Note: transcripts are AI generated and may contain spelling and/or grammar mistakes.

0:00:04 – Intro
Warning the following podcast is a shit show and the individuals you are about to meet are idiots. Their opinions, anecdotes and advice contain zero nutritional value. This is the critical human condition and all of its strangeness. This is life according to an idiot.

0:00:26 – Moe
Welcome everybody to your favorite podcast, according to an idiot.

0:00:33 – Jeremy
That’s us.

0:00:34 – Moe
Yule greetings. If you’re listening to this, you might be curious about Christmas stuff and Yule stuff. Yeah, baby Yule Tide, it might also be called. Also, I’m your host, Moe. I didn’t say that.

0:00:47 – Jeremy
I’m your other host, Jeremy. I wait for Moe to say Moe, and then I say Jeremy.

0:00:54 – Moe
It is a chaotic morning. We are both tired and feeling rambunctious.

0:00:59 – Jeremy
That’s one way to put it. I have a horrible migraine.

0:01:03 – Moe
Alright, you ready to start this thing?

0:01:06 – Jeremy
Yeah, it’s Christmas time, everybody! Christmas time. I guess it’s not just Christmas time because we were a bunch of whiteies. We celebrate Christmas.

0:01:14 – Moe
Grew up in America.

0:01:15 – Jeremy
We’ve got Hanukkah. We’ve got Chinese New Year. We’ve got Boxing Day. We’ve got Christmas. Some of these days aren’t religious. We’ve got St Nicholas Day. We’ve got Kwanzaa. We’ve got Yule. We’ve got Winter Solstice. We’ve got Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

0:01:28 – Moe
Oh, fuck yeah.

0:01:29 – Jeremy
Christmas time, I think, is more especially in America. I think it’s become almost secular now.

0:01:36 – Moe
A state of being.

0:01:37 – Jeremy
For example, I am not a practitioner of any faith, but I know you’re not that – Well, you’re kind of a witch now. So yeah, well, where are you at spiritually?

0:01:49 – Moe
You know I –

0:01:50 – Jeremy
Oh, boy, okay.

0:01:51 – Moe
I don’t believe in gods, but I do believe that we’re all connected in some sort of way. What way that manifests, I don’t really know, but I do feel energy within the universe that we can tap into and I feel like there is not necessarily a destiny, but like a grand scheme of your life, yeah, like a blueprint. I don’t know if that makes any sense when it comes to like talk of religion.

0:02:20 – Jeremy
So I believe in. The best way I’ve heard it put is that I believe in a universe that doesn’t care and people that do.

0:02:27 – Moe
Yeah, I feel like that’s a good way to put it –

0:02:29 – Jeremy

If you care, you’re changing the world, kind of.

0:02:32 – Moe

The way I kind of see it is everybody’s doing their best in one way or another, whether they’re acting on it in a productive way. People aren’t defined by their moments necessarily. So like I want to give that grace to other people because I know I have my moments where I’m probably not the most kind. But I like the idea of the egg story by Andy Weir where we’re all just reincarnations of ourself, so we’re constantly just interacting with ourself.

0:03:01 – Jeremy
Yeah, we’re all one person.

0:03:02 – Moe
We’re all one person. So I want to extend that kindness to someone else. Maybe not in the literal sense that we’re all reincarnations of ourself, but my lived experiences and the amount of consciousness that I have in my life Everybody else has too, and sometimes that, like one interaction with someone else can kind of define your day. And you have control over that interaction with someone else. You know If you’re an asshole, that’s going to define their day. If you’re really nice, that’s going to define their day. So you have the power to like, change that.

0:03:34 – Jeremy
Yeah, and I agree with that. And I say all this, and in two weeks I’ll be cut off by somebody and be like You’re, like I’ll immediately become the worst human I’ve ever been. I hope you fucking die.

Yeah, take that with a grain of salt, nobody is perfect. But yeah, I think most of these kind of thoughts always come up around Christmas time, around the holidays, because it’s the time to reflect, because a year is coming to an end, and it’s the time when we all come together so like community and love and family also comes into frame full force, and also, of course, santa Claus.

0:04:06 – Moe
Santa Claus, right, this episode is about the winter season of Yule, and Yule Tide and Christmas.

0:04:15 – Jeremy
So let’s get into the Christmas mood. Christmas season turn on the fireplace, drop a needle on that net king coal record. Let’s get into the Christmas spirit, shall we? As we know, christmas is a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of who? Santa? No, it’s Santa’s cousin, jesus. Christmas literally means mass on Christ’s day. But what if I told you that our modern conception of the holiday season is all relatively recent. What, oh how recent? As many of you know, the Good Book doesn’t claim that Jesus was born on December 25th. Rather, jc’s birthday isn’t clearly recorded at all. Mysterious, I smell a conspiracy.

