Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a podcast. The guests is Garrison, the producer is
Speaker 1: Sophie Garrison. How are you doing. I'm doing very well. Excellent, Sophie.
Speaker 1: How are you doing? I'm doing very well. Everyone's doing
Speaker 1: so festive and cheery, and so I'm festively jovial. Let's
Speaker 1: do this all right, very Saturnalia chaos pilled so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and our audio is done by Ian our music is
Speaker 1: done by own women. In part one we learned all
Speaker 1: about the pagan ship Christmas borrowed from today. We're talking
Speaker 1: about my favorite Christmas, which is medieval Christmas. Medieval Christians
Speaker 1: had not forgotten their pagan roots. They were again this
Speaker 1: is purely from my point of view, basically just pagan
Speaker 1: to like cross themselves and went to church sometimes because
Speaker 1: otherwise people were just talking to them at Latin and
Speaker 1: they just kept being doing whatever they wanted to do.
Speaker 1: That is my totally historical I'm an anthropologist. Anyway, Christmas
Speaker 1: in medieval England was a lot of fun for starters.
Speaker 1: There's twelve days of it, like the song on Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: their church services there was then there was drinking, feasting
Speaker 1: and games for about two weeks. The twelfth day of
Speaker 1: Christmas was called Epiphany or sometimes just twelfth Day, and
Speaker 1: it is more important in Christmas Day. In medieval Christmas,
Speaker 1: it represents when the three wizards we talked about last
Speaker 1: time who totally belong. It's like it's like if you're
Speaker 1: reading a story where there's only one wizard, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden there's like a reference to three
Speaker 1: other wizards and they're just never talked about again because
Speaker 1: like in in like Christianity, no one can do magic,
Speaker 1: but like God, right, but then there's just some fucking wizards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there, I mean there, there is. There is
Speaker 1: a few other other there is a few other people
Speaker 1: who do magic in the Old Testament. But it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. If you do it, you're basically working with
Speaker 1: demons or Satan. It's like you can't do it, it's
Speaker 1: just evil. Yeah. And then of course like Agnostic Christianity,
Speaker 1: everyone can do magic because everyone is Jesus. All right,
Speaker 1: what's that meme? I would like to know more about
Speaker 1: your religion and please give me a pamphlet. There's like
Speaker 1: a meme where people are like someone says something they
Speaker 1: think is cool. And it's not like a meme, like
Speaker 1: an image meme. It's like a a thing people say
Speaker 1: on the internet maybe who says that? Where someone says
Speaker 1: something and you're like, I would like to know more
Speaker 1: about your religion, Please give me a pamphlet. Anyway, Epiphany
Speaker 1: represents when the three Wizards showed up and we're like, damn,
Speaker 1: this kid is important. I think his dad is gone.
Speaker 1: In a couple hundred years from now, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a big fuss about whether that means it literally or not,
Speaker 1: because spoiler, early Christianity spent a lot of time getting
Speaker 1: into the very heated debates with some death involved about
Speaker 1: whether or not Jesus was the Son of God or
Speaker 1: God literally or whatever any of that ship means. And
Speaker 1: and unfortunately the Catholics won that debate and the Gnostics
Speaker 1: didn't boo boo, Although would we be sitting here like
Speaker 1: right now years later if the Gnostics had won, the
Speaker 1: Nats would have come into power and they would have
Speaker 1: been just but they would have been just a shitty
Speaker 1: I don't know, I I because like the Gnostics are
Speaker 1: way less hierarchical than the Catholics. Catholic maybe like casultism
Speaker 1: is so built on hierarchy, like they built a hierarchy
Speaker 1: of angels. They build a hierarchy of like of of
Speaker 1: of like hell reality, whereas the Gnostics are like, everyone
Speaker 1: can be their own savior and we should we should
Speaker 1: all fight the demiurge, like we we need to fight
Speaker 1: God and become our own savior. Generally way more decentralized, right,
Speaker 1: But the Protestant Revolution was also the decentralization of religious authority,
Speaker 1: and it did not It was at best a lateral
Speaker 1: move in terms of actual liberation for the world because
Speaker 1: it made everyone cops instead of one cop far away
Speaker 1: that you can ignore. Yeah, I mean, I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to come for the Gnostics. I'm just like, I just
Speaker 1: think it'd be really funny and interested if, like the
Speaker 1: Gnostics said, on that fight and then the Catholics have
Speaker 1: been like a cool underground one that like people totally possible.
Speaker 1: It's that that is that is that is definitely completely
Speaker 1: possible that the world would have been just as shitty.
Speaker 1: But there's no interesting because it's it's such a different theology. Yeah. Anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming down that with me. So Midnight Mass
Speaker 1: has been part of Christmas since basically forever, starting around
Speaker 1: four d because Christ, who's totally not the sun, was
Speaker 1: born at exactly the darkest time of the darkest night
Speaker 1: of the year, just when the sun starts returning. Totally unrelatedly,
Speaker 1: it's just a weird coincidence of when he when his
Speaker 1: mom got knocked up by an angel. Funny how that
Speaker 1: worked out. Yeah. St. Nicholas got attached to Christmas when
Speaker 1: the Protestants, who are trying to phase out all the
Speaker 1: pagan holidays and fun in general, they especially the Puritans,
Speaker 1: they crammed him into Christmas instead of his traditional day
Speaker 1: December six, which is the day that everyone used to
Speaker 1: give people presents. People gave each other presents a lot
Speaker 1: during a lot of these times, but like giving kids
Speaker 1: presence was like a St. Nicholas Day thing, and in
Speaker 1: some place, I think it still is. And then they
Speaker 1: were like, no, it needs to be like the presence
Speaker 1: need to somehow be like God presence, not St. Presence.
