced sourced.
I would tell the stories in front of live audiences and some would come up
and go, I can't believe you left off whatever, and I'd write it
down and I'd go home and I go, God, that's good. I
I can't believe it. And then you know, the next audience would get
that one, and it just grew and grew. But it turns out and
then also too, I started to get mad. I was raised Roman Catholic,
which I feel like I should divulge here in the beginning. And when
I was growing up, you know, Christmas was a very big deal in
my house, right, and my priest though, father Lawler, kind of
a mean guy for being honest. He I remember him hating Santa Claus and
thinking, what, like I was five years five or six years old and
Santa was coming to our church hall and all the kids there were beyond excited
because I don't know, the world's biggest celebrity is coming. Yeah. Yeah,
So all of a sudden in walks Santa freaking Clause. And he's got
a big sack, and he's got candy canes for all the kids, and
little rapped gifts which turn out to be plastic rosary beats for all the kids,
and what I've always wanted, you know, just like leering at Santa
Claus trying to shoot death lasers out of his eyes, trying to like kill
Santa with his brain. And I remember looking at father Lawla and being like,
what's wrong with you? That's Santa Clause. This guy's literally like bigger
than Jesus. Uh oh oh maybe, oh oh that's why. Oh so
anyway, I think he was sort of telling me in his own angry,
bitter way that this holiday has nothing in the world to do with Jesus.
And boy was he right. He was right. Pagan is the day is
long? Yeah, forgive me. It's as pagan as the day is short.
So yeah, So it turns out all the fuss, all this fuss
is over one thing, and that's the Winter solstice. It is the shortest
day and the longest darkest night. Winter is coming. It's a time to
be afraid. It's a time to ask yourself if you have enough food and
fuel to get through the winter. It's a time to put your bigones aside
and party with your neighbors because we're gonna need each other to get through this
season. And if we've been having arguments all year, it's time for me
to give you gifts and for us to drink and eat together and say I'm
sorry, because if anything goes wrong, I might be knocking at your door
and asking to stay with you, and you might be doing the same.
Mm hmm. And that was it. So that was that was the impetus.
And then there's so many pieces, and I've learned that this holiday was
originally the most inclusive of all holidays. Had nothing to do with what you
believed or didn't believe, or who you prayed to or didn't pray to.
Made no difference if you live in a place where winter's not so easy.
That was it. Holiday was for you, the salstice, whether you want
to call it Saturnalia or Yule or midwinter or Christmas. It was always always
about getting ready to hunker down because the long winter's coming right right, So
so the fright before Christmas, Grampus, where did he fit in? So
if you are trying to explain to your loved ones, especially your children,
about why it's so important that we stay inside. Now, us adults know,
if you wander outside and the cold and the dark and you're caught unprepared,
you will die. You'll die from the elements. You'll you know,
you'll go hypothermic, You'll fall down dead, and that's the end of it.
So whether the elements kill your child or a monster kills your child is
kind of irrelevant. If you teach them this is the time to stay inside.
This is the time to stay safe among your people, because out there
there's literally monsters lurking. Maybe some of these monsters are here to help,
you know, weird twisted sideways around the back kind of way. And so
Crampis was born in Austria, in Germany and in the Mountainous region. He's
many centuries old and he eventually got connected with Saint Nicholas, and Saint Nicholas
was a real historical figure born in Myra modern day Turkey. Because he was
born into a wealthy family, he was an orphan from a young age and
he spent his whole life giving his money away, building orphanages and hospitals and
giving dowries to the poor. And throwing coins through windows. Gave it all
away because that's what made him feel good. And he became the patron saint
for a lot of groups, pawnbrokers for one, it's tailors for another,
and children and children as well. And when he died on December sixth,
which is an important day, December sixth became Saint Nicholas Day. That's the
day that Saint Nicholas brings presents to the good girls and boys around Europe.
And if Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus are one and the same in your head,
anyone listening right now, I'm going to ask you to go ahead and
split them apart, at least for the next hour or so, like the
rest of the world does. Saint Nicholas arrives on December sixth, Santa Claus
comes on December twenty fifth. Certainly plenty of similarities and crossover, However they
are different. So if December sixth is Sa Nicholas Day, December fifth becomes
the day for consequence and judgment. And that's where Crompus fits in. He
comes on down, He arrives often with Saint Nicholas. He's a monster covered
in fur, he's got long horns and a long forked red tongue. He's
covered in chains so you can hear him coming, and he carries a scratchy
sack. And on December fifth, the evening Kropus knocked. He'll come around
and scoop up all the naughty children, stuff him in the sack, bring
him back to his lair and kill them. So come December sixth, Saint
Nicholas Day, Saint Nicholas can bring presents to all the good girls and boys,
because that's all that's left alive. Oh that's a pleasant thought, isn't
that. So it wouldn't it be great joy time of year one day if
we could get rid of all the jerks in the world, like now we're
not doing a show on the purge, that's you know, I mean,
let's face it, I think that would be pretty wonderful. So so that
was that was where it all sort of started. And and if people have
called incorrectly Santa crampis rather the anti Saint Nicholas or the enemy of Saint Nicholas,
not true at all at all. These guys just did the work.