0:04:59 – Moe
Excuse me.

0:05:00 – Jeremy
There are several theorized dates cooked up by theologians. The date most heralded is one preached by Mormons. The Church of Jesus Christ’s Latter-day Saints drew conclusions from revelations shown to LDS founder Joseph Smith. Okay, right which revealed Christ had been born in early April.

0:05:16 – Moe
He sat down, crossed his legs and was like Jesus spoke to me.

0:05:19 – Jeremy
I think he put his face in a hat. Okay, that’s how he actually did it. The hat was like hey, jesus was born in early April and he goes. That was a really weird thing for you to say. I was hoping for something more life changing.

0:05:31 – Moe
I was hoping you’d say I would have five wives.

0:05:33 – Jeremy
Oh, that also, and then from that LDS members narrowed it down to January 6th, a date that would never be relevant for anything. Ever Little topical American humor for you there.

0:05:45 – Moe
He was born in April. How did they get January?

0:05:48 – Jeremy
I’ll tell you why. It’s religious arithmetic, so, due to the date of Jesus’s reported death being April 6th, and in some cases it’s April 3rd, scholars followed the belief that prophets die on the anniversary of their conception.

0:06:00 – Moe
Okay.

0:06:01 – Jeremy
So, assuming Jesus was carried to full term, april 6th plus nine months is January 6th.

0:06:06 – Moe
I see.

0:06:07 – Jeremy
Yes, one account contributes the selection of December 25th to the 4th century pope, julius I, though this is strongly debated, but we’re still going to talk about it. This is speculation in theories, but still. December 25th was roughly two days after the Roman Festival of Saturnalia. Roman calendars show roughly 40 annual religious festivals, many of which would last several days, meaning that sacred days outnumbered normal days. Fuck yeah, many of these festivals incorporated elaborate forms of public entertainment sponsored by the state. This ranged from Roman circuses that featured chariot races in theatrical plays to exotic animal exhibitions and massive parades. These festivals were publicly recognized holidays. Therefore, it was customary that no business be conducted during them, so everyone had the day off, pretty much.

0:06:52 – Moe
Fuck yeah.

0:06:54 – Jeremy
Interestingly enough, early Christians living under Roman rule were discouraged by their church leaders from partaking in any of these pagan festivities. One major festival celebrating Roman polytheism was Saturnalia, which was devoted to the god Saturn and ran from December 17th through December 23rd. Saturnalia generally entailed religious sacrifices performed at the Temple of Saturn, followed by a public banquet, widespread gift giving and multiple days of continuous celebration and general merriment, which kind of sounds like Christmas.

0:07:24 – Moe
Yeah, that does sound a bit like Christmas.

0:07:26 – Jeremy
A little more hardcore.

0:07:27 – Moe
Yeah, they took out all the fun stuff.

0:07:29 – Jeremy
Right, this is like Christmas if, instead of milk and cookies, you left out monster energy drink and cookies laced with ecstasy for Santa Red bowl Yeager bombs.

Even beyond the similarities with Saturnalia. In the year 274, emperor Aurelian had a temple built in honor of the sun god, sol Invictus, the main divinity of the Roman pantheon of gods. Aurelian was a Henotheist of Sol Invictus, meaning that he worshipped the sun god as the one true supreme god, while he still acknowledged the other guys, but they just weren’t as important. After the temple of the sun was completed, the emperor had it dedicated on December 25th. It’s theorized that Pope Julius may have assigned the Holy Day of Christmas to December 25th because that date had already become associated with the worship of a singular supreme god. Furthermore, it’s possible that Pope Julius set Christmas just after Saturnalia to create a Christian alternative to the pagan festival, and set Jesus’ birthday to match the Roman sun gods, so that Christians and non-Christians could celebrate on the same day, which might encourage pagans to convert seamlessly.

0:08:33 – Moe
Interesting.

0:08:34 – Jeremy
We can still party and have fun. Okay, sure, I’ll join your Christian thing.

0:08:37 – Moe
I’ll eat your weird crackers.

0:08:39 – Jeremy
I’ll eat your weird crackers. Just as Saturnalia was one of many Roman celebrations, it was just one of many winter celebrations practiced across the Old World. As long as mankind has developed belief systems and put superstitions into practice, people have mythologized the natural world, crafting unique understandings of the world through religion and spirituality. So my main point, though, in mentioning that is that early folks will call them pagans, which also was termed made up by the Christians. Pagans often found divinity in nature and the natural processes of the world, For example their personification and worshiping of seasons and cycles, which you’ll see in Yule.