Speaker 1: So it got moved to Christmas so we could put
Speaker 1: the Christ in Christmas, you know. And St. Nick himself
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting his own right. His whole thing
Speaker 1: was he like gave sh it away to people just
Speaker 1: like all right, it seems it seemed like he was
Speaker 1: kind to sex workers, which is nice. I guess it's
Speaker 1: the main way to judge someone, honestly. Anyway, medieval peasants
Speaker 1: they remembered some of those pagan roots and because of
Speaker 1: that there was ritual transvestism as part of Christmas continuing
Speaker 1: to be extremely based, and there was feasting and merriment, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And the Church didn't like this. They just couldn't do
Speaker 1: anything about it. They tried, They tried two different things.
Speaker 1: It's the same two things that everyone uses to try
Speaker 1: and stop the power of Christmas. First you try repress
Speaker 1: and then when that doesn't work, you try co option
Speaker 1: if you can't beat them joint of Yeah, basically that
Speaker 1: is what happened, is the Catholic Church didn't steal Christmas.
Speaker 1: Catholic Church acquiesced and joined Christmas. Is how is my
Speaker 1: reading on this? Yeah. In seven the year seven forty two,
Speaker 1: a bishop wrote to complain about the quote singing and
Speaker 1: dancing in the streets and pagan style heathen acclamations and
Speaker 1: sacrilegious songs, banquets by day and night, the wearing and
Speaker 1: selling by women of flactories and ligatures, which I think
Speaker 1: means like sex charms and love charms. Okay, okay. They
Speaker 1: did better with co option, and they really worked on
Speaker 1: the sanitization of Christmas. And that's the the real war
Speaker 1: against Christmas is the sanitization of it. The gift giving
Speaker 1: got replaced, as you pointed out, by gifts of the magi,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing was treated as if it was
Speaker 1: about Christ or whatever. But the cool ship continued to
Speaker 1: filter through. Take Christmas carols. The medieval versions of Christmas
Speaker 1: carols were based on a pre Christian style of singing
Speaker 1: where a leader sang a verse and then a crew
Speaker 1: of dancers sang and danced the chorus together. And this
Speaker 1: got lewd, And I am so annoyed that I could
Speaker 1: not find more information in history besides it got lewd. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I would I would love to see. Yeah, what the
Speaker 1: two things in all of the history should I read?
Speaker 1: The two things that are written out of it? It
Speaker 1: is fucking sex, working drugs like any hedonism and and sex.
Speaker 1: All the people that write this stuff down are all nerds,
Speaker 1: and the wrong kind of nerds. Yeah, none of them
Speaker 1: actually do the cool stuff. They're all like they're yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like he he he, it got lewd. I'm like,
Speaker 1: does that mean they showed their ankles or were their
Speaker 1: orgies in the streets? Yeah, because they're entirely possible. I
Speaker 1: know people did weird ship. People still do weird ship
Speaker 1: right now. In any given town. You could go to
Speaker 1: a club where people are like t he he, I
Speaker 1: can see that person's ankle, or you can go join
Speaker 1: a weird public orgy like it still happens. So then
Speaker 1: there's the Feast of the Innocence, which is a feast
Speaker 1: day that gets it. It gets assigned to a bunch
Speaker 1: of different days in different traditions and calendars and ship.
Speaker 1: It's usually decembery and the current whatever, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call it December. And the Feast of the Innocence is weird.
Speaker 1: It's about when King Herod of Syria killed all the
Speaker 1: boys under two years old, like tens of thousands of kids.
Speaker 1: This is probably folklore. It probably didn't happen, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like the Bible, I guess, And these kids are seen
Speaker 1: as the first martyrs of Christianity. And I've read two
Speaker 1: versions of what happens on the Feast Day of the
Speaker 1: Feast of Innocence in the in the medieval tradition. They
Speaker 1: are very different takes on what happened on this day.
Speaker 1: One is sick. It's a role reversal for kids and adults.
Speaker 1: You go, there's like just it's just a chaos day.
Speaker 1: Kids run around, the kids like run the Catholic mass. Uh.
Speaker 1: They tell everyone what to do. The parents have to
Speaker 1: listen to the kids. And there's another version of the
Speaker 1: Feast of the Innocence, which is like this shitty game
Speaker 1: of hide and seek where all the kids hide and
Speaker 1: then the parents try to find them, and if they
Speaker 1: find the children, they beat them. What the FUCKA whoa?
Speaker 1: Those are so different, They're so different. What is going on?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I the subtext of the beat the
Speaker 1: kids one is a little bit like the parents might
Speaker 1: not have tried to find the kids. It might have
Speaker 1: been like get out of our hair, or will hit you? Okay,
Speaker 1: we want to have like yeah, yeah, mommy adult time
Speaker 1: or whatever. I don't know, I can't I'm so annoyed,
Speaker 1: you know, like sometimes sometimes in these episodes, I wish
Speaker 1: I had like months per episode, you know, yeah, because
Speaker 1: that is that was I mean is it likely that
Speaker 1: just like both happened at different places. And honestly that's yeah,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about like medieval England. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: like five hundred fifteen hundred in the entire continent of
Speaker 1: because it's like one of those is much more similar
Speaker 1: to like the Saturnalia role reversal thing, and the other
Speaker 1: one is just child abuse. Yeah, totally, and there's more
Speaker 1: role reversal. That's a hard that is a hard thing
Speaker 1: to say. Yeah, in medieval England and again medieval Oh, actually,
Speaker 1: well this one, I can give you a specific country, England,
Speaker 1: a random peasant, would you draw lots again? And instead
Speaker 1: of being the King of Saturnalia, you are the Lord
Speaker 1: of Misrule? Okay, which still sounds pretty rule. It is
Speaker 1: the single best title that one could possibly have, I believe,
Speaker 1: is the Lord of Misrule. And they were in charge
Speaker 1: and their job is to make sure the revelry was
Speaker 1: fucking chaos, eat dinner at the altar of the church,
Speaker 1: fucking drink. People would complain because random strangers, I think,
Speaker 1: like random richer folks coming town. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe that's like me trying to be like, oh it
Speaker 1: was like based but who knows it might have sucked
Speaker 1: who fucking it was chaos, random rich strangers coming into
Speaker 1: town might get spanked and robbed, and everyone is and
Speaker 1: people are of course cross dressing all over the fucking place.