He did the work. They they would arrive together cohorts good cop like that
easy right, And and nor is cramp as evil. You know, every
society needs someone that dolls out the punishment, someone that that you know,
handles that, and that was Crampis. That doesn't mean you can't love your
job, you know what I mean. You are a little twisted, aren't
you. But that doesn't make you evil. You know, you should enjoy
your work. Well, you know, killing the killing the little children,
I don't know. I mean, that's so that's a little bit, that's
that's a little rough. I mean on the surface, sure, yeah,
but over time he became very metaphorical, you know. And and then he
also carries a switch of sticks as you can see behind me. And then
he was known to just beat the naughty children as as to kill them,
just sort of like correcting them. But he was always sort of the consequence
for bad behavior. When I was a kid, I was warned, I'll
get less presents, or at the very worst, I'll have coal and sticks
in my stocking, which is that's what I was told. Yeah, I
mean, you know, you could behave badly for a whole year and colon
sticks, so what you know what I mean, so bad? Yeah,
all the cookies. I stole all the nights I stayed up late. Small
price to pay. There you go, But that's not really much of a
consequence. Crampis and there are many other monsters as well, brings that consequence.
And of course today he's blowing up. He's getting movie deals. You
know, he's in twenty fifteen, the Crampist movie came out. It was
sort of a cult classic. It's getting played year after year. Know this
my Christmas playlist? Yeah? Yeah, you watch It's a Wonderful Life and
then Crampis back to back. Yeah, I want to see a crossover,
you know, or Jimmy Stewart's like, oh hi, what's going on?
You know, that would have been brilliant. Rings Crapus is coming and you
little I need to see that on the big screen. Yeah, I know,
some c g I folks, we could. We're gonna have to start
a gofund me. I guess we can get this done. That would be
awesome. Gosh. Oh yes, So did I mean did you grow up
with scary girls stories or monsters in your well? Not at Christmas time,
although you know I did go to Catholic school, so there was Sister Francis
she carried sticks. Yeah, the consequence. But so you grew up with
the was that our lady of inadvertent flatulence? Is that? Yes, yes,
that's the one. They were rough. They were rough there. They've
turned out many a psychic medium, I assure you. Yes, they literally
beat the psychic right India. Oh my god, I don't see any dead
people. Wam brought me to the edge. Now it's open. I didn't
know I was gonna laugh so much. This is great. So yeah,
so it's really so. The holiday and many, especially northern European countries,
incorporate these various monsters. They're out there lurking in the dangerous, long,
dark, cold night. And then parents discovered that they could use them to
keep their kids in line. And so, uh, anyone who's ever been
a parent and been trying desperately to get just a little bit of quiet time
at night before you yourself have to go to bed, No, at times
you get desperate, and uh, I picture, I mean, imagine,
imagine instead of being told you know Santa's watching, or you know you're gonna
get less presents, imagine just cramp is standing in the corner, just hitting
the sticks against just just sitting quietly, you know, like you're watching your
parents are like, hey, did you take antra cookie Crampis And he just
kind of leans forward. Oh not yet, buddy. Just wait, he's
ready, you know, just he's ready, just hitting the sticks like yep,
watching everybody. I'm ready. Just say the word and I'm on the
job. You know, Santa is time out and Crampis is the time you're
out because he's knock getting you out. I guess we're talking about like misdemeanors
and felonies. Right, that's it. There you go, yea, yeah,
that would be that's a good analogy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. Don't you know there's wildly popular. I mean there was postcards,
lots of postcards. If you want to spend a fun few minutes, go
on Google image search and just type in Crampis postcards. You'll see those old
ones. Yeah. I love those. Yeah, that's what you gave instead
of Christmas cards. You'd send those. And they were wildly popular and Crampis
was everywhere, but around the nineteen teen's nineteen twenties he very quickly went out
of fashion when Sam Clause took over the Christmas holiday. There's a direct one
to one correlation there. You know, once it became about Santa, then
all the monsters had to go away. But Crampis is just one one of
many. Through the very folklore of it. Wasn't the current Santa that everybody
sees and things that wasn't that linked to a Coca Cola advertisement early back then?
