Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday. I
Speaker 1: guess it's Christmas Day. Maybe it is Christmas, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this this episode originally aired on December. It was
Speaker 1: about a holiday associated inventions. Yeah, yeah, and you know, Joe,
Speaker 1: Merry Christmas, Oh, Merry Christmas to you. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that it's almost Christmas time, but I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what day this episode is going to be airing.
Speaker 1: We haven't fully worked that out yet. So it's sometime
Speaker 1: within a couple of weeks of Christmas, right, well Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: but certain it falls within the month of December or
Speaker 1: like the three month radius of surrounding December. So it's Christmas.
Speaker 1: It's the holidays. Bells will be ringing, meaning doorbells with
Speaker 1: deliveries because that's uh, that's the kind of Christmas that's
Speaker 1: going on this year. Yep, yep. A supply chain straining
Speaker 1: holiday season. Yes, um so, yeah, you wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about some Christmas related inventions, and I gotta say we
Speaker 1: turned up some surprisingly weird and funny stuff on this subject.
Speaker 1: I was pleasantly surprised with where this went. Yeah. Last
Speaker 1: year in the Invention feed Back when Invention was its
Speaker 1: own podcast, we focused on some popular toys, where they
Speaker 1: came from, how they were invented, things that went under
Speaker 1: the tree. This year, all of the inventions were discussing
Speaker 1: are things that go on the tree? Which is uh
Speaker 1: and and yeah these It turned out to be quite interesting.
Speaker 1: Do you have a tree up right now, Joe? We do.
Speaker 1: It is fake. It is made primarily of petroleum products.
Speaker 1: So uh, what was once ancient organisms floating in the
Speaker 1: seas have settled down and become oil and now they
Speaker 1: are plastic and they're in my home and they make
Speaker 1: it festive. Oh nice, Well, we too have our tree
Speaker 1: up It is a a live tree, or at least
Speaker 1: one that was was alive at some point and it
Speaker 1: was cut free from the earth and uh so yeah,
Speaker 1: now it is in my living room and I run
Speaker 1: a hose in from outside to give it more water
Speaker 1: every day or so were you always a live tree person?
Speaker 1: Or was that a transition. I've just always been a
Speaker 1: fake tree family my whole life. We were always a
Speaker 1: live tree family, and we would do this thing. I
Speaker 1: think this is something my family picked up in Canada
Speaker 1: and then continued to do, and that is for a
Speaker 1: for the the tree stand. Instead of having an actual
Speaker 1: tree stand, we had a bucket of rocks. So you'd
Speaker 1: put the tree stump in the bucket and then you
Speaker 1: put big sizeable rocks around it, you know, to fill
Speaker 1: it up, but there's still space for water, and then
Speaker 1: we'd pour water are in and uh, I think we
Speaker 1: did that till one year the tree tipped over and
Speaker 1: rocks and water went everywhere, and then they decided, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's see about getting an art official tree, and
Speaker 1: then they made the switch. But uh, I've done both
Speaker 1: here in my own household. Um. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a trade off, right because the there's a
Speaker 1: nice smell to the to the fresh cut tree. Um,
Speaker 1: But then you have to pick up the needles, you
Speaker 1: have to inevitably do a little song on it to
Speaker 1: make it function in your house. So I don't know
Speaker 1: I can go either way. I think conceptually, I'm very
Speaker 1: much a live tree person. I've just never in actuality
Speaker 1: been one. That's that's the power of habit and the
Speaker 1: power of family tradition. Right, Like, if you were to
Speaker 1: present me these options afresh, as if you know I'd
Speaker 1: never celebrated Christmas before, I would definitely go live tree.
Speaker 1: But now I think I'm gonna be plastic to the grave.
Speaker 1: I used to like the idea of doing a small
Speaker 1: tree because if you do a small little tree, it's
Speaker 1: less less work, right, But now we have all of
Speaker 1: the is We've accumulated all of these these family heirloom decorations,
Speaker 1: so you know, we've got to put those on the trees.
Speaker 1: You gotta have a large enough tree to hold them.
Speaker 1: That's a very good points as the ornaments that come
Speaker 1: as Christmas gifts that people give you when they don't
Speaker 1: know what else to give you for Christmas, as they
Speaker 1: accumulate over the seasons, they really do start weighing down
Speaker 1: those branches. Alright. So, like I said, everything that we're
Speaker 1: discussing this episode, all the inventions are things that go
Speaker 1: on a Christmas tree. So we really need to lay
Speaker 1: the groundwork, especially for our first invention, Christmas tree lights,
Speaker 1: electric Christmas tree lights. Now we always discussed what came before. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we have to talk about just the
Speaker 1: origin of the Christmas tree as much as we understand it. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: if a couple of different ways to consider this. You know,
Speaker 1: you can think about the the use of control fire
Speaker 1: itself for ceremonial purposes. Uh, this has a role in
Speaker 1: every culture. But here we're talking more specifically about the
Speaker 1: use of illumination technology combined with the form of a
Speaker 1: tree or an actual tree. Now, I know I read
Speaker 1: a legendary account. Something tells me this this might not
Speaker 1: be necessarily true, but a legendary account involving Martin Luther
Speaker 1: and the origins of lighting up a Christmas tree. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so this story, I guess would post date the invention
Speaker 1: of the Christmas tree itself because it assumes there's already
Speaker 1: a tree inside the house. But the story is that
Speaker 1: Martin Luther is out wandering one night, you know, the
Speaker 1: Protestant reformer Martin Luther. I'm sure he's uh, he's composing
Speaker 1: in his mind some extremely scatological screed against the pope,
Speaker 1: and then he's wandering and he sees trees, and he
Speaker 1: sees the stars, behind the trees twinkling and shining through
Speaker 1: the branches, and he's like, oh, how could I recreate
Speaker 1: that at home? And the idea he comes up with is, well,
Speaker 1: let's put a bunch of candles in the branches of
Speaker 1: this evergreen. Yeah. It's a beautiful story, but as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, it's just a story, just made up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: much like another story, another myth concerning St. Boniface thwarting
Speaker 1: a pagan ceremony and somehow turning it into a Christmas tree. Again.
Speaker 1: You know, it makes for a cool origin story, but
Speaker 1: there's nothing to it now. There's certainly you get into
Speaker 1: the myth making about the origin of the Christmas tree.
Speaker 1: Like Another thing to keep in mind is that we
Speaker 1: have a lot of what you can think of as
Speaker 1: auxiliary traditions. Uh. For instance, in England, prior to the
Speaker 1: use of Christmas trees, there were fifteenth and sixteenth century
Speaker 1: traditions involving bringing holly and ivy in during the winter
Speaker 1: and doing things with holly and ivy. They are dreadic
Speaker 1: traditions concerning mistletoe and we've explored those on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Before the winter may Pole tradition has also some similarities
Speaker 1: according to historians. Yeah, the general ideas that you could
Speaker 1: find something that was green in the wintertime, some kind
Speaker 1: of evergreen branch, you know, if it was pine needles
Speaker 1: or or holly or something, and you'd bring that into
Speaker 1: the home around the winter solstice, and the green decoration
Speaker 1: would help distress the family from the barren misery that
Speaker 1: is winter time. But Christmas tree traditions themselves where you'd
Speaker 1: actually cut down an evergreen tree and then bring it
Speaker 1: inside the house or at least put it somewhere near
Speaker 1: the house or in the barn or in the home. Uh.