Saturnalia was held in late December, near the Winter Solstice, when the Romans would reap their last harvest of the year. The god Saturn was associated with agriculture as well as the passage of time. Saturn partially derives from the Greek titan Kronos, who infamously devoured his children, which was later taken as an allegory for the passing of generations. Both of them were depicted as old men with white beards, which also could be Wysanna and Father Christmas in general, as an old man with white beard.

0:09:45 – Moe
And he’s going to be there to eat your children! Fuck yeah.

0:09:48 – Jeremy
There are similar idols and concepts that resemble Saturn and rituals like Saturnalia that existed within Celtic, slavic and Dramatic Polytheism, which have even deeper ties to Christmas. Dramatic and Anglo-Saxon paganism and winter celebrations is where we draw the most in terms of Christmas. Winter festivals brought joy and light to what was, for many parts of the world, the coldest and darkest days of the year. Early Europeans celebrated the Winter Solstice, which occurs in late December, when the most brutal days of winter were drawing to a close and people could expect the emergence of longer days and shorter nights. The Dramatic peoples came to celebrate the Winter Festival of Ewell during this time, most popularly associated with the Norse and Scandinavian peoples. The 12-day festival would carry on from the Winter Solstice, which is like December 20th to 21st, roughly into early January.

The earliest form of Ewell can be found in the Old pagan calendar used by the Norse. Ewell is considered one of the oldest Winter Solstice festivals in known history, but even then its precise beginnings are still foggy, with historians still arguing the how and why of Ewell. It’s largely agreed that Ewell’s celebrations started at an Old Norse festival called Ewell, which translates to main mid-winter season. This precursor to the latter Ewell is believed to have emphasized the universal themes common in all Winter Solstice festivals, stuff like fire and feasts. Ewell likewise played on themes of fire and light, utilizing large bonfires and modest candlelight to symbolize the returning sunlight that would literally drive out the darkness of long winter nights. And one custom was that of cutting and burning large lumber or logs, known as Ewell logs, accompanied by a feast lasting the duration of its burning. You’d like to take a trunk of a tree, basically set it on fire, and during that fire you’d have the main Ewell feast.

0:11:36 – Moe
Hell yeah.

0:11:37 – Jeremy
Ewell feasts featured lavish and hearty meals, which were atypical in winter, when food was usually limited or scarce. It’s believed that communities would dine on slaughtered cattle. In the harsh climates where Ewell was celebrated, most cattle were slaughtered as it became unsustainable to feed livestock. So they’re like well, we gotta kill them all.

Let’s make a feast out of it. Whether or not these animals were killed as a sacrificial offering we don’t know, but the ritual allowed for a lot of meat which was rare. Otherwise, while technically unrelated, you can think of Yule as a companion festival to the Celtic tradition of Sauen, and I viewed it as like it’s opposite. It’s like the inverse of Sauen. So Celtic Pagan celebrated Sauen to commemorate the end of harvest season in autumn, and the festival included fires and feasts with sacrifices to honor their gods and the spirits of fallen kin. Sauen served to welcome the approach of winter in early November, marking the start of the darker half of the year. In contrast, yule celebrates the eventual end of winter and through ritual actions, that’s a hopeful tone for the next year.

Yule also comes from the Germanic word Yule, literally meaning wheel, and the Pagan saw the year as a metaphorical wheel, with December seated at the bottom of the wheel.

This point in the wheel was seen to represent the shortening of days, but after December 21st the circle curves back up and the days get longer. So, in terms of customs, ancient Germanic folklore portrays this time of year as a battle between light and darkness and, to a deeper extent, birth versus decay. Because the Yule festival in Winter Solstice was seen as the light returning to conquer the dark, people would offer ceremonial assistance by bringing their own light into the world, both in a literal sense, by burning Yule logs and lighting their homes with candles, and figuratively, by celebrating with each other, men exchanging gifts. As a sign of charity and goodwill, families would also cut down evergreen trees and use them to decorate their homes. Evergreens were clear symbols of life, persevering darkness and death, as, unlike other trees in plant life, the pine trees, obviously, you know, never shed their foliage nor lost their green hue during these winters. And by literally bringing an evergreen into their homes, pagans were signifying the return of greenery that was sure to emerge at the end of winter. Wow, symbolism.

0:13:48 – Moe
That’s why we have trees.

0:13:50 – Jeremy
We have trees. I got a fake one. Do you ever have a real tree for Christmas?