Is outfit? Sure is? Yeah, when you when someone says Santa
Claus and you picture in your mind what he looks like. Coca Cola taught
us that in the nineteen twenties. And what was happening was that America was
in a great depression and the only way out of a great depression, economic
depression or recession for that matter, is to spend money. And if you
don't have money, how do you do that? And if you do have
a little bit of money, your instinct is to save it and not spend
it. But Coca Cola came up with this, like they took. Santa
had been evolving since really like the eighteen fifties or so. He showed up
in Harper's magazine. Thomas Nast Twas The Night Before Christmas was written by Clement
Moore that really started to make the figure bigger and bigger. But it was
the nineteen twenties when Coca Cola developed this ad campaign and the thing is it
worked. People bought coke, and then the following year people that sold anything
donuts and pizza, cars and whatever. They were like, wait, wait,
wait, Coca Cola does not own Santa Claus, we could use them
too. And so the world's biggest celebrity was out there promoting for free products
and services everywhere, and America started to crawl out of the Great Depression.
Thanksgiving was moved to the fourth Thursday in November instead of the last Thursday because
retailers needed more time for shopping for Christmas. And what's good for the economy
is good for the America, and then that Christmas squarely became about consumerism at
that point. That's what it was all about. It was about making sure
we spend, spend, spend, and all the monsters, all the consequences
had to go away. That's that's what was so important, was to you
know, make sure that nobody's scared. We want everybody happy, bye bye
bye. And that's where it sat. But I'm here today to warn you
that these monsters are coming back and they're coming back because they're showing up at
pop culture references, they're getting movie deals, they're they're in parades again.
We are bringing back the darker side of this holiday, and I think just
in time to save ourselves. So is your balance, Yeah, yeah,
the good guy, the bad guy. I love that. I'm all about
balance in this world, anyhow. I agree, well also to think about
this in my experience anyway, I don't know of anybody that can't make changes
for the better without fear. Unless you are afraid of something, how can
you like if you know, like it's a good idea to eat more vegetables
and take walks and exercise regularly, you know that that's just everyone does that,
but you know it's tough to put it into practice until your doctor says
you just had a minor cardiac event. The next one could kill you.
If you do ABC and D, you might keep this away and be okay.
And then you say, oh my, I'm not ready to die.
You're scared you make changes. This holiday offers us this inherent darkness, this
inherent danger, and if we face the gauntlet of these ghosts, of these
monsters, then we might come out the other side. Better for it,
and everything can change in one night. And I know a guy who did
change in one night, thanks to some ghosts haunting him. I've heard of
him. Yeah, I believe it was four or or ghosts. The first,
of course, was Jacob Marley, the one everyone forgets. Yes,
yeah, that's the and he's most important. He's the one that shows up
and says to his old business partner, Scrooge, you know I'm covered in
chains, chains I forged in life. They were just as long as yours
seven Christmases ago, this very night, and you've worked on yours ever since.
It's a ponderous chain. But there's a chance for you, Scrooge.
You are going to have to face down three more spirits. And if you
get through this, and Jacob Marley arranged it, he made it happen,
you get through this, you might make it. And Scrooge, of course,
has to face his past. The ghost of Christmas past, see his
lonely self at the boarding house, sees his sister die in childbirth, sees
him self falling in love and then getting his job with old Feziwig, but
then also sees himself falling in love with something else with money, and then
losing the love of his life, and you see him turn into this hardened
man. The Ghost of Christmas Present shows him a world where Christmas cheer is
everywhere, even in the poor houses and workhouses, even at Bob Cratch's house,
where tiny Tim is so sick, and if only they had more money
they could afford medical help and nourishment. And Scrooge is in a position to
do something about that, but chooses not to. And then finally, the
Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows him bleak future where some old guy dies
and people are laughing about it. Good to be rid of him. And
finally, when we see the grave, we realize it's Scrooge. And it's
at that point in the story where all of us who are reading the book
or watching it on TV or play or however you're consuming it, were shocked
because we go, oh, no, oh, no, oh, no,
I realize who Scrooge is. I had no idea He's me. I'm
Scrooge. I'm getting older and crankier. And then in the next morning,
of course, he wakes up to the bells of churches ringing, and everything
is different. He has faced as ghosts, faced as demons, he's run
that gauntlet. He came out the other side, and he can change everything
in one instant. He can start giving to charity. He sends a turkey
to Bob Cratchit, he goes to see his nephews for dinner. Everything is
different in one single night. And that idea of redemption overnight sounds so,
so very good. And it's there for us because of the inherent danger ghosts
and monsters that are lurking in the shadows of the winter solstice. I love
that it's been there for us, right It's I mean the Christmas Carol's been
around since the early eighteen forties, that that story has never gone away.
You know, it shows up year after year. It's we've seen muppets do
it. We've seen it on stage, we've seen it in cartoons. You
know, we've we've won ice yea, yeah. Have you seen it at
north Shore Music Theater? Have you seen their version? So they they've been
doing it for decades. And the man that plays Scrooge is from Texas and
I actually had him on the show last year for this very spot to talk
about his role as Scrooge, and because I thought, you know what's more
paranormal than a Christmas carol, really, you know. And it was a
great it's great how it's all kind of like tied in together like that.
