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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Danny and Samantha and welcome to stuff.

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Speaker 1: I never told your protection of iHeart Radio. So I

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Speaker 1: am so excited about this one. I am so so

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Speaker 1: excited because, uh, probably a lot of you experienced the

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Speaker 1: same thing. We've talked about it every year we talked

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Speaker 1: about it, but for us, like when the holidays come,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't it means like a sprint to the end

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Speaker 1: with getting ahead with work, so you can quote take

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Speaker 1: time off, um, and you really want to anticipate it.

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Speaker 1: So I think it was like October we were talking

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Speaker 1: about this, well, we were talking about the fact that

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Speaker 1: we've been talking about witches, and we were like, oh,

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Speaker 1: what's gonna be sad, We're not gonna talk about whitches anymore.

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Speaker 1: But then but then you have the idea. You're like,

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Speaker 1: I wonder if there's Christmas, which had to be yes,

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Speaker 1: and you were correct. You were correct. There are multiple Christmas,

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Speaker 1: which is some of which are kind of like nice

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Speaker 1: and um curb commercial. Because we found a book as

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Speaker 1: well called The Christmas Witch, which is not what we

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Speaker 1: were looking at looking for, but maybe we'll look into

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Speaker 1: one day. No, we were talking about like a Christmas Witch,

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Speaker 1: like we're talking Grim's fairy tale level. Um, and so

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Speaker 1: we've had this outline since then four months. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: today we are talking about Grilla Christmas, which I will

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Speaker 1: say I looked at the pronunciation, but it was from

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Speaker 1: a UK video and this is an Icelandic which so

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Speaker 1: hopefully Grila is correct, but if not, please let us know.

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Speaker 1: And yeah, this was gonna be a bit shorter because

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Speaker 1: again holidays, we got a lot going on. Not too

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Speaker 1: much is written about green Less sadly enough, though I

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Speaker 1: did get a personal anecdote last night. I can't wait

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Speaker 1: to share it. Um. Yes, oh it's so cool. But yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you have any details we missed any Christmas witches

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Speaker 1: we should shut out, please let us know. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: for if you if you listen to this and you're like,

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Speaker 1: you know what, this is my thing? I want more.

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Speaker 1: We have done so many episodes on witches, as you said,

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Speaker 1: we have done so many episodes on witches. We've done

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Speaker 1: episodes on monsters. We've done episodes on why women love monsters. Um.

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Speaker 1: I would say our discussion of Bobby Yaga is particularly

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Speaker 1: relevant to this conversation. Bobby Yaga came up in a

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Speaker 1: lot of articles about Riela so go check that one

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Speaker 1: out if you'd like. That was a good one. That

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Speaker 1: was a fun one too. Yes, and this is definitely

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Speaker 1: much more arline when it comes to the holidays of

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Speaker 1: like like I got let's say get twist. Everyone else

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Speaker 1: is doing this. Let's go for the halloweenish version of

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Speaker 1: what we can do? Why not? Yes, yes, and it

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Speaker 1: is super fun. So yeah. If you're looking at the

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Speaker 1: darker side of Christmas stories and legends, which there are

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Speaker 1: quite a few, um. One that has gained a lot

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Speaker 1: of cultural traction here in the US, um, including parades

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Speaker 1: and a whole movie I've seen I've seen a play

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Speaker 1: about him is Crampus Um, the hoofed horned German figure.

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Speaker 1: But you really don't hear so much about Gila the

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Speaker 1: Christmas o gris and which from Icelandic legend, although she

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Speaker 1: did recently pop up in something which we will talk about.

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Speaker 1: Um yeah, it says yes and kind of a shortened

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Speaker 1: thing because we have talked about which is a lot.