Speaker 1: There is a chance that at the end of his reign,
Speaker 1: the Lord of Misrule was sacrificed, just like might have
Speaker 1: happened on Saturnalia. And it's an interesting image, and it's
Speaker 1: presented by like a bona fide folklorist and anthropologist who
Speaker 1: should know what he's talking about. A lot of people
Speaker 1: are real skeptical. I'm I'm skeptical. I'm more skeptical about
Speaker 1: medieval England humans prificing the Lord of Misrule at the
Speaker 1: end of their week, but or at the end of
Speaker 1: the twelve days of Christmas, that'd be a funny And
Speaker 1: on the twelfth David of Christmas, I gave you just
Speaker 1: literally you're dead now, just sucking killing you. A lot
Speaker 1: of the like neat stories about weird, wacky ways that
Speaker 1: people killed themselves in each other from like the oldie
Speaker 1: times turn out to be just stories like the thing
Speaker 1: and the like Scandinavian thing, or like the Swedish thing
Speaker 1: about like old people have to throw themselves off of
Speaker 1: cliffs in order to die in order to like not
Speaker 1: take up resources from the community or whatever. I can't
Speaker 1: it's used in that movie Midsummer Spoiler. I guess that's
Speaker 1: not real as far as anyone can tell. That's like
Speaker 1: a that's a story. It's a story. Yeah yeah. Whereas,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, most of the stories that hint
Speaker 1: about sucking and drugs it seem to actually usually be
Speaker 1: true and are not because poor people fucking to drugs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more sustainable than Yeah, you can you can do
Speaker 1: drugs more than during your lifetime die one time typically
Speaker 1: unless you are again Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or that guy the first zombie, who do you summoned
Speaker 1: back from the dead, Oh, Lazarus, Yeah, that's it. And
Speaker 1: then also one of the reasons I sort of doubt
Speaker 1: this is that for all of the I really don't
Speaker 1: want to be like for good things that Christianity culturally exported,
Speaker 1: but um, the overall Christianity cut down on human sacrifice
Speaker 1: a good solid amount whenever it was around, and then
Speaker 1: they found their way to do killing another way. Oh yeah, no, absolutely, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's God. Maybe that's just all made the Crusaders pent
Speaker 1: up whatever anyway, So the Lord of Misrule ties into
Speaker 1: but is distinct from the Feast of Fools, which started
Speaker 1: probably in Central Europe. And all of these names are
Speaker 1: so good, I know, and they're all fucking cool things.
Speaker 1: It's start in Central Europe. It's uh January one Colens,
Speaker 1: which is still part of Christmas if if you're doing
Speaker 1: the twelve Days, and it was a day of the
Speaker 1: Feast of Fools was wildness and folly and role reversal
Speaker 1: and lewdness and like everything is permitted very like actually
Speaker 1: kind of like Mardi Gras is the sort of modern
Speaker 1: thing that people would sort of tiles into and it's
Speaker 1: all happening like in the name of God. But the
Speaker 1: priests in there being like fun, fun, fun fuck. How
Speaker 1: do we stop this fun fun fun fuck? There was
Speaker 1: like in the name of God, and they're like doing
Speaker 1: everything that Christianity normally says not to do. Is there
Speaker 1: having like a transgender orgy? Yeah? Yeah, And it took
Speaker 1: a couple hundred years for the Church to successfully stomp
Speaker 1: out the Feast of Fools. Unfortunate, unfortunate. I know, It's
Speaker 1: like to me, it seems like maybe how like a
Speaker 1: person who lives in England is ostensibly rule by the
Speaker 1: English King, and a Catholic is ostensibly ruled by the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church. But really people are just people and doing
Speaker 1: their own thing, and these authoritarian structures are just trying
Speaker 1: to claim authority that they only somewhat have. And that's
Speaker 1: how I feel about the like folk Catholicism of this time.
Speaker 1: Catholicism is this type of Catholicism is at odds with
Speaker 1: the Church rather than being in like obedience to the Church.
Speaker 1: And this seems to be the Catholicism that was actually
Speaker 1: practiced by a lot of Catholics instead of what people
Speaker 1: claimed they should be practicing. So was sailing. So what
Speaker 1: sailing is when you demand stuff from people? And do
Speaker 1: you know who else is demanding stuff from us? From you?
Speaker 1: The listener, Sophie Lichtman is demanding that in order to
Speaker 1: continue to eat food on Arran. Yeah that, um, we
Speaker 1: should shift over to hearing different voices, a diversity of opinions.
Speaker 1: I have these opinions about cool people did cool stuff,
Speaker 1: whereas you might be about to hear an opinion that
Speaker 1: says that you should become a cop. Hopefully those ads
Speaker 1: are gone. Now yeah, I mean we really don't have
Speaker 1: control over most of the ads. Yeah, so we don't
Speaker 1: endorse them. Yeah. It so we can do our shows
Speaker 1: and pay people and eat food and have homes. Yeay,
Speaker 1: here's the ads. We are back. Was sailing traditionally done
Speaker 1: on the twelfth night. Was sailing probably gets its name
Speaker 1: from the Norse. It basically means like hail, as in
Speaker 1: like hail and well met, or like hey, what's up? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it means it means be in good health, and it's
Speaker 1: what predates modern caroline. It basically means go around and
Speaker 1: make the rich people give you nice ship by singing songs.