It's so it's such an important story and that you can't say enough what Charles
Dickens did to define in the holiday. The holiday was not a thing.
It was not It was like groundhog Day, like the way you think of
groundhog Day now is how people thought of Christmas then just today, most people
went to work and school and everything else, and Parliament was in session and
all that other stuff. But this book suddenly said like, no, this
is a day, this is this is special, and it's a time to
give to charity. And it's and it's a secular book too. I mean,
you know, the Birth of Jesus is mentioned barely gets one sentence in
the whole book, but it's really about how you're supposed to feel about it.
And what he's doing is he's tapping into centuries of Saturnalia and Yule and
these festivals that have been omnipresent, you know, and so many things we
do today still connect us to those very old ways. When you put up
a Christmas tree, when you put a wreath on your front door, when
you put up lights on your trees outside, when you baked goods, when
you make eggnog and get drunk with friends, when you go to your office
party and get loaded. You know you are participating in Saturday A. Yeah,
you're participating in Yule. Right, it shines through. But we fooled
ourselves into thinking like, oh, this is how we celebrate Christmas. And
it is. But it was not wrong because the Church took what was already
happening, though exactly, and rolled it into their own version. And that's
super modern. I mean, Christians have been at war with Christmas since about
three point thirty six AD until like nineteen seventy. You know, they literally
banned it. When the Puritans were in charge of British Parliament, they banned
Christmas. They called it satanical. To dress fine, give gifts, make
merry, you'd be fined five shillings, which is about three days wages for
the working class. Back then, and even when the band was lifted,
preachers were preaching from the pulpit, we do more to dishonor Christianity in the
twelve days of Christmas than in all twelve months combined. And they were they
were furious with the holiday because it was so so pagan, and then finally
somewhere along the way they just sort of gave up and said it was ours
all along. Don't say, you know, Jesus is the reason for the
season. And all we know is that if it were important, if the
birth story of Jesus was important, it would get a lot more ink in
the Bible. It gets hardly a mention, And and if the date was
important, that would be told to you in the Bible. It's not.
It's just all we know is that shepherds were sleeping out in the field at
night keeping watch over their flock. And in Bethlehem they did that in the
spring, summer, and fall. They did not do it, which means,
you know, we can rule out December. But you know here,
no there, right, we know they just picked a day. No,
they didn't pick a day. It was a pagan day. But I mean
it wasn't the day, the actual day, no, no, right,
yeah, of course, yes, the actual celebration. It was the celebration
of the birth, but it wasn't the anniversary of the birth. And so
that happened with the Emperor Constantine in Rome. He was the first Christian emperor.
He's trying to unify Rome. Jesus was born a commoner. That's a
very important part of the Christian story and Christianity. Of course, hinges on
Easter, not on Christmas. What defines you as a Christian is that you
believe in Easter everyone is born, all of us are born. But the
death and resurrection, that's not something everybody does, and so that's what defines
Christianity. Easter is the very biggest holiday in Christianity. From a theological perspective,
it's just nobody, but nobody got the memo right exactly. But the
Emperor Constantine was trying to sell Jesus to the Romans. He was trying to
unify under one religion. Didn't ban the others. Knew he couldn't ban Saturnalia,
which was December seventeenth to the twenty third. But he knew if Jesus
is going to be a king, not just a king, but a king
of kings, he needs a birthday, and he knows the perfect birthday is
December twenty fifth, because in the Jewel calendar, the twenty fifth was the
winter solstice, and that was the festival of Saul and victis this sun God.
It's the shortest day, but it's also marks the day where the sun
starts to return, and there's the light, so it's coming back, and
it will build and build all the way until the summer solstice, when you
get the longest day and the shortest night. And so so that was it.
He thought that was a perfect day to celebrate Jesus. You have,
you have this raging party. The seventeenth to the twenty third, one day
for the hangover. On the twenty fourth, twenty fifth, we party again.
And Christians were at war with that date right up until very modern times.
Here we are and here we are. So so your book is it?
Is it? Is that all of that? Or is it really doesn't
focus on Crampus. No, it's not just Crampus as one chapter. Jesus.