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Speaker 1: But Christmas which is have roots in pagan history to

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Speaker 1: deities and spirits that were thought to be women from

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Speaker 1: from those uh festivals around this time, especially like Harve

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Speaker 1: assessfuls are like cool, you know, Winner's Coming that kind

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Speaker 1: of thing. I actually did find a Game of Thrones

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Speaker 1: and Greenla connection. It was a whole article. Didn't make

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Speaker 1: it anyway. Um, and many of these Christmas witches do

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Speaker 1: you have connections to the cold and deadly dark weather

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Speaker 1: of winter, and Grila is definitely in that realm and

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Speaker 1: she evolved from these beliefs. I wonder if it's related

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Speaker 1: to the the line in The Witch of the Wardrobe

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Speaker 1: with the witch. Yes, I bet it absolutely, because she's

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Speaker 1: one that keeps winter there exactly thoughts. So let's break

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Speaker 1: down green Less history. The legend of Grila dates back

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Speaker 1: to the thirteenth century Iceland, and she is not one

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Speaker 1: to be trifled with. She lives in a cold, dark

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Speaker 1: cave in the hinterlands and is the mother of monsters

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Speaker 1: and the eater of naughty children. Yes, she snatches them

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Speaker 1: up and cooks them in a into a delicious stew.

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Speaker 1: Of course, her name loosely translates to growler. That makes sense, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like you'd hear this growling sound as she goes. Yeah. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Stories of Greenla started as mostly oral and the first

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Speaker 1: written accounts started showing up in the thirteenth century, So

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Speaker 1: that's kind of why this is when we know the

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Speaker 1: story for sure, but it was probably around long before that.

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Speaker 1: Take this poem from the time, Here comes Greila down

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Speaker 1: in the field with fifteen tales on her. Another poem reads,

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Speaker 1: down comes Greenla from the outer fields with fort details,

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Speaker 1: a bag in her back, a sword knife in her hand,

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Speaker 1: coming to carve out the stomachs of children who cry

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Speaker 1: for meat during lent m big No. No other poems

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Speaker 1: mentioned her and her husband, who she later ate because

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Speaker 1: she was bored. You know, you gotta do what you

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Speaker 1: gotta do. Yeah, she had multiple husbands. One historian described

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Speaker 1: her as the first feminist in Iceland, which really cracked me.

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Speaker 1: I don't think it was related to the eating of

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Speaker 1: the husband or multiple I'm like this, like the conservative definition,

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Speaker 1: they're gonna eat well me bored. But yeah, never fear

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Speaker 1: because Greenla did get a second husband, who was this

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Speaker 1: troll like figure who has a name, but I did

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Speaker 1: not put it in here because I knew I would

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Speaker 1: butchered the pronunciation. But yes, he's also kind of a

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Speaker 1: figure in this because the story of Gila is also

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Speaker 1: the story of her whole interesting family, yes, including a

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Speaker 1: huge man eating le cat cat. It's like a well,

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Speaker 1: it's just a cat that comes out around this time. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so okay, red, It's like it's I've seen illustrations of it,

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Speaker 1: and it's like a big black cat. Um I've I've

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Speaker 1: seen some of the descriptions make it sound much more

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Speaker 1: kind of like Cerberus, like glowing red eyes kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: Others are kind of like it's just a big butt cat. Um. So.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, but this can't purposefully targeted those, especially kids,

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Speaker 1: but anybody really who wasn't wearing any new clothes. It

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Speaker 1: could be like a sock, it could be underwear. But

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Speaker 1: if you weren't wearing any new clothes during this time,

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Speaker 1: you were in trouble. Because so all of this they

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Speaker 1: come out. It's supposed to be as winters coming, it's

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Speaker 1: getting darker and colder. This is when they start, you know,

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Speaker 1: checking in on what you're doing. You need new clothes.

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Speaker 1: It's getting cold. I think that you cants classes. They don't.

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Speaker 1: I don't like it. How dare you if we can't

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Speaker 1: afford those new clothes. To round out the family, she

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Speaker 1: had a thirteen adults sons called the thirteen Yule Lads,

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Speaker 1: Each of these huge dudes has their own reputation of

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Speaker 1: mayhem during December, including sausage swiping, doors, slamming, and leftover eating.

