Speaker 1: Oh Bedard, Hello, and welcome to the show. This is
Speaker 1: the Cult of Conspiracy and I am the Cage to Night.
Speaker 1: I'm Raven Lee, and today we are going to continue
Speaker 1: on this week of holiday cheer and merriment and some
Speaker 1: controversy as we go into to some of the more
Speaker 1: obscure Christmas traditions from around the world. Some of these
Speaker 1: are good cult members have probably heard of before. Some
Speaker 1: of them I certainly had never heard of before we
Speaker 1: started this episode, or if I have. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things where you completely forget about and here we are.
Speaker 1: You know, some of these we're gonna start off talking about,
Speaker 1: like the your Welsh, you know with the horse and
Speaker 1: the horse head, the merry Eleude, probably mispronouncing that because
Speaker 1: I don't speak Welsh. Hell, Welsh people don't even speak Welsh.
Speaker 2: But I can't even place their accent in my mind.
Speaker 3: Like I know it's a very distinct accent, but I
Speaker 3: cannot feel life me like think about what it sounds
Speaker 3: like in my mind right now.
Speaker 1: Their language has almost no linguistic family ties to any
Speaker 1: other language on Earth.
Speaker 2: They just like made it up.
Speaker 1: It's it's like Celtic, but it has no bearing as
Speaker 1: far as the Gaelic or the Pictic Celtic languages are concerned,
Speaker 1: I've heard reports saying the closest relative is like ancient
Speaker 1: Hebrew mixed with some sort of a Gaelic tongue. And
Speaker 1: it's like, how the fuck did this happen? Because whales
Speaker 1: be doing whales shit. That's just where we're at with it.
Speaker 1: What I don't it makes no sense to me.
Speaker 3: It's amazing to me how languages happen and then they translate,
Speaker 3: and then they continue to change throughout time. But they
Speaker 3: also have stuff that is stuck around for generations that
Speaker 3: make absolutely no fucking sense.
Speaker 2: And it's like, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: All right, it does kind of tie in. And this
Speaker 1: is super weird tangent, but in line with Christmas and
Speaker 1: things like that. Cross Actually this is a weird Easter tangent,
Speaker 1: but whatever, take bear with me here. So Joseph Avermathea,
Speaker 1: who if those who don't know, was Jesus's uncle, who
Speaker 1: was the one that bought and paid for the tomb
Speaker 1: he was buried, and that was Mary's older brother. He
Speaker 1: was a merchant, and he brought in ten from Britannica,
Speaker 1: which would be where the ten minds were or I
Speaker 1: mean ten is a mixture of copper and press. But
Speaker 1: where that was at was in what would now be Wales.
Speaker 1: So to say that there's a weird Hebrew and Gallic crossover,
Speaker 1: at least at the turn of the first line AD,
Speaker 1: there is some sort of a chain of events that
Speaker 1: would lead someone to make such a speculation. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I had no idea who that was. I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: I was just like, sure, some another another, dude.
Speaker 2: I'm really terrible with names.
Speaker 3: I have learned this as everybody keeps talking about names,
Speaker 3: and like people.
Speaker 2: Are like, yo, you know this person, this person. I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: I don't fucking know. These people. Tell me what they did,
Speaker 2: and like maybe they'd show me who they look like.
Speaker 2: And then I'm like, oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the faces I got all day? What people
Speaker 3: have done? Got you their names? I'm like, no idea, nope, nothing, zero,
Speaker 3: I can't hell.
Speaker 2: People will tell me their name and like two seconds later,
Speaker 2: I'm like, what was that person's name?
Speaker 1: Again? Yeah? Oh no, I'm horrible with it. I am
Speaker 1: sold me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't you remember me.
Speaker 3: I was like, yo, I will never forget your face ever,
Speaker 3: period ever. Same, but I do not know your name.
Speaker 3: And then I tried the whole thing of where you
Speaker 3: talk back, like you say the name back to the
Speaker 3: person as.
Speaker 2: You're talking to them multiple times to try to remember.
Speaker 1: I still am like, Betty, Joe, I haven't got like
Speaker 1: house Bunny, repeat it back like a monster, Joe, and
Speaker 1: it like helps you. That's not real. That's that doesn't work.
Speaker 3: You're supposed to like repeat it back, I think five
Speaker 3: times within the same conversation, so your brain registers their
Speaker 3: name to their associating and I'm like, there's no way
Speaker 3: you should see my phone in the people's names in
Speaker 3: my phone and how they're labeled is absolutely asinine, Like
Speaker 3: the most ridiculous, like person through drive through that I
Speaker 3: saw Joe, and it's like who I worked.
Speaker 1: With a dude for three years. He was like one
Speaker 1: of my best friends. I have no fucking clue what
Speaker 1: his name was. We still don't talk sometimes, you know.
Speaker 2: Look, I actually I laugh because I laugh because I
Speaker 2: actually lived in this Because so I lived in the
Speaker 2: barracks and like I lived with people for you.
Speaker 1: With the name time the shirt.
Speaker 2: With name tapes on their on their actual uniforms, and
Speaker 2: I still was like, who's that guy.
Speaker 1: Yo.
Speaker 2: He lives on the second floor, like halfway down the hall,
Speaker 2: you know, so and so oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: I drink with him at one point. Couldn't tell you
Speaker 1: his fucking name because I met him as civilian attire.
Speaker 2: People People will like message it like uh, Facebook, request
Speaker 2: me or whatever, and I'm like, who are you again,
Speaker 2: And then I'll see their faces oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah, and I'm like, wait, that's that person's name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how what? And then you meet somebody who, like
Speaker 1: you get a total name and you're like, that's obviously
Speaker 1: a nickname. All right. Cool. One of my boys, Winter
Speaker 1: corn uh, I swear to god Winter corn Yep, that's
Speaker 1: his actual legal last name. I thought it was a
Speaker 1: joke because this dude looked albino, and I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm.
Speaker 2: The most crazy, absolutely insene last names in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 2: They are the most like made up bullshit fixtional names
Speaker 2: like what.
Speaker 1: Well names are crazy like that, and especially and you
Speaker 1: know that I'm a hater of AI, specifically chat GPT.
Speaker 1: But here I was trying to make a crazy Australian
Speaker 1: joke and apparently it thinks that I am a vassal
Speaker 1: to the King of Norway and England, because apparently, according
Speaker 1: to chat GPT, I am of the liege of Canute.
Speaker 1: You mean I was going for country. But chat GPT
Speaker 1: was like, Canute, Did you mean Canute? Yes, clearly, clearly,
Speaker 1: I am trying to reach out to my homeboy, Canute.
Speaker 1: What are we talking about here? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Oh man, I want to think about some of the names.
Speaker 3: I'm going to try to remember this because this is
Speaker 3: so not on topic of what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: But I got it. It was like a weird like dick
Speaker 2: names like I like, no, like like the name itself
Speaker 2: was Dick something, No, Dick something, and.
Speaker 3: The names in the Marine Corps. I would see people's
Speaker 3: name tapes and I would stare at them and I'm like,
Speaker 3: you're really that's really your name.
Speaker 2: Somebody somewhere along the way, somehow adopted this name or
Speaker 2: made this name being your family's name.
Speaker 1: I'm what, Yeah, it's like, it's weird.
Speaker 2: It's a weird life out there with your names.
Speaker 1: Taking role John Foot Penis Actually it's handcock now, why
Speaker 1: none your goddamn business. That's why it's strange. It's the thing.
Speaker 2: But back to our Christmas festivities. We are now on
Speaker 2: what day? Three?
Speaker 1: We all three?
Speaker 3: So now we are on Christmas Eve, we will be
Speaker 3: this will be dropping on Christmas Eve. And this is
Speaker 3: all about obscure, unique, fun funny, uh interesting traditions around
Speaker 3: the world. I don't know if we have any from
Speaker 3: back in the day, and I think we have a
Speaker 3: few that come from like back in the day. A
Speaker 3: lot of the traditions have been from way back bled
Speaker 3: into future that have kind of shifted and changed over
Speaker 3: the time. I'm jingling if anybody keeps hearing the bells.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm jingling everyone, which it's my It's mentioninger Bread.
Speaker 1: This is gonna kind of be an all encompassing episode.
Speaker 1: So if it sounds like it's a shot out of
Speaker 1: a cannon and we're over here in this country, we're
Speaker 1: talking Portugal. Now we're talking Japan. Now we're talking scanned Navy. Look,
Speaker 1: just just roll with it. Is the eighty d fucking
Speaker 1: fever dream on this one.
Speaker 2: Just come with us on this journey.
Speaker 1: Ooh, and I can't wait to talk about Japan because
Speaker 1: I just learned a whole lot about the kernel. What
Speaker 1: a raging piece of shit.
Speaker 3: Oh oh man, I know if I know a bunch
Speaker 3: about him, but I will say I'm excited.
Speaker 2: About the poop blog, the poop yeah blog. I'm so
Speaker 2: excited because, like, we just have to bring in the poop.
Speaker 1: I had no idea about Hanky.
Speaker 2: Mister Hanky has to come in of Catalonia.
Speaker 1: And I feel like in episodes past, in Christmas specials past,
Speaker 1: we might have touched on it a bit, but I
Speaker 1: don't think we really did much talking about it because
Speaker 1: it sounded like it was almost an internet thing.
Speaker 3: It does sound like I first, I really thought it
Speaker 3: was a joke. So then I actually had to pull
Speaker 3: up an actual article all about the pooplog because it's real.
Speaker 2: It's a thing, and it sounds like.
Speaker 1: We're making a joke, like a poop a log like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: an actual.
Speaker 2: It's actually like parentheses poop blog, pooplog.
Speaker 1: Like it's a log that you beat it and it
Speaker 1: shit's presence. We're gonna get to it, you know what,
Speaker 1: We're gonna get to it.
Speaker 2: I'm here for it, and I know there.
Speaker 1: Was a whole industry of making these bitches for porcelain,
Speaker 1: and shit.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: It's a weird one, so good. Cult members if you
Speaker 1: would like to see all of the crazy things that
Speaker 1: we're gonna have pulled up here, we're gonna be going
Speaker 1: back and forth between articles and just looking at our
Speaker 1: gorgeous faces. Then what you need to do is go
Speaker 1: to Patreon dot com slash Cult of Conspiracy Podcasts. That
Speaker 1: is the only place to get the video of all
Speaker 1: of these episodes. And also it is the only place
Speaker 1: where you can get these episodes. Absolutely yes, and d
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Speaker 3: Yo ad suck they do so much and get behind
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we are gonna start posting a lot more behind
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Speaker 3: Actually, we actually have quite a few people that we
Speaker 3: need to give a shout out to, not right now because.
Speaker 2: I have to pull it up. I mean, you hang
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Speaker 3: Tara, that's uh Tara, Samuel Tater Ashton croisver croisver kros
Speaker 3: vib crois vib maybe crossive crossive?
Speaker 2: Sure that sounds.
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Speaker 3: My mom signed up. Hey mama and my uncle love you.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, good morning, Babylon. Good morning. What did I
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Speaker 2: Good morning, good morning, Good morning Babylon.
Speaker 3: Dustin, Justin, Mark, Todd, Adam and David all within this
Speaker 3: last week have joined all different tiers. We got actually
Speaker 3: quite a few people that have joined third I all
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Speaker 3: few of these lovely people have actually signed up for
Speaker 3: the entire year. So shout out to each and every
Speaker 3: one of you, and thank you so much for supporting us.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, we love all of you, each and every
Speaker 1: one of you, and that is the best place to
Speaker 1: get to us directly through DMS. We are doing better
Speaker 1: as far as responding to the social medias and things,
Speaker 1: but it is it's time. It's a bitch. You'll you'll
Speaker 1: have days where you might have five people that message
Speaker 1: and that's awesome. You'll have other days or there's two
Speaker 1: hundred unread messages just awaiting you, and it's like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I'll get to it here in a bit now, I
Speaker 1: have like five other things to do beside the point.
Speaker 1: If you would like to DM us directly, that is
Speaker 1: the best place to do so. Without further ado, I
Speaker 1: am going to go ahead and share the screen at
Speaker 1: this time and we are gonna get into the wild,
Speaker 1: wild world of Christmas, all right. So to start off here,
Speaker 1: we are gonna go for taste of home dot com
Speaker 1: sounds good, sounds homely, and fourteen Christmas traditions you've probably
Speaker 1: never heard of. And again, some of these you may
Speaker 1: have heard of, some of them you may not have
Speaker 1: heard of. And I just think it's good to go
Speaker 1: over the big ones here. Okay, so let's talk about
Speaker 1: Kentucky Christmas eating.
Speaker 2: We're gonna touch on that one here in a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a matter of fact, we're gonna just skip over
Speaker 1: this one for now eating KFC for dinner in Japan.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's a huge Christmas tradition. We have a whole
Speaker 1: article independent of this one, actually going on deep on
Speaker 1: that one. So now number two hanging mushroom ornaments on
Speaker 1: the tree. And by mushroom ornaments, I do mean like
Speaker 1: the red ones that look like they're on Mario, which
Speaker 1: you know, it's quite whimsical.
Speaker 2: Get really cute.
Speaker 1: Honestly, No, folks who hang mushrooms all over their tree
Speaker 1: aren't serious fung guy fans. In parts of Germany and Austria,
Speaker 1: these red and white mushrooms are said to bring good fortune,
Speaker 1: known as glux pills. Wow, that's a real thing, all right,
Speaker 1: the glus pills.
Speaker 3: You're probably saying, it's so fucking wrong.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to say. Okay, maybe if I
Speaker 1: said it more angry because it's German glucks poles se
Speaker 1: glukes pills. I don't. I don't know either way.
Speaker 2: I want to put a hot on everything now because
Speaker 2: you don't do I know, but because of Royce. Now,
Speaker 2: I just want to be like, cospill.
Speaker 1: Tell me about it. My last name. It's a motherfucker
Speaker 1: because it's the ch is supposed to be like, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, I'm not doing it. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: but when the German dude got to Louisiana and the
Speaker 1: French nuns were like, h our language doesn't have that
Speaker 1: phlem noise. We got the cud noise though, got that,
Speaker 1: and so we do there it is anyway, it was
Speaker 1: had the point sotime. The mushrooms are known as glux pills,
Speaker 1: which again that just sounds like a pill that you
Speaker 1: would give a woman to give you that gluck gluck
Speaker 1: three thousand. But anyway, you'll find these mushrooms adorning trees
Speaker 1: wreaths and trinkets around the holiday season. Why these showy
Speaker 1: red mushrooms they grow around the of fur trees, which
Speaker 1: is also what we would call Christmas trees, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. And I've heard a bunch of stories as
Speaker 1: far as these what you're dying at the glux pills.
Speaker 1: I think we call those throat in America.
Speaker 2: I am, I am, I am focused, and I am
Speaker 2: paying attention.
Speaker 1: Very we call that chloroseptic spray here in the States.
Speaker 1: But you do you Germany?
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, just the jokes I want to say right now.
Speaker 2: I was like, man, I am, I am not a
Speaker 2: child tonight, and I am not gonna make some jokes
Speaker 2: about shit grown around a tree that sounds like glux pills.
Speaker 1: Right right, But anyway, these these mushrooms are of the
Speaker 1: psychedelic variety though, believe it or not. And so there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of depending on the source you go to.
Speaker 1: And we're not taking this massive tangent, but hear me out.
Speaker 1: Apparently these red mushrooms hanging from trees are the very
Speaker 1: beginnings of ornaments, the red ball ornaments that we hang
Speaker 1: on trees today, depending on who you ask, right, And
Speaker 1: there's this whole story about how the reindeer themselves or
Speaker 1: what would draw the sleigh for the medicine man or
Speaker 1: the shaman who would be bringing mushrooms to these houses
Speaker 1: that were all snowed in throughout the winter months and
Speaker 1: some of the more northern European areas.
Speaker 2: Here's why he's dropping off some shrooms to get high
Speaker 2: as fuck as you're bored.
Speaker 1: Here's my problem with that, right, Like there's almost there's
Speaker 1: a story. There's no historical precedence, there's a story to
Speaker 1: go along with that. Bro, you're telling me you got
Speaker 1: this dude and his wife of the Viking nations, got
Speaker 1: eight faral children running around, and you're snowed in. You're
Speaker 1: dropping home boy a fucking package of these mushrooms off,
Speaker 1: and like that's that's gonna go. And it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: down the chimney, it's Santa Claus. It's not it's bullshit.
Speaker 1: There's no presence that whatsoever. N Like, oh yeah, damn,
Speaker 1: oh they did that. Actually, mushroom ale was like a
Speaker 1: whole thing for them, the same way the Native tries
Speaker 1: do peyote to like even two year olds. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: nac we talked about them. The North American Church. That's
Speaker 1: the whole thing. I would love to go to one
Speaker 1: of their ceremonies. Be honest, it sounds like a rip
Speaker 1: snort in good time. But anyway, so yeah, apparently these
Speaker 1: red mushrooms grow at the base of fir trees in
Speaker 1: the Germany and Austria region. Who knew? What?
Speaker 2: Nothing?
Speaker 1: What was that one? You're stilling that glux pill, ain't you?
Speaker 2: I am not that gloss pill. I am not.
Speaker 1: I felt the FLM was actually necessary. Now that I've
Speaker 1: said it like that, No, because of the gluck gluck
Speaker 1: three thousand jokes I made. Now you have to throw
Speaker 1: FLM on it. Yeah, spit on that that.
Speaker 2: Oh my, we we are not. We are coronas. We
Speaker 2: are not acting like two little shithead marines.
Speaker 1: We are we are al tis the season and ship.
Speaker 2: We are completely serious about this topic.
Speaker 1: So anyway, now let's go on to roller skating to church.
Speaker 2: Yo, I'm here for this. So Venezuela be doing the
Speaker 2: mostest and I'm here for it.
Speaker 1: We're about to go to war with them, and I'm
Speaker 1: here for that too. But also I'm not here.
Speaker 2: That's not a bad Let them roller skated church first. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's still on their parade. Let's wait till after the holidays.
Speaker 2: But apparently, in Caracas, Venezuela, their capital city, many energetic
Speaker 2: Massoers celebrate the Christmas holiday on roller skates. In fact,
Speaker 2: there are so many yule tied skaters that some of
Speaker 2: the city streets are closed off for traffic from eight
Speaker 2: am on Christmas Day to keep the skaters safe. So
Speaker 2: pretty much from the very early morning on Christmas Day
Speaker 2: throughout the rest of Christmas, they're like, yo, these roads
Speaker 2: are just gonna be shut down because you got too
Speaker 2: many people out here skating around fun, Like that's so
Speaker 2: freaking fun.
Speaker 1: The whole family just gets out there on the.
Speaker 2: Blaze miss the old skating rinks.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a blast so like blastom fucking seventies
Speaker 3: music and just be out there vibing like yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Also because of Venezuela, like some hardcore like Rigatone and
Speaker 1: like Mangey music, Like yeah, that'd be that shit would
Speaker 1: be going hard.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a pretty awesome one. I like it.
Speaker 1: I ain't mad at it.
Speaker 2: I need to go Venezuela.
Speaker 1: I really hope we like don't go to war with Venezuela.
Speaker 1: But Also they got oil and a present that's been talking.
Speaker 1: Too much noise for all that oil. But like whatever,
Speaker 1: we'll figure out when we get there anyway. Number four, Uh,
Speaker 1: sharing Christmas wafers with the family, even pets.
Speaker 2: Is it Poland?
Speaker 1: It is Poland?
Speaker 2: I knew it.
Speaker 1: On Christmas Eve, people in Poland break apart thin wafers
Speaker 1: called a plot a plot key, sure o plotky and
Speaker 1: share them with their families. Wafers are passed around the
Speaker 1: table as everyone wishes good tidings upon their loved ones.
Speaker 1: So I think this is like communial wafers almost, like.
Speaker 3: They have like the little steamps on them, and they
Speaker 3: they break them apart and share them with each other.
Speaker 2: Oh god, it's actually really cute.
Speaker 1: But what about their pets. They're part of the family too.
Speaker 1: In many packets of a plot key, you'll find a
Speaker 1: pink wafer that's meant to be shared with your furry pals. Well.