Speaker 1: It gets referred to as recipient initially gated charity, which
Speaker 1: is my favorite euphemism in the world. That's great because
Speaker 1: I would like to present a spectrum of ways of
Speaker 1: engaging in power. I have top down charity, in which
Speaker 1: the rich give to the poor, usually in ways that
Speaker 1: maintain the power structure and you know, not based make
Speaker 1: them feel good about themselves. Then there's mutual aid, which
Speaker 1: is people giving freely amongst equals, and then there's recipient
Speaker 1: initiated charity aka give me your ship. Unfortunately, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's kind of a way of seeing all of this,
Speaker 1: like revelry, this sort of negative interpretation of all of
Speaker 1: this stuff that I really like. I don't subscribe to
Speaker 1: this belief, but it is the danger of all this
Speaker 1: revelry is that it lets out pent up aggression. If
Speaker 1: you get to be in charge, if you're an ancient
Speaker 1: Rome and you're enslaved and you get to be fed
Speaker 1: by your master for a week a year, you're less
Speaker 1: likely to revolt. Yeah, this is the same type of
Speaker 1: thing we see a lot of the time, and like, uh,
Speaker 1: it's the recuperation of like anti capitalist resistance and selling
Speaker 1: it back to you in a way that is palpable.
Speaker 1: But bye. By by doing that exchange, you feel like
Speaker 1: you're living in a world where where there actually is
Speaker 1: actual resistance, but a lot of it is paid for.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it's the the One of the few
Speaker 1: good jokes from Rick and Morny is the is the
Speaker 1: is the simple ricks wafers and how they start selling
Speaker 1: the simple ricks freedom wafer selects how you can you
Speaker 1: can you can you can buy this wafer and it
Speaker 1: gives you a taste of what it's like to be
Speaker 1: actually truly free and so like it's it's and it's
Speaker 1: and and this this wafer flavor was was designed by
Speaker 1: like studying the brain of someone who just laid like
Speaker 1: a revolt against a factory. Um and it's like getting
Speaker 1: this getting this taste into into into the way for
Speaker 1: and this person worked at the wafer factory. So it's
Speaker 1: this company that is like using this revolt to make
Speaker 1: more of their products. And you can, you can engage
Speaker 1: with it, and it gives you a taste, but that
Speaker 1: it's actually it's it's it's just gonna prolong the amount
Speaker 1: of time that you're living under this because now you
Speaker 1: have this little bit of the taste. And what I
Speaker 1: would argue is that when the government or the forces
Speaker 1: that be or whatever the funk do this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff to us, it's dangerous for them. It's not as
Speaker 1: completely under continued their control as they would like to claim,
Speaker 1: you know, um Like sometimes these things, these things that
Speaker 1: to them are like controlled burns, get out of control.
Speaker 1: And I would argue that as they like let the
Speaker 1: steam out of the pent up. I mean, how many
Speaker 1: metaphors can I possibly use here, But you know, as
Speaker 1: they let the steam out or whatever, right let out
Speaker 1: the pent up energy or whatever, so that the whole
Speaker 1: thing doesn't s blowed. It's still sometimes it's like actually
Speaker 1: teaching us. Like sometimes you get that taste that wayfer
Speaker 1: in your mouth and you're like, you know, what if
Speaker 1: we had the whole fucking factory, what if we had
Speaker 1: that all the time? Yeah, no, like that, that's the
Speaker 1: same thing. I think I was talking with this with
Speaker 1: people when um the TV show and or finished coming out,
Speaker 1: which how did how did Disney allow them to make
Speaker 1: this thing that's showcasing how to do all these various
Speaker 1: forms of resistance, And there's a part of it that's
Speaker 1: like they're selling you back this version of right of
Speaker 1: uprising for us to consume. And maybe if we just consume,
Speaker 1: that will be happy enough that we're that we're able
Speaker 1: to consume this thing that we'll forget that you can
Speaker 1: do this in in the real world. But I don't
Speaker 1: I think that is uh with considering, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's it has the full picture. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think what happened there is that you have people
Speaker 1: who actually it less that Disney was like ha ha,
Speaker 1: this is our big evil plan. I mean, like like
Speaker 1: what if there was like a single radio conglomerate that
Speaker 1: controlled like half of podcasts the radio stations, and then
Speaker 1: people got paid to talk about rebels on their network, Right,
Speaker 1: I would argue that they would be doing these hypothetical
Speaker 1: people would be doing it to make use of a
Speaker 1: power structure that exists, like rather than like for the
Speaker 1: sake of that power structure. And it's a dangerous and
Speaker 1: complicated game. But the the old cliche is that the
Speaker 1: the last capitalist will sell you the rope with which
Speaker 1: to hang him. Yeah, and that doesn't mean he doesn't
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, which is why I like
Speaker 1: that saying. And people will use that saying like to
Speaker 1: mean the opposite and I'm like, no, that's the capitalist
Speaker 1: is still diet. Yeah, And anyway, recipients initiated charity. Big
Speaker 1: part of was sailing. It's like the role reversal thing.
Speaker 1: So peasants would go to their feudal lords or just
Speaker 1: like rich people, and they would sing and demand good
Speaker 1: food and booze and sometimes just straight up money. And
Speaker 1: this looked lots of different ways. Sometimes it's like you
Speaker 1: show up and you're like give us your figgie pudding
Speaker 1: or we won't go away and they're like ha ha ha,
Speaker 1: here's your figgie pudding. And then you're like, thank you, sir,
Speaker 1: And everyone feels really good about themselves. And sometimes there's
Speaker 1: all these like people writing complaining about being like the
Speaker 1: rich people are afraid to leave their houses because gangs
Speaker 1: of youth are outside station to rob them. So there's
Speaker 1: like a whole spectrum. Yeah, of was sailing. Uh. Sometimes
Speaker 1: people would curse the rich people, but you know, totally
Speaker 1: not pagan, just regular curses, good Christian curses. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: all of those Christian curses. Yeah. Sometimes they would vandalize
Speaker 1: the place. And this is actually the rick the root
Speaker 1: of trick or treating, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: trick or treat that's what it was reminding me of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's give me some candy or egg your fucking house
Speaker 1: is like the once you're like twelve or thirteen, you know,
Speaker 1: that's the level of trick or treating or whatever. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's just me. Uh. A clergyman from the time said quote,
Speaker 1: men dishonor Christ more in twelve days of Christmas than
Speaker 1: in all the twelve months. Besides, great people would drink
Speaker 1: and gamble and feast and probably they fucked. But you know,
Speaker 1: the history books won't say plus they fucked. Instead they
Speaker 1: say they engaged in licentatious behavior. Cross dressing big part
Speaker 1: of it and a big part of a sailing. So
Speaker 1: every single fucking little bit of tradition has people across dressing.