I mean, let's face it, he's sexy, he's got the movie
deal, dines in the restaurants we can't get into. You know, he's
on the list, he sells, he sells. But no, I cover
the whole history of Christmas, how we got here, how we got to
December twenty fifth, The history of Saint Nicholas, the history of Santa Claus
and then the many other monsters that lurk, not just Crampis, but you
know, Iceland has got stuff that's even worse right, and brings us the
Grilla, And crampis no, that's the Matti load from Wales. That's the
dead horse that rises from the grave to try to get in your house for
treats and alcohol, which is awesome too. So the Grilla is the she's
she's an ogre who lives up in the mountains, and she's got thirteen tails,
and she comes down around the winter solstice. And unlike Cramp, like,
if you're a good person, you don't have to worry about crampis not
your concern. Grila, on the other hand, does not discriminate good kids
bad kids. Makes no difference. If you're wandering out in the woods,
she will scoop you up, bring you back to her lair, cut you
up, cook you in a stew and eat you. Oh, my parents
are happy to tell this story in Iceland. So when Iceland was first settled
only about eleven hundred years ago, there were no people there. When the
Europeans first arrived, it was covered by ice, you know, much before
that. But there were trolls and monsters and imcen fairies and all kinds of
magical creatures. And as they started to settle into as the people started to
settle into villages and towns, those creatures got pushed up into the mountains.
But on the salstice they come down to collect what's owed to them, their
rent, if you will. And so the Grila is the queen, the
matriarch of the whole dysfunctional family. And also you have to understand too,
in reikievic the capital right now, the round the salstice, there's about four
hours of sunlight. That's it. That the sun rises and sets in like
four hours. If you go further north, it's less and if you get
to the very northern tip of Iceland, you're almost at the Arctic circle,
where there is no sunrise. It is total darkness. This is the time
we stay inside, we stay safe, We keep our children inside because there
are monsters lurking out there and it's dangerous. So the Grila she also has
she's in charge of the Ulads, who are these thirteen trolls that come down
one by one throughout the month of December and stay at your home for two
weeks and mess with you, Like one month, steal your cow's milk.
One will, you know, lick your spoons clean after dinner. Another peeps
through your window, Another steals your meat, another steals your candles, another
steals your yogurt. And they just all come, you know, all throughout
the month, and it's a wild time. And Iceland, I mean even
on the news each night they'll say, like tonight is the you know,
the sheep Coke Claude who will come and poke your sheep, So watch out
for that. Yeah, and he stays for two weeks. So this lore
and legend ties us back to really ancient ways and reminds us that, you
know, there's there's other stuff out there, and Iceland's amazing. Iceland they'll
re route highways because they believe that's like a troll rock. You know,
you can't blast that rock. We're going to go around it. I've heard
that. So that's amazing, you know, like that's they take it seriously.
And so the Grila has become also part of their own pop culture.
If you land at the Reikivic Airport right now, there will be a giant
cauldron with a big ogre witch like stirring in it, and you can get
in the cauldron and get your picture taken with the with the greela like we
do Malsanta. They've got that, which is also I know, right,
I know. And there's so so many like of these various monsters, all
across various cultures. Every country almost has their own version of something. And
it's uh, I think it's a wonderful way to connect to the darker side.
The balance, as you were saying, Christine, the balance. Yeah,
like you just can't. Did you ever eat like like some cake that
was just too damn sweet? Yeah, and then you've got to go and
have chips to balance it out. That's what we did to Christmas. We
made the cake too sweet, you know something else and and and we're collectively
working on that right this very minute. You know that it's changing, and
I think changing for the better. This stuff speaks to something very ancient and
primal in all of us, something I think a lot of people, and
especially in today's society, that we have forgotten. Yeah this, you know,
we've forgotten where we come from, and we've made up all these fancy
stories to explain things. And then we have these big parties and they said
everybody's forgetting where the roots of it where it started. Yeah, and it's
but it's always been there. It always, it always had a way to
shine through even when you no matter what label you slapped on it, whether
you're hanging mistletoe or or eating a yulog speaking of cakes that are too sweet?
Right, that used to be a tree that you burned, you know
it was. There's so many things that sort of made their way through and
which I think is amazing. What a test of it to these old ways
that they make it through all the way to present day, even if people
don't understand why they're doing it or where it came from. And I think
that's really sort of wonderful. So now you know, last year I started
a new tradition where I make my own wreath. I actually go out in
the woods and I pull evergreen branches and I twist them into a wreath and
all this other stuff. And it came out horrible. It's a mess,
But I will say this, it worked. Those prickly needles kept the bad
cheer outside and the good cheer inside. It meant something As a green witch.