Speaker 1: That appears to begin among German speaking people's maybe around
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century. That again, it's a little complicated because
Speaker 1: that seems to emerge from similar older traditions. But but
Speaker 1: the Christmas tree itself looks like it it comes around
Speaker 1: the fifteen hundreds. And this was not the only Christmas
Speaker 1: decoration tradition among German speaking people's at the time. Another
Speaker 1: German classic was what came to be known as the
Speaker 1: Christmas pyramid. Though this name comes after Napoleon's adventures in Egypt. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not strictly a pyramid like the ones at Giza,
Speaker 1: you've seen this before. It's sort of a tapering miniature
Speaker 1: tower with platforms populated by angels with trumpets and other
Speaker 1: critters of that stripe. It's a little I arama, okay,
Speaker 1: I you know, I don't know that I've seen this.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen pyramid type constructions where they use points,
Speaker 1: setta plants and kind of arrange them like that. But
Speaker 1: I think one thing you could do when you're building
Speaker 1: your Christmas pyramid is put some evergreen branches on it,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of spruce it up and like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's maybe it's not winter. Here's something green. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then of course U slay all the servants who helped
Speaker 1: you erect it and placed them under the under the pyramid,
Speaker 1: right scoop the brains out of the angels through the nose.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Oh man, you know, an an ancient Egyptian
Speaker 1: themed Christmas tree would actually be quite lovely. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if you would put at the top, maybe a cyrus.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could put in the sun disc. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's there's so much you could do. Now I want
Speaker 1: to make one, except that I would not be permitted
Speaker 1: to do that. Now I was looking more into the
Speaker 1: the history here the tree, and you pointed to the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century origins in Germany, and certainly that seems to
Speaker 1: be when it was. We can really point to it
Speaker 1: and say, like, here is the Christmas tree tradition in action.
Speaker 1: But I was also reading from a book by Judith Flanders,
Speaker 1: Christmas Say Biography. She's a historian and writer with a specialty.
Speaker 1: Her main especially, I think, is Victorian history, and she
Speaker 1: says that we can we can think of of many
Speaker 1: of these earlier traditions as again precursors to the Christmas Tree,
Speaker 1: and an association that had been forged between winter traditions
Speaker 1: and the tree we're already growing around this time, especially
Speaker 1: in Germany. The origins, she says, seemed to take us
Speaker 1: back to the early fifteenth century. In Germany, there are
Speaker 1: records of a fourteen nineteen decorated tree in Freiburg decorated
Speaker 1: with apples, flower paste wafers, tinsel and gingerbread flower paste wafers.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, so Flanders points to documented traditions of paradise
Speaker 1: plays performed at the time and performed around Christmas. They
Speaker 1: use that would have used an evergreen fur with apples
Speaker 1: tied to their branches in place of the Tree of
Speaker 1: Knowledge a k a. The Tree of the Knowledge of
Speaker 1: Good and Evil, which of course is important to Judeo
Speaker 1: Christian traditions and tied to the world tree myths in general. Right,
Speaker 1: So in the Paradise play, this would be reproducing the
Speaker 1: the the myth of the Garden of Eden, where Eve
Speaker 1: is tempted by the serpent to eat of the Tree
Speaker 1: of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which Adam and
Speaker 1: Eve have been forbidden from from partaking of. They can
Speaker 1: eat of the Tree of life, and that you know,
Speaker 1: live forever, but they can't know what's right and wrong.
Speaker 1: And and once they eat of the fruit, then they
Speaker 1: realize they're naked, and all kinds of bad stuff happens.
Speaker 1: God gets very angry. Yeah, it's a it's a whole scene,
Speaker 1: trust me. But at any rate that this would have
Speaker 1: been a tree standing in to represent that mythic tree,
Speaker 1: and the decorations would have included wool thread against straw apples,
Speaker 1: things like nuts and pretzels and yeah, pretzels, which makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: You can make things out of pretzels, make curious shapes
Speaker 1: and all. It sounds good and also feels authentically German.
Speaker 1: This brings up a question I was talking about with
Speaker 1: Rachel recently, and something about this has me still a
Speaker 1: little bit steaming. Are you not supposed to eat a
Speaker 1: gingerbread house. I'm getting mixed signals about what the whole
Speaker 1: deal with the gingerbread house is, because if you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to eat it, why are you making it entirely
Speaker 1: out of edible foods? Uh? I guess that's a redundancy
Speaker 1: out of edible things. And if you are supposed to
Speaker 1: eat it, why is it treated I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: very confused. Well, I guess part of it is that
Speaker 1: it's not just you know, cookier cake, it's load bearing
Speaker 1: cookier cake. Right. Um, yeah, I was always told you
Speaker 1: were making a gingerbread house, but you can't eat it
Speaker 1: because the gingerbread is obviously just sitting out on the
Speaker 1: table and is not fit for consumption at this point.
Speaker 1: You know, when you turn the lights off at night,
Speaker 1: you go to bed and you nestle in, You nestle
Speaker 1: in and get all cozy. The roaches come out. They
Speaker 1: crawl all over the gingerbread house, so they eat little
Speaker 1: bits off of it, and then they scurry away in
Speaker 1: the morning. So if you go and take a bite,
Speaker 1: just know who you're eating after exactly. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: all a good reason not to trust it, unless I
Speaker 1: guess you're very controlling with your gingerbread house. It goes
Speaker 1: into the refrigerator when you're not using it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could see that as working, and that could be fun.
Speaker 1: But otherwise, you don't eat the house. You eat the men.
Speaker 1: You eat the gingerbread men. Voiced by Gary Busey. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: So this tree is becomes popular, In fact, it becomes
Speaker 1: so popular it outlasts the popularity of these paradise plays,
Speaker 1: and it becomes this holiday tradition. It is the it
Speaker 1: is the Christmas tree. It is the the vi Knox bomb.
Speaker 1: So Flanders right, So the oldest Christmas tree market was
Speaker 1: apparently in Strassburg, just over the current German border in
Speaker 1: France in the seventeenth century, and Flanders points to the
Speaker 1: first decorated indoor Christmas tree as being is being tied
Speaker 1: to sixteen o five. Again, the decorations seemed to include
Speaker 1: things like apples and sweets, and they became quite popular
Speaker 1: in the straws Burg region with Actually there were fifteenth
Speaker 1: century laws put in place at one point to limit
Speaker 1: the number of trees per household. Oh, this is not
Speaker 1: the last place we're going to encounter laws regulating Christmas trees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean people, you know, they get upset about the
Speaker 1: War on Christmas, but wars must be waged against Christmas
Speaker 1: to keep it from getting out of control, because it will.
Speaker 1: This is a centuries long tradition. Yeah. Now, speaking of
Speaker 1: of the traditions though, uh, you know, we we often
Speaker 1: especially here in the United States, uh, and and certainly
Speaker 1: in England, you think of it as being you know,
Speaker 1: firmly rooted in English speaking people's right, But the tradition
Speaker 1: didn't actually travel from Germany to England un till the
Speaker 1: final quarter of the eighteenth century. Flanders points to the
Speaker 1: Gurton novel The Sorrows of Young Worther from seventeen seventy four,
Speaker 1: which was translated into English and includes a description of
Speaker 1: a tree not only with organic decorations, but with lights.
Speaker 1: So I had to I had to look it up,
Speaker 1: and you can find this text in full on the internet.
Speaker 1: In but it here's the juicy part. Quote. He began
Speaker 1: talking of the delight of the children and of that
Speaker 1: age when the sudden appearance of the Christmas tree decorated
Speaker 1: with fruits and sweetmeats and lighted up with wax candles
Speaker 1: causes such transports of joy. The tree lighted up with
Speaker 1: wax candles is going to cause such transports of something. Yes,
Speaker 1: So another big thing that was involved in the transfer
Speaker 1: of the Christmas tree tradition to England. In seventeen nine,
Speaker 1: the German wife of George the third suggested they erect
Speaker 1: quote an illuminated tree according to the German fashion, and
Speaker 1: and so you see it making the leap over into England. Now,
Speaker 1: as for the Christmas tree in North America, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: Flanders writes that it may have been here in North
Speaker 1: America as soon as seventeen eighty six. Quote in North
Speaker 1: Carolina that year a member of the Morovian Brethren accused
Speaker 1: an apprentice of cutting down a small pine tree Christmas Eve,
Speaker 1: the day on which trees were customarily erected in Germany. Interesting.
