Even if you don’t love the holidays, you likely appreciate the food. All of us have our favorites, from stuffing and mashed potatoes to latkes and kugel, but the real fun begins with dessert. If you’ve ever wondered why we eat cakes shaped like Yule logs or who first came up with fruitcake, read on — these are the origins of four favorite holiday treats.
Even if you’ve never tried this dessert, you’re probably familiar with the lyric “now bring us some figgy pudding” from “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” While that song possibly dates to the 16th century, figgy pudding itself is at least two centuries older than that. In the 14th century, it was used as a food-preservation technique and resembled a porridge consisting of beef, mutton, wines, spices, raisins, and prunes. It wasn’t until the 1700s, when fruit was more widely available, that figgy pudding became sweet, rather than savory, and much more similar to what we eat today.
You might notice one ingredient conspicuously missing from the original recipe: actual figs. We have the vagaries of Middle English to thank for that, as the word “figgy” (or fygey, ffygey, figgee, and several other spellings) didn’t necessarily imply the use of figs, and its meaning changed along with the various recipes.
Whether you call it a Hanukkah doughnut or sufganiyot, this deep-fried treat filled with jelly and covered in powdered sugar is delicious in any language. And just as Jews eat matzah and other unleavened breads during Passover, there’s a reason fried foods like sufganiyot are served during Hanukkah: Doing so commemorates the miracle of the oil. This is among the oldest culinary customs of them all, as eating deep-fried pastries during Hanukkah was already considered a long-standing tradition in the 12th century.
As for the name, an Israeli folk tale suggests that God gave Adam and Eve sufganiyot to make them feel better after their exile from the Garden of Eden; this interpretation is rooted in the fact that sufganiyah reads similarly to sof-gan-yud-hey, or “the end of the Garden of the Lord.”
Whatever your thoughts on fruit-based desserts, there’s no denying that the love-it-or-hate-it mainstay fruitcake remains popular worldwide. (For another fruit-centric argument, be sure to ask your loved ones their thoughts on pineapple pizza.) All roads lead to Rome, and so does this particular dish’s history: An early (we’re talking 2,000-year-old) variant is said to have included raisins, pomegranate seeds, and pine nuts, but it wasn’t until the Middle Ages that other dried fruits, nuts, and honey were added to the mix.
It won’t surprise you to learn that this Christmas cake is popular in countries such as Belgium and Switzerland, but did you know that Yule logs are also served in Lebanon and Vietnam? Made to look like, well, a Yule log, this genoise-based sponge cake first became popular in 19th-century France — hence its enduring popularity in Vietnam, a former French colony, as well as its original name, Bûche de Noël.
The ingredients — marzipan, meringue, spun sugar, and sponge cake — suggest that this dessert could have been around since the 1600s. Real Yule logs would traditionally be burned starting on Christmas Eve as a symbol of the new year — and, if they worked as intended, bring good luck. However, the cake version has been a more recognizable holiday symbol than its namesake for quite some time.
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Winter is coming. Our ancestors celebrated the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, with festivals marking the cycle of death and rebirth. Since then, astronomers have determined the scientific basis for Earth’s seasons, and even discovered winters on other planets, while communities around the world still celebrate with age-old traditions. This year, snuggle up under a cozy blanket with a toasty cup of hot cocoa and learn more about the science, culture, and legends behind this annual event.
Most people observe the winter solstice as a day on the calendar — usually December 21 or 22 in the Northern Hemisphere — that marks the beginning of the coldest season. Astronomically speaking, however, the winter solstice occurs when the sun appears directly overhead at noon at the Tropic of Capricorn. This invisible line circles the planet at 23°26’22” south latitude and runs through Paraguay, Namibia, Australia, and other countries. The winter solstice corresponds with the exact moment the Northern Hemisphere reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun.
In the Southern Hemisphere, the timing and location are reversed. The winter solstice there occurs around June 20 or 21 at the moment when the sun appears overhead at noon at the Tropic of Cancer, which circles Earth at 23°26’22” north latitude (crossing Mexico, Saudi Arabia, India, and other places). The timing coincides with the Southern Hemisphere’s maximum tilt away from the sun.
The Winter Solstice Marks the Shortest Day and Longest Night of the Year
When either hemisphere is tilting away from the sun to its greatest possible extent, people who live there experience the least daylight and most night of the year. But just how short the day is depends on your precise location — specifically, how close you are to the equator. More southerly locations in the Northern Hemisphere have longer shortest days; the shortest days in northerly locations last only a few hours. For example, Manila in the Philippines lies near the equator and experiences 11 hours, 15 minutes, and 57 seconds of daylight on the winter solstice. In Reykjavik, Iceland, daylight lasts just four hours, seven minutes, and nine seconds.
Sweden Marks the Winter Solstice With Cat-Shaped Cookies
St. Lucia Day is Sweden’s winter solstice celebration, though it takes place on December 13 (the shortest day of the year according to the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian calendar). Swedish people commemorate the feast of St. Lucia, a fourth-century woman who brought food to Christians hiding from persecution. She lit her path by wearing a crown of candles. Today, St. Lucia Day processions air on national TV, while families bake special treats such as gingerbread cookies (pepparkakor) and saffron-tinted sweet rolls in the shape of “Lucia’s cats” (lussekatter). The festivities are topped off with swigs of mulled wine.
The Persian Holiday Yalda Celebrates Light Banishing the Darkness
Like St. Lucia Day, Yalda marks the victory of light over darkness as the days begin to lengthen after the winter solstice. In ancient Iran, the solstice itself was believed to be the night when evil spirits were at the height of their powers, so people kept fires burning and held raucous feasts to drive them away. That tradition continues in modern celebrations, in which Persian families gather to eat red fruits like pomegranate and watermelon (symbols of light and fertility), share hearty stews, read poetry, and stay up until morning to welcome the next day’s sun.
In Northern European Folklore, Plants Symbolize the Winter Solstice
To communities in northern Europe, the vibrant green foliage of certain plants symbolized life amid the dead of winter, and their leaves and boughs were part of winter solstice celebrations heralding the return of the sun. Evergreen trees like pines and hollies represented peace, joy, and good luck, while ancient yews stood for the death of the old year and a connection to the next one. Mistletoe was sacred to Celtic and Norse peoples and linked to fertility and health. Oak trees, even though they’re deciduous, were associated with the winter solstice as the preferred source of Yule logs; people burned the logs to encourage prosperity and protection from harm. Some traditions called for Yule logs to be lit with a remnant of the previous year’s log, perhaps to represent the cycle of time.
Pliny the Elder Had a Specific To-Do List for the Winter Solstice
The first-century historian Pliny the Elder, in his multivolume work Natural History, laid out the agricultural tasks that ancient Romans should perform on or just after the winter solstice. People should avoid handling grapevines on the day. Cherry trees should be planted, and farmers should soak acorns to soften them for oxen feed, in the amount of one modius (about 9 liters) of acorns per ox. People can also cut timber for the winter, and then fashion baskets, trellises for their crops, and torches for lighting during the “hours of the night, which are then so greatly prolonged,” Pliny wrote.
The Winter Solstice Has Been Linked to Superstitions
Within the Catholic liturgical calendar, the winter solstice used to coincide with St. Thomas’ feast day (though now that’s celebrated on July 3). In some parts of Europe and Canada, people marked the shortest day of the year by baking pies or distributing bread to the poor. There were also several superstitions associated with St. Thomas’ day, according to folk tradition. It was unlucky to sift flour, making the pie production and bread distribution somewhat more complicated. If you cut an apple in half and found the same number of seeds in each half, you’d be married soon. And if the temperature dropped below freezing on December 21, the prices of grain would also fall.
The Winter Solstice Was Thought To Bring About Calm Days
In ancient Greece and Rome, the winter solstice was believed to herald “halcyon days,” a period of calm seas and gentle breezes. Pliny the Elder — yep, him again — explained the origin of this story in Book X of Natural History. The halcyon, or kingfisher (Alcedo atthis), a bird that dives into rivers to prey on fish, was thought to build nests seven days before the winter solstice. The birds incubated their eggs for one week after the solstice, at which point the young hatched, “from which circumstance those days are known as the ‘halcyon days’: during this period the sea is calm and navigable,” Pliny wrote. The tale was based on a Greek myth — and it’s a scientific myth, too. Kingfishers actually nest in burrows in riverbanks. Today, “halcyon days” can refer to any period of tranquility and repose.
Astronomers and meteorologists have different criteria for determining the seasons. Technically, the cold season that begins on the winter solstice is astronomical winter, determined by the position of the sun. Astronomical spring, summer, and fall begin on the vernal equinox, summer solstice, and autumn equinox, respectively.