This warms my heart. That's what I do. I've orangees drying right
now to hang. So but so you do it instead of just putting a
fake plast greath on my door. Because my dad did it, and my
dad's dad did it, and my neighbors do it, and it looks nice
and all that other stuff it has meaning, I'm putting it up with intent
to keep the bad stuff outside and keep the good stuff inside. This tree
is more powerful than winter. Our ancestors didn't pick it arbitrarily. I mean
they would look out of the landscape and see that winter killed everything. It
killed the flowers and the grass and the trees. They're just skeletons, kills,
the ponds and the lakes frozen solid. But then you go, wait
a minute, wait a minute, what's that tree? That winter can't kill
it. It must be magical, It must be powerful. There must be
something about it. And so we take those branches and we put them over
our doors and windows, and we put them, you know, in wreaths
over our doors to keep the bad spirits out. Spirits we can clearly hear,
by the way, because in the wintertime you hear this shrieking, howling
sound that you don't hear in the spring, summer or fall, and you
could say, well, it's just the wind whipping through the trees, or
you could say those are the cries of the vanquished foe of the Norse god
Odin as he rides through the sky and his wild hunt. And if I
don't protect myself, they'll get in. And if they get in, then
things aren't going to go well for me. And we still do that,
which I think is so cool. Well, what about the trees, like
the Christmas trees? Yes, so the Christmas tree. Well again, this
is the one tree more powerful than winter like. You don't need to be
a botanist or otherwise to figure that out. Just look look outside, see
what's still alive. And so our ancestors knew it too. It provides you
shelter if you're stuck outside. You know, it's some shape and some protection
from the wind and everything else. This tree is absolutely something about It is
powerful. And not only that, when our ancestors would make a kill in
the winter, they would pull the entrails of the animal out and drape it
around the evergreens. Two reasons. One is to make an offering to the
tree. The other is that other animals could pick that clean and they too
could survive the winter. And I want everybody to really let that sink in
and think about it. If you're ever stringing popcorn and cranberries to put his
garland around your Christmas tree, well that's just a completely different visual. I
say, let's have a more traditional Christmas this year. Get yourself some entrails,
put them around the tree. I know the smell is going to be
awful, it'll be terrible, but that an orange will cover it. Yeah,
you'll need a few oranges. But when people walk in and go,
oh my god, what is that, you could say that is the smell
of an authentic and traditional Christmas? Thank you very much. You can start
out with some sausage links. It might be easier to go and have to
kill something. Sure, sure, sure, yeah, but that's it.
I mean, think about how Intestine like cranberries and popcorn. Look, that's
what you're doing. You're you're literally recreating the entrails around a tree. Fascinating,
beautiful, really just it's a lovely thought. Yeah. I know,
I know, right, you thought you were just going to get like a
monster story and you finally understand so wrong, are wrong? They have to
have a lot of guts to come in and tell a story like that,
I tell you, Yeah, but he's always good for a dad joke,
always, so yeah, so many, so many great traditions are born from
this, this holiday and now growing up too, I remember I had Jewish
friends and I was like, this sucks. You know, Santa doesn't visit
you, Like, what's up with that? Is any anti semi you know?
And and then I realized, I was like, but he could.
You know, Santa does not have to be exclusively Christian at all. And
you could put up a tree, and you could put up lights. Those
are not Christian symbols whatsoever, you know, and you not doing that is
your own choice. Obviously no one has to. But don't tell yourself you're
not doing it because oh that those that's what Christians do. I mean,
yes, it is what they do, but it's it's not their symbol either.
And so I think, if you like the lights, if you think
they're pretty, put them up, you know, put them up. Yeah.
And we do it, by the way, because we literally want to
be a beacon during this long, dark, dangerous night in winter, that
that we want to find our way back home in the dark. We want
our neighbors and friends to be able to find us if they need us.
That's what we Yeah, that's why we do it. It's not just to
run up the electric bills and you know it's order to outdo our neighbors,
but it's it's it's something that that has that always had meaning. We need
to be beacons in this this long dark night. I love that. So
this is just all right up my alley. I'm I'm a blend of all
the different traditions. So because I have a Christmas tree, but I also
celebrate Yule, sure, and you know so I blend it all together.
Right, Well, that's that to me, that's redundant. Like the Christmas
tree and celebrating Yule goes hand in hand. That's now it's saying I'm a
Christian with a Christmas tree. That's blending traditions. Right. I celebrate the
birth of Jesus and I put entrails on my Christmas tree. That's blending traditions.
You're just you're being consistents this year. Maybe you do you you know,
all good, all good? Yeah, stick to the cinnamon sticks and
oranges. Yeah, totally fine and understandable. Probably smells better the other thing
too, though. I remember thinking about how I didn't grow up with crampis
and being disappointed. Only now in hindsight, and I've I've had a good
talk with my parents about it. We've worked it out, you know.
I said, why didn't I have crampis? And they're like, we didn't
know. But then I thought about it, and I said, you know
what crampis was in my childhood. He was in yours too, By the
way, I need you to think back. He was there, he was
green, and he lived on Mount Crumpets. Yes, he was there just
to look the same as you know him now. He was there. He
was just on green. It was green. Uh. He didn't have horns,
but his hair could like curl into like don Mount Crumpet. A long
of similarities there that I never made that connection. Yeah. So anyway,
am I here tonight to accuse doctor SEUs of plagiarism? Yes, yes,
accused Doctor Seuss. The Grinch worked because he probably was something a little bit
familiar. There was something about him. You're like, I like this Grinch.