Speaker 1: And there's also evidence of one in Georgia in eighteen
Speaker 1: o five. So this is this is interesting. We often
Speaker 1: think of of of things sort of you know, establishing
Speaker 1: themselves in England and then becoming a thing here in
Speaker 1: the United States. Uh, you know, but of course there
Speaker 1: were people from from various European countries coming into North America,
Speaker 1: so it ultimately makes perfect sense that the Christmas tree
Speaker 1: would arrive here around the same time or even a
Speaker 1: little earlier. Well. Yeah, so, based on what I've reading,
Speaker 1: it seems like Christmas trees really started making their way
Speaker 1: to the United States, being brought with German immigrants, not
Speaker 1: not so much coming directly from England. The few people
Speaker 1: in England were trying to pick it up. Um, it
Speaker 1: looks like the German immigrants would bring them in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but they weren't taken up as
Speaker 1: readily among the general population as you might imagine, And
Speaker 1: there was basically a history of religious discrimination against Christmas
Speaker 1: trees and other types of Christmas celebrations. After all, many
Speaker 1: of the early settlers of eastern the eastern North American
Speaker 1: colonies were English Puritans, who, most of the time, we're
Speaker 1: not fans of the sort of you know, beastie old
Speaker 1: pagan implications of a hallowed tree. You know, they were thinking, like,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna put a tree up in your house,
Speaker 1: why not just celebrate Christmas by having a decapitation contest
Speaker 1: green Night. Uh So, and a few examples of this.
Speaker 1: William Bradford, you know, the King of the Puritans, the
Speaker 1: pilgrim governor of the Plymouth Colony. Uh. He was famous
Speaker 1: slash infamous, depending on your point of view. Apparently in
Speaker 1: one instance, Bradford just went ballistic and chewed out a
Speaker 1: bunch of people in the Plymouth Colony for trying to
Speaker 1: take the day off on Christmas. So you know, Bob
Speaker 1: Cratchit's out in the street hanging out on Christmas morning,
Speaker 1: and Bradford sees him and just his eyes glow red. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so he's writing incredulously that instead of working, he
Speaker 1: found people on Christmas Day, quote in the street at
Speaker 1: play openly, some pitching the bar and some at stool
Speaker 1: ball and such like sports. And he regarded these celebrations
Speaker 1: of Christmas as some kind of quote, pagan mockery of
Speaker 1: God and the spirit of Jesus. So I think Bradford's
Speaker 1: idea of Christmas is you go to work and then
Speaker 1: maybe you go to church. But you you you do
Speaker 1: not decorate, you do not play, you do not take
Speaker 1: the day off, you do not sing. That that is
Speaker 1: all satanic mischief. Yeah, he really sounds like the grand here. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And there were some other examples that I found cited
Speaker 1: in a in a history dot com article I was
Speaker 1: reading called the History of Christmas Tree. So one of
Speaker 1: them was about Oliver Cromwell, not in the colonies but
Speaker 1: back in England, English Puritan leader, one of the victors
Speaker 1: of the English Civil War and becoming Lord Protector. He
Speaker 1: he did not like what he called the heathen traditions
Speaker 1: of things like Christmas carols, or decoration of trees or
Speaker 1: you know, running around acting Mary that that was all
Speaker 1: kind of desecration of what he called the sacred event
Speaker 1: of Christmas. Um And this article also says quote in
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty nine, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a
Speaker 1: law making any observance of December twenty five other than
Speaker 1: a church service a penal offense. People were fined for
Speaker 1: hanging decorations. The Stern Solemnity continued until the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: when the influx of German and Irish immigrants undermine the
Speaker 1: Puritan legacy. Oh man, this this is rich again, especially
Speaker 1: when you look at some of the like legitimate angst
Speaker 1: that emerges around you know, so called wars on Christmas
Speaker 1: and so today, Oh well, it's this is funny because
Speaker 1: while I was reading about this, looking at for these
Speaker 1: historical sources, I also just happened to stumble across like
Speaker 1: fundamentalist Christian blogs called things like Christmas Tree Truth and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. They're still railing against Christmas trees as
Speaker 1: a as a trap door into some kind of covert
Speaker 1: satanic mass. It was, Yeah, that that's a whole corner
Speaker 1: of the Internet that is worth exploring. Yeah, Christmas trees
Speaker 1: are just a gateway to find joy and other satanic concepts. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But so by the mid to late eighteen hundreds, there
Speaker 1: there had been a real transition. By the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: Christmas trees started becoming popular in homes throughout the United States,
Speaker 1: not just among German immigrants and their descendants. Christmas became
Speaker 1: a federally recognized national holiday in eighteen seventy I think
Speaker 1: that was signed into law by Grant. And so, of course,
Speaker 1: as Christmas and Christmas trees became more mainstream, and you know,
Speaker 1: you're not necessarily part of an immigrant community who has
Speaker 1: a centuries long tradition of how exactly to festoon the
Speaker 1: branches you know, going back to your grandparents and all that,
Speaker 1: the question is going to become, how do you decorate
Speaker 1: this thing? Well, you know, we're talking about Christmas tree lights,
Speaker 1: so the immediate predecessor to electric Christmas tree lights, it's
Speaker 1: of course going to be candles accentuated. This is interesting.
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about this, but accentuated by special
Speaker 1: glass beads that were strung around the tree. Uh Flanders
Speaker 1: mentioned this, pointing out that to check glassblowers specialized in
Speaker 1: these not only were they beautiful, but there were there
Speaker 1: were something they were actually something on the tree that
Speaker 1: would not burn if things got out of control. Because
Speaker 1: of course, fire is a big risk when you're talking
Speaker 1: about decorating a tree with little candles, and it's it's actually,
Speaker 1: you know, I knew this innately, like that's dangerous. That
Speaker 1: sounds like an out of control fire waiting to happen,
Speaker 1: But I hadn't really thought about all the various ways
Speaker 1: in which it is dangerous. Uh Flanders points out that that,
Speaker 1: first of all, with candle lights and hearth fires in general,
Speaker 1: fire was just a much greater daily risk back then.
Speaker 1: But then you had these little candles wired tied to
Speaker 1: individual tree branches, which again in and of itself dangerous,
Speaker 1: But then as the candles melt, their weight alters and
Speaker 1: uh and so so that's going to alter the tilt
Speaker 1: of the branch that they're fixed to. Um, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, potentially move moving that little ball of fire
Speaker 1: around and putting it in contact with other branches and
Speaker 1: decorations and things. On top of that, wax is dripping
Speaker 1: down from these candles onto lower branches, and uh and
Speaker 1: and uh in increasing their weight as well. So the risks,
Speaker 1: you know, go way beyond merely you know, a situation
Speaker 1: of candles balanced in a dried out tree, it becomes
Speaker 1: a moving system to contend with with with branches with
Speaker 1: one candle slowly moving up branches beneath, slowly dipping down
Speaker 1: with accumulating wax. Um. It's frightening, yeah, so Flanders writes quote.
Speaker 1: A series of innovations and contrivances designed to hold each
Speaker 1: candle in place with greater stability appeared over the years,
Speaker 1: but a litt tree was never a safe tree. Many
Speaker 1: households lit their candles only once on Christmas Eve, prudently
Speaker 1: keeping the hand water and a stick with a sponge
Speaker 1: on the end of it um, which sounds great, like
Speaker 1: that that should be like a Christmas character, that should
Speaker 1: be like have its own decoration like the the sponge
Speaker 1: stick guy for putting out the tree fire calls to
Speaker 1: mind weird associations with the crucifixion scene in the Sponge Yeah. Alright,
Speaker 1: so obviously again this is terribly dangerous situation. But it
Speaker 1: is the immediate predecessor to the electric Christmas tree lights,
Speaker 1: So this we can basically look back to the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds on this one. In eighty two, the Edison
Speaker 1: Illuminating Company built the world's first electrical power station, and
Speaker 1: four months later they lit up a Christmas tree. It
Speaker 1: consisted of eighty red, white, and blue bulbs and was
Speaker 1: installed in the home of Edward H. John, an inventor
Speaker 1: and Edison's business partner. But at this point electricity was
Speaker 1: simply not established enough for regular folks to get in
Speaker 1: on the action. This was a special tree, so it
Speaker 1: was only for special events and places such as an
Speaker 1: electric tree erected in the children's ward of the New
Speaker 1: York City Hospital or in the White House put up
Speaker 1: an electric tree. This would have been Grover Cleveland's White
Speaker 1: House hundreds of multicolored electric bulbs. According to the Library
Speaker 1: of Congress. Some historians credit this tree was spurring the
Speaker 1: acceptance of indoor Christmas tree lights. But still you had
Speaker 1: to be either rich or an electricity nut, or I
Speaker 1: guess ideally both to have this sort of lighting set
Speaker 1: up at that time. According to the Library of Congress,
Speaker 1: a light uh to light an average Christmas tree with
Speaker 1: electric lights before nineteen o three would have cost something
Speaker 1: like two thousand dollars in today's dollars. But but then
Speaker 1: at the turn of the century, General Electric buys out
Speaker 1: at A and and in nineteen o three they begin
Speaker 1: offering pre assembled kits of Christmas lights. Okay, sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to imagine. So one of the things that pre
Speaker 1: dated electric lighting indoors and homes was you would have
Speaker 1: gas supplied lamps, right, so you'd actually kind of like
Speaker 1: the wiring in today's home. You'd run gas pipes up
Speaker 1: through the walls and they'd have a little output where
Speaker 1: you could attach a lamp and that they would be
Speaker 1: powered indoors. Could you have a gas powered Christmas tree?
