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What is the Origin of the Christmas Tree?
Today’s Big Question: What is the origin of the Christmas tree?
From jalapeno to rose petal to meteorite wines, adventurous drinkers will have a field day with these nine off-the-beaten path vino varieties.
Today, Christmas seems as American as apple pie, but the country’s original settlers detested the holiday. Religious pilgrims who arrived in North America in the early 17th century demanded that citizens work on December 25 and shut down any merrymaking—and they eventually outlawed Christmas altogether.
Why were these New Englanders such grinches? For one thing, they disliked the celebration of Christmas—which they nicknamed “Foolstide”—because they disliked celebration in general. Puritans were a hard-working lot and pointed out that besides the Sabbath, the Bible said nothing about resting any other days, the birth date of Jesus of Nazareth included.
Beyond that, the Bible said nothing about which day Christ was born. (As historian Stephen Nissenbaum explains, “Puritans were fond of saying that if God had intended for the anniversary of the Nativity to be observed, He would surely have given some indication as to when that anniversary occurred.”) December 25 was just like any other day to Christians until the 4th century, when Pope Julius I recast the Roman Saturnalia festival into a Christian celebration. Soon holly, candles, and other midwinter pagan elements transitioned into Christmas trappings. New England leaders expected their citizens to follow the Bible, not the Pope.
For example, on Christmas Day, 1621, Plymouth Governor William Bradford came across a group of merrymakers playing “stoole-ball”—a sort of colonial version of baseball—and demanded the lot of them get back to work. Eventually, in 1659, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law prohibiting Christmas celebration altogether. It stated that in order to prevent “disorders … to the great dishonor of God and offense of others,” anyone found celebrating the holiday “either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way,” would be fined five shillings.
While this anti-Christmas ruling would be the law of the land for decades, following the restoration of Charles II as ruler of England, the pro-Christmas Crown’s influence soon waxed in the colonies. In 1681, laws forbidding the holiday were repealed (though staunch Puritans continued to fight against Christmas celebration for decades more). In 1686, the newly appointed royalist governor of the Dominion of New England, Edmund Andros, closed shops on Christmas Day and sponsored a holiday service—though local protests made it necessary that he be accompanied there by troops.
Protests of Christmas celebrations continued, but shifted more from protesting the celebration of the holiday at all to the manner in which it was celebrated. Christmas partying had long been characterized by overindulging in booze and food, taking to the streets playing clamorous music, rowdy singing, and demanding alms. This was a holdover from the post-harvest season when little work was left to be done and much was available to drink and eat. It was a ritualized disorder developed over centuries before being adopted and adapted by the church, and the whole thing revolted the rigid Puritans.
Boston minister Cotton Mather preached to his congregation in 1712 about how “[T]he Feast of Christ’s Nativity is spent in Reveling, Dicing, Carding, Masking, and in all Licentious Liberty … by Mad Mirth, by long Eating, by hard Drinking, by lewd Gaming, by rude Reveling.” Around the same time, however, Anglican celebrations in the colonies “began to attract more Christmas-keepers, despite the scorn and hostile preaching of the Puritan-minded,” writes historian Gerry Bowler in his new book, Christmas in the Crosshairs.
This debate over how to celebrate Christmas would continue into the next century and wouldn’t be resolved until a group of writers, poets, and intellectuals—men like New-York Historical Society cofounder John Pintard and “A Visit from St. Nicholas” poet Clement Clarke Moore—helped to move the holiday’s celebration from the streets into the home. But the merits of celebrating the day of Christ’s birth would not be widely called into question in the U.S. again.
In 1836, Alabama became the first state to declare it a public holiday, and by 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant designated it a federal holiday, partly as an effort to heal the rift between North and South following the Civil War. By then there was no turning back. In the battle between puritanism and Christmas celebration, the latter won a decisive victory.
December 12, 2016 – 8:30am
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Once upon a time, you could hang up a string of lights and call your house decorated for the merriest season. But these days, LEDs, computerized Christmas lights, and projection lights have added new dimensions to decorating—and people are creating bigger and better light shows with each passing holiday season.
Robert Pechous of Wheaton, Illinois, synchronized more than 35,000 Christmas lights by computer to create this lovely display in 2013. (The video features just one song—Trans Siberian Orchestra’s “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24″—but the show had three songs total.) Pechous expands the light show every year, raising money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association in honor of his young cousin, who has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
The Brown family of Stafford, Virginia, staged a Christmas light show from 2008 to 2013 to benefit the Fredericksburg Area Food Bank. In 2012, they got a little silly and slipped a novelty song in among the Christmas Carols. You can see their other selections on YouTube.
It’s a Christmas rave! This home went techno for Christmas in 2011. We don’t know where the home is located, or the identity of the people who so joyfully decked it out, but they’ve been at it for a while: You can see their other displays here.