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Speaker 1: We're going to go into them more a bit later,

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Speaker 1: but just okay, this is her family. This is what

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Speaker 1: she's got going on. They weren't related at first. They

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Speaker 1: kind of got you know, pushed together over time. But

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Speaker 1: at first they kind of separate, separate legends, and then

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Speaker 1: they all got smashed up together together one horrible family.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, this gets a bit complicated in terms of

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Speaker 1: how modern day Christmas has transformed over time. But in

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Speaker 1: Iceland at the time, there was a midwinter holiday related

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Speaker 1: to English and Germanic Yule that involved a lot of gathering, feastings,

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Speaker 1: celebrating all the things that many of us associate with holidays. Owever,

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Speaker 1: because of iceland geographic location during this time of year,

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Speaker 1: it's generally darker for longer, and yes, I have a

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Speaker 1: TikTok account that lives in Iceland to watch compared to

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Speaker 1: somewhere like the US, for instance. And these early celebrations

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Speaker 1: were not only an opportunity to connect with a living

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Speaker 1: and the dead, but also with creatures like trolls, elves

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Speaker 1: and other things in that realm that were believed to

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Speaker 1: inhabit the area. It was believed that sometimes these creatures

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Speaker 1: wore flesh faces to visit houses and farms. Yeah, you'll

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Speaker 1: never notice, you'll never recog so freaky like hello. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so one of these creatures in this realm was Greta who. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna get into this more in a second, but

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Speaker 1: a lot of different descriptions of Greenla generally has a horntail,

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Speaker 1: at least one horne tail, and a bag that she

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Speaker 1: would throw at children, specifically ones that she deemed to

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Speaker 1: be naughty. She wasn't necessarily associated with Christmas, as I said,

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Speaker 1: but more the place, the cold mountains, the danger that

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Speaker 1: the season came with in terms of weather, the darkness

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Speaker 1: and snow engulfing the land. She was the one who

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Speaker 1: had the power over this land and those living there,

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Speaker 1: especially during winter. People were at her whim and mercy,

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Speaker 1: or the lack thereof. Her physical descriptions have varied over

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Speaker 1: the years, from more ogre like to more old witch like.

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Speaker 1: Here's a quote from Mental Flaws Guilla might look like though,

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Speaker 1: like all Icelandic trolls, she's a gross, massive giant. One

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Speaker 1: rhyme says she has fifteen tills, each of which holds

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Speaker 1: hundred bags, with twenty children in each bag, doomed to

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Speaker 1: be a feast for the Trolls family. Another says she

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Speaker 1: has forty tails, and still another says she carries a

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Speaker 1: bag of children on her thighs. All right. Some poems

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Speaker 1: say she has three heads, each of which has three eyes.

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Speaker 1: Other describes eyes in the back of our head, ears

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Speaker 1: that hang so long that they hit her in the nose,

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Speaker 1: a matted beard, black and teeth and hoo's. All these

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Speaker 1: stories agree on one point. She's very very ugly. You ugly?

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Speaker 1: Oh oh well, okay, um, yeah, yeah, and uh there

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Speaker 1: has been surprise not to me, but too many probably.

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Speaker 1: Some scholarly debate about why most of these witches are ugly.

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Speaker 1: Some we've discussed before, like links to perceived wildness of paganism,

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Speaker 1: or just you know, Spinster's old woman, Spinster must be ugly.

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Speaker 1: Others speculate it's almost an end of the year thing,

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Speaker 1: more symbolic, so like because she's a winter which the

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Speaker 1: end of the year's coming, like maybe at the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the year, like she's a baby by the end,

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Speaker 1: she's like this, I don't know. Um. And others say

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Speaker 1: that instead of summoning our causing bad weather, um, the

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Speaker 1: which is scared away. Like maybe so this isn't commising

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Speaker 1: more than just grila, but like their ugliness, I feel

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Speaker 1: terrible saying that. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, agree that, but

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Speaker 1: their their appearance is part of scaring the weather way

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Speaker 1: that they're actually not bringing it. Oh that's that's greater good.

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Speaker 1: That's some interpretations of it. Others are just like they're

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Speaker 1: just kind of like a part of the land and

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Speaker 1: you have to respect the land and the danger of

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Speaker 1: the winter. Like there's a lot, there's a lot going on.

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Speaker 1: There's going on here. Um. It wasn't until the nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century that people started to associate Greenla with Christmas specifically.