Speaker 1: So like the gas pipe runs up the trunk and
Speaker 1: then it goes out through some of the branches, they're
Speaker 1: just pipes around through them, and then they're just lamps
Speaker 1: all up and down. I like this idea of an
Speaker 1: unholy gas punk Christmas tree. Um I did not. She
Speaker 1: does not mention it as being a reality. But man,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be some wacky and inventor who who tried
Speaker 1: it and exploded. If not, I really just doubt the
Speaker 1: ambition of inventors in the eighteen eighties. Um So, anyway,
Speaker 1: they put out this kit and Fleming quotes the brochure
Speaker 1: that comes with it. It says, quote, miniature incandescent lamps
Speaker 1: have perfectly adapted to Christmas tree lighting. The element of
Speaker 1: danger I have a present with candles. It's entirely removed,
Speaker 1: as well as the inconvenience of grease, smoke and dirt.
Speaker 1: The lamps are all lighted at once by turning of
Speaker 1: a switch, will burn as long as desired without attention,
Speaker 1: and can be readily extinguished. No stick with a sponge required.
Speaker 1: That sounds far preferable. Flanders details This is a string
Speaker 1: of twenty eight one candle power miniature Edison lamps. It
Speaker 1: costs twelve dollars and I believe that breaks down to
Speaker 1: something like three fifty dollars in today's money, which, to
Speaker 1: be clear, is is the sort of some people are
Speaker 1: still paying and well beyond that for their various holiday decorations.
Speaker 1: When you were growing up, was there anybody in the
Speaker 1: town where you lived who was like the house that
Speaker 1: everybody in town knew about it would just go bonkers
Speaker 1: at Christmas and put up what looks like a million
Speaker 1: dollars worth of Christmas decorations in the yard and everybody
Speaker 1: dry by at night. Yeah. Yeah, there were several of
Speaker 1: those grizzwoll households around you would have you would drive
Speaker 1: out to see them. They were destinations. Of course. Now
Speaker 1: we have so many inflatable decorations, which are cool, but
Speaker 1: I feel like that takes takes away some It doesn't
Speaker 1: take anything away from the decorations, obviously, but uh, there
Speaker 1: are all these other exciting ways to decorate a house
Speaker 1: for the holidays now that don't necessarily involve lights. But
Speaker 1: at the time, even in nineteen o three, it sounds
Speaker 1: like you had some pretty cool options. Flaming points, uh
Speaker 1: to some Austrian produced strings of lights quote with bulbs
Speaker 1: shaped like fruit flowers and animals or snowmen or Santa's
Speaker 1: And the cool thing about these these were apparently battery
Speaker 1: powered and could be used in houses that didn't have electricity,
Speaker 1: which is which is again an interesting innovation because again
Speaker 1: nineteen o three, Yeah, and by the start of War
Speaker 1: War one, around nineteen fourteen, prices dropped to the affordable
Speaker 1: range of a dollar seventy five, So it just became
Speaker 1: you can just see the situation. More and more houses
Speaker 1: are getting electricity, more and more households are cool with
Speaker 1: the idea of having electricity in in the home on
Speaker 1: the Christmas tree. I also understand that there was an
Speaker 1: insurance boost to having electric lights in your tree as
Speaker 1: opposed to candles, and then it just becomes more and
Speaker 1: more affordable, so more and more people buy into this.
Speaker 1: According to the Library of Congress, American Albert Sedaka also
Speaker 1: helped popularize tree lights. His family owned a novelty lighting store,
Speaker 1: so he was well positioned to cash in on this
Speaker 1: as a teenager in nineteen seventeen, he reportedly realized the
Speaker 1: demand and in nineteen twenty uh Albert and his brothers
Speaker 1: organized the National Outfit Manufacturers Association, or NOMA, which became
Speaker 1: the Noma Electric Company, and they ended up cornering the
Speaker 1: Christmas light market until the nineteen sixties, and NOMA was
Speaker 1: responsible for a number of key innovations during their reign
Speaker 1: of Christmas terror, uh, including bubble lights. Do you remember
Speaker 1: bubble lights, Joe? I don't know what that is now,
Speaker 1: you know? Okay? I believe I had an aunt or
Speaker 1: two even that still had these on their trees when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Uh. These were a nine innovation,
Speaker 1: these were Uh. These consisted of liquid feel filled vials
Speaker 1: of toxic methylene chloride, and methylene chloride has a very
Speaker 1: low boiling point, so the heat of an electric bulb
Speaker 1: is enough to make it bubble, which looks cool on
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree. But again, toxic vials of bubbling liquid.
Speaker 1: Methylene chloride is also known as di chloro methane and
Speaker 1: it I think it is used as a paint thinner
Speaker 1: or like a paint stripper. Yeah. So um, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not jealous that I don't have these in my house. Um.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure there might be some more acceptable
Speaker 1: form of bubble lights out there today, But I would
Speaker 1: love to hear from anyone out there who has memories
Speaker 1: of bubble lights uh or has some sort of updated
Speaker 1: version of the technology now or just anybody who has
Speaker 1: has memories of older models of Christmas tree lighting, because
Speaker 1: of course nowadays it's all pretty much l ed. Uh.
Speaker 1: They system seems to be pretty much refined, The technology
Speaker 1: seems to be pretty stable, with just varying degrees of
Speaker 1: like smart technology involved in how they function. Like I
Speaker 1: think you can nowadays you can get an artificial tree
Speaker 1: with lighting still you know, already installed on it, and
Speaker 1: you can just you can decide like the frequency of
Speaker 1: the twinkle. You can decide like what the the colors
Speaker 1: are gonna be, just you know, on the fly. Oh,
Speaker 1: sorry to whip us back. I think I just remember
Speaker 1: another use of dichlora methane, which I think it's the
Speaker 1: liquid that's in the dippy bird. Oh oh oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the the dippy bird, the the water drinking a bird automaton. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there you go. That makes sense. Well, anyway, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna order some dangerous vintage bubble lights. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: can get the money. Oh, be careful, please be careful
Speaker 1: out there. Um. You know, I'd also love to hear
Speaker 1: from anybody who still decorates at all with candles. Um.
Speaker 1: I imagine some people still do this, at least for
Speaker 1: that one lighting, But I just don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm brave enough to try it, even if I
Speaker 1: did have a sponge on a stick. Than okay, so
Speaker 1: put down your sponge on the stick, because I want
Speaker 1: you to picture another element of a classic Christmas tree picture,
Speaker 1: like the vintage nineteen fifties American Christmas tree, the kind
Speaker 1: of like you'd see in a Christmas story and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But what do you see when you
Speaker 1: picture that in your mind? Maybe these multicolored electric lights,
Speaker 1: maybe big old ball shaped ornaments, kind of making the
Speaker 1: branches all drooped down under their weight. And then there's
Speaker 1: that other stuff, stuff that makes it look like the
Speaker 1: tree is dripping shiny metallic gack like a cassette tape
Speaker 1: has barfed silver pasta all over the festive branches. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and over the floor and um and just over
Speaker 1: the house in general. Uh. You're talking, of course, about
Speaker 1: about Tinsel or I think when I was growing up
Speaker 1: we called him icicle Us for some reason. But Tinsel, Yes.
