Dec 5 2020 - Christmas Lists

 

The Christmas List - something of wonder in our current times. It began in ancient times as a tradition symbolic of the Three Wise Men and their gifts. It has moved on to include the year's "Best of {fill in anything}".  The lists have started in the Globe and Mail.   The gift-giving of Christmas is historically tied to the 12 days of Christmas tradition, with a gift given on each day. Christmas is the Twelfth Night.  That's the gift that Shakespeare gave in writing his play Twelfth Night - it closed the Christmas season with an entertaining comedy.  Scholars think that it was written specifically to ge performed for Queen Elizabeth 1. There is other speculation that the play was written for a group of lawyers of the Inns of Court. It is thought that it was performed on January 6, 1602. That seems an amazing Christmas gift, so I wondered about gifts throughout history - given we've got since 336 for such wonders to be given. I found an article on Christmas gifts through history HERE.  They include the Statue of Liberty, the City of Savannah, a White Elephant (to Pope Leo X in 1514), a bowling alley in the White House, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Trojan Horse, Faberge Eggs.  Some gifts don't seem to be related to Christmas (and two are gruesome).  But that's what you get with metalfloss.com.  Christmas presents along the lines of what we expect today all relate to what's most expensive  Here's the descriptions for this list HERE. The Orlov Diamond – Priceless Evalyn’s Jewels, Star of the East and Hope Diamond – Upwards of USD 250 Million Twenty-Two-Year-Old’s USD 88 Million Christmas Present - real estate  Diamond and Ruby for Liz – USD 4.2 Million - Liz Taylor Spend It Like Beckham – USD 3 Million - a necklace HK Superstar Aaron Kwok’s USD 2.6 Million Christmas Present -  Tyson’s Moment – USD 2.3 Million a gold bathtub Aaron Spelling’s White Christmas Gift – USD 2 Million -  snow machine making snow in his Beverly Hills backyard The Waterfall Gift – USD 1.6 Million - to build a Frank Lloyd Wright Fallingwater house Mastiff Gem – USD 1.5 Million - a rare dog A snow orchard image today. The snow has almost melted.  That means I can finish raking the leaves that are still coming down from the trees.

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Dec 23 Festivus at the North Pole

I hadn't realized today's Christmas tradition originates with Seinfeld.  It comes from Seinfeld writer Dan O'Keefe who based it on a holiday his own father invented in 1966 (it wasn't tied to Christmas in the O'Keefe family - read more HERE). Google's top entry for December 23 traditions comes from Wikipedia:  The non-commercial holiday's celebration, as depicted on Seinfeld, occurs on December 23 and includes a Festivus dinner, an unadorned aluminum Festivus pole, practices such as the "Airing of Grievances" and "Feats of Strength", and the labeling of easily explainable events as "Festivus miracles". Would Norway fall for Seinfeld? It has the tradition of "Little Christmas Eve" on December 23rd. Traditions include decorating the Christmas tree, making a gingerbread house, or eating risengrynsgrøt; a hot rice pudding served with sugar, cinnamon and butter. An almond is hidden in the pudding, and if the almond turns up in your portion, you win a marzipan pig! Some sites report that Norway has the closest town to the geographic North Pole - Longyearbyen - it is 1,310.44 km south of the North Pole.  It is famous for the Doomsday Seed Vault, which is storing every known crop on the planet.   Yet there are different answers for what land mass and town are closest to the North Pole.  That seems unusual, as I thought it would be measurable.  Kaffeklubben Island off the northern coast of Greenland is said to be 700 km from the North Pole.  The nearest permanently inhabited place is reported to be Alert, Nunavut and it is 817 km away.  This would be Santa's market town - his workshop and residence are located at the North Pole - at postal code - H0H 0H0 - not very similar to Alert's at V0N 1A0. And what time would it be at the North Pole? The North Pole lacks a time zone.  Time is determined by longitude. The time of day is more-or-less synchronized to the position of the sun in the sky.  At the North Pole, the sun rises and sets only once per year, and all lines of longitude and hence all time zones, converge. Any time zone can be used there. Celebrating January 1st would be a feat in itself. We continue our Christmas Greetings series today - Niagara's Winter Orchard receives the Northern Lights of Christmas.

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Tracking Santa

Did you follow Santa on his journey around the world? NORAD tracks Santa on Christmas Eve. Tracking began by accident in 1955.   Before NORAD was formed, when it was still the Continental Air Defence Command (Conad), a newspaper misprinted a Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement containing the phone number for children to call in to talk to Santa. Instead of reaching Santa, children reached Conad operations in Colorado.  "A colonel by the name of Harry Shoup picked up the phone and assured children who called in that Santa was safe and CONAD, at the time, would be tracking Santa on his progress through North America," she said. The tradition continues and NORAD trackers are finished for this year - he was spotted over the great wall of China, over Christmas Island, Vietnam, India, Afghanistan, Moscow, London, South America, and then Canada and finished in the U.S. There are many articles identifying Santa's workload, speed, and route.  The Atlantic narrows it to "Christian kids" - 526,000,000 of them under the age of 14 in the world.  So he delivers presents to 22 million an hour. That's about 365,000 kids a minute, about 6,100 a second. The dailymail.co.uk also has an article on the science of Santa -  Mr. Claus will eat 150 billion calories in milk and mince pies.  He will need to walk 1.3 billion miles, which is 54,000 times around the circumference of the earth, to work off the extra weight.  More at dailymail.co.uk Enjoy Christmas Day!