SYSK’s 2021 Glad Tidings Bonanza Holiday Special

are two of our favorites. And they are both ad free because we insist upon it, because Christmas has been commercialized enough for doing our bit to reverse that trend just ever so slightly. And I think it's it's been having a measurable effe, don't you, Chuck? I think so. People's fingers are spared that fast forward button for the next forty five minutes, and let's do this. So what are we going to do first? Maybe the mystery behind the world's most famous Christmas poem? Yeah, did you dig

this one up? Or no? I believe this was a listener suggestion. It was so. This is based on an article by Stacy Conrad in Mental Floss, but it was suggested to us by one of our listeners named Adam Stevenson, and thank you very much to Adam for sending this idea in And the whole thing, Chuck, that we're talking about is probably the world's most famous Christmas poem. It's called a Visit from St. Nicholas, and we've read it before, but it's actually, in most people's mind called Toys the

Night before Christmas. That's what I was confused a couple of times I read through this. So that poem has the authorship of it is disputed and has been disputed for some time now. And it's not one of those questions where somebody says, no, no, it was my great great great great great grandfather who wrote it. Instead, there's

actually like evidence that kind of backs this up. So right now here in one and maybe for the rest of all time, we're not a certain who wrote a Visit from St. Nick also known as Towards the Night before Christmas. That's right. We know. It first popped up in Troy, New York's Troy Sentinel on December appropriately three, with no authorship attributed, and then thirteen years after that, a professor and a poet named Clement Clark Moore was

named as the author. Because of the story that his housekeeper, without him knowing it, sent the piece in. It was a poem he wrote for his kids, supposedly, and sent into the newspaper. And then in eighteen forty four, which is twenty one years later, right, it was officially included in one of his poet poetry anthologies. That's right, So

it officially became credited to Clement Clark Moore. And then at some point, in a not entirely certain win, another family, um, the family of Henry Livingston Jr. And again by family we mean um, five generations grandchildren step forward and said, hey, um, I don't think this is quite right, because it turns out that great great great great great grandfather Henry had been reading this poem to our to his kids, my great great great great grandmother for like fifteen years before

it was first published in the Troy, New York Sentinel. Right, So if that was three, they're claiming it goes back to eighteen seven. Yeah, that's what I saw, all right. So let's duke this out on the livingstone side. And we're not taking sides because neither one of us know or care, but uh, on the livings, they certainly do. On the Livings in side. They say, you know what,

we have Dutch heritage in our family and ancestry. Um great great great great great great grand Peppie Henry's mom was Dutch and there's a lot of Dutch references in the poem, so it's his. Yeah, apparently this is where we get the names for Santa's eight Reindeer, And originally Donner and Blitzen's names were Dunder and blicks them. If you read that, I know it's great. What makes it like a cheap T shirt you would buy or something? What a dunder brand T shirt? Well just know, like

you know, you're off brand toys. That seems like the Christmas shirt. Yeah, so don't but it Dunder and blicks them mean thunder and lightning and Dutch, so hence the Dutch references. And the thing is that Clement Clark Moore wasn't Dutch and he didn't have Dutch heritage, so it does make it a little more sensible that Livingston, who did have Dutch heritage, would have used those Dutch names initially.

That's right. And for all of you thinking I'd just stepped by a Dunder and Mifflin joke, I just want to acknowledge it, so you know that I did think of it and I chose not to same here, all right, it's a Christmas miracle for growing up. Yeah, we really are.

Uh So blix Um changed to blix in first, I think to rhyme with vixen, and I believe in the etour More stepped up because you know, he was like, hey, this is my poem after all, right, uh and changed it to the Germanic Blitzen, and then Dunder eventually became Donder, and then in the early twentieth century it was went to Donner because it's also Germanic. Yeah, so there's the whole thing. Originally Dunder and blicks Him were two of the names, and those are clearly Dutch words, which has

nothing to do with Clement Clark Moore. Um. There's another thing to remember. We said that Henry's children said, and apparently a neighbor at times said that they remember him reading this to them back in eighteen oh seven, uh sixteen, years before it was published, and they there's also family legend among the Livingston's that there used to be a handwritten draft copy that had markouts and scratches and revisions

to it. That would Yeah, I would basically suggest this is the original version of the poem, and the case would be closed had that not burned up in a house fire at some point in family history. I don't see. I was when I was reading this stuff, I was like, all right, here we go, it's over, case reopened. Yeah, the mysterious house fire. Now I'm like, I don't know

about you. Livingstone's right, okay, very fishy. Well, then the literary professors got involved, and then things got really taken off the rails, right, Yeah, they've there have been plenty of well know about plenty, but at least a few literary professors who have gotten in the archives and the anthologies and said, you know what, this more guy never

wrote anything like this thing. Uh, it's in this anapestic scheme where you have the two syllables followed by a more stressed third syllable, and you never wrote anything like that, buddy, So I think you're a fraud. Yeah. And I had no idea about that scheme until I kind of spelled it out myself and got it wrong. Though. Did you notice that? No? I didn't. You got the first half right, but then you lose it at you lost it after