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Speaker 1: It was also the same time that the meniscing youle

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Speaker 1: cat and thirteen old Ads were more clearly linked to

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Speaker 1: her becoming like this big dark family. Um. And by

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Speaker 1: the way, the stories of the ul Ads got so

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Speaker 1: bad parents were banned from telling them to their kids

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Speaker 1: in Iceland in seventeen six stories. Well, you know, when

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Speaker 1: we've talked about this before, because the function of a

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Speaker 1: lot of these is to get your children to behave

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Speaker 1: But it sounds like I got kind of out of

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Speaker 1: hand with the staring of the children part. I mean

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Speaker 1: it kind of makes sense again, like they went from

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Speaker 1: campus and Greenla to Santa Claus. So I want to

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Speaker 1: reinforce instead of the term. Yes, yes, a shift, and

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Speaker 1: I would love for for listeners to write in. But

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Speaker 1: I did find um a couple of fascinating essays about

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Speaker 1: how um legends like those are stories like this especially

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Speaker 1: in in Iceland or are more generally Europe, perhaps specifically Iceland,

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Speaker 1: Like they're just so important. Two how I like they're

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Speaker 1: they're more they're taking more seriously than they are here.

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Speaker 1: I guess they are kind of respe did and people

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Speaker 1: hear them and still hear them, and like it's almost

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Speaker 1: a matter of respecting this darkness in this winter and

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Speaker 1: this environment of Iceland. Um, it was interesting, very very interesting,

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Speaker 1: And as you're saying, Samantha, century saw American depictions of

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Speaker 1: Santa Claus spreading throughout Europe, and that did impact how

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Speaker 1: the Yule lads were drawn much more Santa E bigger bellies,

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Speaker 1: red whiskers. Instead of taking stuff and causing the ham

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Speaker 1: they started leaving gifts, and Grila was threatened with eternal

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Speaker 1: extinction by those who wanted the winter holidays to be

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Speaker 1: more family friendly. Um, with one song going into detail

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Speaker 1: about their death, like they actually tried to kill her off.

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Speaker 1: We want this to Vieta rab Yes, And this trend

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Speaker 1: didn't really reverse until recently in Iceland and f by

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Speaker 1: the National Museum of Iceland has been pushing to restore

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Speaker 1: the uel adds to their pre Santa selves. Um. And

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Speaker 1: I want to go over their names now and what

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Speaker 1: they do because I love it. And this is this

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Speaker 1: is from the museum. So there's sheep coat clod. He

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Speaker 1: tries to suckle use in farmers sheep sheds, gullygowk. He

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Speaker 1: steals foams from buckets of cow milk. Stubby, he shorts

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Speaker 1: and steals food from frying pans, spoon liquor, He licks spoons.

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Speaker 1: Would you call me pot scraper a k A pot liquor.

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Speaker 1: He steals unwashed pots and licks them clean. Bowl liquor.

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Speaker 1: He steals bowls of food from under the bed. Back

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Speaker 1: in the old days, Icelanders used to sometimes store bowls

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Speaker 1: of food there, convenient for midnight snacking. Perhaps door slammer

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Speaker 1: he stops around and slams doors, keeping everyone awake. Skier gobbler.

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Speaker 1: He eats up all the Icelandic yogurt Skier. I think

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Speaker 1: that's how you pronounce it, so said swiper. He loves

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Speaker 1: stolen sausages, um window paper. He likes to creep outside

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Speaker 1: windows and sometimes steal the stuff he sees inside door sniffer.

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Speaker 1: He has a huge nose and the insatiable appetite for

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Speaker 1: stolen baked okay uh meat took. He snatches up any

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Speaker 1: meat left out, especially smoked lamb. Candle beggar. He steals candles,

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Speaker 1: which used to be sought after items in Iceland, A

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Speaker 1: very specific somewhat. Yeah, they are all really gross sparely ye,

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Speaker 1: why do they have to lick so many things? I know, Well,

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Speaker 1: it's funny to you. To me again, going back to

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Speaker 1: that point of it sounds like it's just trying to

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Speaker 1: get you to like clean up after yourself, right, like

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Speaker 1: wash your ball or yes, and apparently you know, close

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Speaker 1: the door. Yeah, yeah, well that one's kind of that.

