YULE BE SURPRISED
Paul Little on obscure Christmas fun facts
One of the worst things about Christmas is having to endure the same old conversational gambits day after day with everyone you encounter: What are your plans for Christmas day? Finished your shopping? Going away? Here, to perk up your Christmas party chit-chat, are 26 unique conversation starters or maybe stoppers. Did you know …
CUSTOMS
The first person known to have had his Christmas cake and eat it too, by combining two celebrations in a single greeting, was English admiral Francis Hosier, who wished Woolrich storekeeper Robert Smith: “Merry Christmas and a happy new year” in a letter in 1699.
If you’d like a break from enforced festivities, why not plan to spend December 25 in one of many countries that don’t celebrate the festival? These include such tourist-friendly destinations as China, Morocco, Egypt, the Maldives, Thailand, Vietnam and Iran. Kids find the whole Santa thing confusing enough, so imagine what it was like for any who encountered the world’s largest assembly of Santas in once place — 18,112 of the roly-poly chimney-divers in Kerala, India, in December 2014. Honourable mention: 320 surfing Santas at Bondi Beach, Sydney in December 2015.
The British Medical Journal is one of several academic research publications to produce special issues devoted to Christmas-themed research every year. The articles must meet all the usual standards of methodological rigour, transparency and peer review. Examples of past papers include: “Ham for the Holidays: the challenge of choosing wisely”, “Wine glass size in England from 1700 to 2017: a measure of our time” and “Evidence of a Christmas spirit network in the brain: functional MRI study”. Advent calendars first appeared in Europe in the 19th century. German advent calendar specialists Richard Ellmer Verlag offer a range of 1400. Closer to home, The Beer Library has Craft Beer Advent calendars with 24 beers to lubricate your Christmas countdown. Also available in gin. Jeweller Tiffany’s has a calendar with the likes of a Tiffany Hardwear Link Bracelet in 18k rose gold with diamonds and a Tiffany Victoria earrings in platinum with diamonds behind its daily doors. Yours for $211,000. For something more modestly priced, visit your app store where there are several Christmas countdown apps available for anyone who struggles with the intellectual demands of a calendar.
If your family Christmases tend to end in fisticuffs, why not make it official and spend this Yuletide in Santo Tomas, Peru, home of the festival of Takanakuy, which is celebrated on Christmas Day? It’s very straightforward — everybody fights everyone else in a free-for-all brawl. The Government doesn’t approve. The Christmas sweater is no longer the only gaudily patterned garment that can be produced to embarrass the rels. Sneaker manufacturers are getting in on the act with major manufacturers producing seasonal designs. Now you can team that reindeer jumper with holly-bedecked footwear for a sartorial seasonal overload.
HISTORY
The first recorded Christmas celebration was in Rome on December 25, 336, in the time of the Christian emperor Constantine. Details are sketchy but it can reasonably be assumed that one of the uncles made inappropriate comments about how his nieces were dressed and all the old people fell asleep after lunch. Although he is the reason for the season, there is no evidence that Jesus was born on December 25. We probably have a hooley on that date because everyone else did. It was the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the shortest day of the year, and most ancient religions marked it with rituals of some sort. Many of those involved revelry and it’s speculated that Christians leaders adopted the date for Jesus’ birthday to stop the faithful being tempted to tipple with the unbelievers. “Celebrating” Christmas hasn’t always been part of Christian tradition. The Puritans banned it in Massachusetts in 1659: “For the preventing of disorders, arising in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other communities, to the great dishonour of God and offence of others.” Anyone found breaching the ban was liable to a fine of five shillings.
Back home in Britain, Oliver Cromwell had beaten his American cousins to it in 1644. Sickened by the amount of indulgence in “carnal and sensual delights” that was going down, he passed a law ordering that December 25 be marked as a day of “solemn humiliation”.
The killjoys of the French Revolution also gave Christmas a serve. Before 1789, their countrymen had tucked into a traditional Three Kings Cake to mark the day. The resolutely secular post-revolutionary government kept
the delicacy but changed its name to “equality cake”. Shades of post 9-11 “freedom fries”. Generally, the birthday of the Prince of Peace is the season of goodwill that it promotes itself as. No one managed to get Christmas quite as wrong as US aerospace engineer Bruce Pardo, who dressed up as Santa Claus and, armed with a flamethrower and four handguns, killed nine people at a 2008 Christmas Eve party in Los Angeles.
