Written By Will Grant
 

Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year. Festive feasting on sweet delicacies, children filled with wonder, awaiting Santa’s visit on Christmas Eve. Unless of course, you subscribe to some of the lesser-known Northern European traditions. Then Christmas is downright horrifying. 


Hans Trapp for example. After being excommunicated from his local catholic church, Hans Trapp roamed the countryside disguised as a scarecrow, obsessed with the idea of tasting human flesh. He lured a young shepherd boy to his death, cooked him over a fire and just when he was about to eat him, God struck him down with lightning. He’s dead now, but legend has it that at Christmas time, Hans Trapp goes from door to door looking for tasty young children. 


There’s also Krampus, a demonic half-goat Christmas monster who kidnaps children and either drowns them, eats them or drags them to hell. Okaaay. And we mustn’t forget Grýla, a giant ogre who lives in a cave and emerges at Christmas to hunt for children to cook into a stew. Nothing says Merry Christmas like child cannibalism apparently. 


Speaking of eating, not every country is into Christmas cookies. Some cultures prefer more unique delicacies, like the Russian favourite, Holodets, AKA meat jelly. It’s not the most appealing looking (or sounding) thing. The Soviets could work a little harder on their branding and aesthetics. Or how about some Lutefisk? It’s made from aged fish and caustic lye. You basically turn the fish into poison, then add enough water so it’s edible. Oh, and it corrodes silver. 


But if you want to go fancy this Christmas, how about you try Kiviyak, a classic recipe from Greenland. You take about 500 auks (you know those birds that look like a mini penguins). Then you stuff them, beaks, feathers and all, into the hollowed-out carcus of a seal. Cover it in grease, put it in a hole and cover it with rocks for three to 18 months while it ferments. Delicious. 


Now for those more inclined toward festive pastries, you better hope there’s enough butter, unlike the great Norwegian butter crisis of Christmas in 2011. The Nordic brethren got a little crazy when butter shortages left them imagining Christmas without their buns and biscuits. There were supermarket stampedes, butter smuggling arrests, and desperate Norwegians paying up to 50 pounds per stick. Much like the great Hawaiian toilet paper shortage in 1971. By the time Christmas rolled around, Hawaii was a post-apocalyptic scene of people guarding their TP supplies with their lives


We all know Christmas is about giving, and what better gift than Hasbro javelin darts. These outdoor missile darts were fun for the whole family in the 1960s until the ER visits started ramping up. There were also a few deaths. Let’s just say these things could pierce skulls, and in one case, they definitely did.


Another super fun toy was the Wego kite tubes, a giant ring you tie to the back of a speedboat. Certainly not your average floatation device, Wego resulted in riders losing consciousness, breaking vertebra, rupturing eardrums and puncturing lungs. That product got recalled and quickly became illegal to use in the USA and Canada. 


So, whatever you’re into at Christmas, maybe steer away from deadly toys, poisonous food and terrifying your children with tales of cannibalism. Also, let’s hope you get some new clothes for Christmas so you don't get eaten by an evil giant cat. It’s an Icelandic thing.

 
 
 

  • [00:00:00] Rod: In the olden days of pasture, Hans Trapp was a local man renowned for his greed and unscrupulousness. He would use witchcraft and deals with the devil to become wealthy. He was excommunicated from the Catholic Church, so he lost all his wealth and social standing. What do I do? Well, it's time for me to roam the countryside disguised as a scarecrow.

    [00:00:16] And at some point, he became obsessed with the idea of tasting human flesh. He lured a young shepherd boy into his death and cooked him over a fire. This is Christmas, I want to remind you, this is a Christmas thing. Before he actually got to take the first bite, God struck him with lightning. But nope, you've gone too far, Hans.

    [00:00:33] Will: Oh, fair enough. You've gone too far. I like that God stepped in at this point. Fine, you roasted him. Fine. But the eating? Jesus.

    [00:00:39] Rod: You gross monster. So, he died. But of course, nowadays he appears at times on Christmas, going from door to door looking for tasty children.

    [00:00:48] Will: What does he look like?

    [00:00:49] Rod: A scarecrow.

    [00:00:50] Will: Some sort of human cannibal scarecrow with a lust for shepherd boy flesh.

    [00:00:53] Rod: Horrifying. Now you knew this about me already. I went to a religious high school. Anglican. So pseudo religious.

    [00:01:06] Will: So it was more of a class based high school. Not just religion.

    [00:01:08] Rod: We were the classiest.

    [00:01:09] Will: Like, it's not like you went to Muslim school or Catholic school. They take it seriously. The Anglicans are like, this is just about the class system.

