Author: Bess Lovejoy

With Christmas just around the corner, it can feel like a time to celebrate togetherness and put aside our differences. But what about the differences in the way we celebrate Christmas? When you’ve been celebrating a holiday one way your entire life, it’s easy to assume that’s the way it’s celebrated everywhere—but just ask someone who celebrates Christmas across the pond, and you’ll see some subtle but strange differences. Here are just a few of them.

1. CRACKERS

No, we’re not talking crispy snacks here. These are a series of three cardboard tubes connected by a wrapping of colored foil. They are a British Christmas institution and you’ll see them on dinner tables right next to the cutlery. What are they for? Well, they’re somewhere between pulling the wishbone on a turkey and a fortune cookie. The idea is that you and the person next to you each grab an end and pull.

The tubes pull apart with a small bang (or crack) thanks to the tiny explosive inside. The winner of the game is the person with the lion’s share of cardboard tubes (i.e. two) and their prizes sit inside that middle tube. Now, unless you spend serious money on luxury crackers (which are totally a thing), don’t expect an incredible prize. Usually you’re looking at a small plastic toy or magic trick that barely works, a terrible Christmas joke on a small scroll of paper, and the most important thing of all: the paper crown—multi-colored, deeply embarrassing, and begrudgingly worn for about five minutes before being relegated to the trash.

Crackers stem from a Victorian confectioner named Tom Smith, who was on a visit to Paris in 1840 when he noticed how the French wrapped bon-bons in colored tissue paper and decided to try selling a similar product in Britain. After middling sales, inspiration hit him one evening by the fireplace when the crackling sounds caused him to imagine opening bon-bons with a bang (he was really into bon-bons). After finding the perfect mix of chemicals for his explosive new packaging, their popularity grew and grew.

2. MINCE PIES

The humble mince pie has been a part of British cuisine since the 13th century, when crusading knights returned home with exciting new ingredients from the wider world: cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon. There were quickly added to pies with dried fruit, suet, and minced meat.

After the puritan ban on Christmas and all things deemed unholy, the mince pie (like all Christmas traditions) went away for a while before coming back in a slightly altered form. By the 19th century the recipe had become sweeter, and the pies themselves much more bitesize.

3. WASSAIL? WHASSAT?

While spiked eggnog may very well be the booze of choice for the month of December in the good old US of A, the United Kingdom tends to prefer their festive tipple to be of the mulled variety.

“Wassail” in Anglo-Saxon means “Be Well” and was traditionally a greeting made at the start of the New Year. The act of Wassailing—going door-to-door with a bowl of spiced alcoholic beverage—was performed on the “Twelfth Night,” (January 5, 6, or 17, depending on which calendar you go by) and met with replies of “Drink well.”

The drink in question, depending on where you lived, was likely either a wine or a cider which would be heated up and mixed with various fruits and spices. More common nowadays is simply “mulled wine,” which follows much of the wassail recipe at heart, but without having to wait until the New Year.

4. CHRISTMAS PUDDING

A classic festive dish that dates back to the medieval era, the Christmas pudding is a sort of boiled fruit cake that’s heavily spiced, doused in brandy, and briefly set on fire. Traditionally, coins are hidden inside as an extra gift (or an unpleasant mouthful of metal).

The pudding’s medieval origin comes complete with some very specific instructions from the Roman Catholic Church, which say that “pudding should be made on the 25th Sunday after Trinity, that it be prepared with 13 ingredients to represent Christ and the 12 apostles, and that every family member stir it in turn from east to west to honor the Magi and their supposed journey in that direction.”

5. FATHER WHO?

While he’s known in the U.S. as Santa Claus (an evolution of the Dutch settlers’ term “Sinter Klaas,” which is itself a shorthand for Sint Nikolaas), the UK refers to him almost exclusively as Father Christmas.

Although they’re generally thought of as the same person today, Santa and Father Christmas have very different origins. The modern-day Santa Claus owes a large debt to Clement Clarke Moore’s legendary 1823 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” although he’s also inspired by a 4th-century Bishop of Myra (a.k.a. St. Nicholas) and, some say, the Norse God Odin.