Speaker 1: So I've got to start off by saying, I don't
Speaker 1: know how many people still actually use this stuff, but
Speaker 1: I do know it still exists, you can buy it.
Speaker 1: I looked it up, but I'm mainly associated with Christmas trees.
Speaker 1: You would see an old polaroids from boomer childhood's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we definitely used it. I was talking about tinsel
Speaker 1: with my wife last night and in both of our
Speaker 1: households growing up. Yeah, we just tinseled the hell out
Speaker 1: of those trees, like it looked like somebody had and
Speaker 1: just she lacked them with with with shiny metal drippings.
Speaker 1: So what is tinsel and where did it come from
Speaker 1: and where did it go? Well, so remember that the
Speaker 1: tradition of the Christmas tree, it ties into even older traditions,
Speaker 1: but it goes back at least as far as the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century in Germany. Um So, so what came before
Speaker 1: tinsel in this context apparently literal icicles, because one thing
Speaker 1: I've read is that a common understanding of the purpose
Speaker 1: of tinsel is to resemble ice sickles hanging from the
Speaker 1: branches of an evergreen tree and glimmering in the sun. Now,
Speaker 1: if the tree is inside your house, it will not
Speaker 1: do to have icicles hanging from it, unless you have
Speaker 1: a really really cold house or you don't mind having
Speaker 1: a really wet floor after they melt. So this is
Speaker 1: the next best thing, right, shiny glittering filaments that reflect
Speaker 1: the firelight and make your tree twinkle with Christmas cheer. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of an upgrading of those check beads
Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier, right, right, those were glass beads, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: so these are originally going to be very metal. I
Speaker 1: was reading, um, not metal like metal music they've made
Speaker 1: of metal. I was reading a Mental Floss article about
Speaker 1: this by Michelle deb Chack about the history of of
Speaker 1: tins along Christmas trees, and she puts out a few
Speaker 1: interesting facts, one of which is that today tinsel is
Speaker 1: very cheap, you know, I looked it up. You can
Speaker 1: get it from Target for three dollars for a packet
Speaker 1: or something. But it was once absolutely a luxury item,
Speaker 1: much like Christmas lights themselves. In seventeenth century Germany, there
Speaker 1: are records of trees being decorated with pressed strips made
Speaker 1: from real silver. And remember, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: classic appeals of silver and gold is the way they
Speaker 1: could shine beautifully. They'd reflect the light in a way
Speaker 1: that was pretty. And this was before the invention of
Speaker 1: cheaper metal and plastic foils. So I was looking for
Speaker 1: more on the history here of about tinsel, and I
Speaker 1: found an interesting book by Bernd Brunner called Inventing the
Speaker 1: Christmas Tree, published by Yale University Press in and Brunner
Speaker 1: has some interesting things to point out here. Brunner says
Speaker 1: that quote tinsel was probably inspired by the so called
Speaker 1: Leonie drata, which he says was introduced by Huguenots. From Leon,
Speaker 1: I think Leonisha drata means Leonese wire, and this would
Speaker 1: be quote silver or gold plated copper wire that was
Speaker 1: originally a byproduct of metal work. It is reminiscent of
Speaker 1: the silver thread that was woven into church estimates in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages for a long time. Tinsel, also called
Speaker 1: silver plated sauerkraut in colloquial German, was cut from tinfoil.
Speaker 1: It is reminiscent of a thin icicle, but it could
Speaker 1: just as well bring forth summary associations. And then he
Speaker 1: quotes a German writer who's a like a German realist
Speaker 1: author named Theodore Storm in a passage from eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: four where he's describing some stuff going on around Christmas.
Speaker 1: He says, quote on the Sunday before Christmas, my friend
Speaker 1: Peterson brought a sack filled with a marvelous silver thread.
Speaker 1: The tree wrapped in this fine silver thread looked like
Speaker 1: a flying summer. But Brunner also notes that a variation
Speaker 1: on the silver tinsel was known as angels hair, fairies hair,
Speaker 1: or Baby Jesus's hair, and he says this was also
Speaker 1: a type of fine metal thread. Ah, now that's that's Internet.
Speaker 1: First of all, I mean, I just I'm picturing Jesus,
Speaker 1: adult Jesus with like a full head and beard of
Speaker 1: like straight up silver metal hair. But it also reminds
Speaker 1: me um. I remember talking to some of them, the
Speaker 1: Czech Republican They're talking about the tradition of the baby
Speaker 1: Jesus lowering gifts down. I think kind of like a
Speaker 1: golden or metallic string. So I wonder if that's connected
Speaker 1: to this tradition, like Jesus with a fishing pole like
Speaker 1: the man on the moon kind of, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: down Baby Jesus from on high using like the silver
Speaker 1: corn really like a space elevator. That's very good. But
Speaker 1: so to come back to this the silver tinsil, So
Speaker 1: there were a lot of problems with genuine silver tinseil.
Speaker 1: One of the obvious ones I mentioned already is how
Speaker 1: expensive it would have been. But also deb Check points
Speaker 1: out another thing, which is that silver tarnishes very quickly,
Speaker 1: so if you put it up on the Christmas tree,
Speaker 1: it might tarnish before Christmas actually came around. Okay, So
Speaker 1: but then again, if you're if you're putting up your
Speaker 1: tree on the like the traditional German Christmas Eve erection night,
Speaker 1: then it makes sense. I mean, they don't call it
Speaker 1: erection night obviously, but I mean that is the night
Speaker 1: that you erect the Christmas tree. Okay, Yeah, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not sure when exactly the tinsel would go up in
Speaker 1: in what context. But but you know, there were problems
Speaker 1: with it maintaining it's it's sheen for as long as
Speaker 1: you would want it to, especially since it's expensive stuff.
Speaker 1: So I mean, this might be problems with trying to
Speaker 1: use it year after year. If it was nade of
Speaker 1: actual silver, you would probably want to do that, right.
Speaker 1: But in the early nineteen hundreds of manufacturers in the
Speaker 1: United States were making tinsel out of cheaper and more
Speaker 1: durable shiny metals like aluminum and copper, but there were
Speaker 1: still some problems with the new models because aluminum paper
Speaker 1: based tinsel was highly flammable. Again, this is going to
Speaker 1: cause problems when you want to light up your tree, right.
Speaker 1: But then also during World War One, copper was in
Speaker 1: high demand for wartime production, and so that made it
Speaker 1: a poor choice for you know, for of qlidies like
Speaker 1: holiday decorations. So so what could come in to save
Speaker 1: the day? What other medals could come in to be
Speaker 1: your cuddle friend for Christmas time? Oh? I don't know, um,
Speaker 1: I know, you know where I'm going with this. Not lead, yep, lead?
Speaker 1: Uh So, to read from teb Jack's article here, quote
Speaker 1: lead revive tinsel from obscurity, and soon it was embraced
Speaker 1: as a standard Christmas component along with ornaments and electric lights.
Speaker 1: It became so popular in the nineteen fifties and sixties
Speaker 1: that tinsel is often thought of as a mid century
Speaker 1: fad rather than a tradition that's been around as long
Speaker 1: as Christmas trees themselves. With so many synthetic decorations becoming
Speaker 1: available around Christmas time, tinsel made from metal was considered
Speaker 1: one of the safer items to have in the home.