Speaker 1: It's part of it. There's this book that rules. It's
Speaker 1: called Witchcraft in the Gay Counterculture, and it was basically
Speaker 1: a love letter written to me and you Garrison, okay um.
Speaker 1: It was by Arthur Evans, probably Robert's dad. I'm not
Speaker 1: can neither confirm nor deny mhm um. And it talks
Speaker 1: about how everyone kept dressing up as weird ship quote.
Speaker 1: So common was the practice of animal masquerades in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages that detailed condemnations were issued against them. Theodore,
Speaker 1: a seventh century archbishop of Canterbury Centerbury maybe I wrote
Speaker 1: that wrong might be. Canterbury wrote, if anyone in the
Speaker 1: colens of January goes about as a stag or a bowl,
Speaker 1: that is, making himself into a wild animal, and dressing
Speaker 1: in the skin of a herd and putting on the
Speaker 1: head of beasts, those who in such wise transforms themselves
Speaker 1: into the appearance of a wild animal penance for three
Speaker 1: years because this is devilish. And the same book Witchcraft
Speaker 1: in the Gay Counterculture says links between witchcraft and transvestism
Speaker 1: appear regularly in early Christian Europe. In the sixth century,
Speaker 1: the Christian writer Cesarius of Aries denounced the pagan practices
Speaker 1: of ritual transvestism and the wearing of animal costumes. Six
Speaker 1: and seventh century synods repeat condemned trends. Condemned transvestism during
Speaker 1: the popular New Year's holiday, where men dressed as women
Speaker 1: quote a masquerade probably originating in a fertility right of
Speaker 1: some kind. In ninth century, a Christian guide book prescribed
Speaker 1: penance for men who practice ritual transvestism. A thirteenth century
Speaker 1: inquisitor in southern France denounced female worshippers of the goddess
Speaker 1: Diana along with male transvestites. This is this is all
Speaker 1: super fascinating because I I just I just for the
Speaker 1: last episode of the Tenacious Unicorn ranch series I was
Speaker 1: writing about there's been these attacks on drag shows by
Speaker 1: these these Christian far right groups YUM, and particularly this
Speaker 1: past month, there's been multiple attacks on Christmas themed drag shows.
Speaker 1: It's just fascinating because like these, these these Christmas themed
Speaker 1: drag shows are more like traditionally Christmas yet all of
Speaker 1: these Christians who are attacking them. But it's also this
Speaker 1: interesting look a bit on, like this exact scenario isn't new,
Speaker 1: this has been going on for thousands of years. It's
Speaker 1: the same thing. They're doing, the same thing. We're both
Speaker 1: following into our traditional roles. Yes, these Christians are attacking
Speaker 1: these other Christians or these these holiday like drag performances
Speaker 1: in the same way that these Christians are attacking a
Speaker 1: ritual transmestism. It's the same ship. Yep. And I love
Speaker 1: that the Church has multiple times over the years needed
Speaker 1: to say please stop cross dressing and or dressing up
Speaker 1: like cows, and people just kept being like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: We're gonna do it. I can't stop me. And I'm
Speaker 1: doing it in the name of God. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: also something in the last the last line from that
Speaker 1: last quote about the inquisitor in France coming after female
Speaker 1: worshippers with the gost Diana along with male trends best dates.
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of things there. One is that
Speaker 1: like there were a bunch of women worshiping Diana including
Speaker 1: sis women and trans women was more or less what
Speaker 1: that's saying. But also that like the modern Turfs who
Speaker 1: want to like separate system trans women, like the enemies,
Speaker 1: have been demanding we burned together for a very long time. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: more cool about Christmas. The Welsh tradition have you heard
Speaker 1: of mary lud? I don't think so. It's not actually
Speaker 1: lude like lude, it's it's l w y d Okay, Okay.
Speaker 1: So you take a horse skull, right, and you put
Speaker 1: the horse skull on a stick. Uh, you make like
Speaker 1: a hobby horse out of it, you know, like a
Speaker 1: little kid. Yeah, and then you drape a sheet sort
Speaker 1: of over it, like kind of on the neck so
Speaker 1: that you can hide under the sheet. And so it's
Speaker 1: just a horsehead on a stick with a person underneath it.
Speaker 1: And that's that's your Christmas, uh, with say alien thing
Speaker 1: that you bring around And so with sailors would take
Speaker 1: this horrific, awesome horse skull around them with them as
Speaker 1: they were sucking up the rich and getting drunk. And
Speaker 1: historians have no idea whether this Welsh tradition, the mary
Speaker 1: lewd is the gray mayor I believe is what it
Speaker 1: translates to they have no idea of its pre Christian
Speaker 1: or not. Rather, lots of people have ideas about whether
Speaker 1: it's pretty Christians or not, but no one can prove it. Um.
Speaker 1: The records of it go back to about eighteen hundred,
Speaker 1: but they talk about it being a thing from before them.
Speaker 1: Another thing that predates Mary Lewd is the concept of advertisement.