Father Christmas, however was more of a winter presence than a gift-giver. He’s been traced back as far as the 5th or 6th century, appearing first as a Saxon “King Winter” who promised a milder winter climate if people were kind to him. When Normans invaded, the St. Nicholas story was mixed in with the Saxon mythology to create something that started to resemble Father Christmas. The first recorded mention of Father Christmas by name (well, almost) comes from a line in a 15th century carol, which says “Welcome, my lord Christëmas.” Lord Christëmas morphed into Sir Christmas and then Captain Christmas (which, frankly, should be brought back) before Father Christmas took its place in the 1600s.

Notably, while Mr. and Mrs. Claus famously reside in the North Pole, Father Christmas lives in Lapland, the northernmost region of Finland. There’s a huge Christmas-based tourism industry up there, with UK and Nordic travel agents selling all kinds of “meet Santa Claus” packages featuring reindeer rides, snowmobile adventures and, of course, an audience with the big man with the white beard himself.

6. MERRY CHRIMBO?

The British are seemingly notorious for their colloquialisms, so why should the holiday season be any exception? Christmas in the UK very often gets shortened to “Chrimbo” (or Crimble if you’re of the John Lennon school of phrasing). Meanwhile, the phrase “Happy Christmas” is just as socially acceptable as “Merry Christmas.”

7. PANTOMIME

Do you like campy theatrical productions of popular fairytales with a cast made up of minor celebrities and men in drag? Do you ever watch horror movies and have the sudden urge to scream “He’s behind you!” at the doomed protagonists? If so, pantomime may well be for you.

Pantomime, or panto if we’re continuing with the colloquialisms, is a type of musical comedy that’s a big deal in the UK. In 2012, during the throes of a national recession, the largest panto production company in the UK made more than $30 million during the Christmas period alone.

Pantomime is something that has to be experienced to fully appreciate it, so perhaps it’s best to be bewildered by this star-studded (by British standards) televised panto from 1998 seen above and wonder how it’s so profitable.

8. THE CHRISTMAS ADVERTISING SEASON

In the U.S., the commercial holy grail is the Super Bowl ad, with a 30-second slot costing $5 million at the 2016 game. As the UK isn’t exactly a hotbed of (American) football fanatics, the big commercial events appear around Christmastime. It used to be that the classic Coca-Cola ad served as a signpost for the start of the festive season proper, but for the past few years, adoration has shifted toward the always-anticipated John Lewis Christmas ad.

John Lewis is a high-end UK department store chain that has made a name for itself in the last 10 years with increasingly more saccharine short films that seem scientifically engineered to tug at your heartstrings. With a campaign this year costing an estimated $8.7 million, it’s clear that this is a Christmas tradition they take very seriously. But they’re not even the biggest spenders—Burberry’s star-studded, cinematic 2016 Christmas ad “The Tale of Thomas Burberry’” is rumored to have cost $12.5 million.

9. BOXING DAY

December 26 is more than simply “The Day after Christmas” to the Brits—it’s Boxing Day! Boxing Day is not only a public holiday (which means it’s an extra day off work), it’s also the starting flag for the post-Christmas sales. Much like Black Friday in the U.S., the Boxing Day sales aren’t for the faint-hearted. With shoppers flush with cash from the distant relatives who didn’t know them well enough to get them a meaningful gift, the bargain-hunting can be riotous.

The origins of the name Boxing Day are dubious, but it has nothing to do with a prize fight. Depending on who you believe, it’s either named for the Church of England’s practice of breaking open donation boxes to distribute among the poor, or for the aristocracy giving boxes full of presents to their servants on the day after Christmas.

Whatever its charitable origins may have been, most Brits who don’t spend it shopping or visiting relatives just tend to eat leftovers and watch TV. Something we can all agree on.

10. THE ROYAL CHRISTMAS BROADCAST

A true British institution, the Christmas broadcast by the reigning monarch has been an almost yearly mainstay in one form or another since 1932. Originally starting as a radio broadcast by George V, the broadcast evolved as the monarchy did, and 1957 saw Queen Elizabeth II deliver the first broadcast televised live to the nation. However, due to radio interference, some viewers apparently heard U.S. police radio transmissions mixed in with the Queen’s speech, including the phrase “Joe, I’m gonna grab a quick coffee.”