Speaker 1: A nineteen fifty nine newspaper article on holiday safety reads
Speaker 1: quote tinsel was fairly safe because even if the kiddies
Speaker 1: decided to swallow it, it will not cause poisoning. Uh. Folks,
Speaker 1: you you probably should not use tinsel based on lead
Speaker 1: at all, and you definitely should not let the kiddies
Speaker 1: decide to swallow it. Um. And this became quite clear,
Speaker 1: obviously by the end of the sixties. I mean, starting
Speaker 1: in the mid sixties you had great scientists like Claire C. Patterson, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the Lord of Lead, who we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: talking about the the dangers of lead in the environment
Speaker 1: and dangers of lead being incorporated into the body. By
Speaker 1: the early seventies, the message was really out and there was,
Speaker 1: you know, widespread backlash against the total infiltration of lead
Speaker 1: into every corner of our existence. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: the era when you get like the banning of leaded
Speaker 1: gasoline and things like that. Um. And of course, of course,
Speaker 1: this eventually also lead to the discontinuation of lead in
Speaker 1: many consumer goods, including tenseil. So if you buy tenseil today,
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna be made out of milar or polyvinyl
Speaker 1: chloride with the shiny finish. Uh. You know, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get probably some kind of plastic product. But despite the
Speaker 1: fact that you can still buy it, I have noticed
Speaker 1: I don't really see it very much anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously somebody still using it because you can still get it.
Speaker 1: But like my question is what happened to tinsel? I
Speaker 1: wonder if modern versions of it just have too many
Speaker 1: associations with like the post war plastic boom kind of energy,
Speaker 1: if it just seems too synthetic. Because Brunner writes of
Speaker 1: a countervailing force against tinsel in all of its forms
Speaker 1: in In one paragraph in his book, he says, quote
Speaker 1: at the end of the eighteen seventies, there is documentation
Speaker 1: from Corinthian gael Valley in southern Austria, that a thick spruce,
Speaker 1: free of all decoration, was placed in the corner of
Speaker 1: a farmstead as a sign of silent joy. On frosty
Speaker 1: cold winter mornings. The tree, now covered with little icicles
Speaker 1: and illuminated by the sun's rays, shimmered like a Christmas
Speaker 1: tree covered in lights, without any tensil or fairi's hair.
Speaker 1: The wild beauty of the tree suffice and this kind
Speaker 1: of brings us back to what we were talking about
Speaker 1: at the beginning, like the fake tree versus the real tree.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel that real tree drive, even though
Speaker 1: habits have prevented me from ever going there, and the
Speaker 1: real tree drive, I think feeds into a maybe maybe
Speaker 1: a more total rejection of things that remind you of
Speaker 1: synthetic industrial products when you're decorating for Christmas. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: do admire those really organic trees you see sometimes where
Speaker 1: they're they're using my strong popcorn around it, and and yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe getting back to the use of apples and and
Speaker 1: so forth. Uh, you know it's yeah, I do like
Speaker 1: that the idea that you could basically just eat the
Speaker 1: whole tree after after Christmas, just eat it up or
Speaker 1: just I guess it's you know, completely compostable to some
Speaker 1: degree as well, that let the fungus have it. Uh.
Speaker 1: But there's one more passage I want to read before
Speaker 1: we move on. This doesn't really have much to do
Speaker 1: with tensil, but I was reading parts of this book,
Speaker 1: Inventing the Christmas Tree by Burned Burner, and um I
Speaker 1: came across one section where I met the hannibal lecter
Speaker 1: of Christmas, just the most astonishingly anal retentive Christmas fanatic
Speaker 1: in history. Do you mind if I read this just
Speaker 1: because I thought it was let's let's do it, let's
Speaker 1: lean into the holidays. Yeah, okay, okay, So this is Brunner,
Speaker 1: This is Bruner himself writing this introduction to the passage.
Speaker 1: Bruner says some specialists transformed decoration of the Christmas tree
Speaker 1: into an exceptional skill. Among them was the German Hugo Elm, who,
Speaker 1: in his eight seventy eight Golden Christmas Book made a
Speaker 1: plea for quote a tasteful separation of the numerous decorations
Speaker 1: on the tree. In order to avoid a bland hodgepodge.
Speaker 1: He suggested the following steps, precisely designed for the anatomy
Speaker 1: of the tree and the load capacity of its branches,
Speaker 1: And here the quote begins. Decorations should begin with the
Speaker 1: heaviest objects, which are best placed near the trunk and
Speaker 1: in the middle of a branch. Next one should place
Speaker 1: the nuts. Place silver and gold nuts, alternating about three
Speaker 1: to four pieces on the longer and two to three
Speaker 1: on the shorter branches, and on the top smallest branches
Speaker 1: only one each. The golden and silver pine cones, in contrast,
Speaker 1: should be placed farther forward. In the second third of
Speaker 1: the branch, as calculated from the trunk outward. Marzipan and
Speaker 1: sweets are best placed in between two nuts. Shiny glass balls,
Speaker 1: fruits and the like are to be placed preferably on
Speaker 1: the upper branches in order to enjoy the effect of
Speaker 1: their refracting rays of light. Metal coils and tinsel are
Speaker 1: spread out at the tips of the secondary branches, for
Speaker 1: these are thinner and are more likely to sway than
Speaker 1: the thicker main branches, and small baskets and nets made
Speaker 1: of paper are placed on secondary branches. The individual stars
Speaker 1: should be distributed evenly, while the strings of alternating nuts,
Speaker 1: draw stars, paper and similar are to be wound around
Speaker 1: the branches, and distributed paper bags should always be put
Speaker 1: on the tips of the branches, ideally beneath the lights.
Speaker 1: At the top of the tree, one customarily puts a
Speaker 1: large star made of cardboard covered with golden paper, in
Speaker 1: which one glues either a self made or bought Christmas angel,
Speaker 1: a thick tone with golden fringe, and an old Gothic
Speaker 1: script displaying the Sublime Christmas saying glory to God in
Speaker 1: the high also looks magnificent. Once the lights have been
Speaker 1: put on the tree. The tops of the branches can
Speaker 1: be covered with loosely pulled cotton and these then affixed
Speaker 1: with silver thread. This is my design. Okay, so here's
Speaker 1: my idea. Actually, in the tradition of Batman versus Superman,
Speaker 1: Freddie versus Jason, Godzilla versus King Kong, we've got to
Speaker 1: have a big movie Christmas extravaganza. Hugo Elm versus William Bradford,
Speaker 1: the Man who Hated Chrismus versus the Man who will
Speaker 1: kill you if you put the nuts and the stars
Speaker 1: in the wrong order. Oh wow, wow, Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: that reading. It's just so um pedantic, so so tyrannical.
Speaker 1: Concerning the decoration of the Christmas tree. Right there at
Speaker 1: the end though, he mentioned the star, the angel, the
Speaker 1: tree topper. Joe, what's what's your treetopper? Oh? Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer. I could go check right now.
Speaker 1: Let me let me go check some waiting music in
Speaker 1: the meantime. All right, I may have caught him in alive.
Speaker 1: There may be no Christmas tree and he's not coming back.
Speaker 1: Oh it's anticlimactic. The star, Yeah, the star and the
Speaker 1: angel are are typical. You do see some other quirky
Speaker 1: Christmas tree toppers. I I have some family members to
Speaker 1: use a tartists at the top of their tree. They can.
Speaker 1: They consider that the pinnacle um. But of course one
Speaker 1: of the big ones is is either the star or
Speaker 1: the Angel. So for our final section in this episode,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about the angelic tree topper. So
Speaker 1: remember when we discussed the Victorian Christmas tree. Apparently was
Speaker 1: during this time that the angel really became popular as
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree topper, and it remains a popular choice
Speaker 1: to this day. Though for the most part, these are
Speaker 1: generally the most boring sort of angelic depictions you could
Speaker 1: ask for, never the fearsome or surreal angels that one
Speaker 1: often finds another treatments and art and artistry, and even
Speaker 1: in um sacred literature. Now, these are generally like little
Speaker 1: dress up dolls with wings in a halo. This is
Speaker 1: not the terrifying messenger who carves the seven Pas into
Speaker 1: Dante's forehead, right right, which again I say missed opportunity there.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from anyone who has a more
Speaker 1: terrifying angel at the top of their tree. I guess
Speaker 1: you could put. I know they have ornaments of the
Speaker 1: what what are they? The weeping angels from doctor who?