Speaker 1: So true, you're so true. Yeah, we can all make
Speaker 1: it through it together. We are back. You could also
Speaker 1: with sail and orchard, in case you were ever wondering.
Speaker 1: You're like, but I was sailing orchard? Well, the answer,
Speaker 1: Garrison Davis, is that you could if you would choose
Speaker 1: what type of things would be at the orchard and
Speaker 1: the end of December. So I think this is was
Speaker 1: sailing now taken out of Christmas time. I can't I
Speaker 1: can't tell. It still might have been, because you're not
Speaker 1: like going and getting the apples at this point, you're
Speaker 1: blessing the orchard for better harvest in the here to come. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it actually still could have been midwinter. I
Speaker 1: I really kind of like, I don't know. I spent
Speaker 1: a while trying to figure out exactly when they were
Speaker 1: with sailing orchards. Okay, so yeah you can with sail orchards,
Speaker 1: which even up into the seventeenth century was really fucking
Speaker 1: pagan I mean folklore or superstitious people would march from
Speaker 1: orchard to orchard, led by the wassail king and queen
Speaker 1: to the orchard and drink to the health of the
Speaker 1: trees and scare away evil spirits. In order to bring
Speaker 1: about a good harvest. They would lift the wassail queen
Speaker 1: up into the bows to place booze soaked bread in
Speaker 1: the branches. Yeah, totally Christian. Yeah, this is yes, this
Speaker 1: this doesn't sound like filick paganism at all. No, no,
Speaker 1: just a Christian thing. Other was sailing traditions included drinking
Speaker 1: mould cider and various types of booze from a with
Speaker 1: sail bowl, which is a big communal bowl that everyone
Speaker 1: drank from, and the drink was called with sale because
Speaker 1: they're really original namers and it's been a bunch of
Speaker 1: different drinks at different times. For a while, it was
Speaker 1: mead with crab apples. Later it was cier um, like
Speaker 1: what people drink Christmas now. Other times it was like
Speaker 1: ale with baked apples in it. Basically it's like some
Speaker 1: combination of like apples of some variety and alcohol. I mean,
Speaker 1: stuff like this has has continued on today this yeah,
Speaker 1: this this this style of tradition yeah yeah, And I
Speaker 1: really like it. It is like one of the things
Speaker 1: that I'm not talking about that in the script. But
Speaker 1: I still genuinely like, like the real at my heart,
Speaker 1: the reason that I never actually like didn't like Christmas
Speaker 1: even when I was like a baby anarchist and spent
Speaker 1: all of my time rallying against consumerism and shipped like that.
Speaker 1: And I still believe the same ship I believed but
Speaker 1: noted noted fan of consumerism. Yeah, but like the idea
Speaker 1: of gathering together with your family and the darkest day
Speaker 1: of the year and like at the darkest time, like
Speaker 1: and it's not just that the light is returning, but
Speaker 1: it's at the coldest setting in And how hope returns
Speaker 1: even as things get worse. And I think about this
Speaker 1: a lot with the current rise of fascism. Right, even
Speaker 1: when we turn the tide on fascism, things will continue
Speaker 1: to get worse for a while, but we can't lose hope.
Speaker 1: We know that as the light returns eventually delayed so
Speaker 1: will the warmth. UM. I really care about both Soulstice
Speaker 1: and Christmas, and I like, I really I'm very blessed.
Speaker 1: And then I come from a wonderful family um and
Speaker 1: and enjoy gathering them, and so I feel like I
Speaker 1: need to like shout out that. Like another important part
Speaker 1: about Christmas is something that does get held onto for
Speaker 1: all of it, which um is fucking family togetherness in
Speaker 1: tradition and all that ship. Um. Anyway, that's my my
Speaker 1: little earnest moment for the week. Medieval Christmas. I'm all
Speaker 1: for it. Medieval Christmas is the best of all Christmas
Speaker 1: is a lot of people weren't for it. The real
Speaker 1: war on Christmas is the war to sanitize it. It's
Speaker 1: a war that's been mostly one the middle class in
Speaker 1: the US, and the eight hundreds is a big part
Speaker 1: of the war against Christmas. For some reason. They didn't
Speaker 1: like drunken poor people showing up at their house demanding
Speaker 1: ship and vantalizing their houses. Overall, the US started by
Speaker 1: fucking Puritans kind of missed out on spicy Christmas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a shame. The traditional Christmas, as we've discussed,
Speaker 1: he gave you crime cross dress be a furry worship
Speaker 1: the old gods while pretending like you obey the Church
Speaker 1: and the Christian God of your Roman conquerors. And now
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the first real I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been talking with the War on Christmas being the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred year longing. I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: first time that Christians almost got rid of Christmas, the
Speaker 1: War on Christmas of the sixteen forties. In the sixteen
Speaker 1: forties England, they had this whole funk off Civil War thing.
Speaker 1: It should have been cool, but it actually sucked. It
Speaker 1: should have been cool because it was a commonwealth resting
Speaker 1: power away from a monarch, but it was also they
Speaker 1: were Puritans, and they deposed a slightly more religiously tolerant
Speaker 1: king and then they turned around in genocide of the
Speaker 1: Ship out of Ireland. I have some bias against Cromwell
Speaker 1: that will work its way through anything I talk about history.
Speaker 1: When the Puritans took over England in the sixteen forties,
Speaker 1: they didn't like fun. That was kind of their whole thing,
Speaker 1: not not fun enjoyers, and so Christmas became a culture
Speaker 1: war issue. During the lead up to the Civil War,
Speaker 1: the middle class parliamentarians opened their shops on Christmas to
Speaker 1: say fuck you to the holiday. Christmas was clearly a
Speaker 1: holdover from Catholicism and therefore holdover from pagan is um,
Speaker 1: and the Puritans don't like paganism or Catholicism plus revelry
Speaker 1: and gender bending. No fucking good? Am I right? So true? Yeah?