0:13:54 – Moe
It’s a pain in the ass.

0:13:55 – Jeremy
Yeah, it sounds horrible. We never did it and I’m kind of glad because you have to water it and stuff, right?

0:14:00 – Moe
You have to water it and then it like sheds all over the place and you have to like dispose of it.

0:14:06 – Jeremy
So obviously we carry on the version of these customs and the Christmas tradition that’s known as the Christmas tree lighting. We have it obviously in your homes, but I think a more close one is like one like a city or town will be like, hey, we’re doing our annual tree lighting, where everybody gathers around and the light shines up and everyone gets all happy because it’s like okay, yeah, winter is depressing, but we have these pretty lights that will make it less depressing. Blah, blah, blah. To me that feels more ancient, right, and even today, like when you put up a Christmas tree in your house, even if you’re not religious, which I’m not, it’s like a ceremony Put down the ornaments, like every ornament is kind of like a memory and you’re talking about it and whatever, and you’re putting the star up.

0:14:45 – Moe
It smells good in the house, lighting candles and hanging out with family or friends.

0:14:51 – Jeremy
Right. This one’s a little bit grosser though – Mistletoe. Both the ancient Greeks and Celts viewed mistletoe as representing fertility, and the Greeks sometimes referred to it as oak sperm.

0:15:02 – Moe
Ew.

0:15:04 – Jeremy
It gets grosser. The symbolic ties to fertility and romance are likely due to some suggestive visual characteristics of the plant. First off, mistletoe is evergreen, just like the pine trees, and acts as a parasite to trees. Therefore, mistletoe was easy to find and gather because its host tree lost its leaves in late fall. Also, if it killed a tree, the only thing that would be left was the mistletoe, so it was easy to find and they would pick it Cool. So European mistletoe commonly grows on apple trees, poplars, willows, lindens and more, and when they bloom in late winter, their yellowish leaves produce single seeded white berries that, when ripe, fill with a sticky, transparent pulp which early observers understandably likened to sperm to semen. To get even grosser, dwarf mistletoe acts as a parasite to coniferous trees. In order to spread and populate, the plant uses hydrostatic pressure to shoot its sticky seeds onto surrounding host trees. Ew. So, like when a dwarf mistletoe shoots its load, it goes as fast as 50 miles an hour. That fucking crazy.

0:16:09 – Moe
So like someone walking by like could accidentally get a cum shot.

0:16:13 – Jeremy
This is really disturbing to me. Celtic druids used mistletoe in sacrificial rituals as well as in medicines, primarily fertility elixirs, because they saw that resemblance to human fertility, human reproduction. And then, I don’t know how it happened, but then, much later in England the custom of kissing beneath the hanging mistletoe became popular because it was still seen as like it had like a magical quality to it that promised love and marriage would happen if you kissed underneath it. So, santa and Odin, they fight. I wish.

It’s kind of a stretch, but there’s some theories that our idea of Santa, or like the early center class, borrowed heavily from Odin, and there I think there are there are some relevant points they make.

0:17:04 – Moe
So I was hoping for, like a King Kong versus Godzilla type of moment.

0:17:10 – Jeremy
Odin would definitely win. Because, like, odin is like a god and Santa Claus is like a man.

0:17:14 – Moe
That has diabetes.

0:17:16 – Jeremy
Santa Claus is the legendary Dutch Christmas figure based on St Nicholas and a key source of the modern Christmas icon that we know as Santa Claus. So center class is based on St Nicholas, the early Christian bishop, who became the patron saint of children and is remembered for his habit of gift giving. Little is known about the historical, factual life of St Nicholas, which may explain why the holiday legend he inspired is so outrageous and magical. Center class predates Santa Claus and various. As a result, the center class is an old, serious man with white hair and a full white beard. He wears a white and red bishops cape and garb, with a shepherd’s staff, rides a magical white horse, has a book that is, a ledger containing the record of all good and bad deeds done by kids. So these are the similarities he shares to Odin.

Both characters, both figures, were known to fly around in a white horse, wore a lavish coat and hat, carried his staff. They were seen as old and wise, long white beard. They would send letters and gifts. Both derived, obviously, from Germanic cultures. They judged mortals. Odin was called Yulfater or Yulfather Okay, and then also in pre-Christian Norse tales, odin was said to enter homes through chimneys and fire pits Wow, exclusively on the night of the solstice, odin could be Santa.

0:18:33 – Moe
I think Odin is Santa.

0:18:34 – Jeremy
Yes.