Speaker 1: So maybe some uh, some doctor who fans out there
Speaker 1: have have those at the top. Oh, that's not a
Speaker 1: bad idea, but uh, to discuss what came before this
Speaker 1: this invention, basically reasoning, this is an excuse to talk
Speaker 1: about angels and Christmas tree angels. Basically, the angel at
Speaker 1: the top of the Christmas tree is there because the
Speaker 1: Angel Gabriel factors into the Christmas story. Gabriel is the
Speaker 1: Angel of annunciation, the messenger of the Almighty God that
Speaker 1: informs Mary that she is pregnant with the Son of God.
Speaker 1: And just to give you a taste of the the
Speaker 1: original Bible literature here, this is from the King James
Speaker 1: version uh Luke one six three, and in the sixth month,
Speaker 1: the Angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city
Speaker 1: of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin in espouse, to
Speaker 1: a man whose name was Joseph of the House of David,
Speaker 1: and the virgin's name was Mary. I believe it's also
Speaker 1: in the Gospel of Luke that the Angel later at
Speaker 1: the birth of Jesus appears to the shepherds and tells
Speaker 1: them the good news that I'm unto them. My savior
Speaker 1: is born right, and I think that that if I'm
Speaker 1: not mistaken. That angel is not named, but it's often
Speaker 1: assumed that it might be the same angel, or I
Speaker 1: guess maybe angels working for Gabriel. Uh, it's all a
Speaker 1: little vague, but but Gabriel is often referred to as
Speaker 1: the Harold a k A Harald Angel. You may have
Speaker 1: heard of him. He's been heart the Herald Angel sings um.
Speaker 1: But Gabriel is also sometimes referred to as the Angel
Speaker 1: of Death or though the the one who will blow
Speaker 1: the final trumpet before the end of time. He's also
Speaker 1: sometimes described as a deathbad angel who eases people into
Speaker 1: the next life. Yeah, the actual characteristics and individual identities
Speaker 1: of the angels and their hierarchies are not really explored
Speaker 1: in what's usually considered canonical biblical literature, but a lot
Speaker 1: of sort of apocryphal and you know, extra canonical works.
Speaker 1: Now here's a fun fact. According to Carol Rose, who
Speaker 1: often refer to for various mythical and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: fanciful creatures, Rose points out that the word angel derives
Speaker 1: from the Greek anglos and would have been pronounced with
Speaker 1: a hard G up until the end of the thirteenth century,
Speaker 1: in line with Old English and Teutonic traditions, but then
Speaker 1: the French influence softens it. That's interesting now when you
Speaker 1: see the word angel appearing in like the Bible, that
Speaker 1: comes from word that originally just means messenger, so like
Speaker 1: the angels are the messengers of the divine realm. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Sometimes that message takes the form of announcing a birth.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's more than the destruction of an entire city,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But I have to say, growing
Speaker 1: up in Christianity, I often gravitated towards the weirdness of
Speaker 1: angels because they were supernatural outsiders, demi god like travelers,
Speaker 1: and there's of course a ton of interesting material built
Speaker 1: up around them, from their depicture and throughout hard history,
Speaker 1: to their place in occult magic, to their treatment in
Speaker 1: modern popular culture, and also in the spiritual warfare fundamentalist
Speaker 1: theology that was popular back in the ninety nineties, and
Speaker 1: I guess it's probably still popular in some circles. But
Speaker 1: you know, the angels were just this deeply weird concept
Speaker 1: that was just an accepted aspect of religious reality. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is a funny irony and like the insistence of
Speaker 1: the idea of monotheism, and yet there are these heavenly
Speaker 1: beings called angels, and you might say, well, but they're
Speaker 1: heavenly beings but not gods. And then you just get
Speaker 1: into sort of like hair splitting over what the meaning
Speaker 1: of God is because a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: are called gods and what are openly acknowledged as polytheistic
Speaker 1: religions actually in many ways are similar to what people
Speaker 1: believe about angels. And say Christianity, Yeah, because if you're
Speaker 1: if you were like like I was, sometimes, if you're
Speaker 1: board in church and you pick up the Bible and
Speaker 1: you're like, well, I'm gonna read some angel stories, uh,
Speaker 1: You're to be a little disappointed because there's there's actually
Speaker 1: not much angelic action in the Bible, just a handful
Speaker 1: of occurrences, and there's nothing to explain why they exist.
Speaker 1: There's no origin story or anything for the angels. Though,
Speaker 1: if you want to get into stuff outside the biblical
Speaker 1: canon about where the angels come from and all that,
Speaker 1: you get some into some wild and awesome territory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot of great fan fiction
Speaker 1: that it emerged throughout history about this reveal, like we
Speaker 1: gotta explain these guys where they come from? Um so,
Speaker 1: so I was looking into this a little bit for
Speaker 1: for this episode, and I read the archangel Gabriel in
Speaker 1: History and Tradition by Roxana Eleana yavashi Uh and you've
Speaker 1: actually points out that the reason that angels are basically
Speaker 1: taken for granted both in Judaic and Christian traditions is
Speaker 1: that you did not need to explain them. They are
Speaker 1: already part of our supernatural understanding of everyday reality in
Speaker 1: the world. The author points out that Hebrew ideas of
Speaker 1: angels were influenced by Babylonian angelology and and also by Zoroastrianism.
Speaker 1: So the idea, as they explain it is that while
Speaker 1: angelic beings, demi gods and you know, various intermediaries that
Speaker 1: serve primarily as messengers are sometimes agents of another sort.
Speaker 1: They certainly factor into various religious systems, including the polytheism
Speaker 1: of ancient Egypt. You know they're there, But but while
Speaker 1: they are, they factor into polytheistic um pantheons. They are
Speaker 1: a necessity, they write for monotheistic religions, as the monotheistic
Speaker 1: God is ultimately faceless, or at least does not reveal
Speaker 1: its face to humans. So for a god of God's
Speaker 1: to do human like things, it has to send a
Speaker 1: human like messenger. Oh yeah, that's kind of interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: I would say that the idea of the monotheistic God
Speaker 1: is a like faceless, you know, disembodied kind of spirit
Speaker 1: that has no form of its own. Is a much
Speaker 1: later understanding of that. I mean, I think the earlier
Speaker 1: visions of that God would give would give him a
Speaker 1: body and give him much more recognizably humanlike features. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as the author points out again, you have various
Speaker 1: messengers and agents popping up in various polytheistic religions, And
Speaker 1: of course I instantly thought about the avatars and Hinduism,
Speaker 1: by which a single divine entity may take various forms,
Speaker 1: you know, some much more human than others. The author
Speaker 1: points out though, that you know that this ultimately shows
Speaker 1: the continued role of transcendence in religion. There's this increasing
Speaker 1: distance in religious tradition between the world of the gods
Speaker 1: in the world of humans. So if you look back
Speaker 1: to Greek myths, uh, you know, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of interplay between the gods and humans a lot of drama,
Speaker 1: direct drama between gods and humans. You look to the
Speaker 1: Egyptian model, and there's also this sense that this is
Speaker 1: all happening in the same world in our world. But
Speaker 1: then there's this growing distance between the place where God
Speaker 1: is and the place where humans reside, and it then
Speaker 1: necessitates these holy intermediaries where stead of God showing up
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, I'm a bit ticked at you over this,
Speaker 1: and angels like, hey, um, God sent me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not really happy about this whole apple thing, or
Speaker 1: he said to call off the whole sacrifice your kid thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just got the message to middle management. Yes. Now,
Speaker 1: just as angels don't really have a huge presence in
Speaker 1: the Bible, uh, they're also rarely named. Gabriel is the
Speaker 1: first angel mentioned in the Book of Daniel, and he
Speaker 1: he doesn't have a lot of peers. I mean mostly
Speaker 1: it's just Michael, the archangel as the other named angel
Speaker 1: um and as the author points out here, Gabriel winds
Speaker 1: up doing quite a bit of the heavy lifting. He
Speaker 1: interprets Daniel's visions in the Old Testament, he appears to
Speaker 1: Zacharias and announces the birth of John the Baptist in
Speaker 1: the New Testament, of course, appears to marry like we
Speaker 1: already mentioned. And then in Islamic tradition he reveals the
Speaker 1: Koran to the prophet Mohammed, and of course there he
Speaker 1: has other adventures outside of these books as well, various
Speaker 1: you know myths, legends, even you know pop cultural examples.