    [00:01:15] Rod: How dare you say that. This is about the actual Lord as defined by was it Henry the eighth . So the school calendar, what used to crack me up is the school calendar. You'd come out this little sort of folding cardboard pamphlet for each term and would tell you what's going to happen for that term.

    [00:01:29] But it was full of western Christian liturgical dates, timeframes, and stuff. It wouldn't just say on January the 15th, we're doing this. It'd go like during Advent, Epiphany, Mickelmas, and my favorite was Septuagesima.

    [00:01:42] Will: I always thought Mickelmas was like your junior Christmas. That must be pretty good too. What do we get on Mickelmas?

    [00:01:46] Rod: But yeah, it was always confusing. So I'd read, I'm like, I don't know what the fuck they're talking about. And it was full of them. Like the calendars were full of all these labels, but you've heard of the 12 days of Christmas, right?

    [00:01:55] Will: You get pheasants. You get partridges.

    [00:01:57] Rod: It's not just a song. That's annoying as fuck. There was a thing and it was part of the calendar. I didn't know this. I don't know if you knew this. So the song of course is the whole, you know, boasting about the true love gave me things. And it's basically birds or humans except for five gold rings. Other than that, it's birds and humans. Turtle doves, French hens, calling birds, golden rings.

    [00:02:16] Will: Oh, that's not human, that's a ring.

    [00:02:18] Rod: That's the only thing of 12. Geese, swans. Maids are milking.

    [00:02:21] Will: Okay, we got some slaves here. Okay.

    [00:02:23] Rod: Ladies dancing. Lords are leaping. Pipers piping. Drummers drumming. And another fucking bird, of course, the damn partridge.

    [00:02:31] Will: We did pivot. We pivoted hard from birds to humans, didn't we?

    [00:02:34] Rod: Yeah. It's just like bird, golden ring human, and always coming back to the partridge. And it's a long and annoying song, but yeah, birds and people. They were obsessed in the olden days. So the 12 days actually refer to the period in Christian theology that marks the span between the birth of Christ and the coming of the Magi, apparently.

    [00:02:51] Will: Oh, is that what it is?

    [00:02:52] Rod: I had no idea.

    [00:02:53] Will: I thought they were, I thought they turned up on the night. I thought Mary pushed, put him in the manger, and they're like, cool, you got a cool baby here.

    [00:03:01] Rod: No, she popped out. Merh guy capped Jesus, because no one knows what Merh is.

    [00:03:04] Will: Twelve days. Merh. Yeah. Nah.

    [00:03:06] Rod: The 12 days begin on the 25th. And then they run through to January the sixth. Which is the epiphany.

    [00:03:12] Will: That's when you take your tree down.

    [00:03:14] Rod: I thought that was New Year's Day. So like I don't really have a lot of devotion to Christian matters and I have no use for a lounge room full of birds. I don't have any idea what I do with 10 leaping lords. Like I don't need that stuff.

    [00:03:24] Will: I have a lot of ideas with 10 leaping lords.

    [00:03:26] Rod: Are they at your beck and call?

    [00:03:27] Will: Oh yeah. They.

    [00:03:28] Rod: You're all slaves, all the people in that song are fucking slaves. Do my bidding. But I'm still kind of aroused by, you know, it's Christmas, right? As far as anyone listening to this is concerned. And so stimulated by Christmas you know, I'm tempered by the true spirit of this fine podcast. Yeah. I'm going to give you our first holiday special, the 12 wholesome facts of Christmas.

    [00:03:53] Will: Welcome to The Wholesome Show, the podcast that believes there's always room for a big festive yule log in the whole of science. I'm Will Grant.

    [00:04:03] Rod: I'm not. Christmas rod lampets. So this episode is going to be a grab bag. Four categories with three snippets each. Four categories, three snippets. The categories are, food, celebratory delicacies.

    [00:04:17] Will: So these are all Christmas things?

    [00:04:20] Rod: Christmas related. Traditions, of course, wholesome ones. Christmas shortages. And of course, toys. And the way we're going to do this is, I've given Will Santa's big red sack, as in the pile of little bits of paper. So Will's gonna pick a a topic or a little thing, and then I'm gonna give him the story.

    [00:04:42] Will: Shortage.

    [00:04:43] Rod: Shortage. We start with shortages. Okay, we can do that. Norwegians fucking love butter. MOst Scandos do, and yes, of course I know you do as an English Australian, and I as a partial Norwegian and everything else, fucking love butter.