and all through the house, Oh I did. Yeah, that was pretty much like oh yeah, I see now okay, can read it like yeah, please do, please do. Itwas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Oh man, this is like my math. You got tripped up. Yeah that's all right, good stuff, But that's anapestic scheme. They said, you didn't write anything like that, buddy, But Livingston wrote

plenty of stuff like that. Yeah, so again case closed. Right, if you want to put a nail in that coffin. Another professor from New Zealand, a guy named McDonald Jackson, stepped up and said, get this, everybody, I could. I've devised a statistical analysis machine, and I said it loose on Clement Clark Moore's manuscript notebook and it says all

of those poems are Clement Clark Moore's. But when I feed that same machine towys the night before Christmas, you know, a visit from St. Nicholas, everybody goes, oh yeah that one he goes. It just starts coughing and smoking and sputtering, and it broke. Yeah. Basically, uh, if you talk to them more as they're like, yeah, but you know what you're you're just constructing us in a way that makes it look like you never anything like this, because I know for sure he wrote the Pig and the Rooster

and that's antipestic. He wrote one like this, and that's that I should I should spell out some of the Pig and the Rooster and antipestic scheme and see what happens. So on the more side this, I mean, I sort of get this, but more was buddies with Rip van Winkle, who was very much into the Dutch culture up there in New York State. And I guess the argument is, but because he was good friends with Irving that, uh, it just he picked up on that Dutch stuff. Is

that the argument? That's the argument. But the argument that I saw that basically is like, no, that's it's Clement Clark Moore. Is that Clement Clark Moore, who has otherwise never been accused of doing anything nefarious in his life, um stepped up and claimed credit and an authorship of this, and that just doesn't seem to be something that he

would have done had he not done that. And the Livingston's Henry specifically, who was alive after the thing was published for five more years, never stepped forward to take credit for it, and that to a lot of people, they are like, well that, I mean, that's that, Like, yes,

you can create statistical analysis machines to say whatever. But as it stands out, if you go on to the Poetry Websites Foundation, they say that there's a lot of scholars that credit Henry Livingston with authorship, but they still if you search Clement Clark Moore, the poem that they have on their website for him is a visit from St. Nicholas. Still, so everybody's like, who knows, but ultimately who cares? Just read the poem. It's so great it doesn't matter who

wrote it anymore. I agree. So I think, Chuck, that we've done our first little segment, which means it's time for some of Jerry's delicious Christmas interstitial music. Huh all right, let's hear it. Oh boy, that didn't that so much better than an ad? Yeah? That is so nice. Jerry really knows what she's doing. She's gotten really good at this stuff. All right, where are we headed next? Oh jeez, I'm driving? Huh Okay, I guess he said you want to skip around, So yeah, let's do one of yours.

How about red and green? It's Christmas colors. Yeah, we need to thank u Wanderopolis Reader's digests and our old buddy Robert Paulson, Mr RP funding himself, longtime listener, he said, us, I think he's done this past few years since it's a bunch of Christmas ideas because you know, it gets hard you guys to think of new things and to find new stories, and Paulson's always sent this good stuff. So this was inspired by Robert. And this is the

idea that where did green and red come from? For Christmas? And there's quite a few theories and no one knows for sure. No um, which is fun because that means you get to toss out a lot of theories that might be right or wrong, who knows. But um, if you go talk to a Christian, say hey, that whole red and green thing for Christmas? You're a Christian, where did it come from? And they'll say, well, sit down, friend, I'll tell you. It turns out that the green represents

an evergreen tree, which in turn represents Jesus. And you say, I didn't see Jesus coming in this But here we go. Yeah, it's only Christmas. And the reason that the evergreen represents Jesus is because Jesus has eternal life or offers eternal life, and the evergreen was representative of eternal life and living through the winter time even the bleakest part of the winter, and evergreen is still green. Hence the green part. And you say, well, what about the the red. Don't say blood,

don't say blood. What do they say blood? Yeah, blood of Christ. It's always the blood of Christ. So supposedly that's where the red and green came from, as far as Christian scholars are concerned. That's right. Other people say, well,

i'll tell you what. In the churches would put on these miracle plays, is what they were called, And on Christmas they would perform one called the Paradise Play, which retells the story in Genesis of the creation of Adam and even the garden of Eden when Adam was instructed not to eat from the tree of good and evil

did so. Anyway, they were banished from Paradise. And when they put on these miracle plays, apple trees weren't in season, so they couldn't drag a dead apple tree in there, so they would bring in a nice, lovely green evergreen pine and then fastened apples to them, and that is where the green and the red comes from. And every single year there was always one townsfolk, one annoying towns folk. It would stand up in point and say, that's not