Victor Johnson of Paxton, Illinois, used 140,000 lights on his home to create this display in 2013. The music was broadcast on an FM channel so that those driving by could hear it without disturbing the neighbors. You can see more of his Christmas displays over the years at Lighting Up Paxton.
Tom BetGeorge of Tracy, California, is a legend among Christmas light fans. Every year, his meticulous light display helps to raise funds for local charities, and in 2013, the display included the hilarious “Christmas Can-Can” by Straight No Chaser. The 2016 show will still feature his popular Star Wars sequence, in addition to Harry Potter music and, according to BetGeorge’s Facebook page, a “to-scale computer-lighted model of Hogwart’s [sic] castle.” The show kicks off December 16.
A family in Texas, which goes by ListenToOurLights, syncs many songs to their lights every year, and in 2014, the blue lights lent themselves well to the songs of the Disney movie Frozen. You can see the lights dance to other songs in this playlist. The cactus is a family tradition that acts as their signature.
Richard Holdman of Pleasant Grove, Utah, began programming his Christmas lights in 2006. They grew every year, and in 2009, the town was treated to the sequence you see here. A donation box raised $40,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation that year. Holdman no longer puts on a show at his home, but he started a company, Holdman Lighting, and now decorates homes all over the country.
Mike Staudt of Chaska, Minnesota, puts on an annual lights show called Lights on Pascolo. That’s not far from Prince’s home, Paisley Park, so this year’s show includes a tribute to the artist, complete with purple lights. You can see the full 2016 show here. Donations from those who enjoy the show this year will go to Ronald McDonald house charities.
In Auckland, New Zealand, where Christmas falls in the middle of summer, Logan Carpenter mixed his own music and programmed lights to match. Take a tour of Carpenter’s yard to see the variety of Christmas decorations and lights.
Fred and Maria Loya of El Paso, Texas, won the The Great Christmas Light Fight in 2014. Their home display has only grown from there. This is their light show for 2016, featuring 450,000 lights.
The new trend in Christmas lights is projection. You can project lights on your house for very little cost, but the most amazing displays use computerized projection mapping. This display on the front of Jolly’s Department Store in Bath, UK, in 2014 shows the possibilities of this technology.
In 2006, Joe Noe of Crooks, South Dakota, staged a computerized light show at his home, and the show grew so much every year that it had to eventually be moved to the Western Mall in Sioux Falls. The video above shows the 2011 display. In those years, the light display raised over $225,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. There isn’t a display this year, but organizers hope it will return in 2017.
Matt and Melissa Johnson of San Antonio, Texas, started doing computerized Christmas lights in 2013 at their home, and within a couple of years they were featured on The Great Christmas Light Fight. The display went over so well that Matt started his own lighting business, which was brought aboard to put on a light show at the San Antonio Zoo. See more of the Johnson Family Light Show at their website.
Two years ago, Walt Disney World in Orlando unveiled a show called “A Frozen Holiday Wish,” centered around the movie Frozen. The show leads up to the lighting of Cinderella’s Castle with projected Christmas lights every evening during the season. The actual lighting begins six minutes into the video.
December 12, 2016 – 8:00am
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Snow Day
Sunday, December 11, 2016 – 11:02
Aelia Petro—the clay artist known for her draping dragon jewelry— is back with something festive for the holidays. These special ornaments come with tiny dragons hitching a ride.
Each of the colorful ornaments, which are shaped like bulbs or baubles, come with a clay dragon that’s sculpted to protect the glass items as if they’re one of the creature’s eggs. Each figure is hand sculpted with clay, then cast in resin and painted. They get a coat of varnish and are then applied to an ornament.
You can check out the whole collection on Petro’s Etsy page. With a few of these, it’ll look like Christmas in Westeros.
[h/t My Modern Met]
December 12, 2016 – 6:30am
Whether you’re shopping for your mom who throws detailed dinner parties or a girlfriend who always finds the most unique and eye-catching jewelry, these 11 gifts will surely bring comfort and joy to the women in your life.
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Help her create a flowerbed bustling with activity. Each Pollinator Push Garden contains seeds specifically selected to grow a garden that will attract butterflies, bees, or hummingbirds—three of nature’s most notable pollinators—to your backyard. Flowers like black-eyed Susans, rocket larkspurs, and dwarf cosmos provide a bright backdrop.
Find It: Modern Sprout
Easy does it: These mason jars are filled with all the dried fruits, herbs, and bitters required to create an unconventional cocktail experience. To whip up the drink, she’ll just need to add the recommended alcohol to the jar, let it steep, strain it, and then enjoy the tasty new beverage. Each one boasts no added sugars; just creative flavors (Campfire Bourbon Vodka, anyone?) and as a bonus, she’ll get the satisfaction of knowing she made it herself.