    [00:04:57] But it wasn't great in 2011, when there was a major butter shortage. There was a, in fact, the Great Norwegian Butter Crisis of Christmas 2011. So depending on who you believe, it kicked off in Sweden because it was a famous TV chef who urged everyone to use a lot more butter in their cooking and butter recipes.

    [00:05:16] Butter, demand went up shortages in Sweden soon spread. Yeah. And it started to migrate across borders. So everyone blamed everyone else for the shortage. As you'd expect. So dairy farmers blamed Norway's largest dairy producer for not warning the country earlier that there'd be a demand for butter. The dairy producer said, no, it's the fucking weather. It went wrong. It's the weather. Yeah. Cows didn't eat properly, therefore milk production was less. Many blamed the country's politicians from posing high taxes on imported butter.

    [00:05:43] You fuckers you've made butter more expensive. So soon my my Nordic brethren, they got a little crazy. As everyone in Norway imagined a Christmas without Lussekatt buns and Christmas biscuits. They love their, you know, buttery goodness. Buns and biscuits. Of course they do. Of course they do. So crowds would gather to stake out supermarkets. They would rush the supermarkets before the shelves could even have butter put on them.

    [00:06:03] Will: I am not normally a person that stampedes the supermarket. But if there was a butter shortage, I'd be calling it in my contacts. I'd be like, I'm going black market.

    [00:06:10] Rod: Butter boy. Danish airports and on ferries going between Denmark and Norway, butter started being sold in the duty freeze, which did not before hundreds of ads appeared on the Swedish auction site. Block it. Swedes started to offer to drive butter into Norway for up to 50 pounds a pack in 2011. I'll drive it to you. Like a pack, like a 250 gram.

    [00:06:31] Will: 50 pounds. Wow.

    [00:06:33] Rod: 50 pounds. Danish TV show organized a crowdfunding effort to give butter away to Norwegians that's like, like their war torn. A group of teenagers auctioned a butter off to help fund their high school graduation party. But my fave was as news report, two Swedes were arrested by Norwegian police officers for smuggling more than 250 kilos of butter in, and they would sell them for more than 25 pounds snippet.

    [00:07:01] Will: That's beautiful. I am so happy. I am so happy with that. Give me a food.

    [00:07:06] Rod: So there's a lot of Interesting Christmas dishes. Here's one, the first of three. Holodets. He's Russian. Holodets. So holodets is a meat jelly. When I read I'm like, give me a meat jelly. So you cook pork parts, particularly the bits that contain a lot of bones, skin, and cartilage, basically the bits that have got the goo. So legs, ears, hooves, then you add chicken.

    [00:07:30] Will: You're not wasting your time with muscle.

    [00:07:32] Rod: No. Then you add chicken to make a soup. Then you chill it into like a gel, an aspic jelly goo, then the meat broth thickens and when it cools ends up in a lump of kind of jelly and you put things like this into it. So bits of egg.

    [00:07:44] Will: No, I look, I know that food like that has gone out of favor in Australia.

    [00:07:47] Rod: It doesn't look great. I'll eat it. I'll eat anything pretty much unless it's licorice because I'm not an idiot, but it doesn't look great.

    [00:07:52] Will: Sorry, Russians. You're not an aesthetic people

    [00:07:55] Rod: no, they're ladies are very attractive.

    [00:07:57] Will: No, but I mean, in terms of their design style. Sorry, but there are many countries that have a better aesthetic sensibilities. And all I'm saying, if your food looks like that, there would be a way where your true food aesthetes could plate that up better.

    [00:08:11] Rod: Yeah, and give it a name better than meat jelly. I mean, it's not hard.

    [00:08:20] Will: Well, look, there you go. Branding and aesthetics.

    [00:08:22] Rod: Exactly, branding matters. Don't call it a dumb thing and make it look better.

    [00:08:26] Will: You know, it is a little bit Soviet in the sense that you know, you can go, this is a nice food in Soviet times.

    [00:08:32] Rod: This is very much delicacy. Give me another one.

    [00:08:37] Will: I wanna go toy

    [00:08:38] Rod: toy. First toy Hasbro javelin darts or lawn darts, AKA jarts or the missile game. So these were sold as kids toys from the 1960s as an quote, outdoor game for the family.

    [00:08:55] Will: Fuck yes.

    [00:08:56] Rod: There are 30 centimeters long and they were literally giant darts. Like literally

    [00:09:03] Will: just throwing them at things?

    [00:09:04] Rod: Yeah. You put a little circle on the lawn and then you stand elsewhere. So between 1970 and 88, there was something like 6, 000 plus ER visits related to this.