Speaker 1: Traditionally this wafer would have been shared with farm animals,
Speaker 1: but today people have Polish extraction, share their dogs, share
Speaker 1: with their dogs and cats. Wow, that's really cool.
Speaker 2: I like it. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: I like it.
Speaker 3: Number five the gym and pickle and that actually on
Speaker 3: screen right now is Old World ornaments.
Speaker 1: You see the little tag it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, So before we even get to this, so
Speaker 3: I my family collects Old World Christmas ornaments, and on
Speaker 3: screen right now is a traditional pickle from Old World Christmas.
Speaker 3: I actually this was my first Christmas ornament for my
Speaker 3: own tree. And it's a tradition to give somebody a
Speaker 3: Christmas ornament a pickle. And I actually have multiple size ones.
Speaker 3: I have little bitty ones and I have like the
Speaker 3: big ones. And we have hundreds of Old World Christmas
Speaker 3: ornaments because it's just been a family thing to collect
Speaker 3: them for my entire life. So Germany makes the best,
Speaker 3: the best Christmas ornaments, I will. I would definitely go
Speaker 3: to war with somebody over that.
Speaker 1: But Germany is pretty. And again I didn't really understand this.
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of our mayor can Christmas
Speaker 1: traditions come from Germany. Fine, maybe a lot of our culture,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, does come from Germany. Hell our
Speaker 1: language comes from Germany. But I didn't realize that Germany
Speaker 1: was the Christmas capital of the world. Undisputed bar nuns.
Speaker 1: That's that's the way it is. As far as what
Speaker 1: in America what we think of Christmas, the trees, the lights,
Speaker 1: the nutcrackers, all the little things ornaments.
Speaker 3: Yes, Germany is the capital of the world when it
Speaker 3: comes to Christmas. There entire They have an entire Christmas
Speaker 3: city and it is the most epic. I can't wait
Speaker 3: to go there. I will go there, hopefully I get
Speaker 3: to take my mom there.
Speaker 1: Might put the horse cheese everywhere. Why is that such
Speaker 1: a thing. I don't know, I mean, is it good?
Speaker 1: I've actually never had it. I don't think it is
Speaker 1: it actually? Is it like the name brand or is
Speaker 1: it actually made from horse milk?
Speaker 2: Might have no idea. I'm not gonna lie to you.
Speaker 3: But my dad was obsessed with wanting to go there,
Speaker 3: and it's a whole thing.
Speaker 1: So essent to that video of the dude that went
Speaker 1: to the Christmas village and got all the food stops.
Speaker 1: M m yeah, and for nothing else for my foody soul.
Speaker 1: We have to go one day.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean I have to go because I
Speaker 2: would like to take my dad's ashes there.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to like smuggle them in and be
Speaker 3: covert and be a covert about it. But my dad
Speaker 3: was like Christmas was our holiday and is still my
Speaker 3: mom means like thing we can carry it on. But
Speaker 3: he wanted to go so badly to Germany. And this
Speaker 3: was like a huge thing of ours. This was like
Speaker 3: our pet, like this was our tradition. Every year we
Speaker 3: would go and buy old old world Christmas ornaments and
Speaker 3: you could. They used to be able to be everywhere
Speaker 3: and you could buy them. Now you mainly can buy
Speaker 3: them online in a couple places. There's some places in Oregon,
Speaker 3: like one little shop that's by the coasts that you
Speaker 3: can buy it. So it's a big deal. Like they're
Speaker 3: really great ornaments. And my dad was really obsessed with these.
Speaker 3: So I when I saw the pickle, I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I hung my pickles already on my tree.
Speaker 1: So I saw the pickles on your tree, and I
Speaker 1: just kind of thought, maybe it's just Raven Lee doing
Speaker 1: some wild sin on a tree, because why not. You know,
Speaker 1: if you look at my tree, it's got everything all
Speaker 1: thrown together.
Speaker 2: Because it is a very eclectic tree.
Speaker 1: That's that's just how I do it, you know, And
Speaker 1: nothing against those that do themes. I got nothing nothing
Speaker 1: but love and respect for that. My tree is primarily Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some ornaments that were like manufactured somewhere. A lot
Speaker 1: of it is shit my kids made, and it's like
Speaker 1: it's for say no more, it's going on the tree.
Speaker 1: It's like I don't care. I don't care, it's going
Speaker 1: on the tree.
Speaker 3: This year's theme is the Grench theme, so I'm on
Speaker 3: the Grench vibe this year. I have a couple different, uh,
Speaker 3: different ones. But I don't put out my old World
Speaker 3: ornaments just yet because I do not want them to break.
Speaker 3: So I don't want little tiny hands to grab hold
Speaker 3: of the said pickle or anything.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that hanging a pickle on a tree.
Speaker 1: The old legend says of a pickle is the last
Speaker 1: ornament hung on the Christmas tree. The first child to
Speaker 1: find the pickle gets an extra present. You can make
Speaker 1: yourself a family legend with the quick pickles that everybody
Speaker 1: can share on Christmas.
Speaker 2: M hmm, yep.
Speaker 3: It was the last ornament I hung on my tree. Okay,
Speaker 3: was the little pickles, So I love it.
Speaker 1: Next, we have waiting for Buffana or Buffana the witch.
Speaker 1: In Italian folklore, Buffana is an old woman who delivers
Speaker 1: gifts two children on the night of January fifth. Buffana
Speaker 1: visits the eve or visits on the eve of the
Speaker 1: Feast of the Epiphany to fill good kid's socks with
Speaker 1: candy and presents. The naughty kids are gifted a lump
Speaker 1: of coal or a black rock candy. Okay, So basically
Speaker 1: in Italy they don't have Santa. They have the Christmas Witch.
Speaker 2: She comes like after solstice, so like Solstice ends.
Speaker 1: Isn't it like December twenty first.
Speaker 3: Yes, but then they have like another January fifth, Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I believe that they have Santa as well, but
Speaker 3: this is but this is there.
Speaker 2: She comes and brings like yes or no, if you're
Speaker 2: a good kid or not. So they have like these
Speaker 2: cute little dolls that they have all over the place,
Speaker 2: the little witches.
Speaker 1: Huh. That's kind of cool because I mean, in the
Speaker 1: American tradition, right, Santa would leave you gifts or a
Speaker 1: lump of coal. Certain countries from all over the place.
Speaker 1: They just kind of blend that shit, which is is cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I guess because in Germany Crumpus, although
Speaker 1: he doesn't leave you coal, he puts you on a
Speaker 1: sack and beach the shit out of you, doesn't he.
Speaker 1: I thought that was Crumpus's whole jam. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's in France. That's in France. So Papa Noel in
Speaker 1: France is a skinny dude who carries he runs everywhere.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a sleigh or reindy or any of that.
Speaker 1: He's on foot with sandals, believe it or not. He's
Speaker 1: rocking those air Jesus, and he's got toys in a
Speaker 1: thatched read booksack essentially, and he's got a fuck what's
Speaker 1: the little dude's name that's always with them. But basically,
Speaker 1: Papa Noel will give you toys, but this other little
Speaker 1: asshole with him will throw you in a bur labsack
Speaker 1: and beat the shit out of you if you're bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah I remember that, Yeah yeah, No, Crumpus will take
Speaker 3: the naughty ones that don't put it, that don't do
Speaker 3: the bell, and they don't like do the certain stuff,
Speaker 3: but he'll take them like he'll take the ones that
Speaker 3: don't celebrate Christmas in the right way.
Speaker 1: Oh, just like full on kidnapping.
Speaker 2: They don't come back.
Speaker 1: So so child trafficking.
Speaker 3: So Italy celebrates Santa Claus known as Baboo Natalie Natal
Speaker 3: Natalie not Natal Natal, but it also has unique figures
Speaker 3: like lab Funna, who brings gifts on the night before Epiphany.
Speaker 3: Christmas traditions in Italy include regional customs and celebrations that
Speaker 3: differ from typical Santa Claus narratives.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 2: Interesting, they actually have like thirteen Christmas traditions that are different.
Speaker 1: Well, Italy is a very diverse place, although when everybody
Speaker 1: thinks of Italy they think of you know, Sicily or Tuscany. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like, you gotta understand that the people in the
Speaker 1: north of Italy are blonde hair, blue eyed, and pati
Speaker 1: as fuck. The people in Sicily look completely different. The
Speaker 1: people in Rome are like a weird crossbreed between the two.
Speaker 1: Not even talking about Naples, not even talking about you know, Venice.
Speaker 1: It's they have so many weird pockets of like very deep,
Speaker 1: very long standing historical culture. But it's all Italy. So
Speaker 1: I can understand why they'd have such a diverse, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, plethora Christmas traditions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have a whole bunch of stuff.
Speaker 3: Actually, if you're going to savoring Italy, they actually have
Speaker 3: an entire list of all the different things that they
Speaker 3: do differently and leading up to Christmas and then after Christmas.
Speaker 2: Every single day they have something different.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have a ton of stuff.
Speaker 3: Lighting of Christmas trees, they do, but they have like
Speaker 3: different celebrations leading up to it and what they do
Speaker 3: afterwards as well. Start with the Feasts of the Seven
Speaker 3: Fishes on Christmas Eve. There's nothing wrong, no wrong way
Speaker 3: to celebrate Christmas. But if you want to do it
Speaker 3: in the Anthony Bordona way Anthony Bourdaine boardine, I'm terrible
Speaker 3: with names, okay, then then you start with the Feasts
Speaker 3: of Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. The traditional Italian meal
Speaker 3: is seafood Lover's Paradise, featuring seven different seafood dishes. Yo,
Speaker 3: this is where I'm at. I need to be here,
Speaker 3: seven different seafood dishes. Sign me up, I'm here. And
Speaker 3: while this specific seafood can vary, some of the most
Speaker 3: common include salted cod Nope, you lost IM.
Speaker 1: About to say wait a minute, just to work clear here,
Speaker 1: traditional Italian seafood like I've never thought of, like a
Speaker 1: Christmas beast and be like m fish like never one time.
Speaker 2: Oh I could fuck with fish all day anytime.
Speaker 1: Christmas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a.
Speaker 1: Spring in summertime thing in the winter yeah, I hear.
Speaker 1: I hear from the Great White North of Oregon. So
Speaker 1: like pretty much any day is a fish day for
Speaker 1: you in it?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, no, like I could totally I could
Speaker 3: totally do it any day. But sardines you lost me
Speaker 3: at the salted cod and sardines in a minute. Spaghetti
Speaker 3: with lobster you got me.
Speaker 1: Back, ye me back in I'm listening.
Speaker 2: So they have different ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have different Christmas dinners, they have masses, they
Speaker 3: have different types of lunches.
Speaker 1: Spaghetti with lobster. I've actually never considered this.
Speaker 2: That sounds fantastic to me.
Speaker 3: I'm like mac and cheese lobster mac and cheese very much,
Speaker 3: very fucking so hard.
Speaker 1: So was that like white sauce or red sauce spaghetti
Speaker 1: in the picture?
Speaker 2: There was no picture. But now I'm now I want
Speaker 2: to know. I'm interested.
Speaker 1: Now now we have to look into this more good
Speaker 1: cult members. Okay, stand the fuck bye? Uh moving on in.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a thing of taking a holiday sauna.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I'm here for that. So wherever this is,
Speaker 2: I need to be.
Speaker 1: The fins are all about them saunas. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen frozen?
Speaker 2: The sauna is fantastic. And those huts are like be
Speaker 2: bait that's.
Speaker 1: A giant barrel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they're so nice and they're so cozy, especially
Speaker 3: when it's cold outside and you go into the sauna
Speaker 3: and you sit for a bit, and then you go
Speaker 3: out in the nice cold.
Speaker 1: Oh, it just feels this nice cold, yes, because.
Speaker 3: Well when you've sat in a sauna or a steam
Speaker 3: room or anything like that for a long period of
Speaker 3: time and then you go out into the cold ough, it.
Speaker 1: Feels like a cold plunge.
Speaker 3: Yes, except like cool plunges. Well, for me, cool plunges
Speaker 3: are really great for people. I'm a tedy little baby
Speaker 3: when it comes to that physical cold plunge. And even
Speaker 3: in organ when I would go to Brighton Bush and
Speaker 3: stuff and they would have I'd get it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: The hot springs where they have you know, the watch
Speaker 3: them call it. It's like a sauna overneath running hot
Speaker 3: water that's natural. It gets really really hot in there.
Speaker 3: And then if you go outside and you could do
Speaker 3: the cold plunge, cool off or they have two tubs
Speaker 3: or they have two shower heads and you can cool
Speaker 3: off and then come back inside and it's it's a
Speaker 3: vibe and you do want to cool off some, but
Speaker 3: I am like a baby when it comes to the
Speaker 3: cold plunge. I'll go sit in the snow rather then
Speaker 3: actually physically get in the cold ass water.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Finland, and there's like no exaggeration, three
Speaker 1: feet of stone on the ground. Feel like stepping outside
Speaker 1: would be a cold plunge.
Speaker 2: No, not when you're that hot, though.
Speaker 3: Fuck have you ever been inside of one of these,
Speaker 3: like in an actual outdoor sauna?
Speaker 1: Not outdoor? No, I would love to. I do love saunas,
Speaker 1: but I also love saunas. Again then stepping out into
Speaker 1: the hot parking lot to get into my steaming hot
Speaker 1: car in Louisiana after doing a sauna. I love the
Speaker 1: heat good cold members. If you couldn't tell, I was
Speaker 1: never intended for the cold, don't let the beard and
Speaker 1: long hair for you. I was meant for the ninety
Speaker 1: five degrees and one hundred percent humidity all year. That's
Speaker 1: my jam.
Speaker 2: He is a tit when it comes to the cold.
Speaker 1: But fuck with me in the heat though, yo.
Speaker 3: But the heat is like it's one of those things
Speaker 3: that's just you can't escape it gets. I love sauna's
Speaker 3: actually I love wet saunas.
Speaker 2: Oh do I love wet saunas.
Speaker 1: I've only the only time I'm going to like a
Speaker 1: wet saun or anything is like at a gym that
Speaker 1: I was going to that how it happened to offer it,
Speaker 1: which is cool. But yeah, I would love to experience
Speaker 1: like actual hot spring saunas one day. I've heard so
Speaker 1: many good things about them, and I like and I've
Speaker 1: done the whole like going into a hot tub and
Speaker 1: then going into like a cold pool and then back
Speaker 1: and forth and your muscles get shocked and it feels amazing.
Speaker 2: I hate going into cold plunges.
Speaker 1: I've never done a cold plunge.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I can't. I can't do it.
Speaker 3: Like I respect everybody that can, because it's it's awesome.
Speaker 1: I want to get one, but I also know that
Speaker 1: I'll probably try it for the first time and be like,
Speaker 1: never mind, this was a waste of an investment.
Speaker 2: I feel like you would get one toe in and you'd.
Speaker 1: Be like probably no, I would have to like full
Speaker 1: force just like jump in, and I would not be
Speaker 1: able to lower myself.
Speaker 2: What would kill me is you'd probably be pissed off.
Speaker 2: But like it actually reverses and helps your it helps
Speaker 2: your entire system, and it dumbs dope means and everything else.
Speaker 1: It really help people. I bet it does. I bet
Speaker 1: it do.
Speaker 2: I think for everybody actually the science. But you probably
Speaker 2: be like, oh.
Speaker 1: No, I would be so mad the entire time, so angry.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine me getting out and being like, ah,
Speaker 1: what a good thing I did for myself this morning.
Speaker 1: I would be like, this is the dumbest fucking white
Speaker 1: people shit I've ever heard in my life. Like I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, I don't know, I.
Speaker 3: Want to go to Finland now because a holiday sauna
Speaker 3: is right up my fucking alley. So like, let's go
Speaker 3: to Holland or Finland, Holland and Finland, whatever one of
Speaker 3: those places. I'm sorry everyone that lives over there.
Speaker 1: I did not mean to, like you just pissed off
Speaker 1: the Dutch in the Finish. At the same time, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Group you all together.
Speaker 1: I love you all very much. From the gray white
Speaker 1: north of from.
Speaker 2: Europe, from my extremely Caucasian brethren. Some of those they true,
Speaker 2: they are, they are probably I don't know you are.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: So anyway, taking a holiday sauna in Finland where many
Speaker 1: homes have a sauna. It's customary on Christmas Eve to
Speaker 1: take a sauna with the family. Here, you thought discussing
Speaker 1: politics over dinner could be awkward after the sauna, finns
Speaker 1: conteknew the evening celebration, presumably clothed. I should fucking hope
Speaker 1: skip the sauna and warm up with a Christmas casserole instead.
Speaker 2: Bro shit, I'm really from the I am from its
Speaker 2: white people's ship.
Speaker 1: Man hit him with that casserole. That's how you get them, boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love me some cash role back off.
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know I've ever eaten casserole in my life.
Speaker 2: You have eaten cash made cash role if you.
Speaker 1: Say so, if I believe you, Oh yeah, is that
Speaker 1: even a casserole? Though it's a casserole, it's Shepherd's pie
Speaker 1: with fucking is Shepherd's pie of castle? Right?
Speaker 2: It should be?
Speaker 1: Because if so, then like yo, I grew up on
Speaker 1: the ship. Okay, oh well, well I am quite Caucasian anyway.
Speaker 2: But I feel like other people eat casseroles. I feel
Speaker 2: like a lot of people eat cast roles because technically, uh,
Speaker 2: sweet potato cast roles. You had sweet potatoes the same
Speaker 2: ship at I don't like it. Oh my gosh, I'm
Speaker 2: just saying texture.
Speaker 1: It's not the taste. Sweet potatoes are great tasting.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, though, that's technically a cast role, green
Speaker 3: bean cast role.
Speaker 2: Why would you put mayonnaise in green bean cast roles?
Speaker 1: Ask these white people. I don't listen.
Speaker 2: It's mannise in green bean cash. Oh my god, that
Speaker 2: ship cult members?
Speaker 3: Do you put mayonnaise in greening castro Because I have
Speaker 3: never heard of this Caucasity in my life.
Speaker 1: This is this is my problem, This is my problem.
Speaker 2: What Okay?
Speaker 3: We are in the South where random shake gets thrown
Speaker 3: into things, and let me tell you, if you're not
Speaker 3: from here, I have learned through the years to be
Speaker 3: very cautious about what I put in my mouth when
Speaker 3: it comes to food down here, because Lord have mercy.
Speaker 2: There has been some things that I'm like, it's.
Speaker 1: Like a cream of something. Instead of that, it's.
Speaker 2: Cream of mushroom.
Speaker 1: I do cream and mushroom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's I don't even stand what you're saying. Mayonnaise.
Speaker 1: Look, some people, some people's children are just out here,
Speaker 1: I hope.
Speaker 3: As you are doing on your Christmas Eve, if you're
Speaker 3: listening to us, you are not making green mean castrole
Speaker 3: with mayonnaise, because like, what.
Speaker 2: So gross. I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. I can't. I
Speaker 2: don't like mayonnaise at all.
Speaker 3: So but I hope that you are making wonderful dishes
Speaker 3: and maybe you'll make a couple of random new ones
Speaker 3: as we get into all of this, why do we
Speaker 3: have Daffy.
Speaker 1: Duck in Donald and Daphne Daphne? Okay, so here's the deal.
Speaker 1: In Sweden a show called calaei unca oach hons, honor oska, god, jewel,
Speaker 1: holy shit or in English, there you go, Donald Duck
Speaker 1: and his friends wish you a Merry Christmas. Hey there
Speaker 1: it is is a must see TV every Christmas. The
Speaker 1: traditions started in the nineteen sixties and more than forty
Speaker 1: percent of Sweden still tunes in. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to say to that, Like, that's a very long thing.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize Donald Duck was a vibe anywhere else
Speaker 3: besides America.
Speaker 1: I was Daisy's Donald Daisy, I said, Daphney.
Speaker 4: Daphne, Donald d I got Daffy Duck. I was mixing
Speaker 4: that up Daffy Duck, so Donald Daisy. But uh, apparently
Speaker 4: Donald and his friends. Wish you a Merry Christmas is
Speaker 4: something that around half of the country of Sweden still
Speaker 4: tunes into every Christmas to see.