I don't know why, but he wasn't out killing the kids. But
you know, yeah, there's there's a story. But there's an old adage
right that talent borrows, but genius steals. Oh, I hadn't heard that
one doctor Seuss was a genius. Well he was. Yeah, No,
I know, I get I get it, and I get that like the
idea of all this can be really uncomfortable for some people because it's just the
antithesis of everything they thought how things are supposed to work. But if you
read the old Grim fairy tales, the originals the shit they really are.
Yeah, of course they are the originals, but they've disneyfied everything. And
yep, they used to teach you a lesson and now they don't. Well,
the lessons learned when it's extreme. And so for example Cinderella, right
in the original Grim Tales, when the wicked stepsisters were trying on the glass
slipper, one of them cut their toes off to try to wedge it into
the glass slipper, and they filled the glass slipper with blood. Couldn't get
her foot in. The other one cut her heel off, also filling it
with blood. Again, you'd think someone would watch that and go, you
know what, No, didn't work, This isn't your shoe clearly flipped by
Walt Disney. Somehow got didn't make it to the final edit of the cartoon
Disney version. But the grim Tails were meant to be tough because number one,
we know, we know as adults there's monsters in the world. Yeah,
no question, you know. You have the news. In Bulgaria,
they have the Cara Concolis who comes out during the twelve days of Christmas,
the days they call the Unbaptized Days the Unholy Days. And the Cara Concolus
is a subterranean bigfoot with glowing red eyes and claws, and he's covered in
fur, and he comes out at sundown and he's going to try to jump
on your back and claw at you until dawn before he has to go underground
again. But he's a shape shifter. He can look like anyone and anything,
and he's also sort of keeping tabs on you. And so I love
that story because that is the most authentic monster, I think in the world,
because we know, we know when we watch the news that there are
monsters. As we just said, they do horrible things. They killed people,
hurt people, shoot people, you know, in groups. And the
thing is if they had like glowing red eyes and were eight feet tall and
covered in fur and had razor claws. We would just know to run.
That's easy. You see that real monsters look just like us, and that
is the frightening thing of all. And so yeah, let me tell you
about the Cara Concolus. Maybe that's just a regular old person, or maybe
it's a monster in disguise. And we have to really be careful when we're
out there among strangers or even people we thought we knew, because you never
know. And so all of these stories, all these legends, all these
monsters, have a moral to them that that we you know, we teach
our children and we tell each other because we need to keep the bad cheer
away. We need to be safe, we need to be careful, and
we need to be positive and look out for each other because winter is coming
and it's coming again next year, you know. And it's not just a
thing from a series on HBO. It's not just Game of Thrones, right,
Winter is coming very very soon. And so and once it's here,
you know that we got to figure it out. We got to get through
this. So oh sorry, Jeff, go ahead. Did these stories change
in places where they didn't have the cold and the darkness of winter the way
that we do here. They did not catch on like they do in southern
parts because you know, so many of those stories also made their way through
England, and England as you probably no colonize the world right at one point
the sun never said on the British Empire, Australia, New Zealand, South
Africa, Singapore, you know, I mean the Brits spread far and wide
and took their stories with them. But you know, when it's Christmas Day
and you're at the beach sipping my tie in the Caribbean, it's a little
bit so. So I've always said, like, how do you see the
light when you're on a beach on a bright sunny day with like the surf
tickling your toes, You don't see the light. The light is everywhere,
things are fine, you know, you see the light when you get into
a very dark place. That's when you can see the light. So these
these monsters did not travel well to southern climates. They they stay north to
where winter was really a force to be reckoned with and still is. You
know, even though today we've got door dash and you know heat that we
can just turn up like hit it. A few degrees if we can afford
that. You know, well, there's those of us that still have their
childhood collection of coal. I'm still working on, so nice from just being
naughty all those which is ironic, which means being naughty paid off. There
you go, right, like, oh, I'm keeping warm, this is
right. Oh it's so warm. Oh that's nice. Thank goodness. That
was such a brat. I could keep warm for years on this. Thanks
Mom and Dad or whoever brought me that coal. Yeah, I get it.
Yeah. So so yeah, there was a time when colon sticks was
like, oh, thank god, we're freezing, right, you know,
we're going to this. Yeah, we're gonna toast right up. I love
that. Oh gosh. So so anyway, I was trying to save Christmas,
even if it was just for me. You know, I was trying
to, like say, like, because when I was young, Christmas was
a drug. You know. I was high on that drug from the time
the dessert fork played on Thanksgiving until the ball dropped on New Year's Eve.
And as I got older, a lot of that magic went away until it
was really not even there at all anymore. Then I had a kid,
and a lot of that magic came back, which was awesome. But now
she's sixteen and she's she's over it, you know, and but I still
find it. You know. I found it again because of what it means.
And even though she's sort of over it, I'm still trying to be
like, hey, I don't care whether you love it or hate it.