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
What could be worse than that cringe-worthy Christmas confection Love Actually? That’s easy — the original script of Love Actually,
which had four more love stories than the 10 with which we are burdened. Richard Curtis didn’t shoot plot lines involving a girl with a wheelchair, and one about a boy who records a love song for a classmate. And two other threads were filmed but not included in the version that was released. The threat of an extended anniversary cut of Love Actually
real.
Christmas music ranges from Handel to Elvis, Bing Crosby to Phil Spector, usually all snowbells and sleigh bells and goodwill. Artists from The Beatles to the Chipmunks have released Christmas albums in the spirit of the season. But not all musical offerings toe the Christmas party line. Darlene Love’s Christmas Time for the Jews is a hilarious, totally kosher parody of New York Christmas traditions. And teen idol Rick Springfield’s Santa is an Anagram is a subversive delight. Both on Youtube.
The greatest Christmas movie cameo by a jazz legend and candidate for title of coolest person ever? That would have to be Miles Davis’ appearance as a member of a group of street musicians performing We Three Kings in the 1988 Charles Dickens update, Scrooged.
Father Christmas himself has been appearing is on screen since 1898 when special effects pioneer G.A. Smith featured him in a film simply called Santa Claus.
Frank Capra’s classic 1946 Christmas movie
It’s a Wonderful Life may seem as American as apple pie now but that didn’t impress the FBI at the time, which noted its “rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘Scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This … is a common trick used by Communists.” Christmas is popular with mystery writers, probably because it’s the nature of the season to bring disparate people together in one place thus providing a ready roster of suspects for a plot. Notable examples include Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, Agatha Christie’s
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, Ngaio Marsh’s Tied up in Tinsel and Ellery Queen’s The Finishing Stroke.
Christmas traditions aren’t immune to change themselves. The popular carol Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, for instance, was originally
Hark! How All the Welkin Rings, possibly altered because it sounded vaguely anatomical. “Welkin” is a now obsolete word meaning sky or heavens.
MISCELLANEOUS
Christmas stores — shops selling decorations and other seasonal paraphernalia — are relatively new to the local retail scene but have been well established overseas for decades. None of our homegrown versions yet approaches the outlandish heights of Bronners Christmas Wonderland, established in 1945, in Frankenmuth, Michigan. Outside are three 5m tall Santas and inside you will be winked at and otherwise unsettled by 800 animated figurines.
Although it doesn’t officially celebrate Christmas, in 2010 the United Arab Emirates was the location of the world’s most expensively decorated Christmas tree. Set up at an Abu Dhabi hotel, it was weighed down with baubles to the value of $17 million.
It may have been the reason for the sneezin’. Fake snow has always been a popular Christmas accessory, providing that touch of winter wonderland in even the warmest of climes. In less safety-conscious times, asbestos was marketed as fake snow in the US by the likes of the National Tinsel Manufacturing Company, perfect for your decorating requirements. The snow which falls on Dorothy and her sleeping friends in The Wizard of Oz was also asbestos.
The royal Christmas message has been the highlight of Christmas for absolutely no one since the inaugural address in 1932, which was written by Rudyard Kipling, the first and last winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature to put words in the sovereign’s mouth. The 1953 message was broadcast from Auckland, where the Queen stopped during that year’s royal tour. Squeezing yourself down chimneys with tat for tots would seem to be a bit of a comedown for someone who once stared down God with his legions of demons, but that’s what a number of Christians believe. They maintain that the Santa/satan anagram indicates a real affinity between the two fictional beings. According to Dr Terry Watkins of Dial-the Truth Ministries, Santa is actually … Thor. He writes: “Mythologist Helene Adeline Guerber presents a very convincing case tracing Santa to the Norse god Thor in Myths of Northern Lands” [and] “Another of Thor’s nicknames was Old Nick. Thor also carried a ‘trident’ — the pitchfork of Satan.” Case closed. Other famous people to celebrate their birthday on December 25 include Isaac Newton. Humphrey Bogart, Annie Lennox and Justin Trudeau. With his usual impeccable timing, comic genius and misanthrope W.C. Fields also died on Christmas Day.