But the varying dates of the equinoxes and solstices make it difficult to compare weather data from one year to the next, so weather forecasters typically use meteorological seasons based on temperature averages and the regular calendar. In the meteorological calendar, each season is assigned a three-month period: Winter is December through February, spring is March through May, summer is June through August, and fall is September through November.
Human civilizations around the world built monuments that may have noted the change of seasons as they related to planting and harvesting crops. Newgrange, a 5,000-year-old dome-shaped monument in Ireland, features a small opening in its roof through which the sun shines on the winter solstice. Stones at Stonehenge, built around 2500 BCE in southern England, are aligned to the sun’s angles on the summer and winter solstices. Indigenous peoples in North America also built monumental calendars. The Chaco Culture of northwest New Mexico recorded the winter solstice at special observatories built between 800 and 1100 CE. The Mississippian Culture established “Woodhenge,” a calendar of upright logs, around 1000 CE at Cahokia in modern-day Illinois. In southeast Ohio between 100 BCE and 400 CE, the Hopewell Culture built earthworks that aligned with the rising sun at the winter solstice.
Many Cultures Observe the Winter Solstice With a Festival
Winter solstice celebrations often note the passage of time with feasts and gatherings. People in ancient Rome held Saturnalia, a holiday on which social conventions were turned upside down to honor Saturn — the god of the harvest — and the conclusion of the planting season. The Venerable Bede, an English monk who lived in the eighth century, wrote about the Germanic winter solstice festival called Yule; over time, Europeans blended Yule and Christmas traditions. Celebrants of the Chinese festival Dongzhi observe the winter solstice by making holiday foods, including tangyuan (glutinous rice balls served in a sweet broth), wontons, nuts, and soups. Scientists in Antarctica celebrate Midwinter Day in June with a holiday meal, athletic events, and movie marathons.
Each planet in the solar system has seasons determined by the tilt of its axis and the shape of its orbit, just like on Earth. Smaller tilts and more circular orbits correspond with less-noticeable seasons: On Venus and Jupiter, with minimal tilts and roundish orbits, summer and winter are pretty similar. On Mars, the tilt of 24 degrees and oval orbit give it dramatic seasonal shifts. Seasons on the solar system’s outer planets are not well understood, but scientists do know their winters last a lot longer than on Earth — about seven years on Saturn, 20 years on Uranus, and more than 40 years on Neptune.
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Snow has a habit of sticking around for a while after it falls, sometimes for weeks — or even just in our mind’s eye. It’s often a symbol of calm, quiet, and fresh beginnings; famously, the impressionist painter Monet completed more than 100 snowy landscape paintings in his lifetime. As the winter season gets into full swing, gain a new perspective on cold-weather precipitation with these six cool facts about snow.
Snow Isn’t Really White (And Sometimes It’s Orange)
Most holiday carols allude to blankets of pristine white snow — an image that’s entirely charming but scientifically a bit misleading, because snow is actually translucent. The way light passes through snow crystals causes it to bounce back and reflect the whole color spectrum at once, which is what makes it appear white to the human eye.
Most snow discoloration appears in the days after it has fallen, as snow is driven or walked over, but it’s not entirely uncommon for the powdery precipitation to take on unusual shades as it’s falling from the sky. Take, for instance, the orange snow that fell throughout Eastern Europe in 2018, tinted thanks to dust from the Saharan Desert being whipped up into the atmosphere by storms. A similar phenomenon caused brown snow to fall in Minnesota in 2019 thanks to dust storms in Texas.
Temperature has the biggest influence on a snowflake’s size. When the thermometer drops below freezing, individual flakes are generally smaller and more dry; when temperatures creep upward during a snowstorm, snow crystals end up having a higher water content, giving them a chance to clump together to produce larger snowflakes. Generally, snowflakes are dime-sized or smaller, though it’s not uncommon to witness jumbo crystals anywhere from 2 to 6 inches wide. The world’s largest snowflake reportedly reached a massive 15 inches wide; while no photographic evidence exists, reports from an 1887 snowstorm in Fort Keogh, Montana, claim the flake was “larger than milk pans.” Some skeptical scientists say the record-breaking water crystal likely wasn’t an individual snowflake, but a lump of many, since it’s normal for snowflakes to clump together as they fall at different speeds.
We know that all snowflakes have six sides thanks to Wilson Bentley, a Vermont farmer-turned-photographer and weather scientist. As a teenager, Bentley was fascinated with snow, viewing individual snowflakes under a microscope and eventually developing his own technique to photograph the magnified images. Credited with capturing the very first photo of a snowflake in 1885, Bentley spent four decades photographing more than 5,000 unique flakes, recording climate conditions for each one and publishing his findings on snowfall. (Not surprisingly, he was nicknamed “The Snowflake Man.”) Bentley’s crystal-clear images — many of which are now housed in the Smithsonian — were referenced by scientists for decades.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Earth Isn’t the Only Planet With Snow
Earth is the only planet in our solar system known to sustain life, but it’s not the only cosmic sphere with a form of snow. In 2017, scientists discovered Mars likely experiences snowstorms at night; even though the red planet is exceptionally arid, much of its polar ice caps are made of carbon dioxide, and it snows up to seven feet of the dry ice-like stuff each winter.
Venus also has its own — albeit unusual — snow, which covers the planet’s highest mountain ranges. Minerals from the planet’s surface vaporize due to the extreme temperatures (reaching nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit), entering the planet’s atmosphere. When they float back down, the dust-like particles collect as a metallic version of snow along high-altitude ridges.
A severe snowstorm can grind even the busiest cities to a halt, though colossal snowfall is the norm in many parts of Japan, including populous cities. That’s because the country is in the line of cold air coming from Siberia, which pushes across the Sea of Japan’s warmer waters to create the perfect conditions for heavy snowfall in certain areas from December through March. Snowstorms can dump exceptionally large loads of snow at higher elevations, which is why some regions, like the northern Aomori City, get more than 26 feet of snow each year. The city of Sapporo takes advantage of its 16 feet of snow by hosting an annual winter festival complete with towering snow and ice sculptures. And the coastal city of Toyama, nestled below the Hida Mountains (which get as much as 125 feet of snow annually), gets a hefty 12 feet each winter, which road crews plow into canyon-like walls along a stretch of highway called “Snow Canyon.”
Long before cars, snowy roads were less of a hassle — mostly because they made travel easier. At a time when horse-drawn carriages were the main mode of getting around, travelers could easily swap the wheels on their carts for ski-like runners, which worked best when heavy snow was compacted onto streets. (In many regions, a “snow warden” was responsible for packing down fresh snow with a snow roller — a giant, weighted wheel.) But for people making their way by foot, trudging through a city’s snow-laded walkways was a tiresome ordeal. By the mid-1800s, several inventors had designed their own horse-drawn plows to clear pedestrian paths, and in 1862, Milwaukee became the first major city to test such a contraption. Considered a success, the snow plow concept spread through many of the Great Lakes’ snowiest cities, eventually paving the way for the modern motorized version, which would emerge in the 1920s as automobiles became popular.
Nicole Garner Meeker
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Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.
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Christmas trees are perhaps the most recognizable symbol of the winter holiday season, so it’s no wonder that Americans make them a focus of the holiday. Whether you buy one from a tree lot or cut your own, nearly 30 million evergreens are sold every year in the lead-up to Christmas, and that’s just a fraction of the 350 million that are growing on Christmas tree farms throughout the U.S. Read on for 10 more facts about Christmas trees, from their origins to how they’re beneficial all year long.
Two Countries Claim To Be the Site of the First Decorated Tree
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when Christmas trees became a symbol of winter celebrations. While some historians believe they’re an ancient pagan symbol, others suggest they may not be as old as we think. The neighboring countries of Latvia and Estonia both lay claim to being the home of the first decorated Christmas tree, and both countries point to the Brotherhood of the Blackheads, a guild for merchants and traders, as proof. Members of the guild kick-started the Lenten season with tree decorating and burning in city marketplaces starting in the 15th century, though historians say there’s no conclusive evidence that these were the world’s first Christmas tree decorations.
Historians Give Germany Credit for the Christmas Tree Tradition
Regardless of the debate between Latvia and Estonia, and the fact that evergreen trees were the centerpieces of ancient solstice celebrations, many historians attribute the modern tradition of decorating an indoor tree to German culture. Researchers point to 17th-century Strasbourg, a French city that was once part of Germany, and which is thought to be home to the oldest Christmas tree market. Writings from 1605 record what historians believe is also the first indoor Christmas tree there, decorated with apples, roses, and sweet treats.
The First Artificial Christmas Trees Were Made From Feathers
It only seems right that the creators of the modern Christmas tree would also create the first artificial version. By the 19th century, demand for holiday trees had caused issues in the German lumber industry, making room for sap-free alternatives to emerge. The first artificial trees were produced in Germany during the 1880s, and commonly made from goose feathers (although turkey, chicken, or swan feathers dyed green were also used). The plumes were attached to metal wires to form delicate branches that got their lift from a wooden base.