Speaker 2: Good for them.
Speaker 1: You know, we have our traditions, we have our TV
Speaker 1: things that like, you know, our parents generation. It was
Speaker 1: like we rooted off the Red First Miracle on thirty fourth,
Speaker 1: Roodolph the Red Nose Reindeer, Santa Claus coming to Town,
Speaker 1: Charlie Brown Christmas. These things only came on the TV
Speaker 1: one time, and like that was only three stations back
Speaker 1: in the day. So when that shit came on, it
Speaker 1: didn't matter if you're like fourteen, you're coming to sit
Speaker 1: down and watch with the fam, and like that.
Speaker 2: Was a penny, Like Charlie Brown Christmas.
Speaker 1: Watch your mouth.
Speaker 2: Why I don't why, it's just boring. I've never really
Speaker 2: liked it. I never really liked Charlie Brown at all.
Speaker 1: The monologue from Linus, I believe will probably be the
Speaker 1: reason why Charlie Brown gets canceled one day. He actually
Speaker 1: quotes the Bible, and you know how they be feeling
Speaker 1: about that these days. So yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Don't actually remember it.
Speaker 3: To be honest with you, I haven't watched it since
Speaker 3: I was a kid, because I've never messed with it.
Speaker 1: So shit, it's on at my mom's house probably one
Speaker 1: out of every three times we go, even if it's summer,
Speaker 1: Charlie Brown, Christmas or The Great Pumpkin will probably just
Speaker 1: be on the TV for the fuck of it.
Speaker 3: Really, Yeah, that was my dad's house, would be Westerns
Speaker 3: and or war movies on repeat.
Speaker 2: That's what you like to watch all the time.
Speaker 1: So it's a proper jim all right. So now in
Speaker 1: India they trim a banana tree. So in India, fur
Speaker 1: trees are not as prevalent, obviously, so celebrants make their
Speaker 1: make do with what they have banana and mango trees.
Speaker 1: These trees are adorned with lights and ornaments on the streets,
Speaker 1: and they're leaves decorate inside people's homes.
Speaker 2: That's really cool.
Speaker 1: I like that. Okay, So, like the fake tree is
Speaker 1: just not a thing that's made its way to India,
Speaker 1: I suppose maybe not. Oh no, no no. In South
Speaker 1: Africa eating fried caterpillars, let's go.
Speaker 2: Oh god, it's so big and squishy? Is that a
Speaker 2: who hoo grub?
Speaker 1: Is that? Who?
Speaker 2: Who?
Speaker 1: What the hell is a who hoo grub? I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure the caterpillar.
Speaker 2: No, I'm pretty sure they're who Who's so okay?
Speaker 1: Are you making this up?
Speaker 2: I'm really not so there is.
Speaker 3: I watched a lot of survival shows, and back in
Speaker 3: the day there were two dudes, and I know one
Speaker 3: of you that's listening is going to message me and
Speaker 3: tell me who this is.
Speaker 2: So old boy. One of them was barefoot for like
Speaker 2: twenty five years.
Speaker 1: He has a place, almost like a hippie dude. One
Speaker 1: was like an.
Speaker 2: Actual yeah survival jeev even know, God, I can't think
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they went to Africa and they had or it
Speaker 2: was South America. I don't want to be misquoting. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: it's been south.
Speaker 1: Of the Equator.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They ate grubs that they called whoho grubs, and oh god,
Speaker 3: I might actually get a little bit mount Nope. So
Speaker 3: they put them in their mouths and when they bit
Speaker 3: into them here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I keep your mouth closed that she'll score it out.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Nope.
Speaker 3: So every time I even see something like that, like
Speaker 3: the amagery, I probably would starve to death. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be honest with you.
Speaker 2: I am a texture person and just the thought alone.
Speaker 1: Nope.
Speaker 3: I'm like, you know what, fuck it, I'm gonna die now.
Speaker 3: But there's just no way, There's no way I could
Speaker 3: physically hold that down in my mouth, let alone eat
Speaker 3: it and not vomit everywhere. Just from the texture and
Speaker 3: the thought process alone, I would I would die.
Speaker 2: I would crash out. I'm a baby, Leave me alone. People.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, this past weekend, I went to the Saints game
Speaker 1: with some former coworkers of mine, and somebody no balls
Speaker 1: me to try a scorpion shot.
Speaker 2: Okay, I've had those.
Speaker 1: But a panel you're supposed to swallow the scorpion with
Speaker 1: the shot. I didn't. I just chewed it up because
Speaker 1: like why not?
Speaker 2: And then oh my god, the little scorpion ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's like eating a cricket, y'all. It's no
Speaker 1: big deal.
Speaker 3: And it's like a what like okay, Like I can
Speaker 3: deal with crickets ants, I can deal with scorpions.
Speaker 1: Carpenter ants are delicious. They taste like sour apple.
Speaker 2: I can deal with them. It's damn grubs that, like
Speaker 2: I would, I would crash out. I would actually just
Speaker 2: you're doing that now?
Speaker 1: I am. I am.
Speaker 2: I really feel some type of way about this and
Speaker 2: watching that episode. It seared into my brain.
Speaker 1: I see it.
Speaker 2: I didn't see that picture. I'm just like no, no, no, no, no, no. H.
Speaker 1: Well, in South Africa people munch on fried Emperor moth
Speaker 1: caterpillars on Christmas for extra luck in the coming year.
Speaker 1: That sounds like somebody just started to dare somebody one
Speaker 1: day and it just kind of took like wildfire. Oh,
Speaker 1: they may not bring luck, but a batch of Christmas
Speaker 1: cookies will certainly bring smiles. You can buy a rabbit's
Speaker 1: foot for the luck. Yeah, but you know, and if
Speaker 1: you're in South Africa, you do. As a South Africans,
Speaker 1: I would have no luck.
Speaker 2: I'm dying.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, decorating with spinderweb or.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're gonna get to this one. We actually have
Speaker 3: a whole article about Ukraine in Poland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ukraine and Poland. That's the thing I want to
Speaker 1: take away from the article. We got pulled up. But
Speaker 1: all right, next giving the pudding a st Now, this
Speaker 1: is interesting. When they say putting, they don't when as
Speaker 1: Americans or anything putting, we're thinking of something that's more closely.
Speaker 1: It came to a custard in the UK. When they
Speaker 1: say a pudding that could mean anything from basically like
Speaker 1: a cake to spot a dick to something of a
Speaker 1: more gelatinous nature. Putting in that variety goes a wide
Speaker 1: there's a wide gambit here, so giving the pudding a
Speaker 1: stir the image shows something like what we might call
Speaker 1: a fruitcake.
Speaker 2: It's pound cake essentially.
Speaker 1: In the UK, families all take a turn making the
Speaker 1: chrisp is putting to stir up. Sunday, the Sunday before
Speaker 1: the start of Advent, families gathered a stir up a
Speaker 1: holiday pudding like this plum pudding. Interesting. While the term
Speaker 1: stir up comes from a century's old Anglican prayer book,
Speaker 1: today families have adapted the term and use it as
Speaker 1: a reason to gather with family. Because these puddings are
Speaker 1: a lot of hard work. Everyone takes a turn helping.
Speaker 1: Everyone that gives the batter a stir also gets to
Speaker 1: make a wish for the coming year. I just actually
Speaker 1: watched I told you about the show Tasting History that
Speaker 1: I get down with. Yeah, he just made traditional spotted
Speaker 1: dick from I think it was like the late seventeen
Speaker 1: hundreds or something, and it's this type of pudding where
Speaker 1: basically you just throw a bunch of shit into a
Speaker 1: boil bag and you boil it to get the shape
Speaker 1: and it like solidified. Yeah, I know what you're thinking,
Speaker 1: because that's a really silly name for a dessert.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking about Doctor Seuss and I was like,
Speaker 3: I was thinking about the spotted spotted a watchman call it.
Speaker 3: You know, the little bear thing that they wrote a
Speaker 3: whole book about that had like spots and no spots
Speaker 3: and this and that. And I was just laughing in
Speaker 3: my head because I was like, it's fine, I'm a
Speaker 3: child right now.
Speaker 1: I get it. But yeah, apparently it is a lot
Speaker 1: of work. It takes like hours to do it properly.
Speaker 3: So I was reading an article actually, I was debating
Speaker 3: about which ones to use in this episode, and there
Speaker 3: was a whole article about how the UK is very strict,
Speaker 3: not strict, but very set in their ways is what
Speaker 3: it said, setting their ways when it comes to Christmas
Speaker 3: traditions and how they adhere to it.
Speaker 1: But then they'll go to Boxing Day right after that,
Speaker 1: and I's like that's completely normal.
Speaker 2: I actually don't know what Boxing Day is.
Speaker 1: It's the one day year where people move.
Speaker 2: What like physically move their homes, like.
Speaker 1: Boxing up their shit, like moving addresses.
Speaker 2: They have a day for this.
Speaker 3: They've selected an entire day where everybody just says, fuck it,
Speaker 3: let's move.
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, yes, they'll have people that move throughout
Speaker 1: the year, but that is traditionally the day where people
Speaker 1: will like move residences. And then I asked this was
Speaker 1: a while background. I first heard like, is there boxing
Speaker 1: matches like that?
Speaker 2: I thought that's what you meant.
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, cool, it's like a whole boxing
Speaker 3: day where they have like boxing matches and they bet
Speaker 3: on people.
Speaker 1: You would think, no, no, it's just the one day
Speaker 1: where they'll actually just like move locations or some shit.
Speaker 2: Does everybody chime in and help?
Speaker 1: Uh, well, it's a federal holiday in the UK, so
Speaker 1: pretty much nobody's going to work, So if you've got
Speaker 1: some affairs you need to handle and like move and
Speaker 1: all these things. And again I'm sure that like that
Speaker 1: was the thing back in the day. It's a lot
Speaker 1: different these days, but like it's still a federally recognized holiday.
Speaker 2: Well that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Finding an orange in your stocking. This is something that
Speaker 1: we do at my house. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: oranges are often found in shoes or stockings on Saint
Speaker 1: Nicholas Day, December sixth. That is not how we do it.
Speaker 1: Santa be dropping off an orange in stockings on Christmas?
Speaker 1: Why why not?
Speaker 2: But like, what's the reason for it?
Speaker 1: The same reason why there's also an assortment of nuts
Speaker 1: because it's Christmas?
Speaker 2: Is there like any symbology behind it.
Speaker 1: Or just like the same reason why I've been giving
Speaker 1: my children coffee since they were six months old. Listen,
Speaker 1: this's just what we do here. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: didn't ask questions when it was done for me. I
Speaker 1: just said thank you.
Speaker 2: So here we are still absolutely ridiculous and do not
Speaker 2: agree with it.
Speaker 1: That's fine, you can disagree.
Speaker 2: Why would so you just randomly put an orange in
Speaker 2: your kids?
Speaker 1: It's at the very base where the toes go, just
Speaker 1: because it's it's wintertime. Everybody needs an orange during the winter,
Speaker 1: vitamin sea and shit, so you just ok. And then
Speaker 1: the nuts, Yeah, that's a whole other thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, the nuts makes sense to me because like
Speaker 3: everybody eats nuts during the winter.
Speaker 1: And everybody eats cit trist during the winter because that's
Speaker 1: when it, you know, is ripe.
Speaker 2: I don't, I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's a thing.
Speaker 2: You Southerners be doing some weird shit.
Speaker 1: To be fair, I think that might just be a
Speaker 1: me and my household type of thing.
Speaker 2: I've never heard one person tell me that this is
Speaker 2: a thing down here. Never once.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was like. And me and my brother
Speaker 1: we actually not like the nutcrackers, like the decorative to
Speaker 1: my dad's got like some bad ass like nutcrackers, and
Speaker 1: we would get down on like the walnuts, the brazil nuts,
Speaker 1: the almonds, Oh my god, fresh fresh cracked almonds are
Speaker 1: my shit. Also, hazel nuts. I know you don't fuck
Speaker 1: with them, but I love them so much.
Speaker 3: I like the actual nut. I don't like hazel nut products.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just not my jam.
Speaker 1: The one that I like, but it's not my favorite
Speaker 1: is pecan, and I think I just got burned out
Speaker 1: on them.
Speaker 2: I don't. Yeah, pecans get I like. I like the
Speaker 2: jars of the salty mixture of nuts, and I would
Speaker 2: we would always fight over which ones that we'd eat,
Speaker 2: but we'd have jars of those definitely. When I was
Speaker 2: growing up.
Speaker 3: It would be a whole thing at every at every dinner,
Speaker 3: every party, or.
Speaker 2: Just like one in the house and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But that's not I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think I have anything that I tradition Well,
Speaker 3: the only thing I traditionally cook is I always do
Speaker 3: rice crispies, coolat cheese and Christmas decorating cookies. Yeah, like
Speaker 3: those are the things that we do. But I don't
Speaker 3: put anything specifically in my in my families, so.
Speaker 1: They do the gin bread houses, but we eat them
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons. But like we'll start. Yeah, oh this
Speaker 1: year my dog got onto two of the three of them.
Speaker 1: I'm falcking pissed about it still, but like it's okay.
Speaker 1: She's a she's a fat beast. That English mastiff can
Speaker 1: reach up on most countertops. And I thought they were
Speaker 1: far enough back. They were not. But yeah, we'll make
Speaker 1: gingerbread houses like the first week of December. At some point, I.
Speaker 2: Really did not know that people eat them. I thought
Speaker 2: that people just decorated them and kept them, like every
Speaker 2: every place that I've ever been, people just decorate them
Speaker 2: and then they keep them for like all of Christmas.
Speaker 2: Some people are the only person I know that has
Speaker 2: ever actually eaten them. When you told me that, I'm like,
Speaker 2: what do you mean you eat these?
Speaker 1: We don't like to sit there and eat the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But like as you know doing going throughout the day,
Speaker 1: like break off a corner of the roof and you
Speaker 1: get down on that, you know, and you work your
Speaker 1: way down the wall.
Speaker 2: I don't know, because that's I make them to decorate
Speaker 2: to put out and then be like look out, get there,
Speaker 2: and that's what I do with them.
Speaker 1: I mean, if that's what you're doing, then why not
Speaker 1: do cardboard and like you could decorate it and put
Speaker 1: away with the Christmas decorations and put that bitch back
Speaker 1: out next year. And it's a whole thing, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I don't sounds just edible. I don't know. You
Speaker 1: dip it in your coffee and shit like that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a whole vibe. Well anyway, seeah, were just learning
Speaker 1: things today number fourteen of fourteen before I even see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: keeping an eye out for Crampis. Crampis or Crumpus, sort
Speaker 1: of an anti Santa, if you will, is believed by
Speaker 1: some to be a half goat and half demon that
Speaker 1: comes for naughty children in early December. The legend started
Speaker 1: in Germany but later found its way to the US.
Speaker 1: As Santa might say, you better watch out.
Speaker 2: I love the whole Crumpus conversation.
Speaker 1: And I do like the movie read one where they
Speaker 1: showed a different side of Crumpus, like he's not He's
Speaker 1: not Satan. He was Santa Claus's half brother, yeah, who
Speaker 1: was helping him, but then kind of he created the
Speaker 1: naughty List, like that, that legend and Lord the layers
Speaker 1: of it. I like that a lot.
Speaker 2: I actually didn't really like that movie too, so.
Speaker 1: We just got done watching it tonight for like the
Speaker 1: fifth time of the season. It's quickly becoming one of
Speaker 1: our favorite Christmas movies.
Speaker 2: It's a really good one.
Speaker 1: And it brings up Gorilla and the Yule Lads. It
Speaker 1: brings in a lot, you know it does anyway, all right,
Speaker 1: So that's gonna do it for the first article. And
Speaker 1: yes we took side tangents because it's Christmas time, y'all
Speaker 1: tell take it so seriously, have fun with it. Talking
Speaker 1: about the UK and some of these wild traditions, and
Speaker 1: like you said, they are very strict with their traditions,
Speaker 1: not all of the UK, because Wales is a part
Speaker 1: of the UK and they have this thing they have
Speaker 1: the midwinter Majesty of the Merryleude and I'm probably mispronouncing
Speaker 1: that word. As a matter of fact. You know what,
Speaker 1: I want to see if we could find the correct
Speaker 1: pronunciation of it, because I don't want to upset nobody.
Speaker 1: Let's see here, there's a little video that they're showing.
Speaker 1: So this is a dude that's dressed up with a
Speaker 1: cloak and bells and he's got.
Speaker 2: A Actually i've actually heard of this before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's got a horse.
Speaker 2: Come on.
Speaker 1: In traditional el.
Speaker 2: I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.
Speaker 1: N just keep on singing until someone answers the door.
Speaker 1: Oh he's answering.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 1: The hoss off one weird, isn't he supposed to say?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: Basically, they have to sing there, and you have to
Speaker 1: sing back at them, and you let them in, and
Speaker 1: if they don't then they'll pretty much sit outside your
Speaker 1: door and annoy the absolute fuck of you all night long,
Speaker 1: singing louder and louder and or.
Speaker 2: Mendo gil uh pen.
Speaker 1: That's Welsh. What is he saying that? That is not
Speaker 1: picked Gaelic, that's not Scott's Gaelic, that's not Irish Gaelic.
Speaker 1: That's Welsh, and that don't sound like no other type
Speaker 1: of nothing.
Speaker 2: I have no idea what he even just said at all.
Speaker 1: He's just describing the tradition, I suppose. But anyway, let's
Speaker 1: see if there's another thing where they might explain how
Speaker 1: it's pronounced. No, no, no, why would they do that.
Speaker 1: That's just a thing. Yeah, I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: able to understand these people. But anyway, so if I
Speaker 1: am as pronouncing Mary Lude lloyd load, I don't know?
Speaker 1: Uh is? In the darkest months of the Welsh hear
Speaker 1: a white horse appears the mysterious menacing Mary Lude. Jude
Speaker 1: Rogers steps into one of Wales's most eerie midwinter traditions
Speaker 1: and uncovers the origins and regional variations of this creature.
Speaker 1: You'll never forget the moment you first see of Mary Lude.
Speaker 1: She has lights or babbles for her eyes. Her mane
Speaker 1: is made of colorful streamers or a whole holly and ivy.
Speaker 1: A white cloak falls from her skull, which is attached
Speaker 1: to a pole which is held by a person inside it,
Speaker 1: and they control the character's mischievous nature, often snapping their
Speaker 1: bony jaws at you. Yeah, so what does this mean?
Speaker 1: The origins of Mary's name are like the horse herself,
Speaker 1: a deeply mysterious. One Welsh translation of it, Jerry Maher
Speaker 1: or gray Mayor, rather connects it to the heritage of
Speaker 1: pale horses in Celtic and British mythology, many of whom
Speaker 1: can cross over to the underworld. Jesus. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: remember how to pronounce these words Rhannon in the Mabi
Speaker 1: Geon rode a white horse, for example. It's been a
Speaker 1: while since I did some reading into my Celtic history
Speaker 1: in folklore, so forgive me. The other translations from Mary
Speaker 1: lude is gray Mary. Some scholars have linked her to
Speaker 1: a legend connected to the Nativity story, of course, a
Speaker 1: pregnant horse sent out of the stables. When Mary arrived
Speaker 1: to have Jesus, she spent dark days roaming the land
Speaker 1: trying to find somewhere new to have a full Many
Speaker 1: Mary fans believe the character to have come from pre
Speaker 1: Christian pagan origins. However, this is impossible to prove, but
Speaker 1: there's definitely something timeless and terrifying about her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's terrifying. I'm looking like, it's not even pleasant
Speaker 2: at all to.
Speaker 1: Look at butt in Wales. They just like the foolest thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like stuff of nightmares. But I'm you know,
Speaker 3: I'm glad they have a tradition then that they've kept alive.
Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of places have lost a lot
Speaker 3: of their traditions, so.