an apple tree, that's right, Cleidas a slack gelgyokel. But then now we get into probably the true origins of it, because we're going back beyond the origin of Christianity and starting to get into pagan and Roman culture. And as we've seen time and time and time again with a lot of the holidays that we celebrate these days, they're ultimately based on Pagan and Roman rituals and this is

no no different. Um. They think that Saturnalia actually used to claim as it's holiday colors red and green again because of evergreens and the berries they bear. And and then we talked about Saturnalia before in a Christmas episode, right, we had to have. Surely at some point that's the

only way I would know about it. Uh. The Celtic people, also, the ancient Celts, they loved their holly plants because they were evergreen, and holly is very much associated with Christmas, and they were saying, well, that's where the red and green comes from. Then a little bit later on they were, uh, these religious screens called rudes medieval churches were dyed red and green. But other people say, well, that's because those

were the pigments that were available at the time. So no one really knows for sure, no, but it does like present like a connection between Christianity and red and green. Those medieval church screens definitely do. So. The Victorians came along and they had a bunch of different color schemes. Blue and white, blue and red, red and green all were pretty much equally associated with Christmas with the Victorians.

And uh, it wasn't until one when Coca Cola commissioned Um had in Sunbloom to do his famous illustration of Santa Claus, where Santa Claus became fat and fully clothed in red for the first time and for the rest of all time before that he was naked as a j bird. That's right. It was a gross Christmas tradition, all right, Jerry, how about some more of that music? Take it away, Jerr. Okay, Chuck, So now I think it's your turn to pick which one we're gonna do next.

It's a it's like opening Christmas presents. We're gonna just switch off. You know where I'm headed. I'm headed to, Uh, I'm headed to the nineteen eighties. I'm headed to December seven, and I'm watching the TV show ALF, and I'm shocked at what I'm seeing on my screen. It's right, mainly because I never saw an episode of ALF. Oh you know, yeah, you were a little old for it. I definitely did. It was a cute show eighty six, so I was fifteen, maybe just on the cusp, but yeah, I didn't see

way too old for what was ALF. Like an eightyear old exactly the right age to hate ALF more than any other age group on the planet, I think. Yeah, I was like I started listening to Pink Floyd when I was fifteen, So right, okay, yeah, you wouldn't have like alfin people who have never seen ALF, like you. Um, I was thinking our younger viewers, but I guess anybody

who has never seen ALF. It's a eighties sitcom about an alien who crashed lands on Earth takes up a residence with a family, who he in short order starts to drive crazy with his wise cracking, his troublemaking. He's good hearted, but he's just a lot. He's a handful. And then on top of that, they have to keep him a secret from nosy neighbors, from the government. Um. And it's a it's a cute little show that that like a six year old can follow the plotline of.

Uh you want to hear something more shocking. Yes, I didn't know until yesterday that Alf was an alien. What do you think he was? I don't know. I never thought about it. I just I knew it was a puppet. It looked like a little fuzzy beast of some kind. I never really thought about I had no idea what Alf was. But now that you know, I see this, and I see the year clearly capitalizing on a post et kind of thing. Let's do a sitcom. I'm sure that was brought up in the room, you know. Yeah. Yeah,

and Alf actually stood for alien life for him. It was the name that the dad Willie gave to him. His real name was Gordon schum Way, and he was from the planet mill Mack. Was it really Gordon Shumway? Yeah, it's Have you ever seen that movie Permanent Midnight? Uh? Yeah, Oh, sure. Yeah, Yeah, that guy that was based on the Ben Stiller place. He was a writer for Alfred. Yeah, that's that's all

I knew of alf was that movie. Okay, gotcha? That was one of my favorite lines from any movie is when Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller have lost their percocets. Owen Wilson and his voice goes, if I were a percoset, where would I be? That? I can totally envision that. Wow. That was a dead on Owen Wilson. By the way, Wow there was again. So with alf Um, what you see was what you got. It was very straightforward as

far as episodes were concerned. Sure, it was kind of jarring, like you were saying when you tuned in on December, Oh, I don't remember, but in and you found out that there was a not just a one part as a standard, but a two part episode shot on film of alf And it was a very special Christmas special of alf Yeah. It was, uh, to say the least, not very funny there. You know, I watched some of it today. They didn't

forego the jokes entirely. They used them, tried to use them effectively to sort of you know, punch up some moments here and there, but it was definitely different. It was Alf gets outside the house, get hitches a ride with Cleveland Little from Blazing Saddle's fame as Santa Claus, and they go to a hospital where Alf is mistaken for a Christmas toy and given to a little girl who is dying. Yes, which is basically the main plot line of this episode. Alf hanging out with this dying

girl in her hospital room. And this is not like the kind of thing where the dying girl doesn't know she's dying. She actually talks openly and frequently about dying and how she's being scared of it. Yeah, it's being scared to die. Yeah. Not exactly like the typical Christmas

themes you would you would expect. There's also a part in the second part where Alf talks um uh talks Cleveland Little's character out of taking his life by jumping off a bridge, not another I Actually I was about to say that's not like a very Christmasy thing, but thanks to a wonderful life, jumping off of a bridge