British Royals Helped Popularize Christmas Trees
German immigrants helped spread the Christmas tree tradition throughout the world, though it wasn’t especially well received until the British royal family got involved. Many Puritan communities in the American colonies outlawed the decorations (and even Christmas celebrations themselves) in part because of their pagan associations. Across the Atlantic, the German-born Queen Charlotte, wife of British King George III, introduced the tradition of Christmas trees to her adopted country during the late 18th century. Two generations later, Queen Victoria and her German husband, Prince Albert, fueled the tradition when images of their family and decorated tree hit London newsstands in 1848.
The White House Didn’t Have a Christmas Tree Until 1889
The 2023 holiday decorations at the White House include 98 Christmas trees, but the Executive Mansion hasn’t always been bedecked by firs this time of year. It wasn’t until 1889, during President Benjamin Harrison’s administration, that a Christmas tree first appeared on the White House grounds. Just five years later, President Grover Cleveland became the first President to swap candles for electric tree lights, and it took another three decades before Calvin Coolidge lit the country’s first national Christmas tree in 1923.
Christmas Trees Grow for About 7 Years
Even with ample amounts of water, freshly cut Christmas trees have a relatively short life span, lasting between four and six weeks after harvest. However, it takes most Christmas trees years before they’re ready to leave the tree farm. Some species, like Fraser firs, can take up to 14 years to reach a desirable height of 6 to 7 feet, while Leyland cypress trees can grow as much as 3 feet per year. On average, Christmas trees move from the sapling stage to fully decorated displays in about seven years.
More Than Half of a Christmas Tree’s Weight Comes From Water
Hydration is key to keeping a Christmas tree in tip-top shape, both before and after it’s cut. The average Christmas tree weighs between 50 and 70 pounds, and upon harvest, half that weight comes from water the tree has absorbed. Freshly cut trees are heavy drinkers — just like when they were still rooted — and require about a gallon of water a day to stay green.
Oregon Grows More Christmas Trees Than Any Other State
Credit: Nathan Howard/ Getty Images News via Getty Images
Some Farms Use Helicopters to Harvest Christmas Trees
Big box stores aren’t the only retailers that feel a holiday crunch; Christmas tree farms do, too, with time-sensitive tree chopping that starts in early November and lasts just five to six weeks. The job can be tricky because of the physical labor involved in trimming, cutting, and moving trees off the farm, which is why some businesses turn to heavy-duty machinery, such as helicopters, for help. After cutting batches of trees, farmers bundle between 12 and 14 trees together with rope, then secure them to hooked lines hung from a helicopter. Pilots then deliver the haul to another location where the trees can be loaded onto trucks going to market. Some farmers say using helicopters to do the heavy lifting is five times more efficient than “mud harvesting,” aka dragging cut trees through grass and mud.
Christmas Trees Produce Tons of Oxygen
Christmas trees don’t just brighten up the dark nights of early winter — they also help provide the oxygen we need to breathe. Before they’re cut, Christmas trees function just like any other tree, absorbing carbon dioxide and other gases, and releasing oxygen into their environment. One tree can absorb about 1 ton of carbon dioxide during its time growing, and one planted acre of Christmas trees generates enough oxygen for 18 people every day — a reason to celebrate Christmas conifers all year long.
Nicole Garner Meeker
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Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.
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Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life is a certified American classic. The story follows George Bailey (James Stewart), a small-town banker and family man on the brink of a breakdown. When George is visited by a bumbling second-class guardian angel named Clarence (Henry Travers), he learns the error of his ways and discovers that life is, in fact, wonderful. Before you settle in for a viewing, get to know the film better with these 10 facts.
The Story Idea Came to Its Writer “Complete From Start to Finish”
In 1938, a writer named Philip Van Doren Stern had an idea for a story while shaving: A Christmas tale about a man on the brink of suicide, saved by his guardian angel. The author quickly sketched out the idea and, over the next five years, slowly transformed it into a short story. In 1943, he mailed about 200 copies of his yarn, called “The Greatest Gift,” as his annual Christmas card.
Eventually, a draft of “The Greatest Gift” fell into the hands of an agent at RKO Pictures, who paid the author $10,000 for the motion-picture rights. Attempts to transform the story into a screenplay fizzled until director Frank Capra stepped in. Capra’s team of writers — which included Dorothy Parker and the future Pulitzer Prize-winner Frances Goodrich — turned it into a viable script. Filming began in April 1946.
Amazingly, It’s a Wonderful Life — whose entire plot happens on Christmas Eve — was originally scheduled for a late January 1947 release. The studio intended their Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. vehicle Sinbad the Sailor to be its holiday release, but when production problems with Sinbad’s Technicolor caused a delay, the black-and-white movie got bumped to the earlier Christmas slot.
In the movie, George Bailey’s brother, Harry (Todd Karns), is a well-decorated war hero. But, in reality, that honor belonged to Jimmy Stewart. The leading man was one of the first Hollywood stars to enlist in the military after the United States entered World War II. He spent the war with the Army Air Corps and flew nearly two dozen combat bombing missions over Europe. Stewart remained active in the military for decades and eventually retired in 1968 as a brigadier general — making him America’s highest-ranking actor.
Filmed mostly at RKO’s movie ranch in Encino, California, the fictional town of Bedford Falls covered about four acres. The Main Street stretched three city blocks and the town itself contained dozens of buildings — and even 20 fully grown oak trees. (The buildings weren’t all newly constructed, though. Many of them had been used in the 1931 Oscar-winning film Cimarron.)
A lot of places claim to be the inspiration for Bedford Falls: Seneca Falls (New York), Westchester County (New York), Califon (New Jersey), and Pottersville (New Jersey) to name a few. Seneca Falls has the strongest claim — Frank Capra purportedly visited the town while working on the script — yet there’s no solid proof it was his inspiration. “I have been through every piece of paper in Frank Capra’s diaries, his archives, everything,” film historian Jeanine Basinger told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “There’s no evidence of any sort whatsoever to support this.”
If you look closely, it’s clear that Jimmy Stewart and other actors are glistening with sweat. That’s because the wintry scenes were shot in the middle of a scorching summer heat wave. Even Capra, who was known for ignoring the elements, believed the heat was too intense: He canceled one day of filming because of the rising mercury.
The Special Effects Team Invented a New Type of Fake Snow
In the 1940s, most film sets used painted corn flakes for snow scenes. Problem was, corn flakes were loud and crunchy whenever anybody stepped on them. Capra was forced to re-shoot and dub multiple scenes, costing the production time and money. To solve the problem, the film’s special effects team invented a new type of fake snow reportedly made from soap flakes and fire extinguisher foam.
Shot on a budget of $3.7 million, It’s a Wonderful Life did not recoup its costs. In fact, it left Capra $525,000 in the hole. Some blame the film’s failure on a bitter cold spell on the East Coast, which kept many would-be movie-goers indoors. Others blame the film’s dark themes. Others point fingers at the movie’s advertising team, which failed to play up the film’s relation to the Christmas season. “Instead, it portrayed the film more as a purely warm romance,” film historian Jeremy Arnold has said.
It Owes Its Subsequent Popularity to a Copyright Error
Some of the film’s actors never even saw it when it was released. Leading lady Donna Reed (who played George’s wife Mary) didn’t catch it until the late 1970s, and Karolyn Grimes, who played daughter Zuzu, waited nearly four decades. After its lackluster opening, the film was practically forgotten until 1974 when the copyright lapsed (reportedly because of a filing error). With no royalties to pay, television stations began playing It’s a Wonderful Life almost non-stop around the holidays. The movie’s popularity blossomed.
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The legendary naturalist Charles Robert Darwin, who was born in 1809 and died in 1882, is one of history’s best-known scientists. His groundbreaking book On the Origin of Species, which presented a theory of evolution by natural selection, is still the foundation of modern evolutionary study more than 160 years after its publication, and his five-year voyage on the HMS Beagle, including his trip to the Galapagos Islands, is still a widely recounted tale.
His story is more complex than you might know, though. What hobby made Darwin the object of ridicule when he was a kid? Did he actually have his lightbulb moment while visiting the Galapagos? Which animal did he spend eight whole years studying while developing his most famous theory? From his experiments in taxidermy to his habit of eating the animals he studied, here are 10 facts you may not know about the famed researcher.
Credit: Art Images/ Hulton Fine Art Collection via Getty Images
Charles Darwin Took After His Scientist Grandfather
Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin was a noted physician and botanist, and Erasmus loved the latter science so much that he was known for writing gushing poetry on the subject, in addition to translating many widely used textbooks. His book Zoonomia touched on ideas of evolution, and like his grandson, he came under fire from the English establishment, which preferred biblical chronology.