0:18:35 – Moe
Cool. Well, it’s interesting hearing the start, the beginnings of Yul and Christmas and all these things and what translates to all of the traditions that we have. So you touched on a few of them why we bring a tree inside and the mistletoes. I have some weirder traditions from around the world that I am going to discuss with you. I’m going to go from a bit odd to scarring.

0:19:05 – Jeremy
Fantastic, I love it.

0:19:07 – Moe
That’s my range here. Okay, I’m going to start in Norway. Norway has a tradition of hiding brooms before Christmas Day. According to folklore, witches and evil spirits come out on Christmas Eve to cause chaos, and we all know that witches and evil spirits ride on brooms. So families, in order to stop them from being stolen and ridden into the night as an escape route, started hiding their brooms.

0:19:41 – Jeremy
So they could wake up and kill them.

0:19:42 – Moe
Right, they could just stab them and they’re just like still looking around frantically for a broom.

0:19:47 – Jeremy
Please somewhere.

0:19:48 – Moe
Because they didn’t bring their own. Yeah, really, how’d they get there? They’ll also burn spruce logs in the fireplace to stop them from coming down the chimney.

0:19:57 – Jeremy
Oh, something with spruce. The spruce. Oh, the fire probably wards them off. Oh, I was thinking the spruce did.

0:20:03 – Moe
Yeah, in the Ukraine there is a little bit of a wholesome tradition involving spider webs. There is this old story, this old folktale that there was a poor family that couldn’t decorate their tree for Christmas because back in the ye old days tinsel was made of beaten silver so it was actually pretty expensive to use to decorate your tree. So one night they go to sleep a little sad because they couldn’t afford to decorate their tree, and a spider comes out and builds a bunch of cob webs on their Christmas tree and overnight that magically turns into silver and gold strands. The story is very popular, so now people will decorate their tree with spider webs cob webs instead of tinsel.

0:20:53 – Jeremy
Oh, it’s like Charlotte’s web.

0:20:55 – Moe
A little bit yeah.

0:20:56 – Jeremy
It still says some pig.

0:20:58 – Moe
Yeah, it’s something.

0:20:59 – Jeremy
They have a fat dad that gets offended.

0:21:03 – Moe
So if you find a spider or spider’s web on your tree, it’s a sign of good luck. Oh, and you make it some free money.

0:21:10 – Jeremy
For me, finding spiders in, like Chinese folklore was good luck and meant you could get some money.

0:21:18 – Moe
Yeah, it’s same for a wedding. It’s a good omen for weddings if you find a spider on your wedding dress.

0:21:23 – Jeremy
Really.

0:21:24 – Moe
Yeah, I don’t, I don’t remember why, but yeah, that’s like a old wives tale, weird. You might have heard of this one. In Germany they celebrate pickles.

0:21:34 – Jeremy
I have. I’ve always heard of the Christmas pickles. I never understood why.

0:21:37 – Moe
Yeah, Christmas pickles. So families will hide a pickle ornament in their tree. The child who finds it first gets a special present. The exact origins of this tradition are not really known, but some people believe it’s to honor an American war soldier who was saved from starvation by eating a pickle on Christmas Eve.

0:22:00 – Jeremy
Why I find that hard to believe. So it’s a newer tradition then.

0:22:06 – Moe
Yeah, it’s a much new.

0:22:07 – Jeremy
It only caught on in Germany, which is weird.

0:22:09 – Moe
Well, Germany had World War II.

0:22:12 – Jeremy
They certainly did. There was, there was a war there too.

0:22:15 – Moe
And American soldiers were there.

0:22:17 – Jeremy
Yeah, eating pickles.

0:22:18 – Moe
And were probably hungry yeah.

0:22:20 – Jeremy
If I was starving and someone brought me a brined something that was brined I think I’d probably throw up and die.

0:22:29 – Moe
They’re like I know you’re really hungry, but all I have is this pickle.

0:22:31 – Jeremy
All I have is pickles.

0:22:33 – Moe
And the soldier goes around and tells everyone they’re like. You know what? I wouldn’t believe it. We should hide pickles, yeah, for Christmas.

0:22:40 – Jeremy
Everybody remember my name John Pickle McGee.

0:22:45 – Moe
This one’s really interesting too. You might have heard of this one, but in Japan they celebrate Christmas with fried chicken.

0:22:52 – Jeremy
Yes, I heard about this. I love this.

0:22:53 – Moe
Japanese people. People in Japan do not generally celebrate Christmas, but in the 1970s there was a manager of KFC who overheard some foreigners talking about how they missed Turkey on Thanksgiving. So he decided that he could capitalize on this and maybe give them away to celebrate while they are in Japan. So he started a special called the KFC party barrel Nice To celebrate the holiday. The dinner packages are usually filled with chicken, cake and wine oh, wow. Various sides like traditional American dishes, and it’s so popular that they often are ordered weeks in advance because there’s such a long line. Wow, and it makes up a third of their yearly revenue.