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Speaker 1: That's like plug in your key hole. I guess, um,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I got a very big kick out

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Speaker 1: of this. I've never heard of it. But as I

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Speaker 1: mentioned at the top, I was telling people that I

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Speaker 1: was doing this research a couple of days ago, and

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Speaker 1: somebody was like, oh, no, I know Greenla. I've heard

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Speaker 1: of Greenla because I went to Iceland to visit a friend.

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Speaker 1: And this is his story. He says, when he got there,

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Speaker 1: he saw a statue of her in the airport and

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Speaker 1: was like, whoa, if you haven't seen a statue of her, whoa,

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Speaker 1: she's intense. Uh, And was kind of taken aback that

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Speaker 1: he saw the statue in the airport. But then one

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Speaker 1: of these ule ads, somebody dresses one of these ule

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Speaker 1: ads kept opening and closing the door to his taxi,

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Speaker 1: and he he was he didn't know what was going

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Speaker 1: on because he's an American, He's never heard of this,

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Speaker 1: so wait, was it a real person doing this thing? Okay? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like what okay? But he knew he knew all about it,

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Speaker 1: because he said he had to ask his friend like

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Speaker 1: what was that, and his friend told him about that

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Speaker 1: would be alarming, because You're like, are you trying to

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Speaker 1: kidnap me? I've seen taken No, sir, no, sir, I say,

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Speaker 1: um and this I this is where I want you

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Speaker 1: listeners to write in. Apparently kids are still terrified affair.

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Speaker 1: They're still are freaked out by Grila. Um. There are

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Speaker 1: depictions of her across Iceland to remind folks about Grila,

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Speaker 1: and she and her sons were recently featured in the

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Speaker 1: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix Swim, where she was

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Speaker 1: a witch that protected mistreated children instead of turning them

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Speaker 1: into stew. Yeah. Yeah, so there's definitely been kind of

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Speaker 1: an embracing of of this creepier, more historical version of

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Speaker 1: Grila and her whole family and her whole family. Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: looking at the pictures, she is gruesome but apparently really

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Speaker 1: fun ornaments. I want one. I know, a Grila ornament

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Speaker 1: would be amazing. Yeah, my gosh, I do. I want

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Speaker 1: one to uh. And I think if we hear from listeners,

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Speaker 1: I think we do it. Follow up on Greta because

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Speaker 1: I feel like there's got to be more about her.

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Speaker 1: But that's about what we could find. There's most of

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Speaker 1: this came from one really helpful article deep Dive from

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Speaker 1: the Smithsonian If you want to read more, it's amazing,

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Speaker 1: and there's there was a lot more academic stuff about

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Speaker 1: like witches in winter which is in general that was

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Speaker 1: not exactly what we were looking for for our easy

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Speaker 1: kind of winter episode, but fascinating and we could return

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Speaker 1: to you at a later date. We did want to

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Speaker 1: go through a couple more examples quickly, because Greila is

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Speaker 1: not the only Christmas witch in town, as we said,

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Speaker 1: And we've got a few honorable mentions that when I

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Speaker 1: read about, I was like, oh, no, we have to

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Speaker 1: I have to at least mentioned this. So there's an

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Speaker 1: Austrian and a Bavarian one fral Pershta who around Christmas

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Speaker 1: time checks in to see which kids have been naughty

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Speaker 1: or nice. The nati ones get their torsos split open

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Speaker 1: and stuffed with straw. Obviously obviously there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: interesting ones about For her, I nobody is safe from her,

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Speaker 1: But that was the one where I was like, whoa.

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Speaker 1: We werely like from zero two hundred, quickly ready and

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Speaker 1: the parents are supposed to find the body the next

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Speaker 1: so gruesome. Oh yeah, yeah, that's horrible. It is open,

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Speaker 1: stuffed with straw. What happens to the good kids? Nothings

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Speaker 1: if you don't get cut, yes, But at the same time,

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Speaker 1: then there's Italy's La Befana La befana is descended from

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Speaker 1: pagan witches uh, and base on the story can write

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Speaker 1: a go to our room or both maybe um, and

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Speaker 1: it's typically very crone like in appearance. Generally, good kids

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Speaker 1: are safe from La Befana um and may even get

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Speaker 1: some candy from her. Bad kids, however, might get coal.

