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