actually is kind of Christmas now that I think about it. Yeah, But you know, being Alf and being a TV sit come from the eighties, you would think at the end, of course, the doctors come in and they say we're going to save this girl, or or Alf, your heart was big enough to heal this girl. But no, it ends with Alf leaving and waving from the back seat of the car, and she waves from her hospital window,

and the assumption is that she dies. Yeah. I mean, there's a part early on in part one where Alf over here is a doctor talking to Cleveland Little and saying like, yeah, she's she's a goner, like there's nothing we can do from her. This is going to be her last Christmas. And the show makes no efforts to change that whatsoever. And so like today, if you um read about it on the internet, people like to tee off on it um and in some pretty annoying like

think pieces. It's an easy target if you look at it from a really cynical point of view, but if you actually stop and watch it, it's an extremely touching episode. Apparently viewers in seven were very touched by it, and Alf went on to become a big hit in part because of this kind of daring limb that they went

out on. But there's a guy who writes for Yahoo News named Ethan Atler, and he noticed that at the end of part two there's a little title card that said that that episode was a memory of another girl named Tiffany. So he was like, well, what is this. That's the name of the dying girl in the episode. Who's this Tiffany? And he started to dig into it and he found out there actually was a real life Tiffany who was dying who was a fan of Alf.

That's right, uh, And apparently this was something that happened a lot, is that kids who were, you know, battling cancer or something terrible like that, would get involved in either with Make a Wish or just had a wish to see Alf and to meet Alf because kids loved Alf.

And that's what happened. Tiffany went through Make a Wish wanted to meet Alf, so they set up a video conference in seven no small feat between Alf and the puppeteer Paul Fusco obviously, and then Tiffany was in her hospital room and the mom says, you know what, if it hadn't been for this, like this gave Tiffany an extra month of life. It like picked her spirits up so much. Brandon Tartakov, who was running NBC at the time heard about this and of course, you know, you

can imagine what happens from there. That's how this story was born. He was like, this is gold, Christmas gold, everybody, that's right. So they actually did make this two part episode again, shot on film, um and they dedicated it at the end title card to Tiffany Lee Smith in her memory, which is pretty sweet. Um. But I mean that that that video conference, that meeting between those two was significant enough that like they did they did that, you know, and if you go back and watch it.

I've only seen part one because I accidentally stumbled onto an internet mystery Chuck. Part two is not on the internet. Part one you can get anywhere and you watch it and you want to see part two, and you can't see part two anymore interesting there there. I watched this. Uh you probably saw this too. There's like a ten minute video where this guy kind of breaks it down and goes over the story and shows clips from it. Apparently out delivers a baby at some point too. That's

where some of the laughs come from. Uh. But yeah, it's interesting. And the guy in the video too said that um alf fan sites it can be rated the worst or the best episode of ALF, depending on which one you go to. Yeah, I read like a little article on MeTV and they were saying, the ALF Christmas Special is the ALF movie we always wanted. But anyway, it was nice. It was very pleasant to watch, at least the first part of it. I recommend anybody who can go check it out. It's good and it maybe

want to watch more ALF again. Yeah. I looked up the girl. I was like, I wonder where she is today. She's born in seventy five, so she's a year older than you, And um, I didn't she had She didn't do a lot of stuff after her childhood. But she was on that TV show as a cast regular. Uh not Full House, Our House. Yeah yeah, with Wilford Brimley. Yeah, I never saw that. Shannon Doherty and Wilford Brimley. She was one of the little girls in that too. So

you know, now she's she's locked into Christmas history. That's right, trapped forever with ALF. All right, Jerry, this is your chance to shine. Tune up that violin and let's hear it, man. We're just careening from Christmas Spirit to Christmas Spirit, aren't I know? Uh? So that was yours. Why don't we go with well, no, you pick from mine? Oh is it my turn? Yeah, that's what we're doing. Okay, because I I we got a big finish if you ask me.

Let's do Christmas songs, which is interesting, but you know the one I'm excited about. Okay, all right, fair enough, okay, uh yeah, Christmas songs. This got me thinking about I saw the movie About a Boy recently, again movie that I really love, and in that movie, Hugh Grant's character is still living the good life as a fat cat because of a Christmas song that his father wrote. I can't remember the name of the song, but it's sort

of the idea. And it's correct that if you are a pop star or even not, if you write, and especially if you write and record and have those all those rights to a popular Christmas song, then you are living on easy street. My friend. Yeah, you can pretty much just retire, and it's possible your kids and their kids might be able to retire to and such as the case Chuck with Jim Lee, who figures prominently in this article you found about Christmas music in the music industry.