    [00:09:15] Will: I like that you haven't said how many sold or anything like that. Let's just go straight to how many ER visits.

    [00:09:20] Rod: There were deaths. a couple of deaths. I'm not going to give you details because I know you get sensitive about children, but it's children. These things could pierce skulls. Let's leave it at that. And in one case, they definitely did. It's Christmas miracle.

    [00:09:35] Will: Oh my God. What a Christmas day that is.

    [00:09:38] Rod: I know, what happened to Junior? Stabbed in the head with a giant dart. It's a toy, it's a game for the family. So since 1988, you can only get them with these big, giant, flat, rubber heads, which is pretty much like still throwing a melon.

    [00:09:48] Will: I like that they're like, no, the concept is great, we just gotta safen them up. That is so cool. How did you not think no, maybe not

    [00:09:57] Rod: because it says an outdoor game for the family.

    [00:10:02] Will: I love that the 1980s happened. It's that era in modernity when they went, if you can, you should

    [00:10:08] Rod: it'll be fine. What's going to happen? Nothing. You'll be fine.

    [00:10:10] Will: You don't even have to be stupid though. Like that's literally,

    [00:10:17] Rod: no, you just have to be a child. Like, like, oops. All right. Give me another

    [00:10:21] Will: food.

    [00:10:21] Rod: Alrighty. Play on through the foods, food. Number two, Kiviyak. It's from Greenland. And I love the opening quote that, I mean, there are a number of, there are many sources that talk about this, but my favorite is the beginning. Kiviyak is relatively simple to make. First, collect four to five hundred auks, not orcs from Lord of the Rings, A U K S.

    [00:10:43] Will: Okay, I don't want to collect four to five hundred of anything. But four to five hundred birds!

    [00:10:47] Rod: Yeah. Then, you stuff them, beaks, feathers and all, the whole body, into the hollowed out body cavity of a seal.

    [00:10:53] Will: Well, I love hollowing a seal.

    [00:10:55] Rod: Standard recipe. And stuff your four to 500 small water birds into it. It has to be the auks. Next you press out as much air as you can.

    [00:11:04] Will: I love old school cooking. You know, when we were much more in tune with nature,

    [00:11:09] Rod: cooking is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

    [00:11:11] Will: What are we just leaving this in a, in some dirt for a while?

    [00:11:15] Rod: Can you see through this? So you sew the carcass hole and then you grease it and then you put it in a hole and you cover it with rocks for three to 18 months. So the birds can ferment inside the seal. You have to use auks apparently, because if you use other birds, they don't ferment as well so you get botulism and stuff.

    [00:11:36] Will: You freaking gourmands you.

    [00:11:37] Rod: I know. I know.

    [00:11:40] Will: Mind you, you know, I love an aged thing. That's beautiful.

    [00:11:43] Rod: Let me remind you, it's the whole bird.

    [00:11:46] Will: And the whole seal.

    [00:11:47] Rod: Well, the outside. The guts are taken out.

    [00:11:48] Will: Whole bird with feathers?

    [00:11:49] Rod: Yeah, everything. The whole bird goes into the seal stomach, then three to 18 months.

    [00:11:53] Will: I get the four to 500. It's easier. It's basically flipping around. We're not counting here. We just fill a seal with bird.

    [00:11:58] Rod: Yeah. And the layer of fat basically keeps it sealed the seal sealed. And then they ferment everything ferments except for the feathers and you can eat everything except for the feathers. Everything.

    [00:12:07] Will: Fucking great.

    [00:12:08] Rod: So apparently you eat it by biting the head off the bird and you can suck out the juice. Is pretty. When someone serves that up, you think, fuck yeah, gimme whatever that is inside, whatever that is.

    [00:12:16] Will: I thought we'd be more scooping. I thought we'd be ripping the seal open and do sort of doing a scoop. It'd be all goo, like, like meat goo

    [00:12:22] Rod: merry Christmas.

    [00:12:25] Will: We moderns are so weak. We are we are so weak compared to our ancients.

    [00:12:29] Rod: I mean, fermenting. All good.

    [00:12:32] Will: oKay gimme a tradition.

    [00:12:34] Rod: All right. A tradition. Hans Trapp. From Alsace–Lorraine, so the edge of France.

    [00:12:40] Will: Yeah or the edge of Germany, depending on what time of war it is.

    [00:12:43] Rod: Fucking france, you racist. Supremacist. In the olden days of pasture, Hans Trapp was a local man, renowned for his greed and unscrupulousness. He would use witchcraft and deals with the devil to become wealthy.

    [00:12:55] Will: Well, you don't use them to become poor.