Since 1959, the broadcast has been pre-recorded, but is still faithfully beamed into homes across the country at 3 p.m. on Christmas day. The exception occurred in 1969, when there was no speech because the Queen decided that after a documentary about the royal family had aired earlier that year, there’d been enough of her on TV already.

The subject matter tends to be similar every year: a reflection on the events of the previous 365 days and overall message of togetherness. Since the ‘90s its popularity has dwindled, with TV station Channel 4 broadcasting their ‘”Alternative Christmas Message” at the same time since 1993. Their subject matter varies from the humorous (Marge Simpson delivered the speech in 2012) to the more serious and controversial—in 2006, a Muslim woman known only as Khadijah spoke about Islam and conflict in the Middle East, while in 2013 Edward Snowden was the chosen speaker.

All images via iStock unless otherwise noted.

Amid the whirl of the holiday season, many are vaguely aware of the approach of the winter solstice, but how much do you really know about it? Whether you’re a fan of winter or just wish it would go away, here are 10 things to note—or even celebrate—about the solstice.

1. IT HAPPENS ON DECEMBER 21 UTC THIS YEAR.

The date of the winter solstice varies from year to year, and can fall anywhere between December 20 and December 23, with the 21st or 22nd being the most common dates. The reason for this is because the tropical year—the time it takes for the sun to return to the same spot relative to Earth—is different from the calendar year. The next solstice occurring on December 20 will not happen until 2080, and the next December 23 solstice will not occur until 2303.

2. IT HAPPENS AT A SPECIFIC, BRIEF MOMENT.

Not only does the solstice occur on a specific day, but it also occurs at a specific time of day, corresponding to the instant the North Pole is aimed furthest away from the sun on the 23.5 degree tilt of the Earth’s axis. This is also the time when the sun shines directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. In 2016, this moment occurs at 10:44 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). For those of us on Eastern Standard Time, the solstice will occur at 5:44 PM on December 21. And regardless of where you live, the solstice happens at the same moment for everyone on the planet (you can check what time it will occur for you here).

3. IT MARKS THE LONGEST NIGHT AND SHORTEST DAY OF THE YEAR FOR THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE.

As most are keenly aware, daylight hours grow shorter and shorter as the solstice approaches, and begin to slowly lengthen afterward. It’s no wonder that the day of the solstice is referred to in some cultures as the “shortest day” or “extreme of winter.” New York City will experience 9 hours and 15 minutes of sunlight, compared to 15 hours and 6 minutes on the summer solstice. Helsinki, Finland, will get 5 hours and 49 minutes of light. Barrow, Alaska, will not have a sunrise at all, while the North Pole has had no sunrise since October. The South Pole, though, will be basking in the glow of the midnight sun, which won’t set until March.

4. ANCIENT CULTURES VIEWED THE WINTER SOLSTICE AS A TIME OF DEATH AND REBIRTH.

The seeming death of the light and very real threat of starvation over the winter months would have weighed heavily on early societies, who held varied solstice celebrations and rites meant to herald the return of the Sun and hope for new life. Scandinavian and Germanic pagans lit fires and may have burned Yule logs as a symbolic means of welcoming back the light. Cattle and other animals were slaughtered around midwinter, followed by feasting on what was the last fresh meat for several months. The modern Druidic celebration Alban Arthan reveres the death of the Old Sun and birth of the New Sun.

5. THE DAY MARKS THE DISCOVERY OF NEW AND STRANGE WORLDS.

The Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth on December 21, 1620, to found a society that would allow them to worship freely. On the same day in 1898, Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radium, ushering in an atomic age. And on December 21, 1968, the Apollo 8 spacecraft launched, becoming the first manned moon mission.

6. THE WORD SOLSTICE TRANSLATES ROUGHLY TO “SUN STANDS STILL.”

Solstice derives from the Latin scientific term solstitium, containing sol, which means “sun,” and the past participle stem of sistere, meaning “to make stand.” This comes from the fact that the sun’s position in the sky relative to the horizon at noon, which increases and decreases throughout the year, appears to pause in the days surrounding the solstice. In modern times, we view the phenomenon of the solstice from the position of space, and of the Earth relative to the Sun. Earlier people, however, were thinking about the Sun’s trajectory, how long it stayed in the sky and what sort of light it cast.