He was the bass player for Slade, who until today I didn't realize was the originators of Quiet Riots Come On Field of Noise. It's actually Slades Come On Field of Noise. And I went back and listened to both of them and I was like, this Slave Boy is so much better. I mean, I love the Quiet Riot song, and then I heard the slave version. I was like, oh wow, this is this is amazing. Yeah Slade and by the way, this is from Rob Pachetta cnn um,

but yeah Slade. I love Slade. When I was a kid, they had that great video MTV video hit Run Run Away,

and that's how I got introduced. But previous to that, in the early eighties, they were a big glam rock band in England and Jim was the bassist and he was, you know, he was talking about the pressure of of writing that next big hit all the time, and he was in he was sort of dry of ideas, and apparently, as the story goes, in seventy three, in a hotel bathroom kind of wondering what to do and remembered that his manager and his mom had both said, why Christmas tune,

you can bloody retire. He's saying that inspired him. My room, I mean a hotel bathroom so that inspired him and he uh he he came up with the outline of a verse and then a bridge apparently, and then all of a sudden had a Christmas hit by Slade, which isn't as big here in the States. I definitely heard it quite a few times, but it's really big in the UK. Yeah, I've never heard it before in my

entire life until yesterday. I think, Yeah, it's called Mary Xmuss everybody, and um, yeah, I think it's enormous in Britain because Against Slave was British, but I mean, it's so big in Britain. I'm very surprised. I've never heard it before. But it's a it's a cute, fun little song about how not so Christmas is. But it was a huge, huge hit for him, and it's kind of one of those things where um Slade, the guy, the bass player, Jim Lee, when he came up with this

idea like to do a Christmas song. It wasn't like the band had been had been thinking of doing a Christmas song. He really had to go sell it to talk this awesome hard rocking glam rock band into doing a Christmas song. And they didn't release it as like a single or special. They released it on one of their regular albums. Yeah, you're gonna say the name of their lead singer, oh um, uh, it's great. Hold on, what is his name? Naughty Holder? That's it's a great name.

And he actually looks a lot like a Naughty Holder does. But Lee talks about the fact that it's like having a pension basically here, you know, as he's aging, and he said, you know, my grandkids just like we were talking to He said, they're gonna be getting money for this thing because Christmas tunes don't go away. If you if you managed to wed yourself in there with a popular tune, at least in your home country, uh, you're

gonna make a lot of money. And that's why Freddie Mercury came to jim Ley at one point and said, Hey, I'm kind of thinking about doing a Christmas song. Is like, is that okay? Like I'm not gonna be stepping on your toast or anything, am I? Yeah? Well, I mean that was part of it. I think also, like Slade was the ones who made it okay for people who weren't being Crosby and Gene Autry record Christmas music because after them Bowie recorded that Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby.

Queen came along and recorded There's and it just kept going from there. I have the distinct impression that Slade where the origin eights of that trend. I think, I think, I think you might be right. It seems to be what this uh, what this article is indicating. Uh And you know now it's I think they said that, uh and this was No one knows for sure, because no one really wants to share these numbers, I think partially because it goes against what you want to think about

it Christmas. But like that Mariah Carey song Ineen, they estimated had earned her about sixty million bucks. It's it's a great song. I'm not even a Mariah Carey fan, but I love that song. It is a really good one. Apparently she has more uppersly that have been coming out lately to Christmas album. I think, yeah, I think she

just released another one. But that I mean that is like it is a definitive recent Christmas hit, But it also points out how hard it is to make one of those, like because she's definitely not the only artist who's working still today who's released a Christmas song every Christmas. Tons and tons of artists like they're audited Christmas song and one of the reasons why they take their song was because they will basically be able to stop working whenever they want if it's a hit. It's just so

rarely a hit. And there's this guy who has interviewed in them in the article who basically said, um, he's uh. He works for PRS for Music, which manages royalty payments. He said, basically, you can count on your fingers the number of artists in the last twenty five years we've had like a bona fide Christmas hit. And it's true, like there's plenty of Christmas songs, but Christmas hits are

few and far between. Yeah. I do think it's funny though, how everyone, even bands you don't think you're doing it, they try to get some of that Christmas juice because if you will bring up like a modern Christmas rock playlist, it is just littered with bands that I haven't even heard of that are throwing their name in the hat. Basically, I mean, I love a lot. I love Elton John's song, I love Queen song, Thank God It's Christmas. I think my favorite might be Tom pet ease uh and the

Heartbreakers Christmas all over again. I don't know that one. Oh, it's great. It's great because at the end, I think I talked about this some movie Crush a couple of years ago. At the end, it's kind of fading out with some jingle bells and Tom Petty and that sort of Florida Southern draw says Santa this Christmas, I want a thender Twin Reverb Chuck Berry song. Yeah. Yeah, And he's just like listing things out. Is that it even fades out on his voice. It's real. Hey, I remember

that song. That is a cute one. What's your favorite? I think we poked about this before. My favorite Christmas song of all the time, A recent Christmas hit, favorite just pop rock of any era. Christmas song. Man, Somebody's going to find me on the street and strangle me. But I gotta say Last Christmas by wayamb Oh, it's great? Are you kidding me? Yeah? A lot of people really hate that song. But it's not because it's a bad song.