Find It: Vena’s Fizz House
Your favorite party planner will love featuring this brass tumbler at every get-together she hosts.
Find It: Uncommon Goods
Saving face: This kit includes six of Peter Thomas Roth’s most popular masks, including the nourishing Blue Algae Mask and the anti-aging 24K Gold Mask.
Find It: Amazon
Craft the perfect present for the friend who’s always looking for a new skill to pick up or a project to work on. This kit comes with all the items she’ll need to make a wool beanie. (You can even add a knitting needle for an added cost.)
Find It: Wool and the Gang
Upgrade her timepiece with a modern, minimalist design from Tinker Watches. You choose the size (34mm, 38mm, 42mm) and the metal finish (copper, silver, gold) of the 24-sided face and the color of the interchangable leather strap. Each watch also features a date function, which can show the day of the week in both Spanish and English.
Find It: Tinker Watches
Help her clean up a disorganized jewelry collection with this gem-shaped tray. The 9.25 by 6.5- inch piece features a linen base and a brass-plated frame.
Find It: Uncommon Goods
A birthstone necklace is a sweet and thoughtful gesture, but a lunar phase necklace shows that you really pay attention to details. Select the moon phase that occurred on the recipient’s birthday from eight available options.
Find It: Etsy
For the woman who knows that presentation is everything, opt for this desktop charging stand with a brushed aluminum finish. It’s compatible with the iPhone 5 and newer, as well as certain iPods, so every device can always be charged and ready to go.
Find It: Amazon
Lightweight and stylish, each of these stainless steel growlers in bright copper or sophisticated black will come in handy all year long. Perfect for toting on the next microbrewery tour.
Find It: Uncommon Goods
Give the gift of quiet luxury with a handmade Spa Tower. The pomegranate-and-cardamom scented candle sets a calm tone while the scrub, soak, mask, and body butter complete the spa experience right in her own home.
Find It: Uncommon Goods
December 12, 2016 – 6:00am
13 Craziest Interpretations of Santa Claus to Ever Slide Down a Chimney. From movies, TV, literature, music, and video games.
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29 Actors Hanging Out With Their Body Doubles. Some look very different, while others are like seeing twins.
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10 New Books to Enlighten Your Dark December. They’d make good gifts, too.
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25 GIFs From Planet Earth II That Show How Tragicomic Nature Can Be. Animals are not always graceful and sure-footed.
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What was the largest protest in history? That depends on how you define “protest,” so there are several candidates.
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One of the Most Disturbing Cult Killings in New York History. Seventeen-year-old Ricky Kasso said the devil made him do it.
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Why schools shouldn’t teach critical thinking. Mental skills don’t translate from one area to another that easily.
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7 Strange Christmas Traditions. More ways to add fun to the holiday.
December 12, 2016 – 5:00am
Pouring a beer properly is an art that many of us haven’t quite mastered. Mess it up and you’ll be left with a glass full of foam. You can either shrug and drink it, wait for the froth to settle—or you can take a cue from the American Chemical Society’s latest Reactions video, and use science to make your brew sippable.
The ACS recommends touching a piece of pizza, French fries, or even your nose, and then swirling your greasy finger through the bubbles. The oil breaks the bonds between beer proteins and hop compounds, causing the foam to dissipate. (Pro tip: Leave a little foam, as it lends the brew extra aroma and makes it creamy.) To learn more about the chemistry of beer bubbles, watch the clip above.
[h/t Reactions]
Banner image: iStock
December 12, 2016 – 3:00am
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¡Three Amigos! came galloping into theaters on December 12, 1986. Directed by John Landis from a script by Steve Martin, Randy Newman, and Lorne Michaels, the film follows a goofy group of silent movie cowboys who are mistaken for real heroes by a small Mexican village. To this day, ¡Three Amigos! is one of the most infamous (which we all know means “more than famous”) films of the 1980s. It was named one of the Top 100 comedies by both Time Out and Bravo, and is celebrated as a unique collaboration between some of the greatest comedians of all time. There’s a lot to learn about “those darn amigos,” so here’s a plethora of facts about the comedy classic on its 30th birthday.
Martin worked there part-time from age 10 to 18, first selling guidebooks then hawking spinning lassos in Frontierland, according to D3. “The ropes were hard to sell,” Martin explained. “I had to wear a Western costume, cowboy shirt, hat. I did a little bit of that in ¡Three Amigos!“
The film is full of fake movie references, from Harry Flugleman (played by Joe Mantegna), the amigos’ fictional producer, to fake films like Amigos! Amigos! Amigos! and Little Neddy Grab Your Gun. There’s only one scene where a real star of the silent film era is mentioned: When he’s bragging to some of the Santo Poco villagers about his film career, Ned Nederlander (Martin Short) name drops actress Dorothy Gish, telling the confused villagers about the time Gish visited him on set. Today, that name would probably go over about as well with audiences as it did for the fictional villagers. Though she’s largely forgotten today, Dorothy Gish was an actress and director from the silent movie era, as well as the less famous sister of Oscar-nominated actress Lillian Gish.