His tone, however, differed significantly from his grandson’s. One of his more popular works, a poem called “The Loves of Plants,” used titillating language to pique readers’ interest in botany. This is one of the tamer excerpts:
With secret sighs the Virgin Lily droops, And jealous Cowslips hang their tawny cups. How the young Rose in beauty’s damask pride Drinks the warm blushes of his bashful bride; With honey’d lips enamour’d Woodbines meet, Clasp with fond arms, and mix their kisses sweet.
A wealth of scientific knowledge was available at the time young Charles was in school in the early 19th century, but public schools in England had been slow to adapt it into their curriculum. Science was considered not just uncool, but uncouth at the time. The young Charles Darwin dabbled in chemistry anyway, which didn’t exactly put him in the good graces of his classmates at Shrewsbury School (in Shropshire, England), and they nicknamed him “Gas.” Even his headmaster admonished him for his hobby.
Darwin’s Father Sent Him to Med School (And He Hated It)
Darwin’s father, a physician who considered his son to be kind of a layabout, sent him to Edinburgh University to study medicine at age 16, in 1825. Darwin’s education there was formative; he learned all about the scientific disciplines he loved, like geology, botany, taxonomy, and even taxidermy. At the time, scientists banned from Anglican universities in England came to the Scottish school to discuss then-deviant ideas — such as the early rumblings of evolutionary theory. Darwin did not, however, learn much about medicine, since anatomy bored him and surgery disgusted him.
The knowledge he gained from Edinburgh would serve him well when his dad transferred him to Christ’s College, which had a much more conservative curriculum. It was one of his professors at that institution — Reverend John Stevens Henslow — who encouraged him to sail to South America on the HMS Beagle on an expedition that would eventually take him to the Galapagos Islands.
The Galapagos Islands Didn’t Immediately Lead Him to Natural Selection
At the time he set sail in 1831, Darwin was actually a creationist, holding the then-mainstream English belief that animals and their unique attributes were divinely designed rather than created through a natural process. He wouldn’t change his mind until after he came back from his trip — so despite the popular image of Darwin having a “lightbulb” moment while studying the wildlife on the Galapagos Islands, he didn’t think in detail about the archipelago’s unique ecosystem while he was there. He didn’t note the exact location on most of his bird specimens, and he didn’t collect tortoise specimens at all — only tortoise pets — even though the locals already believed that each island had a distinct race of them.
Darwin, also a geologist, did make one thrilling discovery during his time in the region, however. He noticed some fossilized trees high up in the Andes that he realized must have been underwater for quite some time, and wondered how they got there. The crew had already observed the eruption of a Chilean volcano, and later, they witnessed a major earthquake and a tidal wave up the coast. After confirming some measurements, he realized they were all connected, and proposed a theory of continental uplift: “We may confidently come to the conclusion that the forces which slowly and by little starts uplift continents,” wrote Darwin, “and those which at successive periods pour forth volcanic matter from open orifices, are identical.” His work helped pave the way for the theory of plate tectonics.
Darwin is best known today for his work as a naturalist, but knowing his views would be controversial, he didn’t share his theory of evolution by natural selection until later in life. Even on the Beagle, geology was his drive, and he wrote to his sisters back home that he “literally could not sleep” thinking about the subject. While he didn’t keep the most thorough records of animal life in the Galapagos Islands, he painstakingly studied lava flows. At the end of the five-year voyage, he had amassed 1,383 pages of notes on geology, compared to 368 on animals and plants.
So upon his return to England, he built his reputation as a well-regarded gentleman geologist. He presented his findings on the Chilean coastline to the Royal Geological Society in 1837 and published the first standalone version of his diary from the voyage, “Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle,” in 1839. He published a variety of small papers on geological formations from not just his voyage, but Scotland and Wales. In the 1840s, he published books on coral reef formations, volcanoes, and the geography of South America, but eventually retired as an active geology researcher and threw himself into studying animal life.
Darwin is one of the most influential scientists in history, but even he couldn’t knock it out of the park every time. He acquired a lot of specimens — which became a lot of clutter — during the voyage of the HMS Beagle. Soon, building off his taxidermy knowledge from university, Darwin started experimenting with new preservation techniques using wax, alcoholic spirits, and thin sheets of lead, and he’d mail his creations home to his former professor Reverend Henslow for feedback.
The results were mixed. In one letter to Darwin, Henslow describes moldy mice and crushed bird feathers, although he compliments some of the insects and lichens. Then there was the mystery fungus: “For goodness sake what is No. 223?” wrote Henslow. “It looks like the remains of an electric explosion, a mere mass of soot — something very curious I daresay.”
One specimen in his collection, rediscovered in 2009, was an egg with a large crack in it — a result not of age, but of Darwin putting it in too small of a box.
Darwin Had a Notoriously Adventurous Palate — And Ate Many of His Subjects
Even before his time as a naturalist, Darwin made a point of eating animals that weren’t part of the standard culinary repertoire. While at Christ’s College, he belonged to a group called the Glutton Club, which ate hawk, bittern (a bird in the heron family), and finally a brown owl, before disbanding.
His voyage around the world significantly expanded his options, and Darwin took full advantage, eating puma, iguanas, armadillos, giant tortoises, and his favorite, an unspecified 20-pound rodent. He spent months trying to track down a large, flightless bird called a lesser rhea (sometimes called a Darwin’s rhea), before realizing one day that he was actively dining on one. He called a halt to the meal and sent the leftovers back to England.
Aboard the Beagle, Darwin encountered one of his more fascinating subjects: a species of barnacle without a shell, which he nicknamed Mr. Arthrobalanus. During his time as a gentleman geologist, his mind kept coming back to that barnacle. He began abandoning creationism in the late 1830s, and revisiting his research, engaging with the present scientific discourse, and eventually meeting with dog and pigeon breeders to gather more research.
He sketched out his vague ideas in 1842, and later instructed his wife to publish them if he died suddenly. For the next several years, he would only share his ideas with close confidantes for fear of reprisal. One of them suggested he actually study a species, any species, in depth before he started speculating about their origin — so Darwin finally returned to his barnacles to gain some clarity.
Unfortunately, it turned into a way bigger project than he’d anticipated, since most previous research on barnacles was sloppy, badly cataloged, and riddled with mistakes. So he set about reclassifying everything, requesting barnacle specimens from around the world for study. It sounds tedious, but apparently Darwin loved the work and welcomed a chance to get hands-on again.
His peers made fun of him mercilessly, but it turned out he had a lot to learn from the tiny marine creatures, and cataloged every little nuance and link between them. Eventually it paid off, earning him a Royal Society medal in 1853. Through this work, he gained hands-on experience he needed to strengthen the theory that would make him famous.
Writing and Publishing “The Origin of Species” Was Extremely Stressful
Even as Darwin started to experience his scientific awakening, he never lost sight of the consequences of stating his views publicly. To mainstream Anglican society, anything but creationism was heresy. Evolution as a general idea was already pretty well established, and some atheists who espoused it were being jailed for blasphemy. Darwin had a long way to fall if he was caught before he was fully ready.
Meanwhile, starting in the late 1830s, Darwin began suffering from a host of health problems, including severe nausea. Some experts theorize that this was the result of an illness he contracted on his travels, while others contend it was anxiety-related. Regardless, he was stressed: In 1842, he moved his family outside of London, and even lowered the road outside their house so he would be harder to see. He started turning to spa treatments and quack cures for his illness, even resorting to tying plate batteries to his stomach.
When it came time to actually publish the manuscript, Darwin’s anxiety was especially high. His nausea worsened, and he was taken to a spa in Yorkshire when his book was published in 1859. Two weeks beforehand, he’d sent copies to 11 prominent scientists asking for support, but included intensely self-deprecating passages such as “how savage you will be, if you read it, and how you will long to crucify me alive!” He later described this time as like “living in Hell.”
Charles Darwin’s son George Darwin spent his childhood helping his father in his lab. Famously, upon visiting a friend’s house without a study, he asked, “But where does your father do his barnacles?”
This junior researcher went on to become the next in the family line of scientists as a celebrated astronomer and pioneering geophysicist, best known for his theory that the moon was once part of the Earth before it was pulled away by solar tides to create a satellite. This is generally considered unlikely now, but, as the first theory of sun-Earth-moon evolution based on mathematics applied to geophysics, it was groundbreaking at the time. In a way, it was a very early step toward what most astronomers believe today: that because of some sort of impact, parts of Earth and another unknown celestial body combined to become the moon.
Sarah Anne Lloyd
Writer
Sarah Anne Lloyd is a freelance writer whose work covers a bit of everything, including politics, design, the environment, and yoga. Her work has appeared in Curbed, the Seattle Times, the Stranger, the Verge, and others.