Speaker 1: For the most part, commoners wanted nothing to do with
Speaker 1: either side of this war. They were like the king
Speaker 1: of the rich people. I'm good. Oh, I forget the
Speaker 1: name of it. In my Civil English Civil War episode,
Speaker 1: I think I talked about them. There was this whole
Speaker 1: group that was basically the Band of Brothers from Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones. There's a whole group of people who are like,
Speaker 1: we're just going to defend our fucking towns from both
Speaker 1: armies because both armies are fox. Yeah. The commoners, they
Speaker 1: didn't want anything to do with the pissing match between
Speaker 1: the Royalists and the parliamentarians, and they didn't want to
Speaker 1: lose Christmas. So in sixteen forty three, a bunch of
Speaker 1: apprentices rioted and smashed up the shops that were open
Speaker 1: on Christmas because they're trying to deny society. It's weeks
Speaker 1: of feasting and merrymaking up based you have to fight
Speaker 1: for your right to party, which is the only Beastie
Speaker 1: Boys reference. I will ever make the entire a run
Speaker 1: of this podcast. Yeah, I do love a riot to
Speaker 1: ensure the continuation of Christmas. Yeah. So the Puritans came
Speaker 1: out ahead in the Civil War. Then they had King
Speaker 1: Charles the first in jail in SI. They banned Christmas
Speaker 1: in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. No mince pies. Like literally,
Speaker 1: they banned not just Christmas, but they banned mince pies,
Speaker 1: plum putting, no hanging holly, no excessive drinking or parties.
Speaker 1: And you're required to keep your shops open. No fucking
Speaker 1: free commerce here. You have to keep your shops open
Speaker 1: on Christmas. This didn't go well. No, this doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like people would respond to this very nicely. No. There
Speaker 1: were demonstrations and riots all over England and probably Scotland,
Speaker 1: Wales and Ireland. While Wales Ireland was busy some other ship.
Speaker 1: Around this point, in London, arms soldiers had to break
Speaker 1: up an unruly crowd to stop the crowd from hang
Speaker 1: in holly. In Norwich, forty people were killed when the
Speaker 1: city's ammunition stockpile caught fire in the rioting. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: in Ipswitch, which is totally the name of the town
Speaker 1: and not whatever. Supposedly a protester named Christmas was killed,
Speaker 1: which then got turned into propaganda, which the history book
Speaker 1: I read was like, and then this happened. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't believe it. I straight up don't believe it.
Speaker 1: I know that propaganda was made about it, but I
Speaker 1: don't know there are actually some protester named Christmas was murdered.
Speaker 1: I am at the very least skeptical. Yeah, people in Canterbury,
Speaker 1: which is actually a city in England, and not just
Speaker 1: the name of a book I was supposed to read
Speaker 1: in high school. Uh, they rioted. These are called the
Speaker 1: plum Pudding riots. The mayor went through the market and
Speaker 1: forced everyone to open their stalls for fear, or like
Speaker 1: he would throw you in the stocks if you wouldn't
Speaker 1: open your stalls at the market. So an angry mob
Speaker 1: followed behind, trashing every shop that opened. So these shopkeepers,
Speaker 1: they're just fucked. If they opened their shop, it'll get trashed.
Speaker 1: If they don't, they get thrown the stocks. The crowd
Speaker 1: caught up with the mare and threw him down into
Speaker 1: the mud, but he got up and he managed to
Speaker 1: order the crowd to back off, and then, in a
Speaker 1: move that sounds like someone making fun of England, the
Speaker 1: crowd produced some footballs and started this massive game of
Speaker 1: football across the whole city with no rules that dragged
Speaker 1: everyone into the game or to hide in their houses,
Speaker 1: which was basically a Christmas tradition, was Calvin ball. Puritans
Speaker 1: who tried to stop them were pelted with mud, and
Speaker 1: the pro Christmas rioters took their city back from authorities
Speaker 1: for the day. Later, some instigators were rounded up, but
Speaker 1: the grand jury refused to indict them, so the Christmas
Speaker 1: Rioters got off scot free again, all for traditional Christmas
Speaker 1: sees your city party for twelve days, cross dress, drink
Speaker 1: other people's wine, play sports that don't have rules. The
Speaker 1: main fallout for the canceling of Christmas was pretty much
Speaker 1: the end of the religious component of Christmas. People were like,
Speaker 1: all right, we just won't go to church on Christmas.
Speaker 1: We'll do all of the other stuff, but we won't
Speaker 1: go to church. They also canceled Easter, not the protesters,
Speaker 1: but the Puritans. I don't really care m as much
Speaker 1: about Easter. Cancel culture strikes again. I know. Eventually you've
Speaker 1: got the Reformation and people got a king again, which
Speaker 1: was once again a lateral move. Should have been a
Speaker 1: make things worse, but fucking lateral move. And they also
Speaker 1: got Christmas back. Um, it wasn't as cool as anymore though.
Speaker 1: The Lord of misrule was gone and forgotten. Lord of
Speaker 1: misrule was a died in the Puritan War on Christmas.
Speaker 1: How that what a what a loss? I know, it's
Speaker 1: funny to me because it's the exact same sort of
Speaker 1: people in the seventeenth century England banning Christmas that are
Speaker 1: so adamantly defending it today, right, but there, but the
Speaker 1: thing that they're not defending Christmas, they're just Christo fascists
Speaker 1: trying to yeah, like defend Christian hegemony. Yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: trying to set up a Christian Domini state. Like that's
Speaker 1: that's what they're actually doing. Yeah, totally. Anyway, later in
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty nine, the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay they banned
Speaker 1: Christmas too. Quote, whoever shall be found observing any such
Speaker 1: day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting,
Speaker 1: or any other way, had to pay a five shilling fine,
Speaker 1: which was about three days wages for the average skilled laborer,
Speaker 1: so it's like, oh, like three hundred bucks today. I
Speaker 1: don't know what skilled fred dollars. Christmas was functionally banned
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts until the eighteen hundreds. When I when I
Speaker 1: was a kid learning US history, I always heard about
Speaker 1: the Puritans as this like poor oppressed minority that fled
Speaker 1: England presumably fearing for their lives or some ship. Uh.