It's just because it's really overplayed. That's one of the other problems with the fact that so few Christmas songs are Christmas hits because that means that is a small pool. It gets played over and over and over again. Such good stuff. What a big mistake to get a Christmas Heart and the very next day give it away. That's it is a big, big mistake. There's one other person I want to give a shout out to, though, is

Carly Kylie Minogue. She had some good Christmas songs and there's actually um did she did a duet with James Cordon called like every Day Is Christmas? I think, very very cute. It's not it's not a hit in the United States, but I would bet a lot of marmalite that it was. It's a big hit in Australia. Uh. I know people are sick of hearing it, but I still love Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmas Time and I love John Lennon. So this is Christmas good stuff. Yeah, it

is good stuff. And then I also, um My, the thing I've been playing Chuck and this will come probably is a little surprised to you, Bias wanting to shout it out to. Um. I found a YouTube video that's an hour long called Kmart Store Intercom Christmas Music nineteen four. Whoa knock your socks off? Is this a playlist? It's apparently an hour that they took from the kmart store intercom because at one point they call for security in section three. Um. But it's like just small, like instrumental,

smallty Christmas music that will make you pucker. It's so sweet. Uh. Emily has been She usually likes her her rock and roll Christmas mixes, but she's a big Christmas music person. From Thanksgiving to Christmas. It's always on in the house. Yeah, but this year she's just so crazy with work and really stressed. She's listened to nothing. But I mean, we're calling it jazzy Christmas. I don't know what it is, but it's the these it's sort of like dentist office

Christmas piano stuff. Oh yeah, nice, very relaxing. But I do miss step into Christmas and Christmas all over the world, and so we're gonna have to rock it out soon, okay. Um oh. Another one that we um we should mention is that Donnie Hathaway song. Um This Christmas I think is what it's called Christmas. You've heard it a million times, you know, listen to Dolly. I think I put this before I left social media. Last year, a full of Dolly Parton's Christmas songs are about having sex. What go

listen to? Go listen to Dolly Parton's Christmas songs about them. At some point she's talking about like screwing Santa, or like the guy in neighbor, or like what, it's really funny. I'm telling you just do it. And you know it's in the Dolly Parton way, like yeah, yeah, of course, it's not like we had a few drinks and canoe told or something. Really, I had no idea. It's really funny. But that she she deserves another shout out just for candy Christmas alone. Well, but I think that one talks

about it. Yeah, I think she talks about going to the bar and picking up somebody maybe at once. I know what you're talking about. I hadn't really thought about it because it's just Dolly, you know. All Right, I'm gonna look at the lyrics for that. Well, we need to move on or else we're just gonna spend the next forty five minutes talking about Christmas songs that we we thought of. All right, Jerry, that's your cue? All right?

Is it my turn? It's your turn? Buddy. All right, well, I guess there's nowhere else to go for you than Advent calendars. That's true. I don't know how that happened, did I Did you choose first or something? I must have huh, all right, I'm not sure. It's it's kind of like the antipestic rhyme scheme all over the place. But we're talking to Advent calendars, and I realized that, um,

I didn't set out what an Advent calendar was. Maybe not everybody understands that because I was raised Catholic, so I had an Advent calendar every year, did you No. I got into them when took German in high school and we sold them for German Club. Okay, alright, so they're a super German thing. But also if you're Catholic in the United States, they're a pretty Catholic thing too, but I think they're also a lot of Protestants usom.

But it's just basically a little calendar, but it's a calendar plus because for each day from December one, that's the extent of an Advent calendar. Each day it has like a little door on it each day, and you open up the door and there's like a swede inside or something like that. And the whole point of an Advent calendar is to get kids jazz about the coming of Christmas, as if they needed any extra jazzing whatsoever.

But that seems to be the whole point of Advent calendars. Yeah, we I don't know why I didn't get one this year, because we've been getting them, and I've seen with my own eyeballs how delighted my daughter is because you know, it becomes the ritual every day. He used to open that door and get that little piece of chocolate. Uh, jeez, I didn't get one this year. If you look at dope, it's not too late. You can just pick up the

pace and just started like you know, December twelve. Oh yeah, I guess that we're recording this in December nine, So you're right. I need to find a local German club, high school German club. That all right? So these things? There isn't one on the twenty, does it end. I've

seen both ways, and I don't remember. I haven't had one for years either, but I feel like there was there the last one you opened on Christmas, I thought, But maybe it is Christmas Eve that you opened the last one and you wake up and it's Christmas and you burn it. Then you set it up fire uh Latin uh in Latin, coming or arrival is what Advent means. So obviously the arrival of Christmas and the first Advent

calendar that uh, you know, we kind of recognize. This one was introduced later than I thought, in nineteen o eight in uh Munich or as we would say in German club Munichian Germany, by Gerard Long. Gerard, No, I think it would be Gerhardt line. That's what I thought. He really threw me off. They were in Saxony or something, so Long actually said. It was my dear sweet mother

who introduced me to the Advent calendar. She used to make them for me by hand herself, put little pastries in there so that every day, um, I would get to eat a little sweet and that was my treat for Advent. And he loved it so much and loved his dear sweet mother so much that he grew up as an adult and in nineteen o eight he released the first Advent calendar. But it was the suckiest Advent calendar you could possibly get, because it was just a

flat piece of paper. There were no treats involved. There are no doors to open. You just crossed off the day. And I think gerhart Lang's mother haunted him by his bedside for years until he finally in nine added doors to his Advent calendars and put sweets inside. And then everybody said okay, and his dear sweet mother could rest in peace from that point on and went off to heaven.