    [00:12:58] Rod: That's true. I want to cast a spell that makes me really destitute and horrible. I want my

    [00:13:02] life to be worse.

    [00:13:03] Will: I'll sell my soul so I can be homeless.

    [00:13:05] Rod: I feel guilty. Everything's shit. So he was excommunicated from the Catholic church. So he lost all his wealth and social standing. So obviously he went, what do I do? Well, it's time for me to roam the countryside disguised as a scarecrow.

    [00:13:20] And at some point during his journeys, he became obsessed with the idea of tasting human flesh. So naturally the next step is if you're obsessed with it, he lured a young shepherd boy in to his death and cooked him over a fire. This is Christmas. I want to remind you, this is a Christmas thing.

    [00:13:37] Will: No, just give me a, is this a true story or is this like

    [00:13:40] Rod: the next couple of sentences will confirm things. Before he actually got to take the first bite of human Shepard boy flesh, God struck him with lightning, but nope, you've gone too far. Fair enough. You've gone too far.

    [00:13:51] Will: I like that God stepped in at this point.

    [00:13:53] Rod: Oh, you killed him.

    [00:13:54] Will: Fine. You roasted him. Fine, but you're going to eating Jesus.

    [00:13:59] Rod: Gross monster. So he died. And but of course, nowadays he appears at times on Christmas going from door to door looking for tasty young children.

    [00:14:09] Will: wHat does he look like?

    [00:14:09] Rod: A scarecrow.

    [00:14:11] Will: Sounds like a good costume to dress up as.

    [00:14:12] Rod: If you saw that walking around, tapping at your window, going, I want to eat babies.

    [00:14:16] Will: Some sort of human cannibal scarecrow with a lust for shepherd boy flesh.

    [00:14:20] Rod: Horrifying.

    [00:14:23] Will: Okay, give me a food.

    [00:14:25] Rod: Another food.

    [00:14:26] Will: Can I just for a second, just pause for a second. I know I might've showed these before, but Rod has crafting scissors. And so he cut them out like this. It is so beautiful.

    [00:14:34] Rod: Lutefisk.

    [00:14:37] Will: There seems to be a pattern here. Northern Europeans.

    [00:14:40] Rod: They really are. I mean, I had a big selection, but these are the winners for me. It's described as gelatinous, smelly, and pretty nasty tasty, unless you're really into it.

    [00:14:49] It's made from aged stock fish or dried and salted white fish. And Lye the caustic horrible substance.

    [00:15:00] Will: What does it do?

    [00:15:02] Rod: So you soak in cold water. You soak the fish, whatever it may be for five or six days. Then you move it into a mix of cold water and lye for two days. This makes the fish swell. It gives it a jelly like consistency, which we all look for in our fish. Oh. After this is done, the lye saturated fish is basically caustic and inedible.

    [00:15:20] Will: Oh, okay. So what was the end goal here?

    [00:15:23] Rod: Well, you soak it in cold water again for up to six days so you can basically eat it.

    [00:15:29] Will: So you could eat it before. We poisoned it. And now we unpoison it.

    [00:15:31] Rod: We unpoison it. And my favorite bit of this. So this is, that's the dish. That's the cooking. That's it. That's the goo. And then you eat that. But what I love is when you cook and eat it, the fish and all the residue, they say must be immediately removed from plates, cutlery, and flowing pans because if you leave it, it's impossible to get off. It's like fucking concrete or something.

    [00:15:50] Will: I know we've talked about this fairly recently, but anything that destroys like crockery or metal in the environment around you, don't put it in your body.

    [00:16:00] Rod: Well, they say sterling silverware will be permanently corroded if it comes into contact with it. So you've got to use stainless steel.

    [00:16:06] Will: I'd kind of be down to try it.

    [00:16:07] Rod: I'd try it. I'd try most of this. The I don't know, the Kiviyak, the birds, I'm like, no.

    [00:16:13] Will: I got no problem. I have zero problem with that. Give me a toy.

    [00:16:17] Rod: I'll give you a toy. Flubber. So Flubber, you know, there was a, I think it was a Jerry Lewis movie and then it turned to Robin Williams movie, Flying Rubber, the mad scientist who made some goo.

    [00:16:27] Will: I saw the posters, but never saw the movie.

    [00:16:29] Rod: Obviously toy company said, let's make some for selling. So it was a synthetic rubber, mix of synthetic rubber and mineral oil. And it had, this is a quote, it had all the qualities one would want from a toy, fun, unusual, inexpensive and versatile.

    [00:16:42] Will: That's pretty good.