Speaker 1: They got crumpus. That's supposed to terrify your kids. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be like super welcoming of the ghost
Speaker 1: horse that knocks on your door and sings at you
Speaker 1: until you do something. People get down. People be getting down,
Speaker 1: you know. Anyway, So what does Mary Lewid do? Mary
Speaker 1: is taken around a village traditionally, often between Christmas Day
Speaker 1: and the twelfth night. She is dressed with festive lights
Speaker 1: and decorations, and is usually accompanied by an ostler and
Speaker 1: in some regions like I'm not gonna pronounce that word
Speaker 1: uh Yestra Dinglas in the Swansea Valleys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Wales, she said, I'm not gonna pronounce the U.
Speaker 1: I try. I thought about it. I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: give you the old college try no fuck all that
Speaker 1: Welsh things. When she goes from the regions like Welsh
Speaker 1: Place to the Welsh Valleys, other fault characters like a
Speaker 1: gesture and a lady. This brings the tradition closer together
Speaker 1: with the Mummers plays, which we're gonna talk about in
Speaker 1: a bit, a tradition of performances by the working classes
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century. When the groups get to a house,
Speaker 1: they sing Welsh language songs or wastles, or more traditionally
Speaker 1: indulged in a ritual called bro How is that a word?
Speaker 2: Is pw nco?
Speaker 1: Is that an acronym? Or is that a word? There's
Speaker 1: only one vowel and it's at the very end.
Speaker 3: I you know, I'm just gonna I just spelled it
Speaker 3: out for them, and so put it.
Speaker 1: Is an exchange of rude rhymes with the person who
Speaker 1: lives there. I have seen that tradition too. Basically, they
Speaker 1: will it's like a roast battle, but it has to rhyme,
Speaker 1: and the first person to fuck up loses the game.
Speaker 1: And it's like it's a whole thing clever Christmas traditions,
Speaker 1: you know, like it with the person who lives there.
Speaker 1: If the Mary and her game get entry, the household
Speaker 1: is head to have good luck for the year. Mary
Speaker 1: is well known to be mischievous, trying to steal things
Speaker 1: and chase people she likes as she goes about her
Speaker 1: bidding Yeah again.
Speaker 2: How's she gonna chase anybody in that garb like you?
Speaker 2: You're gonna lose the head let alone? How are you
Speaker 2: gonna run in that thing?
Speaker 1: It's you know? They away? So where did the tradition begin?
Speaker 1: The first written record of mary Lude is in Jay
Speaker 1: Evans's book from eighteen hundred, a tour through the part
Speaker 1: of North Wales. Although the tradition is best known for
Speaker 1: its practice in Glamorgan and Gwent, it has similarities to
Speaker 1: other hooded animal customs in Britain, like the hooden ing
Speaker 1: in Kent, the broad in Cottswolds, and the old tup
Speaker 1: in Derbyshire. Derbyshire. I don't know how these British pronounce it,
Speaker 1: which involved a group of poor people trying to find
Speaker 1: food and money in the harsh depths of winter. Entertainment
Speaker 1: was their method, with a side portion of menace, the
Speaker 1: dead horse's skull appearing in shadow at your door, good lord.
Speaker 1: And again they have all these pictures from way back when.
Speaker 1: This picture from nineteen oh four. This is a more
Speaker 1: recent interpretation. Let's see. Okay, this one's more recent as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one that we saw the video earlier, that's I
Speaker 1: don't even know what year that's from? But okay, so
Speaker 1: how did the tradition start to change? Welsh Methodists and
Speaker 1: other Christian nonconformists criticized Mary Lude in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: The bell Blindow, Gwint based Baptist minister Reverend William Roberts
Speaker 1: called her sinful in his eighteen fifty two book The
Speaker 1: Religion of the Dark Ages, although he also transcribed twenty
Speaker 1: verses of the Mary's performance, helping to disseminate the tradition.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen thirties and forties, Welsh folkloris Erwith Pete
Speaker 1: found the practice still alive in Cardiff Bridge and langwind
Speaker 1: Neath and other parts of the Glamorgan, despite fears that
Speaker 1: it will start to die off. Welsh poets Vernon Watkins
Speaker 1: even wrote a long poem about her in nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: The Ballad of Mary Lude, after hearing a radio broadcast
Speaker 1: about the ritual in Garth, a village just north of Cardiff.
Speaker 1: His words beautifully captured the mary Lud's frightening aspect. The
Speaker 1: living are defended by the rich warmth of the flames,
Speaker 1: which keeps that loneliness out. His poem goes terrified they
Speaker 1: hear the dead tapping of the pains. Then they rise up,
Speaker 1: armed with the warmth of firelight. Interesting, only a few
Speaker 1: merry processions were left by the nineteen sixties, including in
Speaker 1: Pedcote near Brigand and Pitchers near Cardiff. I'm probably butchering
Speaker 1: these names, sorry for all of our UK homies that
Speaker 1: speak this shit. But later that century some folk club, yeah,
Speaker 1: lantercent Folk Club revived the tradition, as did a family
Speaker 1: in that same city, near Maystegg, who still visit the
Speaker 1: old house in in the village with the Mary today
Speaker 1: three generations of landlords have now hosted them. Wow. Other
Speaker 1: popular celebrations also happen in New Year's at Chepstow after
Speaker 1: a break in twenty twenty for you know the vid.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a chapel on a mountain side near
Speaker 1: Launterradal there's a lie.
Speaker 2: Whole It's just like that whole thing and popping up.
Speaker 3: At a local midwinter events Slantern festivals and Wallace.
Speaker 2: How do you see it? Wasteles, wasteles, their bubbles, bobbles
Speaker 2: glowing their eyes and tradition shining with new life.
Speaker 3: So don't have natemars. Let yourself be taken into the
Speaker 3: darkness and go with Mary towards the light.
Speaker 1: Okay, so here's one of the gestures that you might
Speaker 1: see traveling with the horse skull and you got the
Speaker 1: dudes with the sticks, and it's just a whole thing.
Speaker 1: And they just sing. And I've heard different stories and
Speaker 1: different traditions. They will sing and sing and sing waiting
Speaker 1: for someone inside the house to sing back to them.
Speaker 1: Doesn't even matter if it's the same song, just singing
Speaker 1: something back. And if they are gained entry into the home,
Speaker 1: they get the house, go luck and basically they all
Speaker 1: just get completely shith housed until they feel sated, and
Speaker 1: then they go to the next house and do the
Speaker 1: same thing.
Speaker 3: And if they seen this tradition actually before, and I
Speaker 3: really like it. I think it's cool.
Speaker 1: Usually the head of the house will like join the
Speaker 1: party and go to the next house with them too.
Speaker 3: And they gather more and more and more men as
Speaker 3: they go, and they like eventually make their way all
Speaker 3: through the town and stuff.
Speaker 1: They'd just be looking for any excuse to get ship housed.
Speaker 1: Let me real, that's true.
Speaker 3: But I mean it's cool that it's actually been revitalizing
Speaker 3: and brought back and generations are still trying to adhere
Speaker 3: to old ways because I think so many traditions have
Speaker 3: died out, especially as the New Age with technology and
Speaker 3: things like that, a lot of the old traditions are
Speaker 3: just gone. So yeah, it's pretty cool though, And I
Speaker 3: didn't know a lot about that, And there's a lot
Speaker 3: of weird words that. This is why I had you
Speaker 3: read it, because I was no way would I be
Speaker 3: able to even try again.
Speaker 1: Y'all, I barely speak American English, I don't speak British English.
Speaker 2: That we butcher a lot of names on here, there's
Speaker 2: no way.
Speaker 1: Most time most humans can't pronounce Welsh words. Let's just
Speaker 1: be real.
Speaker 2: Here, I'm still confused at the pw that's.
Speaker 1: Nice, pwn coo, pondco pond coo. And I'll bet you
Speaker 1: it's something like, oh, you mean you mean soul. Have
Speaker 1: you seen them try to pronounce Irish traditional names? Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen how quava is spelled? No, it's it's
Speaker 1: ridiculous idea anyway, way, So moving on to the next one. Now,
Speaker 1: let's go to the Americas for just a moment. As
Speaker 1: we talked about some Native American tribes yesterday on our episode,
Speaker 1: this was actually a pretty interesting one that I thought
Speaker 1: was worth going deeper on on today's episode, The Iroquois
Speaker 1: False Face Society.
Speaker 2: I know nothing of this, so.
Speaker 1: I don't either. I found that it was a Christmas
Speaker 1: or winter solstice, this time of year type of things,
Speaker 1: so I was curious, what's up with it? So let's
Speaker 1: get into it. Among many coaches around the world, there
Speaker 1: are two types of illnesses. First are those which have
Speaker 1: a clear physical cause, such as a broken arm. Then
Speaker 1: there are those which the cause is less readily apparent.
Speaker 1: Curing these illnesses often involve ceremonies and spirituality. The Iroquois
Speaker 1: tribes have a number of different medicine societies which can
Speaker 1: perform different curing rights. The Little Water Society, for example,
Speaker 1: dealt with great illness that was usually called in when
Speaker 1: the patient had had a vision of the dwarf spirits,
Speaker 1: that is the little people. Yeah, the I will say that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's like what seven different ones we've heard about,
Speaker 2: and we just watched a video yesterday, I think doing research,
Speaker 2: and there's more little people.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I just found out about a Japanese
Speaker 1: crew and if you these people have lived in Japan
Speaker 1: by their own emission, for like seven thousand years. They
Speaker 1: don't look Japanese, they look Russian, and they their old
Speaker 1: folklore talks about stone giants and little people that they
Speaker 1: also called giants. But it's there are elves.
Speaker 3: For lack of better words, the ones that they have
Speaker 3: a little figurines for in their houses.
Speaker 1: All over the place. Yeah, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: there's something to it. Yeah, I'm not saying which side.
Speaker 1: It could be fae, it could be aliens, could be demons.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh, you're saying that the dwarfs technically is that they
Speaker 3: go by now I don't want to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not talking about like humans who have dwarfism.
Speaker 1: That's not what I mean. I mean the uh, the
Speaker 1: creatures which like in Irish and Scottish tradition would be
Speaker 1: the brownies or leprechauns. Some would call them the elves,
Speaker 1: some would call them the faith folk. There there's so
Speaker 1: many different versions of them. What I'm saying is all
Speaker 1: these cultures around the world, all having their own stories,
Speaker 1: and they all very much sound and act alike. There's
Speaker 1: probably way more of a kernel of truth to that
Speaker 1: than what our modern interpretations would like us to believe.
Speaker 2: See, and everyone gave me ship for being scared of
Speaker 2: small people.
Speaker 3: So, oh my god, I wasn't. I wasn't talking about humans.
Speaker 1: I think fair are size.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, I think some could be, some could be big, small,
Speaker 3: all in between.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a thing, you don't You.
Speaker 2: Don't think that they could be our size too.
Speaker 1: Every time they're ever depicted, they are not now in
Speaker 1: modern tick talk, book lore or whatever the hell, But
Speaker 1: like actual traditional historical references, faithfolk are not human.
Speaker 5: Sized ever know what they could be? I'm not maybe
Speaker 5: I've never met one, you know, I don't ruin Santa Claus,
Speaker 5: Welcome to Christmas conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, read about some goddamn tribesquoi.
Speaker 1: So apparently, if they had a vision of the dwarf
Speaker 1: spirits or little people, then the Little Water Society would
Speaker 1: come in and help them with this great illness. The
Speaker 1: healing right would begin by placing tobacco on the fire
Speaker 1: and calling for the spirits of the dwarves. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: gotta get a good buzz going. I feel that fu.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In cases of an illness, which modern physicians call dementia,
Speaker 1: the Bear Society would be called in in their healing
Speaker 1: rights the members would dance counterclockwise around the patient. I
Speaker 1: don't know what that would do to help heal dementia,
Speaker 1: but I mean, all right, it's only dumb if it
Speaker 1: doesn't work. I suppose there were times when the patient
Speaker 1: would not improve after the ceremony from the healing Society.
Speaker 1: In cases of serious illness, when other medicine societies have
Speaker 1: failed to bring out the cure, the Wooden False Face
Speaker 1: Society would be called in. This society dates back to
Speaker 1: a time during creation when the world was ruled by
Speaker 1: mythical beings. The wooden false face masks are made at
Speaker 1: this One of the words I hate, by the way,
Speaker 1: masks words you have to make extra effort to make
Speaker 1: it plural desks, wasps, masks. I fucking hate these words.
Speaker 1: It's a weird thing anyway. These false face masks are
Speaker 1: made from white pine, maple, bass wood, and poplar. To
Speaker 1: make a mask, the features are first carved in a
Speaker 1: living tree. During the process of carving the mask and
Speaker 1: cutting it free, a prayer is addressed to the involving
Speaker 1: mask and to the spirit forces which it represents. The
Speaker 1: mask is then painted and adorned with horse hair. The
Speaker 1: new mask is concentrated to human service by placing it
Speaker 1: in the hot coals and ashes of the long house fire.
Speaker 1: All the masks are characterized with the distorted features and
Speaker 1: deep set eyes. The noses are bent and crooked. The
Speaker 1: masks are generally painted red and black and have pouches
Speaker 1: of tobacco tied onto the hair above the foreheads. Interesting
Speaker 1: with regard to the symbolism of the mask, they portrayed
Speaker 1: the Great Doctor dwelling at the world's rim, whose broken
Speaker 1: nose and twisted mouth derived from a mythical struggle with
Speaker 1: the Creator for control of the world. The masks are
Speaker 1: symbolized are also symbolized the forest dwelling common faces seen
Speaker 1: in dreams. In addition, some of the masks are beggar masks,
Speaker 1: which caricature neighbors and strangers alike. The masks are not artifacts,
Speaker 1: but living representations of a spirit. One of the rules
Speaker 1: governing the care the masks is the need to periodically
Speaker 1: anoint them with a mixture of some flower seed oil
Speaker 1: and animal grease. At the same time, the masks are
Speaker 1: fed white corn mush. They feed them in the off
Speaker 1: season okay, in payment for their services. Tobacco is burned
Speaker 1: for them, and small bags of tobacco are tied to them.
Speaker 1: Members of the Wooden False Face Society might be called
Speaker 1: at any time of day or night to perform ceremonies
Speaker 1: for those who are ill. Upon recovery, the patient is
Speaker 1: expected to join the False Face Society. Wow, okay, that's
Speaker 1: how you get some devout followers of your group or
Speaker 1: your like. This would be like one of those mystery
Speaker 1: cults from like ancient Greece or any of these things.
Speaker 1: How do you get a devout follower? Oh, because he's
Speaker 1: also a client.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean if they somehow magically cured them
Speaker 3: of dementia, so.
Speaker 2: You know, I guess sure.
Speaker 1: The actual curing ceremony is sacred and not to be
Speaker 1: shared with those outside the society. Mm hmm. These are
Speaker 1: those mystery schools right. Traditionally, the Wooden False Face Society
Speaker 1: would perform two community rituals each year. During the ceremony,
Speaker 1: the story of the False Faces is told. The members
Speaker 1: of the society, wearing the masks, then go through the community,
Speaker 1: entering the houses and driving out all sicknesses, diseases, and evils.
Speaker 1: At the present time, there are several concerns about the
Speaker 1: False Face masks. First, there are a number of non
Speaker 1: Iroquois artists who are making what they call false face
Speaker 1: masks and selling them to the general public. Second, and
Speaker 1: number of false face masks are in the hands of
Speaker 1: the private collectors who do not care for them in
Speaker 1: the traditional manner. The Iroquois have called for the collectors
Speaker 1: and museums to return the mask to the tribes so
Speaker 1: they can be cared for in a respectful manner. The
Speaker 1: National Museum of the American Indian has returned a number
Speaker 1: of these. The Iroquois Traditionalists Society opposes the sales false
Speaker 1: face masks to private collectors and museums. So this doesn't
Speaker 1: really bring it up. But this was in the right article.
Speaker 1: But essentially I was.
Speaker 2: Like, how does this tie in to Christmas?
Speaker 1: So the two times a year where they will do this,
Speaker 1: like the one for the entire tribes during the summer
Speaker 1: solstice and during the winter solstice. Okay, so this was
Speaker 1: supposed to brought up in the winter solstice context, but
Speaker 1: this article did not do a good job of explaining that.
Speaker 1: But getting back on.
Speaker 3: I wonder, I wonder if because they carve them while
Speaker 3: they're in the tree, that they believe they have the
Speaker 3: entity or spirit of the trees or some kind of
Speaker 3: entity in it, and that's why they feed it and
Speaker 3: care for it the way they do.
Speaker 1: Maybe, but then it's the way it made a mask
Speaker 1: after it's put into the coals, which is also.
Speaker 3: They invoke, you know, they invoke some type of spirit
Speaker 3: to be trapped into it to help heal these people.
Speaker 2: And so that's why they're feeding it.
Speaker 1: Possibly, But I mean it's like you're feeding it white
Speaker 1: corn mush, which like all right, cool, So even in
Speaker 1: the off season when you're not using this mask, you're
Speaker 1: feeding it and it's just going through it like you
Speaker 1: just is it just like the you're going through the
Speaker 1: motions so that the spirit gets it. Sounds like a
Speaker 1: mess to clean up afterwards. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know anyway. So now this actually is from CNN, believe
Speaker 1: it or not, The Strange Dark Nights of Romania's Bare
Speaker 1: Day Dancers Bear Dancers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like they bring bears up into this place.
Speaker 1: No, not exactly, but you might think so. So all right,
Speaker 1: to the outsiders, the site of a troop of dancing
Speaker 1: bears decked out in blood red tassels, stomping through the
Speaker 1: snowy streets of a small Romanian town might be a strange,
Speaker 1: almost sinister site, But for those that live in Romania's
Speaker 1: Eastern Moldova region, the arrival of the bears actually locals
Speaker 1: wearing real bear skins, is a time of celebration. The
Speaker 1: event takes place annually between Christmas and New Year's. It's
Speaker 1: a tradition that until recently, few beyond the tight knit
Speaker 1: rural communities of the Trottis Valley have witnessed. But a
Speaker 1: series of images by New York based photographer Diana zenneb
Speaker 1: not going to pronounce that name, has captured this mysterious
Speaker 1: ceremony and brought it to a wider audience. She a
Speaker 1: former humanitarian aid worker now pursuing photo projects mainly across Africa,
Speaker 1: is half Romanian and lived there until she was eight,
Speaker 1: when her family left as refugees, first to Canada than
Speaker 1: to New York. I think that's supposed to be her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all right there. The bear dances were always one
Speaker 1: of my favorite memories, she'd tell CNN. It's a joyous event,
Speaker 1: although the dancers don't look that way in the pictures.
Speaker 1: They're trying to look fierce because, like you know, totally
Speaker 1: so the bear Tamer. Her beautiful images show men and
Speaker 1: women in full bear costume paradying through or parading through
Speaker 1: the streets in and around her hometown of Muannesty. They
Speaker 1: are accompanied by drummers and singing Bear Tamer candid shots
Speaker 1: also showed the bear dancers enjoying downtime, smoking cigarettes, sharing drinks, relaxing,
Speaker 1: and even kissing. The bear dancing is meant to drive
Speaker 1: away evil spirits, according to the author here, It owes
Speaker 1: its origins to the time when the local gypsies also
Speaker 1: known as Roma, would descend into towns from the forest
Speaker 1: in which they lived, bringing with them real bears. That's
Speaker 1: the fucking.
Speaker 2: Gypsy I knew, I said as soon as I I
Speaker 2: was like, oh man, the gypsies.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean we're talking Romania. They're called Aroma, And
Speaker 1: apparently the Gypsies would come down from the mountains with
Speaker 1: real bears and use them to drive away evil spirits.
Speaker 1: And the local community's like, huh, what if we just
Speaker 1: like wore the bears skins and did it probably be
Speaker 1: safer right? Hell yeah, I mean it's pretty cool though.
Speaker 1: I like it. Townsfolks would pay the gypsies in exchange
Speaker 1: for letting the bear cubs walk up and down their
Speaker 1: backs seen as a cure for back ache. Listen, I'm
Speaker 1: not trying listen. Listen, y'all.
Speaker 2: I mean even even the little ones though, have real
Speaker 2: sharp claws, so I'm not just asking for it.