7. STONEHENGE IS ALIGNED TO THE SUNSET ON WINTER SOLSTICE.

The primary axis of the megalithic monument is oriented to the setting sun, while Newgrange, another structure built around the same time as Stonehenge, lines up with the winter solstice sunrise. Some have theorized that the position of the Sun was of religious significance to the people who built Stonehenge, while other theories hold that the monument is constructed along natural features that happen to align with it. The purpose of Stonehenge is still subject to debate, but its importance on the winter solstice continues into the modern era, as thousands of hippies, pagans, and other types of enthusiasts gather there every year to celebrate the occasion.

8. ANCIENT ROMANS CELEBRATED REVERSALS AT THE MIDWINTER FESTIVAL OF SATURNALIA.

The holiday, which began as a festival to honor the agricultural god Saturn, was held to commemorate the dedication of his temple in 497 BCE. It quickly became a time of widespread revelry and debauchery in which societal roles were overturned, with masters serving their slaves and servants being allowed to insult their masters. Mask-wearing and play-acting were also part of Saturnalia’s reversals, with each household electing a King of Misrule. Saturnalia was gradually replaced by Christmas throughout the Roman Empire, but many of its customs survive as Christmas traditions.

9. SOME TRADITIONS HOLD THAT DARK SPIRITS WALK THE EARTH ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE.

The Iranian festival of Yalda is celebrated on the longest night of the year. In pre-Islamic times, it heralded the birth of Mithra, the ancient sun god, and his triumph over darkness. Zoroastrian lore holds that evil spirits wander the earth and the forces of the destructive spirit Ahriman are strongest on this long night. People are encouraged to stay up most of the night in the company of one another, eating, talking, and sharing poetry and stories, in order to avoid any brushes with dark entities. Beliefs about the presence of evil on the longest night are also echoed in Celtic and Germanic folklore.

10. SOME THOUGHT THE WORLD WOULD END ON THE 2012 WINTER SOLSTICE.

December 21, 2012 corresponds to the date 13.0.0.0.0 in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar used by the ancient Mayans, marking the end of a 5126-year cycle. Some people feared this juncture would bring about the end of the world or some other cataclysmic event. Others took a more New Age-y view (literally) and believed it heralded the birth of a new era of deep transformation for Earth and its inhabitants. In the end, neither of these things appeared to occur, leaving the world to turn through winter solstices indefinitely, or at least as long as the Sun lasts.

All images from iStock unless otherwise noted.

A version of this story originally ran in 2015.

What was the first theme park in the nation? If you guessed Disneyland, you’re going on the naughty list. In fact, it was called Santa Claus Land—a year-round Christmas idyll in the middle of the country that came into being before Walt Disney decided to make his brand a tourist destination.

To understand Santa Claus Land, you’ve got to understand its location: Santa Claus, Indiana. The town became forever associated with Christmas back in the 1850s, when residents applying for a U.S. Post Office realized that their town, which had been established a few years earlier, had the same name as another Indiana burg. There was no choice but to change the name of Santa Fe, Indiana, to something else. After townspeople consulted among themselves, “Santa Claus” won the day. Little did the residents of the tiny town realize that they were setting themselves up for a cottage Christmas industry that would last for over a century.

Though Santa Claus was the town’s name, one nearby resident felt the place wasn’t respectful enough to the man himself. For years, the teensy town had been a beloved place to send letters to Santa, which the postmaster responded to (with some help from locals) along with the town’s unique postmark. However, a local industrialist named Louis Koch thought that wasn’t enough—he believed the town needed a better way to honor everyone’s favorite Christmas visitor.

Koch took matters into his own hands during early World War II, when he bought 260 acres of farmland with plans for an amusement park. The war intervened briefly, but when it ended Koch moved forward as swiftly as a reindeer pulling a sleigh. He and his son opened a Santa-themed park designed in an Alpine style and complete with adorable details like a toy shop, children’s rides, and appearances from Santa himself. It even had a House of Dolls aimed at little girls.