    [00:16:43] Rod: It also gave the users, kids, sore throats, rashes, and other nasty reactions, including one of the things I read said something about follicular damage or strange things going on with hair. So Hasbro made this again. By the time they decided to pull it off the shelves, more than 1600 people had connected ailments. And again, we're talking sixties here.

    [00:17:06] Will: I just, when do you stop? Like, like, like was when you finally get

    [00:17:09] Rod: to 1599. Now, fuck it. 1600. All righty. We've, we have a case to answer. So they pulled it off the shelves, but then the company had a whole new problem. What do we do with all the leftover flubber?

    [00:17:22] Will: Obviously we export it to poor countries.

    [00:17:25] Rod: No, not that's, you're a monster. So they couldn't bury it in the ocean because it floats. You couldn't burn it. Cause you get this foul cloud of toxic black fumes. So they went with the only other option in those days. You bury it. Yep. So sometime in the late sixties, apparently in the middle of the night, a bunch of Hasbro employees wandered into a field behind the factory and buried something like 50, 000 balls of this stuff, and they paved it over and made it into a parking lot. And at least 35 years later or more, apparently locals say on hot summer days, not only can you smell it, but it bubbles up through the pavement.

    [00:18:03] Will: I want to go to the bubbling flubber site.

    [00:18:06] Rod: We'll do a wholesome field trip.

    [00:18:07] Will: There's a great story in 1983, Atari. ET was a huge movie and they made a big video game and they're like, it's going to be so fucking huge. And so this is cartridge era. And so they made like, multi millions of this thing. And it was a fucking dog. Like it was a dog. It was the worst game in the world. And so they ended up with literally warehouses full of these cartridges that they couldn't see. And so they had to bury them in the desert. And it's like this idea of this video game, just being buried on mass.

    [00:18:35] Rod: How bad is it? It's as bad as it's possible.

    [00:18:39] Will: We actually have to look at a way to get rid of it in a vaguely safe way.

    [00:18:43] Rod: And deny that it ever existed.

    [00:18:46] Will: Shortage.

    [00:18:47] Rod: Oh, another shortage. Oh, these are good. The great Hawaiian toilet paper shortage of 1971. International Longshore and Warehouse Union went on strike. Now that, that means every dock on the West Coast got shut down.

    [00:19:01] Will: And just to confirm, west Coast of America, Hawaii's an island.

    [00:19:06] Rod: It very much is. So the residents, of course, in Hawaii, completely depended on shipments for things like salt, rice, et cetera. But the one that really stuck in everyone's memory was of course, the lack of toilet paper.

    [00:19:17] And we know this having come out of COVID, but shortage lasted for months and by the time Christmas rolled around Hawaii was a post apocalyptic scene of people guarding their toilet paper supplies with their lives, which isn't exactly in the Christmas spirit. So it got bad. So July, it started and this was still going on six months.

    [00:19:34] So one bar owner, there's a few reports, but one bar owner says, Oh, I remember how patrons kept stealing rolls of toilet paper. So we moved them behind the bar and we assigned a poop manager who would give each customer six squares when they went to the toilet. Great for P terrible for poop.

    [00:19:50] Will: Yeah, like, yeah, look I get that. That is it. It solves some scenario,

    [00:19:56] Rod: but does not solve many New York times 1971. They had an article that said the possession of toilet paper had become a status symbol. A wealthy heiress and her husband bought a condo in Waikiki and they, among some things, but many of the things I received as housewarming gifts from neighbors were rolls of toilet paper.

    [00:20:15] Radio stations would have contests and the winner would get toilet rolls and one of them delivered the toilet paper in a Rolls Royce. But you didn't get the car. You just got the toilet paper. And it also got into the machinery of local politics. So there was a story about a grocery manager who was telling one of the newspapers, the star advertiser, he got a call from the mayor of Honolulu at the time, and he said, I need a case of toilet paper and three bags of rice.

    [00:20:38] And he says, all right, we'll work that out. And they handed it over at midnight in a car park outside his shop. And then the the mayor Frank Fossey said. Anything I can do for you. And the dude said, the manager said, Oh, there's some potholes behind the store on the street there. And the next day they were paved over.

    [00:20:54] So then of course it was getting crazy. So Nixon, the president got involved with the dockworkers and said, come on back to work. And so they'd finally got back to work in late October, but the damage is already done. They went on strike again in 72 and they then finally resolved the problem in February of 72.

    [00:21:07] So seven, eight months later, then toilet paper started to appear on the shelves again. So Christmas with no toilet paper in a world where you can't just pop down and go, I'll get a different paper product because they had to be brought in by longshore folk as well. Yeah. Not good.