Speaker 1: But all right, I'm not trying to throw shade. But
Speaker 1: like the old gypsy woman who is over here telling
Speaker 1: fortunes and telling you how to cure things, Oh yes,
Speaker 1: if you led the bear cub crawl in your back,
Speaker 1: it will fix your psiatica bitch, What's that's the dumbest,
Speaker 1: But they would pay.
Speaker 2: Them for It's like maybe the way of it would
Speaker 2: help pop their back.
Speaker 1: You could just give the local fat guy to do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if they don't know, if they didn't have
Speaker 3: knowledge of chiropractic, but the bear cub did. I'm simply
Speaker 3: saying the weight of the bear walking up and down
Speaker 3: their spine would pop it, which does relieve a lot
Speaker 3: of people's sciatic nerve issues.
Speaker 1: But I feel like you could just get like a
Speaker 1: child to do it. I don't know how much the
Speaker 1: bear cub's way.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It depends on how big they are I guess, I guess, so,
Speaker 3: I mean it makes sense in some way of you know, hey,
Speaker 3: this thing is, you know, doing this, and now my
Speaker 3: back popped and it suddenly feels better, so hey, it
Speaker 3: actually works.
Speaker 2: It makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: If nothing else, just for the novelty of like being
Speaker 1: able to play around with the bear cub and thing.
Speaker 1: It'd be worth it whether it did or didn't pop
Speaker 1: your back, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're super cute, dude.
Speaker 1: Bears are terrifying, and they have no no business looking
Speaker 1: as cute as they do for how terrifying they are.
Speaker 3: They are really terrifying, Like they really will fuck you up,
Speaker 3: but they're so adorable they are. It's super cute and
Speaker 3: I want to touch the dog, but I also don't
Speaker 3: want to. So I've seen way too many bears out
Speaker 3: in person, like in the wild.
Speaker 2: I don't fuck with him at all.
Speaker 1: I still't need a bear rug and then anyone my
Speaker 1: laugh or a cape down with a cape.
Speaker 3: The last time I saw a bear, I was actually
Speaker 3: hiking with my child and it was just me and
Speaker 3: him out in the woods in the middle of nothing,
Speaker 3: and that was a pretty terrifying experience because he was
Speaker 3: sleeping and I was so who I was so stressed out.
Speaker 3: He was going to wake up and cry and they
Speaker 3: were going to realize that I was right there. And
Speaker 3: it was a whole thing. And man, what kind of bears?
Speaker 2: Black bears?
Speaker 1: Oh they're peaceful. Yeah, you never hear a black bear
Speaker 1: attacking anybody. Yeah, it was a mom with three cups. Yep,
Speaker 1: never mind that would be the only.
Speaker 3: So I was sweating it out because I saw the
Speaker 3: may first and then I saw the head of the
Speaker 3: mom and I was like, fuck my life. And I
Speaker 3: had to like try to figure out how to backtrack
Speaker 3: without her seeing me, without waking up my child.
Speaker 2: And it was a whole thing.
Speaker 3: And I only had like a small gun on me,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, this is this is gonna be a thing.
Speaker 3: We're we're gonna fight to the death over here, over
Speaker 3: our kids. So I was really stressed. I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: lie to you.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: I didn't sleep for like three days after that because
Speaker 3: I was so panicked that my kid was gonna get harmed. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a rough It was a rough one. So
Speaker 3: then I didn't hike around there for a good bit.
Speaker 1: Where is that Tunica?
Speaker 2: No, this was this was down the street from my
Speaker 2: house in Oregon.
Speaker 1: Oh oh Jesus, So I know I got black bears
Speaker 1: up there? Yeah huh, I mean I knew I had
Speaker 1: bears for sure. I didn't know black bears were native
Speaker 1: to Oregon. I thought it'd be more like a well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to just thow out Kodiak and grizzly
Speaker 1: and shit, but.
Speaker 2: Like there is grizzly bears that have come down.
Speaker 1: See. I also thought it'd be more of the grizzly variety.
Speaker 1: But hey, good things. Black bears. They're all over the place. Hell,
Speaker 1: I've mentioned it before. They just got to such a
Speaker 1: population in Louisiana where there's now a season.
Speaker 3: Lottery estimated thirty thousand black bears.
Speaker 1: You learned, so I knew every day.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was like, man, I know you're making me
Speaker 3: question the bear I saw it. I was like, no,
Speaker 3: I know it was a black bear.
Speaker 2: No no, no.
Speaker 1: If you say it was.
Speaker 2: Just cougar, cougars will hunt you, like no tomorrow, Yeah
Speaker 2: they will. We have.
Speaker 3: So my dad's where I grew up is in between
Speaker 3: two canyons. So if a cannon on each side, and
Speaker 3: there's a long road, and our property was in between so.
Speaker 1: You got like proper mountain lions and ship.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there was a cougar that decided it felt some
Speaker 3: type of way, and this cougar would wait, I'm not
Speaker 3: kidding at night for me to get home for my job,
Speaker 3: and I would have to sit in my car sometimes
Speaker 3: my truck and not get out because the damn thing
Speaker 3: would sit out there and just like pace around and
Speaker 3: like come back and forth.
Speaker 2: And I was, well, yeah, and I this was before
Speaker 2: cell phones.
Speaker 1: Don't do you know how old were you?
Speaker 2: Let's see, I was fifteen.
Speaker 1: Shit, it's probably your dad just didn't sit on the
Speaker 1: porch and be like got you.
Speaker 3: Well, once we figured it out that it was actually
Speaker 3: kind of because it was it was stalking the livestock
Speaker 3: behind me into the side of me and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: But this thing would sit out there and it would
Speaker 3: it would come I would see it and it would
Speaker 3: come up the because you have to drive up a
Speaker 3: big driveway up a hill and all this stuff, and
Speaker 3: it would just I would see it out of the
Speaker 3: corner of my eye before I got out of the truck,
Speaker 3: and I would watch it kind of like look at me,
Speaker 3: kind of wander around, come back.
Speaker 2: I'm like this motherfucker's trying to wait for me. I
Speaker 2: am not getting out of my truck right now. Like,
Speaker 2: there's no way. They're big too. Yeah, they're really big
Speaker 2: compared to what people think. No, they're really their paws
Speaker 2: are huge. Nope, Nope, that thing, I swear to you,
Speaker 2: just like outlived everybody.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what their lifespan usually looks like.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I'm telling you that thing never
Speaker 3: got I know that people shot at it. I don't
Speaker 3: know if anyone actually ever or killed it, because I
Speaker 3: would see it every now and again.
Speaker 1: Bastard.
Speaker 2: I just was worried that I was gonna be eaten.
Speaker 1: By damn mountain. Look that fuck that no way, at.
Speaker 3: Least it wasn't a random crazy panther of Louisiana. Apparently
Speaker 3: that we telling you.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you too.
Speaker 2: We do not have panthers.
Speaker 1: We did not.
Speaker 2: I looked it up so much, so much research on this.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you look online, they will say that we
Speaker 1: have no large cats that live in Louisiana. I don't
Speaker 1: give a fuck what the wildlife and fisheries tell you. No,
Speaker 1: And I have them from my own personal experiences. I
Speaker 1: have multiple dudes that I've worked with that have multiple
Speaker 1: trail camps all throughout their personal land that they own.
Speaker 1: We have large long tail cats that live in the state.
Speaker 1: Whether the wildlife and fisheries want to acknowledge that or
Speaker 1: not is up to them. I don't give a fuck.
Speaker 1: I've seen them, and I've seen them with my own
Speaker 1: eyes twice in my life. Here in this parish, we
Speaker 1: have them. They're not a lot. It's not like we're
Speaker 1: overpopulated or anything like that. They're super elusive. You may
Speaker 1: go your entire life and never see one, but if
Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time in the woods, you'll
Speaker 1: probably see one eventually. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know anybody that is seen besides you saying that.
Speaker 3: And I've looked up so much literature on it because
Speaker 3: I was like, there's no fucking way.
Speaker 1: That we have actually a panther that's an African cat.
Speaker 1: I understand this. This is more like a cousin to
Speaker 1: a mountain lion. Okay, I get that, but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: we got them, like for sure.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: People can believe what the fuck they want. That's fine.
Speaker 1: I live in these woods. I know it's up back
Speaker 1: to the bear, back to the bear in Romania, older
Speaker 1: bears be So we got the younger bears that are
Speaker 1: walking on people's backs, and they're super cute, and they're
Speaker 1: paying the gypsies to do these things. Older bears would
Speaker 1: be made to dance by being placed on hot metal
Speaker 1: plates that would make them hop up and down. Oh
Speaker 1: how cute, No horrible. And these again, these are the
Speaker 1: gypsies that are doing that. Free for thought. Uh whatever
Speaker 1: this lady's name is says this took place as recent
Speaker 1: as the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's it's been a good hot minute.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, now they've just got people that are dressing
Speaker 1: the skins, because that's more humane.
Speaker 2: I don't know what's worse. God, damn what I like? Well,
Speaker 2: I mean they're torturing them.
Speaker 1: It's better for the bear to be dead.
Speaker 3: Well, it depends that they're like actually over killing them,
Speaker 3: or if it's like a population control kind of a
Speaker 3: thing and you get a tag and you only get
Speaker 3: a certain amount. I don't believe in killing bears that much,
Speaker 3: but I you know, depends on how many they are
Speaker 3: overpopulating and things like that. But sure, sure, I mean
Speaker 3: to torture them and make them hop up and down
Speaker 3: on hot plates, burning their feet.
Speaker 2: That's fucked up.
Speaker 1: But the Gypsies have never been known to be super
Speaker 1: kind of animals.
Speaker 2: That's fair.
Speaker 1: No, I'm just saying anyway. Her grandmother, who is now
Speaker 1: in her eighties, recall seeing Roma leading bears on leashes
Speaker 1: down from the forest when she was five or six
Speaker 1: years old. The tradition is very undefined because Roma don't
Speaker 1: write their history down. I've done research, but no one
Speaker 1: can figure out how they went from live bears walking
Speaker 1: on people's backs to people addressed as bears. The costumes
Speaker 1: involved in the dance are actual bear skin, so while
Speaker 1: bear dancing was once an exclusive Roma activity, the author
Speaker 1: says they've been priced out because a ban on bear
Speaker 1: hunting has escalated the price of the skins to up
Speaker 1: to twenty two hundred dollars US. Damn. Most Roma, she says,
Speaker 1: have sold theirs and can't afford new ones. This checks out.
Speaker 1: Hard economic times followed the collapse of communism meant an
Speaker 1: end to the days when crowds of bear troops were
Speaker 1: welcomed in every house of food, drink, and money. Now
Speaker 1: fewer groups make pre arranged stops at the homes of
Speaker 1: the community figures or restaurants where they pick up tips
Speaker 1: for up to one hundred dollars. Recently, some have been
Speaker 1: able to make more money traveling to bigger cities like
Speaker 1: Bucharest to perform for wealthy clients. Even though the tradition
Speaker 1: is still cherished by locals, the Altar says it's in
Speaker 1: danger of dying out as local cultures are diluted by
Speaker 1: Western influences and many people leave home. Yeah that's fair.
Speaker 1: So Romania has a problem with our out migration because
Speaker 1: there are no jobs for people of working age. They're
Speaker 1: all away in Italy or Spain or some other places.
Speaker 1: So in rural areas it's most likely the older people
Speaker 1: and very young kids. Everyone else is gone. So this
Speaker 1: could be another reason why the tradition is dying out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty much what it talks about. Is it
Speaker 2: dying out?
Speaker 1: But as far as the bear dances are concerned, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is because over here you see
Speaker 1: like people in the bear costume and it won't let
Speaker 1: me shift to the next picture for some reason.
Speaker 2: Oh there we go. Oh okay, yeah, we got people.
Speaker 1: Wearing actual bearskins doing their dances and things, which.
Speaker 2: That was a mask.
Speaker 3: Did you see that guy's mask that was That was
Speaker 3: a face mask. If I've ever seen it, looks like
Speaker 3: a cleon.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that looks like. But hell yeah,
Speaker 1: trek shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's truck shit.
Speaker 1: I believe that. Yeah. Yeah, dudes rocking the bearskins and
Speaker 1: the red scarves and they're just walking around doing their
Speaker 1: dances and things, traditional instrumentation and shit. This is cool.
Speaker 3: I mean, hopefully the tradition stays alive and they're able
Speaker 3: to continuously pass it down.
Speaker 1: I like it.
Speaker 2: I do. It's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: So now let's shift over to how KFC became a
Speaker 1: Christmas tradition in Japan. I will give my spiel on
Speaker 1: the Kernel here in a bit, because boy, I just
Speaker 1: learned more about him. He went from a gunfighter to
Speaker 1: basically a failed businessman multiple times over, prolific womanizer. We'll
Speaker 1: get to all of it. We'll get to all of
Speaker 1: it here in a bit. But anyway, how did KFC
Speaker 1: become a Christmas tradition in Japan? Let's get into it here.
Speaker 1: It started with a dream. Literally. Takishi O Kawara, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the manager of Japan's very first KFC reportedly scribbled down
Speaker 1: an idea at midnight after hearing foreign customers hn't the
Speaker 1: lack of Christmas turkey. The next morning, party barrels were born,
Speaker 1: family sized buckets of fried chicken, marketed as a holiday
Speaker 1: meal alternative. It was a bold pitch, especially in a
Speaker 1: country with no baked ham tradition, no tree trimming ritual,
Speaker 1: and no long established Christmas dinner. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: KFC Japan went national with the now famous campaign not
Speaker 1: going to pronounce that, but it basically means Kentucky for Christmas.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a catchy slogan, it was a seasonal
Speaker 1: blueprint which began as a workaround quickly gained traction. Suddenly
Speaker 1: KFC wasn't just a fast food chain. It was a
Speaker 1: holiday fixture. And in the list of things you didn't
Speaker 1: know about Kentucky Fried Chicken, it's one of Japan's most
Speaker 1: enduring Christmas brands.
Speaker 2: I love this.
Speaker 1: This is fordicads.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know this and I lived in Japan.
Speaker 2: I mean I lived in Oknawo, so I didn't live
Speaker 2: in mainland.
Speaker 1: But which Okanawa has its own culture separate from mainland.
Speaker 2: Oh, for sure, completely, completely.
Speaker 1: I mean it's let's get into it here, so it says.
Speaker 1: The real genius of the campaign was that it didn't
Speaker 1: try to mimic Western customs. Instead, it gave Japan something
Speaker 1: entirely new, a fun family center tradition that felt festive
Speaker 1: without feeling forced. The original package even came with a
Speaker 1: bottle of wine, nudging the fried chicken into celebration territory.
Speaker 1: In a country without a Christmas dinner playbook, KFC made
Speaker 1: its own. So now let's talk about this a deep
Speaker 1: fried Christmas decades in the making. First of all, why
Speaker 1: does the colonel look inherently Japanese in that sculpture.
Speaker 2: I love that it came with a bottle of wine.
Speaker 2: I mean fried chicken and wine. Like you talking dirty now,
Speaker 2: because we've got an old japan man.
Speaker 1: Because when I think of KFC, I I'm also thinking, like, yo,
Speaker 1: they might have some cab.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying Netflix and chill kind of vibe.
Speaker 1: Yo.
Speaker 2: You bring that box chicken boy and that wine like
Speaker 2: you only get laid.
Speaker 1: You're bringing that bucket of chicken in a bottle of wine.
Speaker 2: That good old Christmas.
Speaker 1: They bring Kentucky into the Japan. It's what it is
Speaker 1: they're bringing the trailer park to Tokyo.
Speaker 2: Like this, This is wonderful tradition.
Speaker 1: Today, Japan's Christmas season doesn't begin with sleigh bells. It
Speaker 1: starts when KFC Japan opens pre orders. What slaying them bells? Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah myself, you're good.
Speaker 1: It starts with KMC Japan opens pre orders in late October.
Speaker 1: These people are pre ordering get buckets of chicken in
Speaker 1: October for Christmas.
Speaker 2: N This is so awesome. This is even better than
Speaker 2: like down the street ordering your turkeys like a mom
Speaker 2: in advance because.
Speaker 1: They don't have turkeys there, but they do got that
Speaker 1: KFC bucket though they oh my god.
Speaker 2: They got that country chicken.
Speaker 1: Bro, what the fuck? They have timpoora chicken. But that's
Speaker 1: not the point. KFC man was like, listen, I got
Speaker 1: a wild marketing pitch. Just hear me out hear me
Speaker 1: out here we are.
Speaker 2: How did I not know this? And I lived over there?
Speaker 1: Oh whoa? Okay, no, but I keep reading this. Oh shit,
Speaker 1: I just saw the numbers. Okay. So Kentucky for Christmas
Speaker 1: has become a logistical operation as much as a holiday tradition,
Speaker 1: with some customers ordering weeks in advance to avoid standing
Speaker 1: out in line for hours. According to KFC Japan, Christmas
Speaker 1: Eve remains its busiest day of the year, with some
Speaker 1: store selling over ten five to ten times more than usual.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen alone, the chain pulled in six point
Speaker 1: nine billiony in, which is sixty three million dollars in
Speaker 1: just five days.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, sixty three million dollars and five days off
Speaker 2: of the Lord's Chicken of Country Chicken.
Speaker 1: Bro what can good tie is the Lord's Chicken as
Speaker 1: far as that's concerned. But like, hold on, hold on,
Speaker 1: these people in Japan are.
Speaker 2: So really like I like KFC. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: It used to be better.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, there's a reason for that. The only
Speaker 3: one I went to is one in like in Podunk nowhere.
Speaker 3: That's the last one I've been to, and it was
Speaker 3: really good actually.
Speaker 1: But so I'm gonna give you all a backstory. There's
Speaker 1: also a reason why your boy Dave from Wendy's made
Speaker 1: his store what it is, and it does tie back
Speaker 1: to the Colonel. But anyway, okay, so just break this down.
Speaker 1: Just everybody's on the same page as this. Sixty three
Speaker 1: million in twenty eighteen, the chain KFC in Japan, which
Speaker 1: for the record, I didn't even know that they had
Speaker 1: that level of outpost in Japan either, in five days
Speaker 1: because people are thirsty for that that glorious fried chicken
Speaker 1: so much that in five days they made sixty three
Speaker 1: million US. That is that's substantial. They ain't play money.
Speaker 1: That's that's wow, okay, And it's not just buckets a
Speaker 1: fried chicken. KFC celebrated the holiday season with special value
Speaker 1: meals back in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's twelve million, six hundred dollars a day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for five days straight, they're making twelve million profit.
Speaker 3: That's okay. Sorry, I just I had tod the quick
Speaker 3: math and I'm like, holy crap.
Speaker 1: Yo, I ain't mad at it. I'm I'm stoked that
Speaker 1: KFC has found them a niche market and they're just
Speaker 1: leaning into it. But like, holy fuck, Tokyo, what is
Speaker 1: happening here? Where it's God's zilland when you need them anyway?
Speaker 1: So they have value meals back in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: offering everything from whole roasted chicken with stuffing to cakes, sides,
Speaker 1: and commemorative plates. Each year, the party barrel gets a
Speaker 1: new design and some stores even dress up the kernel
Speaker 1: in full Santa regalia. Other parts of the world have
Speaker 1: gotten into the fun too. KFC's Christmas treet ornaments debut
Speaker 1: in New Zealand as festive decorations, providing the chain's global
Speaker 1: grip on holiday branding.
Speaker 3: Wait, we need to hit up crypto women and ask
Speaker 3: her if this is a real thing.
Speaker 2: You know what, I'm jealous. I don't have a KFC
Speaker 2: crew Smiths tree ornament.
Speaker 1: I feel like we can just find one this.
Speaker 3: Come on, man, I actually do you buy my mom
Speaker 3: every year a Starbucks ornament? Like, for like the last
Speaker 3: I don't know, eighteen years, I bought her a store
Speaker 3: Starbucks cup ornament.
Speaker 1: And it was founded in Portland. Right, that's an organ thing.
Speaker 2: I think Seattle.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry specific Northwestern excuse me, don't want to miss
Speaker 1: I don't want to misappropriate your your inheritance, settle your
Speaker 1: your culture there. But anyway, moving on, So what started
Speaker 1: as a clever bit of marketing has turned into an
Speaker 1: annual ritual that is festive, efficient and unmistakably local. Oh
Speaker 1: very much so.