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Air travel used to be a fancy occasion with comfortable seats and dapper dress, but those days are long gone. Modern airports are exhausting, plane seats are tiny, and the journey is rarely fun. But there are ways we can make flights a little more bearable, or even enjoyable, for those around us — after all, we’re all in it together until we reach our destination. A little bit of consideration for our fellow passengers can go a long way. Next time you board a plane, follow these 10 tips for a nice flight.
Before you leave, look up current security guidelines for the airport, carry-on limits for your flight, and other pertinent information. It will save everybody, including yourself, time in the long run, and it’ll help you avoid unexpected faux pas — like holding up the line — at security or your departure gate. This doubly applies if you’re traveling with something like a stroller or a fragile item.
Stow Carry-On Suitcases Wheels First and on Their Side
Everyone has to share the overhead bins, so try to take up as little space as possible. If your suitcase will fit on its side, place it that way; doing so will help more luggage fit in the bin. If your carry-on has wheels, they should go toward the back of the bin — with the handle facing out — so you don’t struggle with them when you go to take down your suitcase at your destination. And if you have a small bag that will fit under the seat in front of you, keep it out of the bin to save that space for someone else.
If you’re told your flight is late or that your bag won’t fit in the overhead bin, try to face the unwelcome news with calm and grace — getting heated won’t change the outcome and will only make the airline employee’s job harder and your fellow passengers uncomfortable.
Reclining airplane seats, especially in economy class, is a hot-button issue. Some people are firmly in the anti-recline camp, but others think there’s a little wiggle room here. Regardless, never recline more than absolutely necessary, and check with the person behind you before you lean back, so you don’t launch everything on their tray table into their face. Even staunch recline opponents will concede that a little is permissible on long-haul and red-eye flights.
Credit: NattawitK/ iStock
Middle Seat Gets the Armrests
If there’s onethingetiquetteexperts can agree on about air travel, it’s that the person in the center seat — unquestionably the least desirable one in the window-middle-aisle configuration — gets the armrests if they want them. It’s a small consolation prize for not having the view of the window seat or the ease of egress of the aisle.
Wearing headphones for your in-flight entertainment should go without saying, but since everything has a speaker on it now, it’s worth mentioning. Don’t disturb your neighbors with your music or movies, and if you’re using wireless headphones, double-check that they’re fully connected.
It’s fine to enjoy a drink when you fly — that’s what beverage service is for — but imbibe with caution. It can be difficult to gauge whether you’ve had too much when you’re confined to a seat. Strictly speaking, drinking at high altitudes doesn’t make you drunker, but alcohol can exacerbate the disorienting effects of flying. Check in with yourself and don’t get carried away.
Nobody wants to be seated near a screaming baby on an airplane, but nobody wants the baby to stop screaming more than their parents do. If you’re a child-free passenger, stop to consider whether a parent has control over something before airing your concerns. Nobody can reason with an infant, especially when experiencing painful changes in cabin pressure for the first time, but parents do have an obligation to intervene if their kindergartener is kicking the back of your seat. Just be kind when you ask. (One etiquette expert suggests that kids are less likely to kick in their stocking feet.)
It’s smart and frugal to pack your own food to bring on a plane, but it’s rude to grab a tuna salad sandwich in the terminal and take it with you. Packed food should be as tidy and unsmelly as possible for the sake of both your fellow passengers, who have to share your air, and the flight attendants who have to clean up after you. After all, you can’t exactly crack a window.
Flying is notoriously uncomfortable, but bare feet should not come out on the plane. If you’re expecting to remove your shoes, wear socks. It’ll keep your bare feet from touching the ground at security anyway.
Sarah Anne Lloyd
Writer
Sarah Anne Lloyd is a freelance writer whose work covers a bit of everything, including politics, design, the environment, and yoga. Her work has appeared in Curbed, the Seattle Times, the Stranger, the Verge, and others.
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As the days grow shorter and the nighttime lengthens, cultures around the world celebrate a variety of autumn and winter festivals meant to honor a fruitful harvest, the birth of Jesus, and much more. Whether it’s the spooky good time of Halloween, the feast of Thanksgiving, or the meaningful celebrations that occur around the solstice, these facts will provide plenty of conversation-starters to help keep you warm.
One of the Largest Oktoberfest Celebrations in the World Takes Place in Ontario
Cooler weather, shorter days, and changing leaves are small harbingers of one undeniable truth: Oktoberfest is at hand. Most years (except 2020 and 2021) since 1810, the German town of Munich has erected massive beer tents, tapped kegs filled with liquid masterpieces such as helles, Pilsner, and hefeweizen, and held the world-renowned beer celebration called Oktoberfest — the largest beer festival in the world. Although Germany will likely never relinquish its beer-guzzling crown, a few towns around the world hold similar Bavarian bashes that rival the original. One of the biggest is the Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest, held about 75 miles west of Toronto. Established with only $200 back in 1969, the festival has exploded in popularity in the ensuing decades, and regularly attracts more than 700,000 people — including Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who opened the 2016 festival by tapping its first keg.
The First Oktoberfest Was Actually a Wedding Celebration
On October 12, 1810, Prince Regent Ludwig of Bavaria married Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. Five days later, all the locals were invited to take part in the royal couple’s marital bliss by celebrating at a party complete with a horse race on a large open field outside the city. The gathering was such a success, the town decided to have another party (and horse race) the next year, and then a third one in 1812. By 1818, drink stands began supplying the beer, and those stands had transformed into tents by 1896. While this Bavarian couple isn’t a household name today, their wedding reception, now known as Oktoberfest, is technically the longest wedding celebration in human history. Although at first glance the original intent of the celebration appears lost amid untold gallons of lagers and ales, its legacy lives on: Every year since its inception, the fest takes place on the same stretch of ground that celebrated the royal couple’s union all those years ago. It’s known as Theresienwiese, or “Therese’s fields.”
It’s not exactly clear what ancient Celts did during Samhain, the pagan holiday we now link with Halloween, but historians have some idea thanks to a surviving bronze calendar. The first written mentions of Samhain appeared in Europe around the first century, marking winter’s swift approach and the start of the Celtic new year. Celebrated on October 31, Samhain was a time when the wall between the spirit plane and the living world was thought to be at its weakest, allowing spirits to cross the boundary with ease. In an effort to curb vandalism and mishaps from angsty ghosts, the Celts hosted welcoming bonfires and left food offerings; eventually, the practice transitioned to dressing as ghouls themselves and traveling door to door in search of refreshments and merriment. Modern Halloween has held tight to many Celtic traditions, like fortunetelling and bobbing for apples, but Roman Christian attempts to squash pagan ceremonies starting around 600 CE started the slow transition from religious festival to spooky secular event.
Before Carving Pumpkins for Halloween, People Used To Carve Turnips
Turnips aren’t usually considered fancy fare — over the years they’ve served as livestock fodder and occasionally been used to pelt unpopular figures in public. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, however, they weren’t just begrudgingly served for dinner, but also used as small lanterns. The durable root crop is often harvested as the weather cools, and in Ireland, that was just in time for the Celtic celebration of Samhain. Because ancient Celts believed that the separation between the living world and spirit realm was at its weakest during autumn, it was thought possible for ghosts and demons to cause mischief. To protect themselves and their homes, superstitious folk across the British Isles would carve frightening faces into produce — sometimes potatoes or beets, but most commonly turnips — as a way to ward off harm. With a lit candle placed inside, the illuminated faces acted as old-world lanterns that banished the unwanted and guided the way along dark paths.
While apple pie may have misappropriated origins (the first recipe appeared in England around 1381, not in the U.S.), pumpkin pie deserves more credit as a purely American dessert. The spiced autumnal pie that now inspires countless fall desserts and drinks was concocted by early English colonists who encountered native pumpkins for the first time. Accounts from the mid-1600s suggest that newcomers to young America were reliant on pumpkins, brewing them in ale and baking them into pies. Because of their easy-to-grow nature, pumpkins became popular throughout Europe, where countless recipes for the baked squash pies directed chefs to boil pumpkin flesh in milk or mix pumpkin puree with baked apples.
Modern pumpkin pie construction became significantly less laborious around the 1920s, when Libby’s brand launched its first canned pumpkin puree. Most cooks today continue to opt for the store-bought ingredient, though pie purists may just opt to roast their own pumpkins, considering commercial purees actually consist of a sweeter, butternut-like squash. Pumpkin pie may be seasonal, but the tradition of adding your own flair is what keeps it around from year to year — just like every other popular dessert.