There's still magic to be found and had in this holiday, and I'm going
to work on that, even if it's just for me. And at the
end of the day, it takes your whole life to sort of realize,
like, I can't control you, even though you're my kid, Like I
have to do this for me, and maybe it'll just sort of radiate outwards.
I don't know, but at the very least, I want to be
happy, absolutely absolutely. And it's so funny we're having this conversation because Christina
and I have been having a conversation over the last several weeks about you can't
see the light without the darkness. The darkness makes the light shine brighter.
So bring on the monsters, bringing them on, Bring them all on,
Get scared, get frightened, cower in the corner, just like they did
in the Crampist movie. Right, yes, everybody huddled together. And but
you gotta look back and once again this is the family united YEP around a
common enemy and it brought them together. So are monsters really a bad thing?
I don't think they are. I mean there must be. That's why
we keep them. And the Crampist movie say what you will about it on
his artistic merit, But like they nailed the spirit, Crampus is here for
us. Crampis was waiting in the shadows. H He wasn't angry. He
was just waiting for us to call him. That was it. He was
just like he was just filing his fingernails, going I'm here when you need
me, just just let me know. And and he got the movie deal
and and now he's in. My parents live in this little town in Connecticut,
and they have a Christmas parade which looks like any small town Christmas parade.
You can imagine the fire trucks, the marching band from high school kids
marching Sannah. But they also had a Crampus last year, really wandering through
their parade and people are going, who's that and why is that here?
But if you know, you know, and first started conversations, absolutely,
what's crampis? Why is crampis here, and I mean that parade, forget
it. He's probably right behind you, like he's right behind me. That's
fascinating, you know. Uh so, so yeah, no, he's coming
back. I got to attend a few years ago. The New England Crampus
Society has an annual ball, and of course Covid derailed that for a few
years, but it's happening again and I went last year. It was at
the Narragansett Brewery in Providence, Rhode Island, and it was all these crampuses
walking around and beer, So I mean it's perfect, but yeah, I
know, right, it was great. So so there's people that are celebrating
Crampis and and everything that cramp Is represents, and I think that I welcome
it. I totally welcome it because we need to be having these conversations and
realizing there's stuff that's much older, that's we've seen little peaks of it here
and there, but I think it's coming in having a renaissance right now.
So we only have a couple of minutes left. Believe it or not,
we've gone through almost all of our time. So Jeff, your book,
where's the best place to get it. It's gone. Amazon sold out,
we books a million just sold out. Online bookshop dot org sold out.
There's a few stores out there that still have it. There's an audiobook version
that that I narrate, and that's that you can get that won't run out.
You can get that in the electronic ebook or kindle or whatever. That's
that won't run out again. But the first their own Yeah, yeah,
I mean, so the first printing, first edition is just about pretty much
gone. If you're if you find one, hold on to it because it'll
I mean, I'm sure next year we'll see another another printing of it.
But this first one went faster than any of us could have ever guessed,
and the publisher printed a lot. Now is that something you're going to print
mostly at the holidays or do you think you'll get it all year round?
You think, I mean, people get it. The publisher they've already ordered
some to be that, but they don't expect them until March. And okay,
no one thinks this. No one expects this book to sell much in
the spring or the submar right, It's just people that are just that forward
thinking, you know. But in the fall, you know, they'll there'll
be another reprint and it will be out again next year. And that's the
beautiful thing about a Christmas story, is it It can come out year after
year. So yeah, the response to this book was nothing. I like,
nothing I'd ever seen. They just sold out so fast. That's great.
Yeah, so we'll see, we'll see what happens next year. And
but I also I really believe in the story, and I think it sold
out so fast because it must have resonated with others too, And and that
now we're you know, looking for that, everybody's still looking for balance.
I believe that. Yeah, so I'm doing my part, doing my part
to summon these monsters from the dark recesses of the holiday and say come on
back. We need you, we need we need you so badly to balance
this thing out and help us figure it out again and be a little more
inclusive than we used to be. That's great, And anything else coming up.
I know you still have your show, New England Legends. You've got
that, You've got the podcast, and you're still on You're still on Prime
and yeah, yeah, we're still still working on new podcast episodes every week
and that's still going. Still working on Ghost Adventures We're about to start filming
our next season next week or two weeks. Wow, yeah, very soon.
The next season starts filming again. And yeah, and still always working
on new projects and pitching ideas. You never know when one catches on,
and then working on that so well. Jeff, thank you so much for
being here. It's been a real pleasure having you back, hearing all about
Christmas. I want to wish everyone a very happy new year. Will see
you in twenty twenty four. Christina, Jeff, thank you so much.
Have a wonderful night, everybody. Take care, Thank you, thank you.
You've been listening to The Paranormal Project radio show with Scott Allen and Christina
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