Speaker 1: They never taught us how Puritans in England soon took
Speaker 1: control of England, or the fact that one of their
Speaker 1: sticking points had been the reason they felt oppressed is
Speaker 1: that they didn't tolerate other religions, and literally one of
Speaker 1: their problems with the king, as he was fairly religiously tolerant.
Speaker 1: He was even married to a Catholic. The religious freedom
Speaker 1: that the Puritans were fighting for was the religious freedom
Speaker 1: to not allow religious freedom, which I don't know it
Speaker 1: might sound familiar to the modern Yeah, listen, alright, one
Speaker 1: more group that tried to get rid of Christmas. Stalin
Speaker 1: Really I didn't know this. In the USSR banned Christmas.
Speaker 1: They banned it in the same way that the Catholics
Speaker 1: banded senturnalien Yule and tried to ban Christmas, which is
Speaker 1: that they tried to ban it and that didn't work
Speaker 1: because people just kept celebrating Christmas. So then they co
Speaker 1: opted it. The band last from when they realized what
Speaker 1: everyone has always realized. People need a fucking holiday in
Speaker 1: the middle of the goddamn darkest time of the fucking year,
Speaker 1: especially in Russia. I know, those those four Russians. So
Speaker 1: the Christmas trees got rebranded New Year's for trees, gift
Speaker 1: giving was moved to New Year's too, and then that
Speaker 1: totally materialist, absolutely rational figure grandfather Frost, was the one
Speaker 1: to bring them. Okay, people feasted, people dressed up in costumes,
Speaker 1: totally secular fun times for all the non religious people
Speaker 1: in the non religious country. It was probably a little
Speaker 1: bit bland, a little bit sanitized, like the U S
Speaker 1: version of the holiday. And I I totally get why
Speaker 1: revolutionaries came for institutions of power, which include the church. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I get why people wanted to destroy the vestiges
Speaker 1: of religion, but people want midwinter celebrations and frankly it's
Speaker 1: gonna feel religious whatever fucking religion. People don't care. It
Speaker 1: could be soul invictus. It could be the Horned God.
Speaker 1: It could be Odin, it could be yahweh, it could
Speaker 1: be Marks who fucking ever give us our figgy putting
Speaker 1: or break your fucking windows, and that, Garrison Davis, is
Speaker 1: the true meaning of Christmas. Give us our figgy pudding
Speaker 1: or we'll break your fucking windows. I've never had figgy pudding,
Speaker 1: but I'll take your word for it. I don't know
Speaker 1: what figgy pudding is. I assume it's putting made out
Speaker 1: of figs. That actually sounds good, now that you mentioned it,
Speaker 1: that probably that that doesn't make sense. I looked up
Speaker 1: a thousand things for this episode because I didn't grow
Speaker 1: up in a very religious household, and um, I didn't
Speaker 1: look up figgy pudding. I looked up what was in
Speaker 1: with sale, but I didn't look up figgy pudding. Figgy
Speaker 1: pudding does indeed have figs? All right, well, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Is it a pudding because there's also blood. It's it's
Speaker 1: a putting in the sense of like a British pudding,
Speaker 1: so like it's like a dessert. It's like a it's
Speaker 1: like a more congealed, bready type thing. All right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know I would say it probably tastes good, but
Speaker 1: I've had some British food. Yeah, I'm gonna it doesn't
Speaker 1: look great. Okay, everyone Google it looks like meat loaf.
Speaker 1: That is nicer than what I what it looked like.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like it was. It's kind of fruitcake yea, exactly.
Speaker 1: Essentially it is a fruit cake but with like there's
Speaker 1: figs and like there's times people are saying they put
Speaker 1: like brandy in it, and sometimes there's other dried fruits
Speaker 1: and stuff. But you know, biggy pudding that's cool. And
Speaker 1: on that note, that is the Christmas cool people who
Speaker 1: did cool stuff in which we talked about Christmas, which
Speaker 1: is the cool The cool people are the people who
Speaker 1: party no matter what whatever they get told to do
Speaker 1: or not do. Yeah, the people who are going to
Speaker 1: be throwing hardened figgy puddings through windows if they if
Speaker 1: they don't get allowed to take their tree up three
Speaker 1: flights of stairs and shove it in their apartment because
Speaker 1: if it's cold, they're cold, bring the tree spirits inside,
Speaker 1: which is like it's like a very like a Miyazaki type.
Speaker 1: And if you want to save money on candles, you
Speaker 1: can also just sacrifice people. Uh, and leave the bodies
Speaker 1: in the window. I'm not sure if that's going to
Speaker 1: catch on anymore. I don't know. We're past that. That's
Speaker 1: just sailed. We're having we're having to fight for for
Speaker 1: like drag Queen Christmas. I'm not sure if we're ready
Speaker 1: to fight for the dead bodies in the window. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're ready to fight for a thousand year old Christmas,
Speaker 1: but not ready. We're going to defend our traditional values,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, go out there, everyone and defend
Speaker 1: your traditional values of people's. This part is not sarcastic.
Speaker 1: People should be allowed to fucking drag shows. Jesus fucking Christ.
Speaker 1: What the fund is wrong with people? Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I got. End of your plugs, anyone, or suck at all,
Speaker 1: buck at all, Lord of misrule, declare yourself the lord
Speaker 1: of misrule, but survived of the week. That is your duty,
Speaker 1: each and every one of you. Hi, everyone, See you
Speaker 1: next year. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,