A Connecticut Town Once Postponed Thanksgiving Because There Wasn’t Enough Molasses
In October 1705, the Connecticut settlement of Colchester was facing an early winter. While New England was known for its cold snaps, this one was unusually premature and severe, with temperatures so low that nearby waterways froze. The timing was unfortunate; the community had not yet received wintertime provisions, which were typically shipped to them by boat, and a day of Thanksgiving — planned for November 4 — was quickly approaching. (At the time, Thanksgiving was not yet a fixed holiday.) The most important item, molasses, was running low in pantries around town, and without it, residents faced a gloomy situation: Thanksgiving without bread, baked beans, or pumpkin pie. Rather than suffer a paltry holiday spread, town residents voted to postpone Thanksgiving by a week in the hope that a molasses delivery would arrive in time. (Apparently it did.) In the years to follow, the event was dubbed the “Great Colchester Molasses Shortage,” and eventually parodied in poems.
“Black Friday” Once Referred to Employees Calling In Sick After Thanksgiving
The day after Thanksgiving is known for the deluge of holiday shoppers that descends on stores for serious savings. Some will tell you that the term “Black Friday” originally referred to the bottom lines of these stores, as the day of skyrocketing sales sent them out of the “red” (losing money) and into the “black” (making money) — hence, “Black Friday.” However, the origins of the phrase are a bit murkier.
The first known use of “Black Friday” to describe the day after Thanksgiving comes from the November 1951 issue of the magazine Factory Management and Maintenance. In it, a writer hyperbolically describes the day as “a disease second only to the bubonic plague in its effects. At least that’s the feeling of those who have to get production out, when the ‘Black Friday’ comes along. The shop may be half empty, but every absentee was sick … ” In other words, “Black Friday” wasn’t about hordes of shoppers pulsing through stores, but weary (and possibly hungover) factory workers calling in sick.
Although this is the first recorded use of the term, it’s unlikely that this version is what eventually became known across the U.S. as “Black Friday” in the late 20th century. Our modern sense of the term likely originated in the 1950s, when Philadelphia cops began using “Black Friday” to describe the traffic mayhem of shoppers and sports fans descending on the city after Thanksgiving and before the Army-Navy football game on Saturday. Philadelphia stores tried to change the name to “Big Friday” but failed, so instead transformed the day’s negative connotation into a positive one, and the idea of “Black Friday” as a day of financial solvency was born.
Although Hanukkah is one of the most-talked-about Jewish holidays because of its proximity to Christmas, it’s far from the faith’s holiest of days. The two High Holy days for Jews are Rosh Hashanah, which is a new year celebration, and Yom Kippur, or “Day of Atonement,” when Jews seek reconciliation with God for their sins. Even somewhat lesser-known holidays, such as Sukkot, are considered more religiously important than Hanukkah. However, the holiday’s commercialization (in lock step with Christmas) during the 20th century has made it one of the most well-known celebrations of Judaism around the world.
The word “Hanukkah” is a transliteration of the Hebrew word for “dedication.” This is a reference to the historical moment at the heart of the holiday, the rededication of the Second Temple of Jerusalem during the Maccabean Revolt of the second century BCE. At the time, the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire was forcibly oppressing the Jewish population by trying to eradicate their religious practices; as part of this effort, they defiled the temple and placed an idol on its altar. In 164 BCE, the Maccabees (a group of Jewish warriors) recaptured Jerusalem, cleansed the temple, and rededicated it on the 25th day of Kislev, a month in the Hebrew calendar (and the date used today to mark the beginning of Hanukkah). The eight candles on a hanukkiyah commemorate the moment when Jews relit the temple’s ner tamid (Hebrew for “eternal light”), a lamp meant to burn perpetually in a synagogue. Although they had only one day’s worth of oil, the flame miraculously burned for eight days — enough time to get more purified oil to feed the flame.
Whether you call it a Hanukkah doughnut or sufganiyot, this deep-fried treat filled with jelly and covered in powdered sugar is delicious in any language. And just as Jews eat matzah and other unleavened breads during Passover, there’s a reason fried foods like sufganiyot are served during Hanukkah: Doing so commemorates the miracle of the oil. This is among the oldest culinary customs of them all, as eating deep-fried pastries during Hanukkah was already considered a long-standing tradition in the 12th century.
As for the name, an Israeli folktale suggests that God gave Adam and Eve sufganiyot to make them feel better after their exile from the Garden of Eden; this interpretation is rooted in the fact that sufganiyah reads similarly to sof-gan-yud-hey, or “the end of the Garden of the Lord.”
Credit: Heritage Images/ Hulton Fine Art Collection via Getty Images
Many Cultures Observe the Winter Solstice With a Festival
Winter solstice celebrations often note the passage of time with feasts and gatherings. People in ancient Rome held Saturnalia, a holiday on which social conventions were turned upside down to honor Saturn — the god of the harvest — and the conclusion of the planting season. The Venerable Bede, an English monk who lived in the eighth century, wrote about the Germanic winter solstice festival called Yule; over time, Europeans blended Yule and Christmas traditions. Celebrants of the Chinese festival Dongzhi observe the winter solstice by making holiday foods, including tangyuan (glutinous rice balls served in a sweet broth), wontons, nuts, and soups. Scientists in Antarctica celebrate Midwinter Day in June with a holiday meal, athletic events, and movie marathons.
Each planet in the solar system has seasons determined by the tilt of its axis and the shape of its orbit, just like on Earth. Smaller tilts and more circular orbits correspond with less-noticeable seasons: On Venus and Jupiter, with minimal tilts and roundish orbits, summer and winter are pretty similar. On Mars, the tilt of 24 degrees and oval orbit give it dramatic seasonal shifts. Seasons on the solar system’s outer planets are not well understood, but scientists do know their winters last a lot longer than on Earth — about seven years on Saturn, 20 years on Uranus, and more than 40 years on Neptune.
Children have been sending letters to Santa for longer than the United States Postal Service has existed to deliver them, though today, they’re far more likely to get a response. In early America, children’s holiday wish lists were often written out and left by the fireplace or burned in hearths, with the belief that the ashes would rise through the chimney and out to the holiday helper himself. Today, there’s no fireplace necessary — just a stamp — since the USPS gives Santa Claus his own address: 123 Elf Road, North Pole, 88888.
After the creation of the Postal Service in 1775, letters to Santa began flooding mailboxes; local postmasters would sometimes intercept the mail and respond to children themselves (though this is technically mail fraud, most postal workers considered the deed an act of kindness and looked the other way). Eventually, the lack of a specific postal route for thousands of Santa letters became problematic for real-life delivery workers. By 1907, the sheer number of unanswered letters bogged down the Postal Service’s dead-letter office (the home for unclaimed or undeliverable mail), and many ended in incineration. So, the country’s postmaster allowed post offices to give Santa letters to generous individuals and charitable organizations, who then answered letters and delivered gifts. Dubbed Operation Santa in 1912, the program has continued for more than a century. It’s gotten a modern update, however: Wish lists from children and adults are anonymized and digitized, then uploaded to the USPS website, giving holiday do-gooders the chance to play Santa and reply with the kindness of a surprise gift.
Ugly Christmas Sweater Parties Started With Two Canadians
Ah, the ugly Christmas sweater. Now an ironic-yet-nostalgic mainstay of the holiday season, the look forces even the coolest fashion kids to raid their parents’ closets in search of itchy, unbecoming outerwear. According to the Ugly Christmas Sweater Party Book: The Definitive Guide for Getting Your Ugly On, two Canadians are actually responsible for the phenomenon. The book credits Vancouver residents Chris Boyd and Jordan Birch as the two young men who threw the first-ever ugly Christmas sweater party in 2002. In an interview on Canadian TV, Boyd and Birch explained that they were hoping to put on a “cheesy, feel-good, festive party, and the sweaters were a main ingredient of that.” In the years since, hipsters and hip, fun-loving bosses alike have jumped on the bandwagon, creating a wholesome custom perfect for revelers of all ages (as well as a booming industry of purposefully hideous knitwear).
Even if you’ve never tried this dessert, you’re probably familiar with the lyric “now bring us some figgy pudding” from “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” While that song possibly dates to the 16th century, figgy pudding itself is at least two centuries older than that. In the 14th century, it was used as a food-preservation technique and resembled a porridge consisting of beef, mutton, wines, spices, raisins, and prunes. It wasn’t until the 1700s, when fruit was more widely available, that figgy pudding became sweet, rather than savory, and much more similar to what we eat today.
You might notice one ingredient conspicuously missing from the original recipe: actual figs. We have the vagaries of Middle English to thank for that, as the word “figgy” (or fygey, ffygey, figgee, and several other spellings) didn’t necessarily imply the use of figs, and its meaning changed along with the various recipes.
Candy Canes Are Also Likely a Centuries-Old Tradition
Candy canes are rumored to have originated in Germany in the 1600s, when choirmasters at the famed Cologne Cathedral would hand out sugar sticks to their choir boys to keep them from being chatty during the Living Crèche (or Live Nativity) ceremony. The bent cane is believed to have been either a nod to the candy’s religious origins or a more practical solution for those who wanted to hang the sweets on their Christmas trees. Interestingly, the original candy canes were all-white; it wasn’t until production was automated around the turn of the 20th century that the iconic red stripes and peppermint flavoring were added (likely for increased marketability).