0:23:42 – Jeremy
Holy shit, A third. A third Also only like an American inspired food would be served in barrel form.

0:23:52 – Moe
Right, the party barrel. I love that the party barrel.

0:23:55 – Jeremy
The KFC is still pretty good.

0:23:56 – Moe
It is good. You know what it is good?

0:23:58 – Jeremy
I got it once recently. I’m like oh my God, I forgot about this. It’s like grandpa food.

0:24:03 – Moe
I get it. Japan, All right. Spain, Spain has two, and both are very strange and both involve defecation. So the first one there’s something called a caganer I hope I’m saying that right which means the shitter. In this region of Catalan Spain, nativity scenes typically include a man who has his pants rolled down and is taking a shit.

0:24:35 – Jeremy
No.

0:24:36 – Moe
Yeah, and it’s very popular. It’s very popular.

0:24:39 – Jeremy
I have to look this up.

0:24:40 – Moe
The origins are lost, but it appeared in the 18th century oh it’s been a while. People think it might be linked to fertilization of crops and stuff.

0:24:52 – Jeremy
Oh my God, I’m seeing him.

0:24:53 – Moe
Yeah, it’s usually placed in the corner of the scenes, kind of like a little hidden, like where’s Waldo? Type situation.

0:25:00 – Jeremy
This is incredible.

0:25:02 – Moe
But they’re so popular now that you can find versions of celebrities doing it. There’s like Shakespeare ones.

0:25:08 – Jeremy
I see Barack Obama right here.

0:25:09 – Moe
Yeah, Barack Obama At the bottom it says yes, we can.

0:25:13 – Jeremy
Oh my God, this is incredible. Everybody look up Google. If you listen to this, Google Catalan Christmas shitter Wow, I can’t even have heard of this.

0:25:23 – Moe
It’s beautiful.

0:25:23 – Jeremy
I want to buy one.

0:25:25 – Moe
Yeah, they have like some traditional looking ones right Like it would belong in a nativity scene, but other ones are just like kind of looks like a bobblehead, yeah, but it’s just taking a shit. Spain also has something called pooping logs for Christmas, so kids are given a hollow log to take care of. It’s nowadays made up of like paper and stuff. It kind of looks like a pinata, but it’s shaped like a log and it has a face on one end, so it’s terrifying looking, I think.

0:25:58 – Jeremy
I’m seeing it right now. Yeah, it’s horrifying.

0:26:01 – Moe
So every night the family feeds the log and covers it with a blanket. When I first read this, I thought they were shitting in this log. They’re not shitting in it.

0:26:11 – Jeremy
Yeah.

0:26:11 – Moe
They’re putting like treats and stuff inside this log. So on Christmas they sing log songs and beat the logs with sticks, ordering it to eliminate.

0:26:22 – Jeremy
Oh, my God.

0:26:24 – Moe
So it’s basically a pinata. They feed the pinata throughout the month and then they beat the shit out of it on Christmas until all of the candy is gone. Yeah.

0:26:35 – Jeremy
It’s like this little blurb here on Wikipedia I’m saying. It says in the days preceding Christmas, children must take good care of the log, keeping it warm and feeding it, so it will defecate presents on Christmas day or Eve. This is incredible.

0:26:48 – Moe
Yeah, it’s kind of like in school when you’re given like a doll to take care of.

0:26:53 – Jeremy
Yeah.

0:26:54 – Moe
If you can’t handle this doll, you can’t handle getting pregnant. These kids in Spain are like I’m giving a log every year to take care of and then I beat the shit out of it Just like a real kid.

0:27:06 – Jeremy
That’s how every school project, the baby school project, should end. The last day you get to beat the shit out of the doll.

0:27:11 – Moe
It’d be a lot more popular.

0:27:12 – Jeremy
And presents come out.

0:27:13 – Moe
Like you cover it with a blanket and everything. It’s so cute. In Sweden there is something called the Yule Goat which is very popular. It’s believed that, instead of a sleigh, santa rode the Yule Goat to deliver presents.

0:27:30 – Jeremy
A little bit slower.

0:27:32 – Moe
They had the ability to scare away demons, the devil and evil spirits. By the 19th century, the popularity of the Yule Goat kept growing and growing and growing. So by the 19th century the goat had become the giver of gifts himself.

0:27:49 – Jeremy
Oh, wow.