That's nice German heaven. Uh. This went throughout Germany of first, and they were they were selling and printing these things like crazy up until World War One and in World War Two when they stopped doing it because of the paper rations. But you'll be glad to know. Then in World War Two, the Nazis still printed their own Advent calendars with Nazi propaganda stuff behind the little doors. Yeah, they took all the churchy stuff out. Yeah, but in

the little pagan symbols. Uh. And then after World War Two they kind of cranked up the operation again. Yeah, they got back to normal. Everybody's like, thank God. And apparently they just stayed basically in Germany. It was a German tradition among Lutherans and other German Protestants. And then in the fifties h Dwight Eisenhower, dear old Ike was photographed with his grandchildren around Christmas time opening an Advent calendar,

and everybody said, I like Ike. So they went out and bought event calendars, and they suddenly became a lot more widespread in the United States, and today they are widespread, to say the least, and they really bear little rese went to that original Sucky Night Advent calendar that Gary hart Lion came up with. Yeah, you know, when I bought them, they do resemble it. It's still sort of the traditional Advent calendar with just the simple little chocolate

in there, but they can get quite fancy. Now. Apparently you can get large calendars with beer or wine or whiskey in them, which I think is kind of cool. What else, Um, if you're a little kid and you're like, I really want to be exposed to branding all month long to really get me primed to ask for certain certain presents, then they've got Advent calendars for you. They have roadblocks, they have Lego hot Wheels minecraft. Some of

them managed to be doubly branded. There's Harry Potter Lego Advent calendars, Pokemon Funco Advent calendars, it's an advertising bananza all about the arrival of the baby Jesus. I bet Amazon sales one that's just a tiny little QR code for five percent off something that's right, and like you open each jour in the messages you love Amazon, I

love Amazon. You cannot do without Amazon. Uh. And then there is one that uh I meant to look this up and see a picture of it, but apparently if you have way too much money and you're a uh no, I'm not gonna say what kind of person might do? Is okay because it's our kids are listening. But you can get one from Tiffany and Company, which has it's a big crate with you know, legit jewelry inside each day to give your special someone twenty four individually wrapped

Tiffany gifts. I think in this crate man the spirit of giving. That's what they call that. I guess so. And by the way, everybody advent calendars was the suggestion of another little helper named Alexandra Stock who sent in that one and a whole list of others. So thanks for that, and Chuck, I think it's Jerry's time to shine again right now? All right, we're back and Uh, we need to shout out Time magazine and and this is going to be a dead giveaway Festivus web dot

com for this next bit. Yes, so we're talking about Festivus, Chuck, Festivus, the festival for the rest of us or the festivals for the rest of us, depending on who you talk to. That's right. Uh, if you don't know what we're talking about, then you probably are not a Seinfeld fan. But Festivus was in the of an episode of The Strike in the ninth season when Frank Costanza the great great Jerry Stiller, Uh has he left us or is he around? Don't know when? And Mara died? Don't know? All right, should

we get our our our person to check on this? Hey, check on that? Will you on it? I think people think we do have like a dedicated researcher at our side at all times, and they're not very good. So Jerry still er, Uh, this is great. He staged a war on Christmas and created Festivus. With one of the great lines in Seinfeld history, he said, many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did

another man and here's the line. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way that Christmas twice today? You you watched it twice today. Oh my gosh. It is flawless. Man. It has it all. Cramers on a bagel strikes like giving her fake number out and trying to get a free sub, Kruger's in it, George's Human Fund, like fake charity, Cherry's two faced girlfriend, like everything is in that one. It's just an amazing flaw this episode. I love it. Uh So this is

on the show. It's celebrated on December twenty three because he wanted to get a leg up on Christmas. Uh and he he practiced festivals with the Festivus pole, which was a bare aluminum pole in the living room or the backyard with no decoration. And they have, of course the airing of the family grievances and then engage in the feats of strength. That's right. So everybody knows that Seinfeld and Seinfeld writers just created this out of whole cloth,

and Festivus was born. And I mean almost immediately people just started taking up festivals and celebrating festivals as well, and still do today. Very much. But it turns out, and I had no idea about this, but one of the writers on Seinfeld, Dan O'Keeffe, his father, Daniel O'Keeffe Sr. Actually created festivals back in the six these and little Dan O'Keefe, as a kid in the seventies and eighties, celebrated it with his family every single year. So Festivus