Speaker 1: For instance, Uh, Gabriel shows up in various bits of
Speaker 1: Jewish legend and lore, various bits of Islamic legend and lore,
Speaker 1: so he's associated with the Moon and early Jewish writings
Speaker 1: as well as in medieval Christian astrology. In Moroccan traditions,
Speaker 1: he is a Sidna Jebri according to Carol Rose, and
Speaker 1: is said to have delivered to Addam all the tools
Speaker 1: that he needed to survive outside of Paradise, which kind
Speaker 1: of makes him sound like a Prometheus figure. Oh yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Though also I would say in the Garden of Eden story,
Speaker 1: the serpent itself is very much a Prometheus figure. That's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read that. In Northern English traditions, there's a We've
Speaker 1: mentioned the wild hunt and various death dogs and hell
Speaker 1: hounds on the show before. Uh. There are also the
Speaker 1: Gabriel Hounds, which are you know, basically just death dogs
Speaker 1: of the wild hunt. And then, of course we have
Speaker 1: some very memorable performances from from recent film history in
Speaker 1: which somebody plays Gabriel. Uh. Tilda Swinton played a ubl
Speaker 1: Gabriel in two thousand fives Constantine, which um was maybe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember it as being fun. I haven't seen it
Speaker 1: since it came out. It's a probably an imperfect adaptation
Speaker 1: of the comic book character, but it has a lot
Speaker 1: of fun weirdness in it. I mean, Tilda Swinton as
Speaker 1: a rebel angel Um, oh god, what's his name? Plays
Speaker 1: the devil? Oh? He played what's his name? He played
Speaker 1: Dino Velvet in Um eight millimeter? Hold on looking it up,
Speaker 1: Vigo Mortenson. No, no, you're thinking of your thinking of
Speaker 1: the next film we're going to talk about. Oh oh geez,
Speaker 1: Sorry sorry sorry. Peter Stormar, Yes, yes, he plays a
Speaker 1: wonderful kind of like coked up Satan in that film
Speaker 1: We believe in Nothing Gabriel Nothing. Yeah. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun in that. And of course the other
Speaker 1: big Gabriel performance that comes to mind, Christopher walk Can
Speaker 1: as a rebel Gabriel in three out of five Prophecy
Speaker 1: films with the with Vigo Mortenson as the devil in
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, the Vigo played the devil in the
Speaker 1: first one, and um yeah, I think what who else
Speaker 1: was in that? A number of actors showed up in
Speaker 1: that franchise. Oh man, I'm seeing lots of names of
Speaker 1: Virginia Madson of Highlander to fame, Eric Stolts, Eric Stults,
Speaker 1: that's right, yeah, Elias Kotaus, Amanda plumber Well and for
Speaker 1: a written and directed by the man who wrote Highlander,
Speaker 1: So it has strong Highlander there. Yeah, that Cannon's I mean, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like like this, Like we've said before,
Speaker 1: there's the idea that to understand the mythology, you have
Speaker 1: to you have to accept all forms of the mytholo.
Speaker 1: You have to include all forms of the myth So
Speaker 1: we ultimately have to incorporate um the Prophecy films into
Speaker 1: our understanding of of angelic lore. I was just thinking
Speaker 1: about something that this kind about maybe the sexually isn't
Speaker 1: all that interesting, just let me put it together. So
Speaker 1: in order to have a really good understanding of a
Speaker 1: mythological tradition, you need to know all of the versions
Speaker 1: of the myth that you can and hold them all
Speaker 1: in your head at the same time, understand where they
Speaker 1: come from, how they fit together, and how the myth
Speaker 1: varies in in all of its different faces. But as
Speaker 1: we talked about last time, one way in which you
Speaker 1: have to just pick one version of the myth is
Speaker 1: if you're going to engage in storytelling, right, because you
Speaker 1: can't tell all versions of the story at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's not enjoyable as a story, So you have to
Speaker 1: pick one way there. But the other time when you
Speaker 1: really have to pick one version of the myth is
Speaker 1: if it's official dogma and people have to believe it.
Speaker 1: If people have to believe it, they have to believe
Speaker 1: it one way or another, in which case you also
Speaker 1: have to pick one version of the story. So I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of interesting that whether you are trying
Speaker 1: to keep a child entertained or whether you want to
Speaker 1: lay down the law, that's when you have to pick
Speaker 1: one version and ignore all the others. One exception of
Speaker 1: this that I like that you you see occurring in
Speaker 1: various treatments, but one of the most noteworthy is probably
Speaker 1: um that second Batman from from Christopher Nolan the one
Speaker 1: in which Heath Ledger plays the Joker. Uh, the Joker
Speaker 1: gives his own origin story what a couple or maybe
Speaker 1: three different times, and it's always different. It's a play
Speaker 1: on that. Some say they came from such and such,
Speaker 1: some say it was this, you know, establishing multiple possible
Speaker 1: mythologies behind a character, which which I kind of like, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that Joker is uh, that does sound really cool.
Speaker 1: I think that Heath Ledger Joker is supposed to embody
Speaker 1: chaos and canonical unity is order. Uh. You know what
Speaker 1: that really means is in order to understand the mythology
Speaker 1: you need to understand the chaos of canonical diversity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, sounds good to me. Let's let's put that
Speaker 1: on the tree, Chaos angel go right at the top
Speaker 1: um because again, yeah, I'd love to see some some
Speaker 1: Christmas Angel tree toppers that invoked some of these other ideas.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some really beautiful, weird visions of angels
Speaker 1: out there, and and certainly, you know, traditional artistic treatments,
Speaker 1: but also more modern stuff. I'm thinking about the various
Speaker 1: like the seraphims of of Michael W. Kluda. Um. Certainly
Speaker 1: you could put a Christopher walking up there at the top.
Speaker 1: I think that would be great. All right, Well, uh, Joe,
Speaker 1: I think we've completely decorated this Christmas tree for the year.
Speaker 1: The trimming is complete, and now it really it only
Speaker 1: remains for us to put some presents underneath this tree.
Speaker 1: And by that, I of course mean listener mail. We
Speaker 1: would love to hear from everyone out there if you
Speaker 1: have some sort of a Christmas tree or holiday decoration
Speaker 1: tradition that ties into what we've discussed here. We would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you about it. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: it's certainly not just Christmas decorations. I'm oh, I'm very
Speaker 1: interested in very secular holiday decoration traditions, or some version
Speaker 1: of holiday traditions that also meld with other systems of
Speaker 1: faith or mythologies or fandoms. I think that's all on
Speaker 1: the table, and I want to hear about it. Does
Speaker 1: anybody decorate their tree according to the strict instructions of
Speaker 1: Hugo Elm with no deviations whatsoever? If so, I want
Speaker 1: to know about that. Oh, man, I want to see
Speaker 1: a Hugo Elm tree. Now, you know, it's it's basically
Speaker 1: like to come back to the Bible. It's like the
Speaker 1: the the instructions of how to build the tent that
Speaker 1: houses the Ark of the Covenant. You know, it's so specific,
Speaker 1: but surely somebody's recreated it. You shall decorate, as the
Speaker 1: commandant says. All right. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: you can find is wherever you get your podcasts and
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. We just ask that you rate,
Speaker 1: review and subscribe. I think you can still go to
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and that will
Speaker 1: send you over to our I heart page and if
Speaker 1: you go there, there's a place to click for our
Speaker 1: store and you can buy sut or something with our
Speaker 1: logo on it or a cool monster on it. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of couple a couple of listener created
Speaker 1: designs in the mix as well. They're pretty exciting. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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