Kissing Under the Mistletoe Comes From a Greek Myth
Sneaking in a kiss under the mistletoe is as Hallmark as it gets. And the history behind the practice is, fittingly, also classic — mythology-classic, in fact. According to legend, the Norse god Baldur was killed by a sprig of mistletoe; he had woken up that morning afraid that every plant and animal species was out to get him, so his loving mother and wife went out to ask every plant and animal to leave him alone. The women forgot to ask mistletoe, however, and a sprig of the evergreen ultimately killed him. His mother, the goddess Frigga, wept tears that turned into white berries on the mistletoe. She was able to revive him, and in celebration, Frigga proclaimed mistletoe the plant of love. The ancient Druids, Greeks, and Romans all also believed that mistletoe could restore fertility, likely due to the fact that the plant remains green and hardy even in the worst winter weather. And so, the practice of smooching under the mistletoe was born.
One Dollar bill with Santa Claus Face.
Santa Claus Has Appeared on U.S. Currency
The United States and its currency seem inseparably linked, but for much of the country’s history, an official, standardized U.S. dollar didn’t exist. In its place was a Wild West of currencies from competing banks located across several states. In their zeal to earn goodwill and customers, a few of these institutions even minted some rather creative banknotes. These bills didn’t feature the chiseled visage of General Washington or other real-life American leaders, but instead the pudgy, bearded face of St. Nick, among other figures.
For the St. Nicholas Bank of New York City, featuring the bank’s namesake on its currency made some sort of sense. But other banks, seemingly unaffiliated with Father Christmas, also issued Santa money. For example,in the 1850s, the Howard Banking Company issued its Sinter Klaas note, which depicted a St. Nick scene from Dutch legend. A total of 21 banks in eight states created notes featuring Santa Claus, with seven of them even printing an entire Santa Claus vignette on their currency. These fun funds came to an end in 1863, when the National Bank Act created a national currency in an effort to standardize banking throughout the U.S. While these Santa bills are now considered “obsolete,” the notes remain highly prized in certain collecting circles and are doing much more than just ho-ho-holding their value.
Christmas and Hanukkah celebrate moments that occurred more than two millennia ago, but Kwanzaa is a much more modern invention. In August 1965, the Watts Riots broke out in Los Angeles and left 34 people dead and $40 million in property damage. Horrified by the devastation, a Black activist and scholar named Maulana Karenga decided to create a holiday that celebrated African culture in an effort to unite the community. Karenga pulled influences from “first fruits” festivals across Africa, including Ashanti, Zulu, and Swazi harvest celebrations, and on December 26, 1966, the first Kwanzaa commemorations were held in Los Angeles among Karenga’s family and friends.
Kwanzaa always begins on December 26 and ends on January 1. Although the holiday immediately follows Christmas, Kwanzaa is a nonreligious celebration, the aim of which is only to highlight African culture and communities — and not to replace religious traditions. In fact, many people who celebrate Kwanzaa also celebrate the Christmas holiday on December 25.
Seven Principles Are Central to the Kwanzaa Celebration
The Nguzo Saba, or seven principles, are seven themes of reflection for each day of Kwanzaa. These principles are Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibility), Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba (creativity), and Imani (faith). Each of the principles is said to be reflected in one candle on the kinara, the seven-candle candelabra used in Kwanzaa celebrations.
In addition to the seven principles, there are also seven important symbols at the heart of Kwanzaa. Mazao (crops) are a symbol of productive labor. The mkeka is a mat that represents the foundation and traditions of African history. The kinara and the mishumaa saba (aka the seven candles) represent the seven principles, as described. The kikombe cha umoja, or unity cup, is what brings the African community together. The muhindi (corn) represents children and the future, and finally, the zawadi are gifts (encouraged to be educational or homemade) given as a sign of commitment. On December 31, families also have a feast called karamu and often dress in traditional African clothing, including dashikis and kaftans.
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The First Ball Drops Were Designed for Ship Captains, Not New Year’s Eve
Whether at home on the couch or among the crowds in Times Square, watching the New Year’s Eve ball drop symbolizes a fresh start. But as the ball descends to mark another year gone by, it also harkens back to an era when knowing the exact time was much more difficult. Before the 20th century, timekeeping was significantly less precise; most people noted the time thanks to church bells that rang on the hour, though the system was often inaccurate. For sailors and ship captains, knowing the exact time was key for charting navigational courses, and they used a device called a chronometer to keep track of time onboard ships. That’s why Robert Wauchope, a captain in the British navy, created the time ball in 1829. The raised balls were visible to ships along the British coastline, and they were manually dropped at the same time each day, allowing ships to set their chronometers to the time at their port of departure. At sea, navigators would calculate longitude based on local time, which they could determine from the angle of the sun, and the time on their chronometer.
Time balls emerged as a timekeeping feature throughout the world, though their reign was short-lived. The devices fell out of fashion by the 1880s, thanks to the availability of self-winding clocks. The concept would eventually be co-opted by TheNew York Times in 1907, when the newspaper’s formerly explosive New Year’s Eve celebrations were barred from using fireworks. Organizers took a chance by looking back at the time ball’s influence, and decided a lighted midnight drop was the perfect way to honor the occasion.
Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Drops Bologna on New Year’s Eve
For more than 25 years, the town of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, has dropped a giant package of bologna for New Year’s Eve. Lebanon is renowned for its bologna, first pioneered by the Pennsylvania Dutch, so the town’s meat-based tradition makes sense. Although it started at the end of 1997, the idea for a bologna drop was bandied about on local radio stations and newspapers for years. Local bologna maker Kutztown Bologna made a 100-pound, 6-foot-long piece of meat for the inaugural celebration, and bologna has been a fixture of Lebanon’s New Year’s celebrations ever since.
Since 2012, Boise, the capital of Idaho, has stayed true to its state’s starch-filled history by dropping a giant illuminated potato made of resin as the final seconds of the year tick away. The potato, of course, is the official state vegetable of Idaho, and its russet masterpieces are shipped around the world. This is thanks in large part to the state’s volcanic soil, as well as the Snake River, which provides the water and silt that makes Idaho a potato-producing powerhouse. Boise, which is near the Snake River, honors this agricultural heritage with a New Year’s Eve celebration filled with food, music, and 40,000 attendees breathlessly waiting for a crane to drop a massive potato — all in front of the state’s capitol building.
New Underwear Is a New Year’s Tradition in Some Latin American Countries
Bear (bare?) with us — new underwear is a New Year’s thing in Brazil and many parts of Latin America. Guided by the spirit of “ano novo, vida nova” (“new year, new life”), wearing new underwear is rooted in both tradition and superstition. Drop your … hints … before December 31, because underwear that’s a gift is said to be the best luck of all. There’s a color code, as well. Wear white clothing and choose your base layer depending on your wish for the new year: red for passion, green for health, yellow for money, and multicolored if you’d like a little bit of everything.
Meanwhile, Buckwheat Noodles Are a New Year’s Tradition in Japan
Japan has a wealth of traditions welcoming the new year, but toshikoshi-soba (buckwheat noodles) are by far the tastiest. “Year-crossing noodles” are long, symbolizing longevity, but also easily cut, symbolizing cutting ties and letting go of the past year. Other observances include temple bells chiming 108 times. Known as joya no kane, the bells represent the spiritual cleansing of the 108 worldly passions in Buddhist tradition.
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Thanksgiving traditions have evolved. Native American perspectives on the holiday are more often honored. Some people dispense with the turkey for more creative dishes. And the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions are no longer the only NFL teams that regularly suit up to play on the fourth Thursday of November. Yet the rollout of the soaring balloons, elaborate floats, and captivating performers of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been a near-constant for almost a century. Here are nine facts about the annual celebration that kick-starts Thanksgiving Day and keeps us going until the still-undefeated tradition of passing out from too much food settles in.
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The First Parade Was Held in 1924
The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, on November 27, 1924, looked decidedly different from the well-oiled contemporary versions that now chug through midtown Manhattan. Billed as “Macy’s Christmas Parade,” the marching gala covered just two city blocks and included an assortment of elephants, bears, and camels from the Central Park Zoo in lieu of balloons. On the other hand, it did feature the now-traditional element of a sleigh-riding Santa Claus, who beckoned children to the window display at the finishing point of Macy’s flagship store on 34th Street. Although the New York Herald devoted only two sentences to the event the following day, the parade was enough of a success for Macy’s to immediately announce a sequel for the following year.