0:27:50 – Moe
And people would dress up as a goat to give them out. So instead of Santa, it’s a goat, that’s awesome. The Yule Goat, and now every year, more recently for less, almost 100 years there is a gigantic straw goat that is built and set up a month before Christmas. That is eventually burned down, okay, and everyone gathers around the Yule Goat as they burn it.

0:28:14 – Jeremy
Interesting, very fun. It’s been demonic.

0:28:17 – Moe
I agree, so it’s very interesting that this goat is delivering presents to everyone.

0:28:23 – Jeremy
But in practice goats are pretty sweet animals. Sometimes, Ever seen someone give a goat to a horse?

0:28:29 – Moe
No.

0:28:31 – Jeremy
So horses are very intelligent and they get lonely because they live out in the stable. So certain people, if you can manage it, they will give their horse a pet goat and they’ll just hang out with each other.

0:28:44 – Moe
Aw, that’s adorable.

0:28:46 – Jeremy
Yeah, if you take the goat away, the horse will get sad, not adorable.

0:28:50 – Moe
Hi Air, I’ve presented you a friend and now I’m ripping him away.

0:28:52 – Jeremy
Yeah right.

0:28:53 – Moe
What do you mean? You’re sad. In Iceland there’s something called the Yule Creatures. Ooh. So instead of Santa Claus kids, meet the 13 Yule lads.

0:29:07 – Jeremy
Oh, we know these guys.

0:29:08 – Moe
Yeah, I think we might have talked about them before.

0:29:10 – Jeremy
We have another Christmas episode that’s solid Krampus. It’s called the Christmas Creeps or whatever. If you can find it it’s a good companion to this episode.

0:29:18 – Moe
Yeah, so I’ll just kind of brief them again a little bit. But the Yule lads. The Yule lads take turns visiting children on the 13 nights leading up to Christmas. The kids place a shoe on their bedroom window sill on each night. So if they’ve been good they’ll get treats put in their shoe, and if they were bad then they get a rotting potato. The original version of the tale is that the Yule lads were trolls who lived in a cave in the mountains and they appeared around Christmas to cause mischief. Each troll had a specific task assigned to it. You know things like stealing food to cause mischief in the town. They also appeared to steal children, which they would boil alive and turn into stew. Oh, the troll family also had a demonic Yule cat which ate anyone without a new set of clothes.

0:30:12 – Jeremy
Fashion police.

0:30:14 – Moe
So in Iceland it is now a tradition to always get new clothes on Christmas. The Yule lads have quite fun names, so I thought I would present all of them.

0:30:26 – Jeremy
I remember. I remember two of them.

0:30:27 – Moe
Which ones do you remember?

0:30:29 – Jeremy
Cow sucker, and there’s pot liquor, I think.

0:30:33 – Moe
Close. So we have sheep caught clad. Oh yeah, sheep caught clad, sheep caught clad. We have golly gock, stubby spoon, liquor pot scraper there we go. Bowl, liquor door, slammer, skier, gobbler, sausage, swiper window, peeper doorway sniffer meat hook and candle sealer.

0:30:58 – Jeremy
They feel like beat poetry the way you’re reading those off.

0:31:00 – Moe
Right, I like meat hook the most because I feel like that’s very ambiguous. The rest of them are very like. Okay, I understand pot scraper probably like scrapes up my pots and I wouldn’t like that Bowl liquor is going to lick my bowls. But like what is meat hook doing?

0:31:16 – Jeremy
These sounds threatening.

0:31:17 – Moe
Yeah, yeah, I like stubby Stubby’s nice. I don’t really understand what he’s doing, but just being fat, I believe it’s for a good cause. Yeah, or sheep caught clad. Yeah, or golly gock. I’m not entirely sure what they’re up to either, but Just some great names right there.

0:31:33 – Jeremy
They need to be like a series about them.

0:31:35 – Moe
The last tradition that I have is the very infamous Krampus, which we have another episode on, but I will talk about it briefly. Krampus is the other side of the coin to Santa Claus. Santa Claus is giving and nice and jolly and you know a holy and all this stuff. Krampus is the opposite of all of that, so he’s often depicted as a horned monster carrying chains. Oh God.

He often uses these chains to scare children. Santa Claus, you know, gives gifts to good kids. Krampus will show up for bad kids and will stuff them into his sack and drag them to hell, or just kill them all together.

0:32:23 – Jeremy
Fascinating.

0:32:26 – Moe
He is accompanied by unruly elves that will also destroy your house. So he like shows up with these chains, fucking lasso your kids, shove them in a sack, kill them, and then the elves are like we’re not fucking done yet.