Speaker 2: It was what it was Seattle. I was crazy.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, I know it's not organ Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have been corrected. These are not interchangeable dialogues. They
Speaker 1: are not. They're not They're different, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: So just like Alabama and Georgia, these are completely different places,
Speaker 1: allegedly completely different, with so many cultural differences. Said someone's time,
Speaker 1: I'm sure.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 1: Anyway, there are plenty of holiday food traditions around the world,
Speaker 1: but few are as unexpected or as enduring as Japan's
Speaker 1: deep fried December. Just don't forget to pre order. Wow,
Speaker 1: So these people are these people are doing the mostest
Speaker 1: with the colonel. So all right, talk to.
Speaker 2: Me about the colonel. What happened with him?
Speaker 1: So he didn't actually start KFC until he was in
Speaker 1: his sixties.
Speaker 2: Oh for real?
Speaker 1: So he was. So he was a prolific cheater on
Speaker 1: his wife, like and was not shy about it. And
Speaker 1: at one point in time she basically took his three
Speaker 1: kids and took off, and he got her back and
Speaker 1: essentially just got right back into the same thing. He
Speaker 1: worked a sales job here and there. He just kind
Speaker 1: of had odd jobs just to make ends meet, and
Speaker 1: one day he decided that he through a weird chain
Speaker 1: of events, he ended up owning a gas station and
Speaker 1: which was cool. I mean he didn't mean to. Essentially,
Speaker 1: he was like a Michelin entire guy at one point,
Speaker 1: and there was a gas station maintenance shop combo. Then
Speaker 1: through a chain of events, he ended up owning the
Speaker 1: gas station. Cool started selling food on the side, and
Speaker 1: he realized that if you take this chicken and you
Speaker 1: do it in a pressure cooker, you can cook it
Speaker 1: in eight minutes rather than in a deep fryer that
Speaker 1: would take some like twenty minutes. So he started just
Speaker 1: doing pressure cooking and like dope, cool. Long story is short,
Speaker 1: they built an interstate that went completely opposite direction of
Speaker 1: his place. So his business failed and crumbled, and this
Speaker 1: was after the building had burned down twice, so he
Speaker 1: was not necesinarily destitute, but essentially he's like, listen, fuck
Speaker 1: the gas station industry. I know I can make money
Speaker 1: off of this chicken. So for from sixty six to
Speaker 1: seventy years old, this man found two hundred failing businesses,
Speaker 1: failing restaurants and taught them how to make Kentucky fried
Speaker 1: chicken with his pressure cooker in the back. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't even like these stories became friend chies. They would
Speaker 1: just have on the menu also now serving Kentucky Fried chicken,
Speaker 1: and that was it cool and it worked between sixty
Speaker 1: six and seventy. It took off in a good way
Speaker 1: to where he started franchising these stores. But these people
Speaker 1: didn't know how to run restaurants. That's why all of
Speaker 1: them were failing. So he brought on this guy to
Speaker 1: teach these restaurants how to run efficiently and keep it
Speaker 1: on brand and all of these things. This guy later
Speaker 1: decided to split off into his own thing. His name
Speaker 1: was Dave. In his restaurant we would now call Wendy's.
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: He named the restaurant chain after his granddaughter. The original
Speaker 1: Wendy is still currently the CEO with the red hair,
Speaker 1: although she's like, god, she's eating way too much Wendy's.
Speaker 1: But but's at the point, beside the point, okay, So
Speaker 1: cut to KFC. He goes public, he sells his company,
Speaker 1: and he made a few million off of it, and
Speaker 1: that's fine. He also was such a prolific foul mouth
Speaker 1: person because he was a veteran that basically they understood
Speaker 1: if he was walking into the store to like be
Speaker 1: the quality manager. And that was the deal. He sold
Speaker 1: his shares of the company, but he would maintain at
Speaker 1: least a quality assurance, quality control type of position. He
Speaker 1: could pop into any location and he got paid somewhere
Speaker 1: between sixteen and eighty K a year something like that
Speaker 1: for this service. They knew if the colonel walked in
Speaker 1: like somebody's getting the ass chewed, if everything is not
Speaker 1: up to snow. And when they went public, the gravy
Speaker 1: went off the kilt. They started doing the extra crispy,
Speaker 1: which he called a fried dough ball on top of
Speaker 1: what was once chicken like. He was so mad that
Speaker 1: the standard had dropped. But apparently back in the day
Speaker 1: when he owned a gas station, his gas station was
Speaker 1: in a position where it was like the midway point
Speaker 1: for a lot of bootlegging operations that would go down.
Speaker 1: And also there was other gas stations that were trying
Speaker 1: to take his business, and he got into multiple altercations.
Speaker 1: He would throw hands for no reason whatsoever, and that
Speaker 1: was like a known fact as well, and he was
Speaker 1: good at fighting. He also was a lawyer. At one
Speaker 1: point he yeah, he lost his bar when he beat
Speaker 1: the shit out of his client in front of the
Speaker 1: judge in the middle of a case.
Speaker 3: Yo, everything about him except for the prolific cheating I'm
Speaker 3: here for.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying he was perfect. I'm saying that he's
Speaker 1: a fucking wild guy. Like there's the story with the lawyer,
Speaker 1: and shit, we're not sure if he beat his client
Speaker 1: with a chair or if the client threw a chair
Speaker 1: at him, but somehow a chair was used as a weapon.
Speaker 1: Dave came out on top and he lost his lawyer license. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: the colonel excuse yeah, but uh yeah. So somehow this
Speaker 1: went international to the point of making it to Japan,
Speaker 1: and then one day this homeboy was like, listen, man,
Speaker 1: I got this idea. It's gonna sound weird. Who wants
Speaker 1: fried chicken for Christmas? But hear me out and now
Speaker 1: it is such.
Speaker 3: It's such a cool, like random, weird fluke tradition that
Speaker 3: has taken off and I love it.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 1: What is what is this? What are we doing here?
Speaker 2: We're having some yo, That's what I'm gonna bring.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm gonna go find me a bucket of KFC.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna find me a KFC, get me a tree
Speaker 3: ornament and some wine, and then like, what's up? What's up? Man?
Speaker 1: Sounds like the most white, tragic, whole bucket, whole bottle.
Speaker 1: Fuck the utensils. We don't need the We're here the wine. Christmas,
Speaker 1: y'all for.
Speaker 2: The fucking party. I'm gonna show up in my ugly
Speaker 2: Christmas sweater, yo, but I gotta bring I will say,
Speaker 2: I gotta bring that mashed potatoes and gravy because they
Speaker 2: got that ship on point. I love me some mashed
Speaker 2: potatoes and gravy from KFC. If you say so, I
Speaker 2: know you're.
Speaker 1: A no no, no, no no. I used to like KFC
Speaker 1: back when it like when I was younger, before he sold.
Speaker 2: It apparently in like a few years. But the little
Speaker 2: podunk nowhere one, it's really good, but.
Speaker 1: They stopped by one one day. Maybe the standards have
Speaker 1: been red.
Speaker 2: I feel about Popeyes.
Speaker 3: Popeye standards has dropped and their prices has skyrockets.
Speaker 1: So ever since they came out with the spicy chicken
Speaker 1: sandwich and like that went viral. That's like all they're
Speaker 1: doing now. They're chicken trash their sandwiches. Okay, but like
Speaker 1: that's anyone anyone. So moving on to the next thing.
Speaker 2: You have the poop one. Let's talk Barcelona.
Speaker 1: Barcelona Spain's pooping Christmas log.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy the wild tradition.
Speaker 1: Of kaga teo. M hm, I'm sure I'm mispronounced that.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a soft g. I don't know so anyway,
Speaker 1: my first December in Barcelona, when I lived there a
Speaker 1: few years back, I noticed something odd amids the winter
Speaker 1: holiday displays small logs with smiley faces, tiny wooden legs,
Speaker 1: and a red little red capes. I also heard whisperings
Speaker 1: of kaga teo, which sounded like an insult about a
Speaker 1: family member, given that teo in Spanish means uncle and
Speaker 1: CagA translates to poop, so literally, we're talking about poop uncle, uncle,
Speaker 1: poop and uh so. I soon learned that these two
Speaker 1: things are related and have nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: disagreeable relatives. In fact, kagatillo means pooping log in Catalan
Speaker 1: and the official language of Barcelona. In the entire state
Speaker 1: of Catalonium. In early December, families in Catalonia and neighboring
Speaker 1: Aragon place one of these grinning chunks of wood in
Speaker 1: the fireplace or another prominent spot at home, or buy
Speaker 1: the fireplace. Yeah, yeah, they don't burn the poop unkle no, no,
Speaker 1: and pretend to feed it nightly so they can defecate
Speaker 1: little gifts on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 2: I love it so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know why.
Speaker 2: So it makes me so happy because it's like such
Speaker 2: a cheerful little poop log.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If for any of the cult members that are
Speaker 1: not seeing what we're looking at right now, please come
Speaker 1: to Patreon so you can witness this.
Speaker 2: I'll describe it really quick for those of you that
Speaker 2: can't see it. So it is a log that's sitting
Speaker 2: on like a wood Yeah, it's like a wooden log
Speaker 2: sitting on two legs in the front that are taller,
Speaker 2: with two smaller legs in the back. This one has
Speaker 2: a little red cap on its head, kind of like
Speaker 2: the French beret.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: It has a cute.
Speaker 3: Little smiley face with a little nose, and it has
Speaker 3: a little scarf dress situation that's covering like its back
Speaker 3: half so where the poop would be.
Speaker 2: So just so you can understand what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So the log is sitting squatted dog style here basically,
Speaker 1: and you pretend to feed it every night, and on
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve you lift up the skirt and there's just
Speaker 1: little presents for you and it's shit.
Speaker 2: I really want to do this. I don't really want
Speaker 2: to do this. I love it.
Speaker 1: It's so fun, ye know. The kids will probably really
Speaker 1: get a kick out of this, like this is so good.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. You give it something to eat every
Speaker 1: night and it is gone in the morning. Barcelona mother
Speaker 1: Monica Vallejo explains Fileto says she and her kids would
Speaker 1: give the log leftovers from dinner or whatever was around.
Speaker 1: She says some families go further to ensure their little
Speaker 1: wooden trunk will actually be able to do the doo doo.
Speaker 1: Pallejo says that these nutrition oriented types might give their
Speaker 1: legit lignious log fiber rich foods like garbonzos and lentils
Speaker 1: so it can poop more presents. They're giving the log
Speaker 1: fiber wise to make sure that it gives them a
Speaker 1: lot of presents.
Speaker 2: What is this, It's healthy poop. They need to make
Speaker 2: sure that poop's healthy. It's on regular tracks, so that
Speaker 2: way they can get their little presents. This is fantastic
Speaker 2: for everyone.
Speaker 3: This is my favorite one so far out of every
Speaker 3: tradition that we have read period.
Speaker 2: This is my favorite.
Speaker 1: The jokes right themselves too, because I can see like
Speaker 1: there's no presence for one day, like what is this? Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess uncle, shit, it's a little constipated. Maybe we
Speaker 1: should give like in reality, like the parents didn't go
Speaker 1: get anything that night. There's like, yo, I don't know,
Speaker 1: feed them fucking fiber. I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, if you give them
Speaker 1: too much fiber, I wonder what present diary looks like,
Speaker 1: like what would be like unwrapped presents, like the wrapping
Speaker 1: paper and everything's just all over the place. Just whatever.
Speaker 1: Oh no, man, it's a mess.
Speaker 2: Max so good, all right, continue on.
Speaker 3: Valo is the owner and general manager of Hostle Grouse,
Speaker 3: the eco friendly I've watched your Place boutique in Barcelona,
Speaker 3: where she keeps the cognitive.
Speaker 2: Cogatio I don't know why.
Speaker 3: That doesn't sound right, but also called the t O
Speaker 3: Day Nadal or Christmas log in in December as well,
Speaker 3: she says holidays. She says, holiday guests at the hotel
Speaker 3: find the tradition cute and strange. They don't understand it.
Speaker 2: Given the ship, who would understand this?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's cute, but also like, yo, what
Speaker 1: the fuck are y'all? Doing Barcelona.
Speaker 3: Given that Vallejo herself concedes, there's no why. There's no
Speaker 3: reason for the pooping log for foreigner guests, confusion is understandable.
Speaker 1: There's no rhyme or reason. Just go with it, okay.
Speaker 2: The origins of the poop log.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, you want me to take it?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: Right, As Valeo explains, the practice originated in the countryside. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'll bet there's no way the snooty city folk came
Speaker 1: up with this concept. There's absolutely no fucking way there.
Speaker 1: Families burned a special log over the holidays, representing light
Speaker 1: and togetherness.
Speaker 2: So like you a log, Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 1: Once it was gone, they spread its ashes in the
Speaker 1: fields in a symbol of fertility and regrowth.
Speaker 2: So pretty much the same.
Speaker 1: Okay. Somehow that growth translated into a log that gets
Speaker 1: fattened up for two weeks in December until it finally
Speaker 1: has to have a movement in a tradition that steeped
Speaker 1: into Cataloan cities in the nineteen sixties. Oh, this is
Speaker 1: relatively recent. Okay, this isn't like a long standing tradition
Speaker 1: from way back in the day's years old. So nope,
Speaker 1: in the sixties they're just like al right, I.
Speaker 3: Bet somebody got high as fuck and it was like, hey,
Speaker 3: so this log needs the poop and like we need
Speaker 3: to fatten it up, kind of like a like fatten
Speaker 3: um the.
Speaker 1: Old guy taking a rail of coke log ship presents
Speaker 1: for the kids. It's like, bro, what.
Speaker 3: I was thinking of Hansel and Gretel kind of a
Speaker 3: vibe where like she needed to fatten up them up.
Speaker 3: So like maybe it's just blended a couple of traditions
Speaker 3: together or heard some stories and you know, now we
Speaker 3: need to fatten the log up that ships out presence.
Speaker 3: And I am doing this. I am gonna make one
Speaker 3: and post a picture on the coal on the Patreon.
Speaker 2: I'm making one. It's happening.
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, so you'll have you have your Yule log
Speaker 1: on the table and you also have the poop log
Speaker 1: by the tree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not gonna it's gonna be what. We're gonna
Speaker 2: have a lot of logs going on out of my
Speaker 2: house with my KFC bucket and my wine. Yes, I'm
Speaker 2: having all of it. I'm gonna go out of my
Speaker 2: way to have all of the traditions. I can, you
Speaker 2: know what, just to have a good old time to celebrate.
Speaker 1: Yea, so we are one day when you have grandkids
Speaker 1: that are gonna come over to your house and not
Speaker 1: know what the going on.
Speaker 2: The whole table ship, I'm gonna have like a horsehead.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, No, no, the horsehead with the decorations.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have ulog.
Speaker 1: I'm just showing down a great time.
Speaker 2: This is gonna be the best Christmas ever. But I'm
Speaker 2: so excited, y'all. Oh my god, this is so good.
Speaker 2: This is the thing that's gonna have to happen for sure. Yes,
Speaker 2: we must go out of our wage to do all this.
Speaker 1: There's so many random juggling pieces that don't even make sense.
Speaker 1: But just like Vallejo said, listen, don't question it, just
Speaker 1: fucking go with it.
Speaker 3: To go with it, Okay, who explains the practice originally?
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the sixties. Although you can purchase one of
Speaker 1: these smiling chunks of timber in a store or market, Dude,
Speaker 1: they're okay, yeah, because it's making one is just too
Speaker 1: that's too crazy. But they seldom if you scroll, yo,
Speaker 1: they straight up sell this.
Speaker 2: Yes, so they have, Oh they have. They have made masksoplugs,
Speaker 2: they have a whole industry around it, but it says
Speaker 2: the place for parents with young kids to get one
Speaker 2: is where logs come from the woods. Shocker train so
Speaker 2: hard not to laugh, yo.
Speaker 1: The annual search for the hidden log is known in
Speaker 1: Catalonian simply as Concastitians, bro Caucassians or the hunts. So
Speaker 1: this is like a whole Christmas tradition instead of going
Speaker 1: to the tree farm cutting down a Christmas tree to
Speaker 1: bring it into your home and decorate a family. You
Speaker 1: got people in Catalonia who are going out into the
Speaker 1: woods to find logs. They look like a real shit
Speaker 1: worthy you know what I'm saying. Does that log look hungry?
Speaker 1: Does it look like it will shit? Good presence for us? Brok,
Speaker 1: throw that bitch in the truck. Let's go like that's
Speaker 1: the one.
Speaker 5: Wo.
Speaker 1: So parents could take their kids to a special kagatillo
Speaker 1: forest run by a small band, run by a small business,
Speaker 1: where they've been hidden for the children to find. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's a treasure hunt. Small towns in Catalonia
Speaker 1: offer options to find cago tillos in their woods to
Speaker 1: those who would have prepaid about thirty five dollars and
Speaker 1: encourage families to stay afterwards to enjoy a long family
Speaker 1: lunch at a designated restaurant. Yeah, they have whole whole
Speaker 1: winter wonderlands where you can go and find the ship
Speaker 1: log for your family at the forest, Vallejo took her
Speaker 1: boys to. The logs are already decorated with eyes, legs,
Speaker 1: and capes. For her, the forest search is the best
Speaker 1: part of the Cagatillo tradition as that tooting tree.
Speaker 2: I fucking can't whoever wrote.
Speaker 1: This, God, damn you get the assignment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying so hard not to lie.
Speaker 1: As that tooting tree trunk will belong to your family
Speaker 1: for many holiday seasons to come. Once they have the
Speaker 1: kakatilla at home and being fed each evening, kids actually
Speaker 1: think it's getting bigger. Valleo says. By the twenty fourth
Speaker 1: of December, the kakatilla is gordito or chubby and ready
Speaker 1: to go number two. But the little piece of wood
Speaker 1: who needs some privacy to do his thing, okay. In
Speaker 1: religious families, kids are told to head into the bedroom
Speaker 1: to pray for gifts. Falleo's family is not religious, so
Speaker 1: she used to tell her two boys that the kakatilla
Speaker 1: was shy, and they needed to wait in another room
Speaker 1: for a while. When the kids leave the room, parents
Speaker 1: dash goodies under the log's cape, which can look more
Speaker 1: like a blanket.
Speaker 2: How are they making it look fatter? How are you
Speaker 2: fattening up a lot?
Speaker 1: I guess you're just like playing cognitive dissonance with your children,
Speaker 1: like straight up, like, oh man, that is getting fat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: moment is see see it's like, what the fuck, dude,
Speaker 1: it's a log.
Speaker 2: These kids are like it, you got elves that we need?
Speaker 1: I do be doing the elves on the shelves.
Speaker 3: I didn't say it was like Americans got the damn
Speaker 3: l is everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yo's a new tradition.
Speaker 2: Does anybody else do elves on the shelves like globally?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: I watched an episode of Shark Tank when they did
Speaker 1: mince on a bench for like the Jews out there
Speaker 1: that want to do their own thing for Hanukkah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not nearly as popular as elf on a shelf
Speaker 1: shakra right now, but apparently that's the thing, and I
Speaker 1: don't know of any other. You're good, I'm so good.
Speaker 2: I'm so good.
Speaker 1: Oh. I have to look this up for you because
Speaker 1: this is the minch on a bench is it's so silly.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I thought about Snoop Dogg with
Speaker 2: ank Yo, Like, I don't know, a little.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mince on a bench. This is a thing that
Speaker 1: you could buy for your Jewish family.
Speaker 2: We have to buy one for Royce.
Speaker 1: Oh kind of looks like maybe if he gets like
Speaker 1: when Royce has kids on you know, they got a
Speaker 1: whole moose. He has a buddy who's antlers are the
Speaker 1: Minora No, oh my god, his his his wife Ruth,
Speaker 1: and his daughter Rebecca. Obviously. Yeah, I'm so sorry family.
Speaker 2: I'm trying really hard not to last.
Speaker 1: There's a fucking Minora zebra. What is happening?
Speaker 3: Yo.