    [00:21:22] Will: Tradition.

    [00:21:23] Rod: Hell yeah, I love the traditions. Krampus. So, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Northern Italy. This is a a creature. So, in many of these countries, Saint Nick has a companion who's like his bad cop counterpart.

    [00:21:35] Will: He has a bad cop? Santa has a bad cop?

    [00:21:37] Rod: At least one, but this is one of the biggies.

    [00:21:39] Will: Why have we not brought that tradition in? I want Santa to have a bad cop.

    [00:21:43] Rod: Yeah, who's the anti Santa?

    [00:21:44] Will: Well, you know, the whole premise is based on if you're good, you get the present. If you're not good, you need a bad cop. Why don't we do that? I'm embracing that.

    [00:21:52] Rod: When you hear more about them, maybe you'll change. So Krampus is a demonic half goat monster, horns and a long tongue. The images of Krampus, there are too many, but look up Krampus. Amazing, horrifying looking monster. Horrifying, wonderful. He drags a chain behind him and rattles it as he walks. He carries a birch switch to whip children who are bad, but also apparently in some cases, a basket or a sack to kidnap them.

    [00:22:18] Will: Well, fine.

    [00:22:19] Rod: Some stories say the ones he kidnaps, he may drown. Or eat them or drag them to hell. Is this the anti Santa you're looking for? And on the eve of St. Nicholas, which is the 5th of December, it's Krampusnacht. So lately it's become common for hordes of pissed fuckwits to get dressed up as Krampus looking horrifying and this cruise around Alpine towns, breaking shit

    [00:22:40] Will: but you guys rule. I mean, I mean, dressing up as Krampus, dressing up as an evil devil.

    [00:22:44] Rod: So that's the December 5th, that Krampusnacht, and then on the 6th, which is St. Nikolaus Day. So the guys, the adults, they're all men, of course, they're either, you know, hung over, arrested or beaten up because it gets ugly. The kids, however, they wake up to find out whether they got gifts or they have to nurse their injuries as a result of Krampus's work. That's the theory. And so in places like Austria, for example, someone was suggesting maybe Krampus is a little bit too horrifying.

    [00:23:13] Will: Nah, that sounds Halloween to me. Give me a shortage.

    [00:23:16] Rod: Tickle me, Elmo. 1996. So Elmo, you know, the character from Disney, you, he's got that high pitched voice. He's very happy.

    [00:23:23] Will: He's Sesame Street.

    [00:23:24] Rod: Yes. That's right. Yeah. It's not Disney. He's a lovely guy. Lovely character. Blah, blah, blah. 1970s he appeared, but he wasn't really popular until the eighties. And when he became a thing, people went, Oh, okay. We like Elmo. Then the doll came out. So you tickle the doll and it wiggles and jiggles and squeaks and says funny things and giggles.

    [00:23:41] Sales of the dolls in the nineties were strong, but they weren't mental. They weren't like, Oh my fucking God, this is the biggest thing since anything. So no one had any reason to suspect in the late nineties that the mayhem that was about to kick off.

    [00:23:53] Will: I remember this.

    [00:23:54] Rod: So apparently the doll appeared on the Rosie O'Donnell show. She was an actress slash comedian slash, she was in movies. So apparently on her show, she said her two year old son had an Elmo doll, but it's actually his second because he dropped the first one in the toilet. But Elmo, she says, has the innocence of a two year old. He wants to take love and give love with purity. So it's delightful. That's Elmo. Delightful. So this was allegedly instrumental in launching Elmo into the zeitgeist. So production went up, but it wasn't enough to ensure everyone who wanted one by Christmas got one. So parents went into a fucking frenzy.

    [00:24:25] Like it got insane. They descend on stores, they wait for deliveries and they rush the employees, or as some sources put it, terrified employees to get one. And one example, I love, there are many, a Walmart worker, a guy called Robert. He was working a late shift. It was after midnight, December 14. And he apparently, he's looking outside, there's 300 or more people waiting for a shipment of Elmos.

    [00:24:45] He picked one up, and they fucking stampeded, they went off. They came charging at him. He got a pulled hamstring, injuries to his back, jaw and knee, a broken rib and a concussion. Whoa. And his quote was, I was pulled under, trampled, the crotch was yanked out of my brand new jeans. How the fuck do you do that? I mean, everything else is scary, but actually to tear out the crotch of jeans.

    [00:25:08] Will: Well, that's where the Elmos are stored. Parenting stuff. Give me a toy.

    [00:25:13] Rod: Wego kite tubes. Ring any bells?