Early Artistic Director Tony Sarg Introduced the Parade’s Balloons
The development of the Macy’s parade into an immensely popular attraction is largely due to the efforts of its early artistic director, Tony Sarg. An illustrator, puppeteer, and inventor, Sarg designed the marionette-filled Macy’s window display that capped the inaugural gala. More importantly, he introduced the giant balloons that are now indispensable to the proceedings; the first one, Felix the Cat, took flight over marchers and onlookers in 1927. Sarg continued to design new balloons for Macy’s, as well as for parades in Philadelphia and Boston, until his death in 1942.
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Approximately 50,000 Hours of Labor Are Expended Toward the Parade
So what goes into the making of this annual spectacle? According to the record-keepers at Ripley’s, a typical parade sees 200 pounds of glitter applied to each float and 750 pounds of gas used to inflate one balloon. Additionally, more than 300 wardrobe and makeup artists are hired to tend to the 600 performing cheerleaders and dancers, 2,800 marching band members, and 1,600 balloon handlers. Altogether, some 50,000 hours of labor are expended each year by Macy’s employees in the buildup to one momentous morning designed to entertain the 3.5 million fans regularly in attendance.
The Parade Halted for Three Years During World War II
Although the parade normally goes on, rain or shine, it was suspended from 1942 to ’44 when valuable resources were diverted to the war effort. Specifically, the precious helium normally used to inflate balloons was instead earmarked for blimps, while the material used to create the balloons themselves became 650 pounds of scrap rubber. When a helium shortage again posed a problem for the 1958 festivities, organizers worked around it by deploying vacuum cleaners to fill the balloons and cranes to carry them along the parade route.
Although everyone loves the Snoopys and Kermit the Frogs that drift over the festivities, these titanic balloons have caused their share of problems over the years. Initially, they were allowed to drift away after the parade’s end, with a reward offered for their return, until one pilot nearly crashed her plane as she chased down a floater in 1932. In later years, a Popeye the Sailor balloon drenched the crowd with water from his rain-filled hat in 1957, and an errant Sonic the Hedgehog crashed into a streetlight in 1993. But the biggest balloon-related disaster came when strong winds pushed the Cat in the Hat into another streetlight in 1997, producing a debris shower that injured four.
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Macy’s Parade Studio Employees Are on the Job Year-Round
While most of us don’t think about the parade until sometime close to Thanksgiving, it’s a year-round job for the 26 full-time painters, carpenters, sculptors, and metal workers employed at Macy’s Parade Studio. Located in a warehouse in unassuming Moonachie, New Jersey, the facility is big enough to store and test the durability of each balloon before its Thanksgiving appearance. A more complicated endeavor is the creation of new floats, which can take four to nine months from the time of the earliest sketches to the finished product. The kicker: Each float needs to be partially deconstructed into an 8.5-foot-wide vehicle in order to fit into the Lincoln Tunnel for its trip to New York City.
Largely unnoticed but nevertheless crucial to the parade’s proceedings are the drivers in charge of towing the bulky floats. As members of the Teamsters Local 817 union, which represents transportation and other workers in the film, TV, and theater industries in New York City, the drivers are asked to wear jackets and ties for the occasion, even if they’re largely hidden in their trucks. Apparently few look forward to the responsibility of pulling Santa’s parade-tailing sleigh, which involves a lot of waiting around. And all drivers bear the burden of getting their floats back to the New Jersey facility on their own, which usually entails dealing with some gnarly holiday traffic.
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Attendees of the 2012 Parade Found Surprising Information Among the Confetti
Although most people in attendance can count on being entertained by the sights and sounds of the parade, few expect to become privy to confidential information by way of the confetti showered along the way. But that’s what happened to a group of college students near 65th Street and Central Park West in 2012, who found Social Security numbers, arrest records, and details of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s motorcade route among the shredded papers in their vicinity. Following an investigation, it turned out that the leaked information was courtesy of a member of the Nassau County Police Department, who apparently used office documents to create a batch of homemade confetti.
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A Smaller Production Was Prepared for the COVID-Affected 2020 Parade
Although a world war scuttled the annual parade in the early 1940s, Macy’s wasn’t about to let a global pandemic do the same to the 2020 gala. Taking every precaution possible, organizers slashed the regular participating workforce of about 8,000 people to under 1,000. The diminished help was offset by reductions in the number of balloons (from 16 down to 12) and floats (26 to 18). The parade itself lasted one block across 34th Street, way down from the standard 2.5-mile route, as fans were discouraged from attending. Yet the TV coverage managed to fill up the regular three-hour time slot from 9 a.m. to noon, thanks to the staggering of live footage with prerecorded musical acts, and the entire affair mostly kept pace with viewership of previous parades, with 20.7 million people tuning in to get a glimpse of normalcy during that COVID-marred year.
Tim Ott
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Tim Ott has written for sites including Biography.com, History.com, and MLB.com, and is known to delude himself into thinking he can craft a marketable screenplay.
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Generations of Americans have been gathering to celebrate Thanksgiving for hundreds of years, sharing holiday stories and trivia around the dinner table. However, not everything we once learned about the holiday has held up to the test of time (or further examination). Here are seven common Thanksgiving myths worth busting — and sharing — between slices of pumpkin pie.
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Myth: Thanksgiving Has Been Celebrated Since the 1600s
Americans haven’t continuously celebrated Thanksgiving since its first iteration in 1621. In fact, there are few surviving details of the earliest Thanksgiving celebration; according to some historians, that’s because colonists didn’t view the meal as a new tradition. While Thanksgiving-like events occasionally occurred in the century after, it wasn’t until 1789 that George Washington began the trend of Presidents declaring official days of autumnal celebration. Even then, Thanksgiving didn’t become a national holiday until 1863, when a campaign for its recognition was supported by President Abraham Lincoln.
Myth: Colonists Who Arrived on the Mayflower Were Called Pilgrims
“Pilgrim” is the term we commonly use today to refer to the European settlers who ventured across the Atlantic, though that’s not what passengers on the Mayflower went by. Those who boarded the ship to start a new life in North America referred to themselves as “saints” or “separatists” because of their division from the Church of England. Later on, the colonists would be called “first-comers” or “forefathers,” until around 1800, when the term “pilgrim” emerged, and stuck.
Myth: Pumpkin Pie Was Served at the First Thanksgiving
Pumpkin pie is synonymous with Thanksgiving, though the earliest celebrations likely didn’t include the custardy confection. Initially, the colonial settlement in Plymouth, Massachusetts, lacked an oven, making it difficult to bake such a dish. Many historians point out that the colonists also lacked the sweeteners needed to create desserts like pie or cranberry sauce. Those weren’t the only foods lacking, however; potato dishes were also absent, and it’s possible venison, not turkey, was served as the centerpiece dish.
Myth: Thanksgiving Has Always Been Held in November
The earliest national observances of Thanksgiving didn’t follow a pattern; instead of occurring on a predictable date, the timing of the holiday was left up to the President. As noted above, George Washington was the first President to acknowledge Thanksgiving, designating Thursday, November 26, 1789, as a day of prayer and gratitude. However, Thomas Jefferson refused to declare a date, citing a conflict of church and state. And in 1815, fourth President James Madison set Thanksgiving for April of that year. While November celebrations were typical, Thanksgiving didn’t get its official designation as the fourth Thursday of the month until 1941.
Myth: Abraham Lincoln Began the Turkey-Pardoning Tradition
Tad Lincoln, the youngest son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, had a soft spot for animals, including a turkey meant to be the family’s Christmas dinner in 1863. Tad successfully argued against eating the bird, and instead kept the turkey as a pet, jump-starting the misconception that Lincoln was the first President to pardon a turkey for Thanksgiving. American Presidents have received live turkeys as holiday tokens since the 1870s, and many ended up served on platters instead of spending their remaining days on a farm. Turkey pardons happened sporadically, but it wasn’t until 1989 (with President George H.W. Bush at the country’s helm) that such pardoning became a formal tradition.
While both sweet potatoes and yams are associated with Thanksgiving, the two tubers aren’t the same — biologically, they’re not even related. These root crops have noticeable differences: Yams are larger, with a darker exterior that feels rough to the touch, like tree bark. Sweet potatoes are typically smaller, with a smoother skin. When it comes to their inner contents, yams have more starch and are drier than sweet potatoes, and are typically not as sweet. In fact, most “yams” sold in the U.S. are just mislabeled sweet potatoes.
Thanksgiving is one of America’s oldest traditions, though Americans aren’t the only ones who celebrate a harvest season holiday. Canadians have long observed their own Thanksgiving, dating back to 1578 when explorer Sir Martin Frobisher set sail from England in an attempt to discover the Northwest Passage. To honor the safe journey, Frobisher and crew had a feast of meager rations — biscuits, salt beef, and peas. The date became an official holiday three centuries later, in 1879. Outside of North America, Thanksgiving celebrations can also be found in Liberia, Grenada, and select regions of the Netherlands and Australia.
Nicole Garner Meeker
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Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.
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