Speaker 1: The dog's got Drado's for spots. That's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a Dalmatian. Look at this shit. That's great, that's great,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. And for the record, I have no
Speaker 1: idea how popular that is. I remember seeing that with
Speaker 1: Shark Tanker was like, there's no way they're gonna invest,
Speaker 1: and then one of them did, and I'm like, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm just missing the ever present Honka market here, but whatever.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so the elf on the shelf thing, that
Speaker 1: is a newer tradition, and I had to explain that
Speaker 1: to my kids last ten years.
Speaker 2: Maybe I maybe I didn't even do it till the
Speaker 2: last four years.
Speaker 1: Earlier four years. I remember hearing about it when I
Speaker 1: was in the Marine Corps, but like, we didn't have
Speaker 1: kids at that time, and when we fed our first kid,
Speaker 1: he was so young he wouldn't have known no different.
Speaker 1: When we got back to Louisiana, it says this is
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, it had like taken off.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't even know that was a thing until really,
Speaker 3: I mean I heard it and that I saw some
Speaker 3: people doing.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't doing that dumb shit.
Speaker 1: But there's like a whole book that goes with it.
Speaker 1: Now there's movies. Now I have eight elves, so yeah,
Speaker 1: you go abum, and beyond with that.
Speaker 3: There's I have two I have two parents and six babies.
Speaker 2: It's a mess. Yeah, it's a it's a whole thing.
Speaker 1: So I had to explain to my kids, like we
Speaker 1: didn't have Elf on the shelf growing up, and like
Speaker 1: wait why, And I'm like, Santa decided to do it
Speaker 1: just a couple of years back because all y'all kids
Speaker 1: are so bad. He needs to send some extra eyes
Speaker 1: a spile on y'all asses, and they bought it. But like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's we work better at being kids than y'all. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to tell you. Man, Yeah they got
Speaker 1: they felt some type of way about that. I mean
Speaker 1: it's true though, I mean, hey, anyway, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the ship log.
Speaker 3: When when the kids return, the weirdness continues. The children
Speaker 3: have to courage the poop blog to expel the presence
Speaker 3: by hitting it with the stick.
Speaker 2: It sounds aggressive, but it's gentle. The kids don't hit hard.
Speaker 2: You stimulate it to go poop.
Speaker 1: I fucking can I can't emulate the log to ship
Speaker 1: by tapping it with sticks? Why? Why? But for why
Speaker 1: does is that what y'all do to people who are
Speaker 1: constabator to start beating with the tongs. It's a movement
Speaker 1: in there.
Speaker 3: You can be four kids at once hitting it, okay,
Speaker 3: recalls Hugo, now a college student, having having a pooplog
Speaker 3: for his pre his preschool classes. Little kids can't hit
Speaker 3: it that hard. It's more about the tradition and singing
Speaker 3: the song. There's a song there, there's a song. I
Speaker 3: can't wait for this all right.
Speaker 1: The song has kids asking the poop uncle to poop
Speaker 1: out nuts and turrun, a sticky sweet nougat that's popular
Speaker 1: throughout Spain over the holidays, and specifically not to poop
Speaker 1: out salty fish. Bro What what is happening here? In fact,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much all they get for their efforts. Candies Okay?
Speaker 1: So what?
Speaker 2: Wait? Is there an English translation? Yes? There is? Please
Speaker 2: the poop log song, y'all?
Speaker 1: Ok here we are pooping log almonds and nuggets. Don't
Speaker 1: poop herrings as they are too salty. Poop nuggets as
Speaker 1: they are better pooping log almonds and nugats. If you
Speaker 1: won't poop, I'll hit you with the stick. Wow.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think that's how it goes. Yeah
Speaker 2: I know, but yeah, so pooping long all, pooping log
Speaker 2: almonds and nuggets.
Speaker 3: Don't poops nuggets. Don't poop herrings as they are too salty.
Speaker 3: Pooping nuggets nuggets as they are better. Pooping log almonds
Speaker 3: and nuggets. If you won't poop, I'll hit you with
Speaker 3: a stick is a song that we must sing.
Speaker 5: To the log, to the log to make it shit,
Speaker 5: to stimulate it.
Speaker 1: Candies and presents, Oh my.
Speaker 2: God, this is like the best one ever.
Speaker 1: So that was for the candies. Yeah, and now let's
Speaker 1: talk about it pooping out presents. Okay, the presents are
Speaker 1: small things like sweets. It's not a Sony PlayStation. I
Speaker 1: know why not. But now we're drawing the line on
Speaker 1: what the log can shit Jesus, we're gona wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: candies are one thing. You're telling me it's pooping on
Speaker 1: ne xtbox. That's a bit crazy. It's a fucking log, dude.
Speaker 1: I'm here for you. I like it. Uh, the bigger
Speaker 1: the presents, I'm sorry. The bigger presents are giving on
Speaker 1: January sixth, which is celebrated in Catalonia and throughout Spain
Speaker 1: as the Day of Los Res Magos or Three Kings Day.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: It's just as well they aren't any PlayStation since Cago
Speaker 1: Tea is strictly for small kids. Oh, I should hope so.
Speaker 1: Bvalleo says that while most kids can believe in Santa
Speaker 1: Claus or the Three Kings until they are eight years old,
Speaker 1: that's not the case with the Cagatillo. By age four,
Speaker 1: they have a hard time accepting that a salt tree
Speaker 1: trunk can expel presents from its backside. We thank god
Speaker 1: when they are two or three years old, it's like
Speaker 1: matt When they are four years old, it's complicated, says
Speaker 1: in Leo. By the time he was five, Vlao's older son,
Speaker 1: John Paul, who's now fifteen, didn't get why they had
Speaker 1: to keep leaving the room to get more gifts or
Speaker 1: why a log would poop all poop at all. That's
Speaker 1: that's fair. By five years, always thinking like huh what now?
Speaker 1: But okay, it's ridiculous, laughed Hugo Valeas as he tries
Speaker 1: to recall if he ever believed in the Kagatillo. It's
Speaker 1: possible he didn't since only his grandfather was Catalan and
Speaker 1: with his other grandparents hailing from southern Spain, Japan and China,
Speaker 1: so even though he was born in Barcelona, he didn't
Speaker 1: have a defecating piece of wood at home. Only at school.
Speaker 1: In those early school years, he recalls, they fed kagatillo mandarins,
Speaker 1: not leftovers or lentils. For Monica Valo, mandarins are actually
Speaker 1: the end of Cagatillo's process. Kids keep leaving the room
Speaker 1: to pray or just get the log some alone time
Speaker 1: to do its biz, and every time they come back
Speaker 1: more small gifts and caramels. Await when Cago to You
Speaker 1: starts dropping mandarins, though the present party has petered out.
Speaker 1: After that, kids in Catalonia and Aragon will have to
Speaker 1: wait two more weeks until three Kings Day to get presents.
Speaker 1: That's when three magi who visited Baby Jesus come bearing
Speaker 1: gifts wrapped boxes, and those magi can carry a Sony PlayStation.
Speaker 2: Okay, I was I'm sorry we laughed so much.
Speaker 1: I am not. That's hilarious and the author understood the assignment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the author really did us dirty there.
Speaker 1: The author's name is Noel shut Off. Dude. Oh I
Speaker 1: love it. I love it. Okay, okay, wow, now let's
Speaker 1: go to Ukrainian legends.
Speaker 2: Oh Christmas Spider, the Christmas Spider.
Speaker 3: I thought this is kind of cool, so for those
Speaker 3: of you that don't know, I'm terrified as spiders, but
Speaker 3: I actually thought this was kind of cool because they
Speaker 3: decorate their trees and spiderwebs.
Speaker 1: Which I kind of thought was more like a U
Speaker 1: you know, this is hell we I thought it was
Speaker 1: like a nightmare before Christmas thing. It's actually a pretty
Speaker 1: like wild story, but like a good story. So let's
Speaker 1: get into it here. Every Christmas, I love to think
Speaker 1: of the modest Ukrainian home where a little miracle once happened,
Speaker 1: A miracle still found on Christmas trees around the world,
Speaker 1: carried by families like yours and mine. It's a tail
Speaker 1: care through generations, passed from our grandparents to us and
Speaker 1: now share with families far beyond Ukraine's borders. This is
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian I'm not gonna pronounce that because most of
Speaker 1: those letters don't exist in my alphabet. The legend of
Speaker 1: the Christmas Spider a reminder that even the simplest moments
Speaker 1: can shine with a bit of unexpected magic. Let's get
Speaker 1: into Ooh, that's actually a really dope one.
Speaker 3: That is a really pretty ornament. Oh it isn't like
Speaker 3: an all gold, really nicely done ornament. That's a spider.
Speaker 1: That's that's dope. Let's get into it here. So the
Speaker 1: legend of the Christmas Spider. Once upon a time, a
Speaker 1: poor widow lived in a small hut with her young children.
Speaker 1: On a warm summer day, a pine cone fell through
Speaker 1: the roof and, against all odds, took root on the
Speaker 1: floor of the small home. As the seasons passed, the
Speaker 1: children nurture the growing tree, imagining it could be their
Speaker 1: Christmas tree. When winter arrived, the tree grew, but when
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve came, they could not afford to decorate it. Dishearten,
Speaker 1: the children went to bed. Overnight, something extraordinary happened. Spiders
Speaker 1: crawled to the tree and spun delicate webs all over
Speaker 1: the branches. As the first rays of sunlight streamed through
Speaker 1: the windows, the seemingly ordinary webs transformed into strands of
Speaker 1: silver and gold. The wind or, the widow, and her
Speaker 1: children awoke to a glittering tree transformed, and with it
Speaker 1: the fortune of the family changed. From then on, they
Speaker 1: never lived in poverty again. So there's like an image
Speaker 1: on screen right now of like what that might have
Speaker 1: looked like, which is kind of cool. It's got to
Speaker 1: see a little Charlotte's Web action, if you will.
Speaker 2: That's pretty legit.
Speaker 1: So the origin of this folk tale is unclear. Some
Speaker 1: say it travel from Germany, Others insist it is firmly
Speaker 1: rooted in Ukraine. What we do know is that it
Speaker 1: stems from an ancient European belief associating spiders with good
Speaker 1: luck for generations. People believe that brushing away a spider's
Speaker 1: web during brings misfortune.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: This person, who is a curator at the Ukrainian Museum
Speaker 1: in New York, leans strongly toward a Ukrainian origin placed
Speaker 1: in the tradition in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and it's very long story. Many believe that eventually inspired
Speaker 1: us to use tinsil. Really that he believes that that
Speaker 1: might be where actual tinsil came from.
Speaker 2: Wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Which also again, this as an ornament.
Speaker 2: It's actually really pretty cool cool.
Speaker 3: It's a golden spun spider web, but that is like
Speaker 3: a detailed out.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if it's like a golden lay.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I love it. Look, you got
Speaker 1: golden glittery spiders on that, bitch. You got some golden
Speaker 1: spider webs for the hell of it.
Speaker 2: It would look really good with my dark goth theme
Speaker 2: Christmas tree.
Speaker 1: This will look cool on a Halloween tree and then
Speaker 1: the Christmas tree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it.
Speaker 1: I like it for it. So, you will often find
Speaker 1: tiny spider ornaments known as as povushki yeah, decorating a
Speaker 1: Ukrainian Christmas tree. Traditionally, these were made from simple materials
Speaker 1: like paper, straw or wire. Today, patufki come in all
Speaker 1: kinds of styles. You can find hand crappt in folk designs,
Speaker 1: or even delicate beaded versions. Some households also drape light
Speaker 1: artificial cobwebs across the tree.
Speaker 2: Once again, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: I like it. So today the legend of the Christmas
Speaker 1: Spider feels just as meaningful as it did over a
Speaker 1: century ago. In Ukraine and across the diaspora, this little
Speaker 1: tale still brings a quiet sense of comfort. It reminds
Speaker 1: us that beauty often appears in the most unlikely places,
Speaker 1: and that even the smallest creatures can bring a moment
Speaker 1: of hope when we need it most. And really, that's
Speaker 1: why we continue to tell the story in moments of
Speaker 1: uncertainty or distance, whether from loved ones, loved ones, or
Speaker 1: from our homeland. The image of bare little tree transformed
Speaker 1: by something as delicate as spider webs feels especially powerful.
Speaker 1: It's not a tale of grand jet but of hope
Speaker 1: arriving gently and unexpectedly, and that's something we all need,
Speaker 1: no matter what or where we celebrate Christmas. I like it.
Speaker 3: I really liked that. I didn't actually know the legend.
Speaker 3: I honestly picked it because I thought it was really unique.
Speaker 3: Just I kind of skimmed it and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: I'm spider web sounds great.
Speaker 2: Want to kind of look into it more. That's actually
Speaker 2: a really sweet story.
Speaker 1: That's also something that I think could go on the
Speaker 1: Christmas tree.
Speaker 2: Regardless, I guess we're gonna have to get some spiders out.
Speaker 3: I'd be like, shocker, I only have like nine thousand
Speaker 3: totes of Halloween, so we're good.
Speaker 2: I'm good for my house.
Speaker 1: Gold spray paint one of the spiders. You already have
Speaker 1: them Halloween's be like, hang a hook from that and
Speaker 1: be like, bom you crying to hear.
Speaker 3: As fuck, I'm gonna have to just do all these
Speaker 3: traditions all at once because as of time of recording,
Speaker 3: we are a few days out from Christmas Eve. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's gonna be a whole vibe to slap them
Speaker 3: all together.
Speaker 1: Indeed. Indeed, so now we're going to go down another
Speaker 1: list and we're gonna briefly go over some of these.
Speaker 1: Some of these who already covered, so we're not going
Speaker 1: to touch them. But the strangest Christmas traditions from around
Speaker 1: the world. This is for Regent Holidays dot UK Christmas
Speaker 1: with the KFC in Japan. Are you talking about the Umm?
Speaker 1: What is this one? Next? Hiding broomsticks in Norway? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an interesting one.
Speaker 1: So from a stay in the world's most northern old
Speaker 1: on let me zoom in on. Next, My eyes aint
Speaker 1: what they used to be good cult members? Apologies, I
Speaker 1: need glasses. From a stay in the world's most northerly
Speaker 1: town to sleeping in the bucket list snow resort kirk Kings,
Speaker 1: a winter break in Norway is packed full of unique
Speaker 1: and extraordinary experiences, but for something wholly out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: In Norway, there is somewhat terrifying tradition of hiding all
Speaker 1: broomsticks in the home on Christmas Eve to prevent witches
Speaker 1: and evil spirits from stealing them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Have you never heard this one before?
Speaker 1: I haven't y'all. Do y'all know the first time that
Speaker 1: there was ever a witch writing a broomstick was a
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred's manuscript.
Speaker 3: Wasn't it by that one guy that uh went kind
Speaker 3: of crazy on witches And he wrote like multiple manuscripts
Speaker 3: about hunting witches and women and all this stuff very possibly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that checks out. But sure, so we got to
Speaker 1: hide all the broomsticks that they don't get stolen by
Speaker 1: all them evil winter witches, you know. Okay, hey, why not? Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we've had this holiday tradition actually verified by a Norwegian person,
Speaker 1: and it seems likely that joy riding witches aren't in
Speaker 1: really reality a feature of Norway's national holiday. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: but if you're celebrating Christmas in Norway, then jewel board
Speaker 1: all right. Probably yule Board is a festival, a festive
Speaker 1: tradition that you should definitely get on board with, translating
Speaker 1: as Christmas table. If you're invited to yule Board, then
Speaker 1: expect a Christmas party for epic Norwegian proportions with a fee,
Speaker 1: serving traditional roast, pork belly, meatballs and glog. Don't know
Speaker 1: how to pronounce it with the oath the line through it.
Speaker 1: Norway's version of mauld wine. Yeah, that is a Christmas tradition.
Speaker 1: I would like to start doing mauled wine. Just sounds nice, awesome,
Speaker 1: I'm here for it. So all right, hiding the broomsticks
Speaker 1: while Norway's witches might be in hiding the magic of
Speaker 1: Scandinavian Christmas is very real, especially under the glow of
Speaker 1: the northern lights. Our trumso Trumsol winter break lets you
Speaker 1: experience the season and its most magical, from reindeer sleigh
Speaker 1: rides and snowmobile safar as to evenings spent chasing the
Speaker 1: auroras across the art of sky.
Speaker 2: The holiday. What's talk about planning the holiday? There?
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing beats a K two holiday anyway. So enormous
Speaker 1: Christmas goats in Sweden. Now about to say that, why
Speaker 1: does I feel like this ties into thor.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of different stuff that well, this is
Speaker 3: ties into Yule and Saint Nicholas.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, okay, let's get into it here. A strange
Speaker 1: tradition's fair A gigantic straw goat statue has to be
Speaker 1: up there. Dating back to Picking times, the story of
Speaker 1: the Yule goat has morphed over the centuries, from a
Speaker 1: sacrifice to a god of harvest to Saint Nicholas's symbol
Speaker 1: of control over evil in the eighteenth or the eleventh century.
Speaker 1: Later it was seen as the giver of gifts, and
Speaker 1: today it's a traditional ornament in Scandinavian countries where a
Speaker 1: straw goat is wrapped in red ribbon and used as
Speaker 1: a decoration when you're certain to pick up from a
Speaker 1: Christmas market in Gothenburg. However, this long Yule Tide history
Speaker 1: has now made way for a very special annual Christmas tradition,
Speaker 1: the Swedish town of Govley's Giant Goat. Every year, an
Speaker 1: enormous goat is constructed in this castle square in Sweden,
Speaker 1: some two hundred miles northwest of Stockholm. This gigantic version
Speaker 1: of the traditional straw Swedish Yule goat stands tall and
Speaker 1: proud in the square for the whole of Christmas season,
Speaker 1: and on its record breaking year, the gigantic straw statue
Speaker 1: measures a whopping forty nine feet tall. Wow. Sadly, most
Speaker 1: of the most year's vandals get to the goat and
Speaker 1: burn it down. Although illegal, it has become a Christmas
Speaker 1: tradition and a pride if the goat is able to
Speaker 1: be destroyed. Yeah, so vandals do this. It's not like
Speaker 1: they're actually wanting it to get back.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: I actually have a little you'll goat. Yeah, I have
Speaker 2: a couple of them. I put it out so.
Speaker 1: Very interesting. So fortunately the local fire station is just
Speaker 1: around the corner, and the blaze can usually be put
Speaker 1: out before the goat's skeleton is damaged. The city rebuilds
Speaker 1: the old goat in time for Christmas. The Govely Goat
Speaker 1: has now become damaged or destroyed and astonishing thirty eight times.
Speaker 1: Despite this, it is still it is able. It is
Speaker 1: able keep Okay, they probably it's able to keep. It's
Speaker 1: global fan club updated through advent On X. In order
Speaker 1: to prevent Arson and the Yule Goat being destroyed, more
Speaker 1: elaborate structure security measures are added each year and now
Speaker 1: include a double fence, twenty four hour CCTV, and twenty
Speaker 1: four guard patrol with a canine unit. Wow, after all
Speaker 1: the excitement of Sweden's fiery festive folklore, you might be
Speaker 1: craving a Christmas escape. Yeah, okay, are getting into the
Speaker 1: retreat here, Okay? Men dressed as goats in Romania. We
Speaker 1: just talked about Romania having bears. Now we have dudes
Speaker 1: dressed as goats.
Speaker 3: Who That is an elaborate goat outfit. It's like a
Speaker 3: goat head with I don't even know what to describe that.
Speaker 1: That's like the damn Lama off of Fortnite.
Speaker 3: It does look like the Lama off of Fortnite, with
Speaker 3: the same little rushing side pieces.
Speaker 1: Yeah. M so. Romania is a fascinating country to visit,
Speaker 1: but even more so if you happen to be there
Speaker 1: on Christmas Eve, when you might catch the sight of
Speaker 1: men dressed as goats called copra walking through the streets
Speaker 1: accompanied by singers. The traditional garment warred by the copra
Speaker 1: are brightly colored with a wooden goat mask and sheepskin
Speaker 1: on their back. In some areas, this lively tradition is
Speaker 1: undertaken on New Year's Eve. But whether you get to
Speaker 1: watch it, it certainly makes for an authentic experience. Wow, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: the way it was own from bucres Yeah yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Eating raw whale and decomposed awks. It's the green that
Speaker 1: you want to talk about. You know, it sounds so nasty,
Speaker 1: like it's so nasty Greenland with your Viking ass. You know,
Speaker 1: y'all are eating decomposed awks, which is a flightless bird,
Speaker 1: and raw whale. And that's a Christmas tradition for you people.