    [00:25:17] Will: No, I don't have one.

    [00:25:18] Rod: No, you wouldn't. Cause you don't have a speedboat. I kind of remember these. They're big in the mid 2000s.

    [00:25:24] Will: Things that make speedboats more dangerous.

    [00:25:26] Rod: Oh Christ, infinitely. So it's basically essentially a three meter diameter blow up disc.

    [00:25:34] Will: Yes. See, this sounds fun so far

    [00:25:37] Rod: you're tied to the back of a speedboat and you fucking honk.

    [00:25:40] Will: Yeah. It sounds awesome.

    [00:25:41] Rod: Very quickly. It gets airborne conservatively, depending on the length of your tether, it will go to four or five meters moving at speedboat velocities. Landing, let's call it willy nilly.

    [00:25:54] Will: Yeah. You stopped the boat and it might just keep going somewhere.

    [00:25:57] Rod: It's not aerodynamic. So if you're honking along four or five meters in the air, it flicks slightly. You're strapped in, you're holding two little handles.

    [00:26:08] Will: Staying right way up?

    [00:26:09] Rod: Not necessarily at all. This is not a stable device.

    [00:26:13] Will: You know what this says is the world of toy possibilities is vastly bigger than the world of safe toy possibilities.

    [00:26:20] Rod: So very quickly after they got it, reports were coming in of riders losing consciousness, breaking vertebra, rupturing eardrums and puncturing lungs. Cause you'd go up, you'd flip and you hit the water. You hit the water fucking hard. So by July, 2006, at least in the U S, 84 plus serious injuries and three deaths. So consumer product safety commission and the company we go recalled all the kite tubes and it very quickly became illegal to use them in basically any body of water, at least in the U. S. and Canada.

    [00:26:53] Will: I'd fucking love to have a go though. It'd be freaking wild.

    [00:26:56] Rod: It'd be great until you were horribly injured. Tradition. The final, that's a nice one to end on. Grýla, her sons and the Yule cat from Iceland. So Grýla is a giant ogre and she lives in a cave. She emerges at Christmas to hunt for children, who she kidnaps, takes to her cave and cooks them in a stew. there is a fuckload of child cannibalism in the North. I just don't know what it is. And christmas related.

    [00:27:20] Will: Maybe that's the thing that kids are most scared of being cooked and eaten.

    [00:27:23] Rod: So she has 13 troll sons who are also called the Yule lads, which is a punk band for sure. We're the Yule lads, fuck you. And they come out one at a time, starting on December the 12th. And there's heaps of them. I won't tell you all of them, but like there's one called, the name translates as spoon licker, he licks spoons, pot licker, he licks pots, he steals unwashed pots so you can lick them clean, bowl licker

    [00:27:45] Will: there's a lot of licking going on.

    [00:27:47] Rod: There is a lot of licking going on.

    [00:27:47] Will: This is a weird Icelandic thing.

    [00:27:49] Rod: Yeah. And there's on the 20th of December, sausage swiper.

    [00:27:56] Will: Is this like a guy that's made up by some dad? Who's like, he eats the sausages for lunch. And he's like, sorry, it was the sausage licker.

    [00:28:03] Rod: Son, hide your sausage. It gets worse. 21st of December, you get the window peeper. Okay. And this one, 22nd of December door sniffer. Always in pursuit of baked goods. So that's her children. She also has the cat, the Jólakötturinn. Now, you'd be amazed here, it's not a sweet little kitty you put on your lap and pat. It's about lion sized. Oh, black and angry. It lopes through town in the dark, peering into the lighted windows of children's bedrooms, the only way to save yourself from being eaten by the cat is to show that you got clothes for Christmas. Because if you get clothes, that means you're good.

    [00:28:41] Will: What? You get the socks and undies and you're fine.

    [00:28:44] Rod: You put them out and go, these are new clothes. I was given new clothes. But if you don't get new clothes, you leave out old clothes and hope that they look new enough that the cat won't eat you. Fuck yeah, Iceland. Here's my old undies. I've washed them. Don't kill me. There you go, that's the 12 facts of Christmas. There are so many more I could have told you about, I didn't. And you know, happy birthday Jesus to everyone.

    [00:29:05] Will: Yeah, like merry holidays and stuff like that. We don't come into your earballs in the holidays in this way. You know, if you're eating your yule log, drinking your eggnog.

    [00:29:15] Rod: Waving in you clothes so you don't get eaten by an ogre's cat. Just remember that we support whatever whatever ogre you're into. And science. And science.

Will Grant
Previous
Next