Well, technically, the Singing Bush was played by a bush, but Newman provided its voice. His voice was digitally altered for the role. In an interview with Movies.com, director John Landis explained that he’d considered several different ways of portraying the singing bush—including animating it, or somehow showing its lips moving—but ultimately decided to make the bush more naturalistic, and just let Newman’s singing take over the scene.
Short had been doing sketch comedy—including on Saturday Night Live and SCTV—for years before he landed the part, but ¡Three Amigos! was his breakout film role. He went on to work with Steve Martin in two more films: Father of the Bride (1991) and Father of the Bride Part II (1995).
The Spanish language adventure comedy is largely forgotten today, but Alfonso Arau not only went on to play “El Guapo” in ¡Three Amigos!, he also appeared as the villain, Herrera, in Sam Peckinpah’s classic Western The Wild Bunch (1969).
Landis told Movies.com, “Probably the funniest moment for me when shooting was when I had the Three Amigos on horseback in the desert and I was shooting while they were wearing those ridiculous outfits and after having been shooting for three weeks, Chevy objected to a line of dialogue and he said, ‘I don’t think I should say this.’ And, remember, Chevy plays a character named Dusty Bottoms. So I said, ‘Well, why not?’ He said, ‘Because my character would have to be a moron to say this.’ All I could think was, What movie has Chevy been making? So I said, ‘OK, I’ll give it to Marty because it’s a laugh.’ Then Chevy said, ‘I’ll say it!’ It’s one of my favorite moments with an actor.”
Like ¡Three Amigos!, films like Galaxy Quest (1999) and Tropic Thunder (2008) have featured movie stars accidentally ending up in real danger. Vulture outlined the many similarities between Tropic Thunder and ¡Three Amigos!, which include everything from similar catchphrases and movie star cameos (Tom Cruise plays Jewish film producer Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder while Joe Mantegna plays Jewish film producer Harry Flugleman in ¡Three Amigos!) to characters eating bats when they’re short on food. Galaxy Quest meanwhile featured a group of washed up sci-fi stars who end up cavorting with real aliens.
Referring to the spate of movies that borrow from the ¡Three Amigos! premise, John Landis said, “They completely ripped it off! The first Pixar movie about the ants, A Bug’s Life, took the same plot. It’s amazing how often the plot has been used. If Galaxy Quest weren’t so funny, it would probably bother me more.”
These included: Three Amigos rubber cement, holy water (“blessed by the Three Amigos”), turkey basters (in sizes ranging from “Martin Short” to “Steve Martin”), the “Egg McMigo” breakfast sandwich, and Three Amigos contraceptive foam.
While shooting a pistol fight in the film, Steve Martin developed tinnitus—a constant ringing in the ears which sometimes fades over time. In Martin’s case, the condition turned out to be permanent: regarding his experience with tinnitus, he explains, “You just get used to it. Or you go insane.”
He called it “too confident, too relaxed, too clever to be really funny,” and complained that the performers were underutilized—particularly Chevy Chase who “hardly seems in the movie at all.” He also argued that the film lacked the energy of Landis’s earlier comedy, Animal House.
It was originally going to be called The Three Caballeros. Steve Martin, who came up with the original idea, was talking about it in interviews as early as 1980, but it took a long time to find a director willing to make it.
Before she was The Nanny, Drescher had a small part in ¡Three Amigos! as a shallow movie star in the Hollywood segment of the film. Though the film was eventually re-released with deleted scenes, Drescher’s footage didn’t appear—it seems to have been lost entirely over the years.
Spielberg considered making the film in the early 1980s with Martin, Robin Williams, and Bill Murray as the leads. Ultimately, he decided to make E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) instead.
Martin had initially imagined co-starring in the film alongside Belushi and Aykroyd. It’s unclear what happened—perhaps the film just took too long to make it into production. Next, Spielberg had expressed interest in casting Murray and Williams alongside Martin, but when he dropped out of the project, the idea went with him. Finally, Landis considered casting Rick Moranis as the third amigo—but only if his first choice, Martin Short, was unavailable. Splitsider notes that many of these actors were collaborating with each other around this time: Moranis, Murray, and Aykroyd all appeared in 1984’s Ghostbusters together, while Belushi and Aykroyd famously co-starred in 1980’s The Blues Brothers and 1981’s Neighbors.
It was an official adaptation of the original screenplay, and was even promoted in the film’s credits. Fleischer has written a number of film novelizations, mostly for classroom use, including the novelization of the Academy Award-winning 1988 film Rain Man.
December 12, 2016 – 2:00am