Speaker 2: I need somebody from Greenland. If this reaches you, I
Speaker 2: need you to talk to us about this.
Speaker 1: This is the spot where Trump wants to take over.
Speaker 3: There's a lot to be said though about the conspiracy
Speaker 3: of Greenland again in it being like the perfect place
Speaker 3: to survive pretty much everything, and also having he bought
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of land over there. You can't fly
Speaker 3: over top of it. There's a whole bunch of treaties
Speaker 3: that have happened. There's a whole bunch of things that
Speaker 3: have gone on about this is the place, yeah to go.
Speaker 1: Y'all are eating raw whale and like rotten birds for
Speaker 1: the hell of it. Because it's Christmas, y'all can have it. Dude,
Speaker 1: y'all can really stop there. Look at this place. Look
Speaker 1: how white and snow it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you shouldn't be poaching whales. Just saying I don't think.
Speaker 1: They're poaching them. I think they're allowed to kill them.
Speaker 2: Most whales are protected now because they've been.
Speaker 1: Buy who green Peace. I'm joking. I'm joking. I do
Speaker 1: believe we should protect whales.
Speaker 3: No, there's actually been there's a lot of places that
Speaker 3: even China has whale restriction laws now in some place.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know they're not following that.
Speaker 3: There's actually a lot of things have happened to protect
Speaker 3: the whales because so many of them are going extinct
Speaker 3: or they've pretty much or they've killed off the entire
Speaker 3: population of the types of whales.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's a big thing globally. It has been pushed.
Speaker 1: There's new information. Me.
Speaker 2: Okay, I follow a I belong to a whale thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not shocked, raven.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I belong to a whale group. And like
Speaker 3: I've I read all about it and stuff.
Speaker 2: It's one of those it's like one of those weird
Speaker 2: things that I'm super passionate about. Don't ask, oh whatever?
Speaker 1: Uh did you know that in Greenland, mata and kivak
Speaker 1: are considered a great delicacy reserved for Christmas. Matak is
Speaker 1: whale skin with some blubber attached that is supposed to
Speaker 1: be chewed, but is often just swallowed as it can
Speaker 1: be a little tough. Apparently it tastes like coconuts what
Speaker 1: so they basically they're not even frying it. They just
Speaker 1: like skin the whale and leave a little bit of
Speaker 1: fat on it and it tastes like coconuts.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, sure, I'm a texture person, so just like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: Why I'm saying they're just they're just swallowing a whole
Speaker 1: Just say fuck it. Kiviak is made from the raw
Speaker 1: flesh of auks, a small Arctic bird. The auks are
Speaker 1: buried in seal skin a long time before Christmas and
Speaker 1: then dug up to eat when they have been when
Speaker 1: they have reached an advanced stage of decomposition.
Speaker 2: Andrew Zimmer did this?
Speaker 1: He ate this? Who?
Speaker 2: Andrew Zimmer?
Speaker 1: Why? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Have you never seen the guy that goes around the
Speaker 2: world and eats all the nasty food?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: The ball guy.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm obsessed with him, by the way. He's fantastic.
Speaker 3: But no, he ate one of these things. That's why
Speaker 3: I knew as soon as you're reading it. I was like, oh, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I thought this was going to be closer
Speaker 1: to the fermented shark. And I don't know which country.
Speaker 2: I think it might be Norway that does that, but
Speaker 2: you said Norway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they apparently.
Speaker 3: It tastes like coconuts. I can't get over that right now.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and then the advanced stage of decompensation. I
Speaker 3: wonder what it tastes like, Like, I wonder what the
Speaker 3: smell is. I wonder if it smells like that stuff.
Speaker 3: That the nastiest tasting or nastiest smelling thing, Moti Durian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that that fruit smells like rotten flesh,
Speaker 1: and apparently it tastes for people that have the palette
Speaker 1: for it. It's great.
Speaker 3: You know that can that you can open up and
Speaker 3: have ever seen people try to eat? I know that
Speaker 3: I would vomit as soon as that smell would hit me.
Speaker 3: I'd be done. I don't have a weak stomach at all,
Speaker 3: but there it smells and textures will do me in
Speaker 3: any day of the week.
Speaker 1: They make ice cream out of it. There's Durian ice cream,
Speaker 1: you know, for the zombie and all of us. I
Speaker 1: guess you could say ice cream. Yep, zombies are so cool.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, maybe you would like Durian. Maybe
Speaker 1: your palate would probably get down.
Speaker 3: No fucking way I would be able to survive that.
Speaker 3: I don't know, There's no way. But I've smelled those
Speaker 3: those hundred yr eggs before.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: I smelled one one time, and the amount of just
Speaker 2: sickness that I had.
Speaker 1: Is that the one that's fermented and young Boy's pissed
Speaker 1: for one hundred years that's what they do. In China.
Speaker 1: They have like young virgin boys pee in a bucket
Speaker 1: and a ferment boiled eggs in this and that's like
Speaker 1: a delicacy for the What is.
Speaker 2: With people and children? Can't they just leave fucking kids
Speaker 2: alone in all capacities, like, just stop, they're gross, leave
Speaker 2: children alone. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It was like Vietnam with the bloat, the fucking duck
Speaker 1: eggs that have the duck in it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, i know I've seen that.
Speaker 1: Fuck that.
Speaker 2: Oh man, they ate that on a fear factor.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they did. I'm sure. Meanwhile, Vietnamese people are
Speaker 1: getting down on this. That's a Christmas tradition as well.
Speaker 1: It's like a holiday seasonal thing, and it's like, y'all
Speaker 1: are fucking crazy, but they think we're crazy for not
Speaker 1: getting down on it. The little beak in the little
Speaker 1: it's little feathers is like, you'll fuck you, that's nasty.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. My texture alone would not allow this, man.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm not trying to knock your tradition or heritage.
Speaker 2: It's great. Let's go back to.
Speaker 1: This, Let's go back to the decomposed bird.
Speaker 2: Like, let's go back to that blo that's raw and
Speaker 2: that decomposing bird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because man, the bloat to this transition is actually
Speaker 1: a little closer than you think with the decomposing bird.
Speaker 3: These poor cult members. If you are listening to this
Speaker 3: while you were eating or fixing your holiday tradition.
Speaker 1: Just go back to listen about the poop log. You're
Speaker 1: fine and KFC and KMC and wine there you go.
Speaker 1: Don't fancy it, don't worry. There just is usually barbecue
Speaker 1: cariboo on the menu. Two because yeah, but you know, if.
Speaker 2: You're not, I'm here for it.
Speaker 1: You don't like the raw whale skin or the decomposing bird,
Speaker 1: well we also got caribou barbecue, Like, well, let's do
Speaker 1: that obviously, bro wow it. Or you could always join
Speaker 1: in with the Christmas Eve tradition of wearing national clothing
Speaker 1: to a church service for men that's a white on
Speaker 1: rock or color chosen because of the chosen. For the hunters,
Speaker 1: it would mean they could blend into the snowy landscape.
Speaker 1: Other ways to get into the holiday spirit in Greenland
Speaker 1: include children screaming for Santa at the start of December
Speaker 1: and the terrifying tradition of the entire family telling ghost
Speaker 1: stories on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I can ask you it behind that one. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Goods for you. The number six giving treats to the
Speaker 1: Christmas mummers in Latvia. And we mentioned the mummers a
Speaker 1: little bit earlier, but so we're gonna get a little
Speaker 1: deeper into this. In Latvia, mummers roam the street during
Speaker 1: Christmas Christmas time. But what are mummers? We hear you cry.
Speaker 1: A tradition in a number of Northern Hemisphere countries, even
Speaker 1: in some parts of the UK. Mummering because mumming would
Speaker 1: be silly, it's Mummering is when groups get together dressed
Speaker 1: in disguise, going from house to house during the twelve
Speaker 1: days of Christmas. In Latvia, these masked processions are rooted
Speaker 1: in tradition known as kikatas, and although they started to
Speaker 1: disappear in the nineteenth century, they've had something of a
Speaker 1: revival since the nineteen seventies. A kind of moving social gathering,
Speaker 1: the group, dressed in mass depicting animals or more macob
Speaker 1: figures like death and living corpses, are offered food and
Speaker 1: drinks at the houses they visit, and are often invited
Speaker 1: inside retreats in exchange for a dance or performance. If, however,
Speaker 1: the individual is recognized underneath the costumes, then they have
Speaker 1: to remove the outfit. Tradition says that when you treat
Speaker 1: the mummers well, they bring blessing to the house and
Speaker 1: encourage fertility whilst scaring away bad spirits. Another Christmas related
Speaker 1: fact you might not know is that Latvia is thought
Speaker 1: to be the home of the very first Christmas tree. Really,
Speaker 1: I did not know that.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that at all. That's interesting, the.
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean to be honest with you. The earliest
Speaker 1: record I've found of a Christmas tree was in Germany
Speaker 1: in the thirteen hundreds and fourteen hundreds, which we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about on the episode tomorrow when we talk about
Speaker 1: traditional Christmas and how there are certain pagan ties and
Speaker 1: certain not in the way that you might think the
Speaker 1: earliest record of the Christmas tree is in Germany. But
Speaker 1: if they do have some sort of a historical precedence
Speaker 1: that predates that, I would love to hear more about it.
Speaker 1: Let's see Finland's candlelit graveyards and the sauna elf a. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's an elf for your saunas in Finland.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, we did talk about their Finland tradition
Speaker 3: abo about saunas, so hey, I'm here for this.
Speaker 1: At first glance, this might feel a bit morbid, but
Speaker 1: it is in fact surprisingly uplifting and beautiful too. On
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve, families in Finland visit the resting places of
Speaker 1: their lost loved ones and light a candle to place
Speaker 1: on the grave. Not only does this tradition help people
Speaker 1: to remember those they have lost, it turns cemeteries into tranquil,
Speaker 1: glittering havens of light that some choose to walk in
Speaker 1: just to appreciate their beauty. I could see them. The
Speaker 1: Finish take this tradition seriously. As many as seventy five
Speaker 1: percent of Finnish families take part. A common tradition you're
Speaker 1: likely to associate with a winter holiday in Finland is sauna,
Speaker 1: and with many homes having their own, families will often
Speaker 1: get together on Christmas Eve for a sauna together. Julusauna
Speaker 1: Finish for Christmas sauna or Yula sauna probably is a
Speaker 1: tradition in most households. It aims to be relaxing before
Speaker 1: the busyness of Christmas Day, as well as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to pay tribute to the sauna Elf Sauna Tontu by
Speaker 1: leaving him treats and thanking him for keeping the sauna
Speaker 1: tidy and warm.
Speaker 2: I need a sauna Elf. Now, what kind of.
Speaker 1: Treats you're gonna leave in a sweat box that's not
Speaker 1: gonna be nasty?
Speaker 2: Maybe like little towels folded up with a little little water.
Speaker 1: That's the treats.
Speaker 2: Yep, little a little water, A little split serve there.
Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Oh man. Okay, so now we've talked about the Icelandic
Speaker 1: Yuel cat.
Speaker 2: Before Juel Cat, we have talked to Yeah, you guys
Speaker 2: did talk about that.
Speaker 1: But what about the rotten potatoes?
Speaker 2: The rotten potatoes.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about that.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he's not going.
Speaker 1: There, pad children don't get coal and Iceland at Christmas,
Speaker 1: they get rotten potatoes. Okay, Yeah, you read that correctly.
Speaker 1: Icelandic Christmas folklore tells the stories of monsters who live
Speaker 1: in the mountains of these They are the sons of Gorilla,
Speaker 1: known as the thirteen Yule Lads mashievious boys, who come
Speaker 1: to visit children on thirteen nights and lead up to Yule.
Speaker 1: In what is a similar holiday tradition to Advent calendars,
Speaker 1: Icelandic kids place a shoe on their windowsill with the
Speaker 1: Yule lads leaving gifts to children who've behaved, and rotten
Speaker 1: potatoes for naughty children.
Speaker 2: I'm doing this.
Speaker 1: I'm not mad at I'm doing this because like we
Speaker 1: don't wide our homes with coal anymore. But like, I
Speaker 1: bet I could find a bag of old potatoes somewhere.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna leave them out. I'm gonna hide them somewhere.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna put them in the forest down the street
Speaker 3: and then I'll just go there and get them.
Speaker 1: In the forest. Yeah, you could just like leave them
Speaker 1: in your garage and just let.
Speaker 2: No, because I'm sure them kids are gonna be like,
Speaker 2: would you gotten here? Smells like, oh he does rotten potatoes?
Speaker 3: I know this.
Speaker 1: And put them in their good shoes too, they gotta
Speaker 1: go to school.
Speaker 2: Smell the nikes. Yeah, fuck your creases.
Speaker 1: I won't put potato.
Speaker 3: For those with children that are in the teenage years.
Speaker 3: You will understand this reference very much so. And them
Speaker 3: creases can't crease the nikes, dude. Yeah, they even sell
Speaker 3: anti crease things. To insert into them because God forbid
Speaker 3: they crease them shoes.
Speaker 1: That's so silly, but anyway, yes, uh so. Grilla and
Speaker 1: the Yule Lads also have a pet called the mule cat,
Speaker 1: a giant, vicious animal that prows the snowy countryside. The
Speaker 1: holiday tradition of mule Cat is thought to go way back,
Speaker 1: though there are only written mentions of the mythical creatures
Speaker 1: since the nineteenth century. The story goes that farmers would
Speaker 1: reward their workers with new clothes for getting their work
Speaker 1: done in time for Christmas. Those who didn't would be
Speaker 1: eaten by the mule cat.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah, there's a lot more to it, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this I'm just saying. You can imagine being an
Speaker 1: adult working out.
Speaker 2: It has a theme for clothes. Man, I love the
Speaker 2: mule cat. It's great about that.
Speaker 1: If it's like, if you're wearing tattered clothes, the cat
Speaker 1: will like fuck you up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it has a whole there's a whole story
Speaker 2: about the cat and clothes and and we'll have to
Speaker 2: talk about tomorrow.
Speaker 1: For you Jesus. Okay. Now, in early Christmas in the Philippines,
Speaker 1: from tropical beaches to bustling city, streets. A festive break
Speaker 1: in the Philippines is full of vibrant sights, sounds, and experiences,
Speaker 1: but for something truly extraordinary, the Philippines holds the world
Speaker 1: record for celebrating the longest Christmas season on the planet.
Speaker 1: That's right, Filipinos start decking the halls as early as September.
Speaker 2: Oh, I forgot. I remember this now, and.
Speaker 1: Of spirit often stretches all the way through to January.
Speaker 1: Expect twinkling lights adorning streets, shopping malls and homes with
Speaker 1: colorful paroles, traditional star shaped lanterns lighting up every neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Christmas songs fill the air almost year round, from jeepneys
Speaker 1: and radio stations to restaurants and markets, creating a joyful
Speaker 1: soundtrack to daily life.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I would not be mad at this. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna lie to you. I would be pretty pumped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not mad at that at all. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: think we only yeah, now, we have the solstice traditions.
Speaker 2: But you know what, I think we should save it
Speaker 2: for tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I think we will. I think we are going to
Speaker 1: save that for tomorrow. As a matter of fact, so
Speaker 1: any of a good cult members this has been a
Speaker 1: wild ad d fever dream through all of the crazy
Speaker 1: Christmas traditions from around the world. Some of these I
Speaker 1: actually might start implementing at my house. Some of these
Speaker 1: are going to be left exactly where I found them.
Speaker 1: The whale blubber can stay there, they can keep.
Speaker 3: That stand by for my pooplog. Also my potential sauna
Speaker 3: elf and your KFC, my KFC and the wine. Yep,
Speaker 3: it's happening. Why not, right, I'm here for all of this.
Speaker 1: Tis the season, as they say, Uh well, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: so many logistical things of that poop log that just
Speaker 1: don't make sense to me.
Speaker 3: Love this, Like, I don't have anybody that would actually
Speaker 3: like fall for this, but I think because I'm gonna
Speaker 3: explain the tradition and we're just gonna have fun with it,
Speaker 3: and maybe we'll like put the elves hiding out at
Speaker 3: the back of it, like sticking out the back.
Speaker 1: I just fucking with them.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I.
Speaker 3: Can't wait for this. This is gonna be a glorious
Speaker 3: time Tomorrow's Tomorrow's plan of.
Speaker 2: Attack is to get me a log at least one.
Speaker 2: At least one, I might need to poop blogs for
Speaker 2: the fun of it.
Speaker 1: Oh my godside your door you did, I'm.
Speaker 2: Gonna bring it over, Bring it over and put it
Speaker 2: like in this dicky note on it and says from
Speaker 2: my elves to your elves.
Speaker 1: Bro my, my fucking your youngest, my four year old
Speaker 1: is gonna be like dead. What is this? I'mna be like, yes,
Speaker 1: go grab a stick. I'll explain later. Let's go dropping
Speaker 1: no caramel? Is it gonna be dropping hersh's kisses? Because
Speaker 1: there's more than one joke that could be made here,
Speaker 1: if you know what I'm saying. A couple of milk duds.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm sorry. We have laught so much this episode, guys,
Speaker 2: and I hope you drop some shit.
Speaker 1: Oh oh my god, there's so manys.
Speaker 3: Paull Uh laughed with us during this fun, crazy eight
Speaker 3: D situation that is the unique and colorful histories around
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 1: Indeed, good cult members. As we wrap up this episode
Speaker 1: giving all the shameless plugs. If you would like to
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Speaker 2: Make sure you get your KFC too.
Speaker 1: Of course, but we're not getting sponsored by them, so
Speaker 1: you know, do your thing.
Speaker 2: Reach out to the chicken.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, sure, why not? If you'll let to get
Speaker 1: your start in the buying and selling and trading of
Speaker 1: gold and silver bullying, then what you need to do
Speaker 1: is go to link in the description to cocsilver dot
Speaker 1: com and get your start today. Talk to your financial advisor,
Speaker 1: talk to your accountant whoever is handling your retirement and
Speaker 1: ask them what they think about it, and you let
Speaker 1: me know what they say. Okay, gold and silver prices
Speaker 1: are skyrocketing, but it's still affordable. To get your hands
Speaker 1: on some of this right now while you can. It
Speaker 1: is an excellent Christmas gift to get somebody last minute.
Speaker 1: Get them a account made with cocsilver dot com and
Speaker 1: you fill out your information. Our homeboy, Wayne Clark will
Speaker 1: be the one to reach out to you and get
Speaker 1: you squared away, But in other ways you can support
Speaker 1: the show. Good cult members, let us know what you
Speaker 1: think about all these crazy, obscure Christmas traditions would be
Speaker 1: too Please hit the five stars, hit the Shares of
Speaker 1: life describes common lego post review shares, it the friends
Speaker 1: and family shares. If we're here's the deal. The more
Speaker 1: activity the algorithm sees across all of our listening platforms,
Speaker 1: the more we get promoted to more potential listeners who
Speaker 1: could then become potential COLT members. Actor ast you finally,
Speaker 1: as and gentlemen, why are you ready to go check
Speaker 1: out Minimistics Johnson's other show and give them the same
Speaker 1: lever respective over there with the five star reviews and
Speaker 1: the positivity in the comments. Come check out The Cage
Speaker 1: to Night and come to each of us for our
Speaker 1: individual patrons. We host every Wednesday night, nine pm Central.
Speaker 1: Links to those are in the description.
Speaker 6: As well, and we thank you for everybody's already gone
Speaker 6: and done so with all of these wild topics being discussed,
Speaker 6: this was another beautiful episode of the Coat of Conspiracy
Speaker 6: and I'm the Cage to Night and Raven and there's
Speaker 6: one very important, extremely.
Speaker 1: Vital piece of Vent makes me do, learn just as
Speaker 1: soon as humanly possible. Speak no bay off