was a real thing. The other writers of Seinfeld forced Dan O'Keefe to basically include in an episode. Yeah. I think I may have heard that at some point, but didn't really have it ingrained in my mind until this popped up. And it just makes it all the better the fact that this was a real thing. As the family story goes in nineteen sixty six, on the eve of the first date that Daniel Sr. Had with his UH fiance to be Deborah Uh, they commemorate Festivus and

they became an annual tradition. Some differences is they did not have a Festivus pole. I was creative for the show, uh, and it was not on a set date. Apparently in the O'Keefe family, happened at any time in the year

and never actually happened at Christmas. Yeah, I reade an interview with Dan O'Keefe, and he said he never knew when they were going to celebrate festivals until he got off the bus after school and his dad like had the decorations on, was playing weird sixties French music and I guess I love that so much better than it being a Christmas thing. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, there's no no idea when. But they actually did air grievances. That was part of it, and it seems to be part

of like the actual theme or reason four festivals. As Daniel O'Keeffe senior conceived of it, that it was partially just kind of like blow off steam, get out what was bothering you about the rest of the family, and then you drew off. You know, it's a healthy thing to do. They didn't call it the airing of the grievances. They just you know, basically spoke about their beefs uh.

They um apparently were inspired or the senior Daniels inspired by a Samuel Beckett play called Crap's Last Tape where the protagonist in the movie or I'm starting to play Um tapes himself speaking at different points in his life. And so the O'Keefe family used a tape recorder to record their festivus and these some of these tapes still

exist apparently from little Dan's life, which is great. Yeah, and there's actually in that episode Frank Costanza brings into old tape recorder and plays an audio tape of one of the festivals. Is where they just saw the whole family descends into screaming and George's crying and it's it's pretty good. Seriously, you need to watch the episode again. So good. I'm like, man, this show was good, and that was a really great episode. I'm gonna do that

right after this. Actually, this was exactly what I'm gonna do. Um. One of the traditions that they did that that was not on the show was this is really funny. It was called a clock into bag or a clock in a bag. And the thing here is that apparently even the kids still don't know what that was all about. This is something the dad did and they would ask him, like Dad, what is the clock in the bag all about? And he would say, that's not for you to know. So they just had to go along with it and

honor the clock in the bank. And apparently one of the other famous things about Festivists. The Festivals for the rest of Us is what a lot of people say. It's the slogan that's on that episode. That actually was a slogan for Festivus with the Keith family, they called it the Festival for the rest of Us, And initially um was kind of a bit of dark humor reference to Daniel O'Keeffe Senior's mom dying, and so it was a festival for the rest of them left over after

his mom died. But it was part of the point was to um move on each year, to like, you know, are your grievances and kind of bid a dude to whatever problems you had and just move on rather than dwelling in the past and your problems and that that seems to be tied in with that. So it was I as if Festivus could have gotten any better, It just did for me. I love it. So we should do that now, Josh, I've been meaning to say, you're not so great at mass, and oh, yeah, that's all

I have to say. Uh, your your putdowns are actually not that bad. How about that? That's my big problem? All right, we've gotten it. We've gotten that out of the way. I feel so much better. I do too. I love it. I think it's great that it was a real thing and the writers had to kind of put him up to it. Apparently Dan was a little reticent about sharing this, but his since I think he went on to write a book about it even Yeah, I think so too. He fully embraced it. Yeah, I

mean with a set of cash. He right, and he definitely likes set loose, a huge cultural juggernaut on the on the world, which is cool. I love it. And this makes me think of Aaron Cooper, So we want to shout out Aaron, because I know Aaron loves Festivus for sure. Happy Festivus, Cooper, and happy Festivus to all

the rest of us. Yeah, and thanks thanks for another great year everybody, and you and Jerry and Dave and UH and Max who helps uh helps us with the ads and and the ad sales team and everyone at I Heeart who helps us put this thing out. It's uh, we gotta think Dave Ruse, we gotta thank our newest member Libya, and we gotta thank Grabowski and uh, Julia, Yeah,

that's right, Julia Layton. And also thank you to our special elf helpers Um, Adam Stevenson, Robert Paulson, of course Alexandra stock Um for coming up with these great suggestions for us. Were appreciate that big time. And like Chuck said, happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanuka, happy Kwanza, as they say in that episode of The Simpsons, have a tip top ted. And we appreciate you guys joining us every year for this thing because we really look

forward to it. And Chuck, I have to say, after a wonky ish episode, which I think was very appropriate for I feel like we got our our Christmas spirit back in this one. I think so. And of course, if this is a tough time of year for you, which it often is for some people we're thinking about you, hang in there, get through these holidays and uh and look forward to hopefully a better next year. So in the meantime, everybody, happy holidays from all of us. It's

Stuff you Should Know. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.