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Speaker 1: Some versions have candy shaped like coal um, which I

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Speaker 1: guess is fine, But they could also get scooped up

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Speaker 1: and taken to her home to be fed to her

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Speaker 1: cannibalistic husband, which seems to be a theme just like Greila.

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Speaker 1: There have been some attempts to sanitize and christianize her story,

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Speaker 1: with one going so far as to claim that the

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Speaker 1: Three Wise Men stayed with her on their way to

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Speaker 1: see baby Jesus UM, and when the men invite her

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Speaker 1: to join them, she declines. She says she's busy and

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Speaker 1: in some versions is grieving the loss of her own

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Speaker 1: child UM and doesn't want to go, And then in

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Speaker 1: some versions thinks that Jesus is her own child. H.

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Speaker 1: That went very far. Yes I know, yes, I know. Um.

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Speaker 1: She changes her mind and goes and bring she's a gift,

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Speaker 1: and he loves it so much he makes her the

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Speaker 1: protector of Italian children um and some depictions of her.

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Speaker 1: She even sweeps the floor of all the homes she visits,

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Speaker 1: which is very nice. She's so beloved in Italy. There

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Speaker 1: are multiple festivals and markets held in her name, and

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Speaker 1: apparently one in Italy involves a boat race with people

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Speaker 1: dressed up as witches. So yeah, the guest. The celebrations

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Speaker 1: now her of her being, which not so much as

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Speaker 1: the saint or is it the saint version? I think

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Speaker 1: I think there's both, but I think I think she

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Speaker 1: she's she started out as a much less nice which

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Speaker 1: evolved into a nicer which but I think she's still

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Speaker 1: like which okay, okay, she can still hold onto that claim.

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Speaker 1: Yes that was my understanding. But again, listeners right in,

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Speaker 1: because it seems she's still quite popular. Yeah, she's relevant. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I got festivals, festivals, I know. Yes, that's let's take

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Speaker 1: a tript um. And then there were a couple more.

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Speaker 1: I did want to mention this. There wasn't enough to

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Speaker 1: do a whole mention of them without going into I

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Speaker 1: think this would be a separate episode, but I did

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Speaker 1: want to say there were a couple of other Christmas,

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Speaker 1: which is that actually um, we're more about harassing women

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Speaker 1: than children, like a housewife who's not doing her job

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Speaker 1: as well as she should be. Uh. Some of it

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Speaker 1: involved like leaving smudges of feces on, like laundry, like

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Speaker 1: messing up housework, and sometimes splitting them open and stuffing

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Speaker 1: them with straw, which I just found fascinating because, as

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Speaker 1: we said, these are so there's so like moralistic naughty

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Speaker 1: or nice, do your chores or else that I find

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Speaker 1: it interesting that there are some versions of them that

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Speaker 1: are specifically towards women and housewives from this time. Um,

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Speaker 1: so just a note that I had when I was

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Speaker 1: doing this research. H Okay, interesting, yep, very interesting. I

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Speaker 1: mean honestly, the research was very fun. This was a

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Speaker 1: fun one to research. So if you listeners again you

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Speaker 1: have any follow ups, any more details, any suggestions, any

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Speaker 1: legends other which is there are also some really cool

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Speaker 1: like women in food and which is traditions that I found,

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Speaker 1: So if you know about those, please let us know, yes,

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Speaker 1: and you can contact us in many ways. You can

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Speaker 1: email us at Steffidia mom stuff I hurt media dot com.

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Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast,

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Speaker 1: on Instagram and stuff I never told you. Thanks as

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Speaker 1: always to our super producer Christina You and thanks to

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Speaker 1: you for listening stuff. I never told you, respection, but

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Speaker 1: I heart radio. For more podcast for my heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: you can check out the heart radio app, Apple podcast,

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Speaker 1: or regul listen to your favorite shows. No more move