0:32:42 – Jeremy
Burn this place down, fellas.

0:32:44 – Moe
You should go crazy. This kid sucks. Do better next time.

0:32:50 – Jeremy
Next time you have a kid, because we’re taking him to hell, you’re gonna see him again. All that tells me is that parents used to be so horrible.

0:32:57 – Moe
Used to.

0:32:58 – Jeremy
Well, especially then to be like telling your kids this Right, it’s one thing to be like, oh you know, santa’s gonna give you coal, or like bellish nickels gonna beat you, or whatever. To have it be like you’re gonna be whipped with chains and dragged to hell because you didn’t clean your room enough, or you talk back to us, right, so that’s traumatizing.

0:33:16 – Moe
I can’t remember if it was the Yule lads or if it was Krampus, but one of them were banned from being like taught to kids because it was so like traumatizing and scary for them Probably Krampus, probably Krampus. Yeah.

0:33:27 – Jeremy
Because Yule lads feels very kid-centric.

0:33:30 – Moe
Yeah, I agree.

0:33:31 – Jeremy
Krampus is the only thing. That’s just fear. It’s just about fear.

0:33:34 – Moe
Right, murder and devilry.

0:33:37 – Jeremy
Right.

0:33:38 – Moe
But they have like full festivals about Krampus. It’s like one of the most popular things. Yeah, now it might have like overtaken Santa in terms of like popularity and like what they celebrate, which is really interesting.

0:33:51 – Jeremy
Yeah, in Europe it’s still huge to have Krampus festivals and parades, just, I think, because it’s such a unique part of the culture, whereas Santa has been adopted everywhere.

0:34:00 – Moe
Right.

0:34:00 – Jeremy
So you’d probably want to celebrate that more.

0:34:02 – Moe
And it’s such like an extreme opposite.

0:34:05 – Jeremy
Yeah, it’s fun, it’s different.

0:34:06 – Moe
It feels a little like rebellious yeah.

0:34:09 – Jeremy
Absolutely.

0:34:09 – Moe
That’s all I got.

0:34:11 – Jeremy
Well, wow, that was fantastic. In closing, what a joyous Christmas this shall be.

0:34:16 – Moe
Unless, you’ve been bad.

0:34:18 – Jeremy
In which case you will be dragged to hell.

0:34:20 – Moe
Or cooked into a stew.

0:34:21 – Jeremy
Yes, I think I prefer the stew.

0:34:23 – Moe
Yeah, I mean it has less long-standing implications. Yeah.

0:34:27 – Jeremy
I just want to die. I don’t want to go to hell. I didn’t think about this.

0:34:34 – Moe
I mean, if you’re being boiled in a stew for being naughty, I feel like your chances of heaven are pretty slim.

0:34:40 – Jeremy
But isn’t there something to be said about like? You pay the price by the pain of your death? I don’t know if that’s a thing. So I’m being tortured, Therefore, doesn’t that give you some angel points?

0:34:51 – Moe
Like your, your redemption, a little bit. Yeah, like you, you, you’ve atoned for your sins, exactly exactly.

0:34:57 – Jeremy
I don’t know if that’s a thing, but I always saw that in my head as like if you have a horrible death, you immediately go to heaven, Like if someone murders you or if someone tortures you.

0:35:04 – Moe
So what happens if you have like a, like a good, easy death?

0:35:07 – Jeremy
Go to hell Hell points, hell points. Or if you’re good, no points. You just get to die in a bed with your family around you.

0:35:16 – Moe
Well, anyways, that was yule stuff, that was yule.

0:35:19 – Jeremy
Christmas Watch another year close.

0:35:21 – Moe
Yes.

0:35:22 – Jeremy
And hopefully more to come Ideally.

0:35:25 – Moe
Every year there’s more growth.

0:35:26 – Jeremy
I know the world is currently on fire in critical condition, but hopefully and a few years we’ll have aliens too.

0:35:36 – Moe
So hopefully we’ll see what happens. All right, y’all. So if you enjoyed this episode, this episode is actually suggested by one of our listeners and, I think, a patron too. So if you have episodes that you would like us to talk about, we’re willing to do that. This episode is a testament to that, so feel free to shoot us an email at accordingtoanidiot@gmail.com.

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0:36:39 – Jeremy
Keep your stockings dry and your fireplace lit.

0:36:43 – Moe
Make sure you feed your Yule log and beat the shit out of it.

0:36:48 – Jeremy
Pull it shits, rewards, all right, everybody else happy holidays and I will see you in time.

0:36:55 – Moe
Bye, love you.