Amusement parks existed long before Santa Land opened in 1946, but a park with a specific theme was something new. One of its greatest assets was Santa himself, who was played by a man named Jim Yellig for close to four decades. Yellig earned a spot in the International Santa Claus Hall of Fame for his trusty portrayal of the portly celebrity and is thought to have had over a million kids sit on his knee during his tenure.

Koch’s bid to put the Santa in Santa Claus worked. Despite being free initially (it started charging 50 cents admission to adults in 1955), the park generated enough revenue to make Koch’s son, Bill, think: Why not build out Santa Claus—the town itself—even further?

Bill Koch’s dream for Santa Claus was huge, and it didn’t stop with a mere kiddie park. Rather, like Disney after him, he saw his investment in the area’s tourism as a real estate bid, too. He opened a campground across from the park in 1958. Then, in the early 1960s, he told his son he wanted to build out the stagnant, small town. “He wanted a better place to raise his kids,” his son, Philip, recalled in a history of his father’s business. Bill’s wife, Pat, told her husband he was “absolutely crazy. Why would anyone want to live in Santa Claus?”

Undeterred, Bill began to buy up farmland and work with local authorities to create the groundwork for a subdivision—featuring street names like Chestnuts-by-the-Fire Drive. In 1966, Christmas Lake Village opened—and today the upscale gated community has about 2000 residents. (The family also built another, non-gated community called Holiday Village.)

Things changed at Santa Claus Land over the years. In the 1970s, the park began adding more daring rides in an effort to compete with a growing rollercoaster trend. In the 1980s, it changed its name to Holiday World and incorporated other holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July. These days, it also contains a water park called Splashin’ Safari and several noteworthy coasters, like The Raven and The Legend. 

It may no longer be called Santa Claus Land, but Holiday World is still a local destination and has plenty of Christmas tributes (Santa still makes daily appearances). And perhaps the best part of the park is the fact that it emerged from one small town’s Santa obsession.

Bowling may seem like a wholesome pastime today, but the game once had an unsavory reputation, prompting laws that not only regulated bets on the game but who could play and when. During one especially dark period for the game’s fans, the only day common people could legally go bowling was Christmas.

The origins of bowling go way back: Artifacts found in an ancient Egyptian tomb suggest the game, or something like it, may have been played as early as 3200 B.C.E. However, the first laws apparently known to have regulated bowling were passed in 14th century Germany amid concerns over gambling. At the time, peasants were placing such large bets they would go into debt over the game, and so in 1325 the German cities of Berlin and Cologne legislated how much a person could bet on a bowling match—limiting the stakes to the equivalent of about a dollar today.

A few decades later, in 1361, bowling was banned altogether in England—King Edward III considered the game a distraction from archery practice, which male citizens needed to keep their skills sharp for war. Henry VI reversed the ban in 1455, and 15th century London briefly became home to several all-weather bowling alleys, but Henry VIII felt compelled to legislate against the sport again in the 16th century. In 1541, he declared that only the wealthy could bowl—convenient for him, since London’s Whitehall Palace had recently been rebuilt with outdoor bowling lanes.

However, the law did allow workers to play on one day each year. According to the statute, “Artificers, labourers, apprentices, servants and the like” were prohibited “from playing bowls except in their masters’ house and presence at Christmas.” The sport would have been played as part of the 12 Days of Christmas enjoyed during Tudor England, which provided the working class with opportunities for rare pleasures such as visiting the zoo, watching plays, and jousting matches.

Henry VIII’s 1541 law, although rarely enforced, was not officially repealed until 1845. (Unfortunately, in 1555 Queen Mary even outlawed the Christmas games, saying they provided cover for “unlawful assemblies, conventiclers, seditions, and conspiracies.”) But English subjects continued to play, and sometimes did so instead of attending church. In 1618 King James issued the Declaration of Sports, which banned bowling on Sundays but did allow dancing and archery as long as one first attended a church service.

Bowling was subject to less legislation in other countries. Dutch settlers and explorers brought a version of bowling known as ninepins to New Amsterdam, later known as New York City. The early settlers played at a lower Manhattan site now known as Bowling Green. When large numbers of German settlers emigrated to the U.S. in the late 19th century, they also brought their love of bowling, and it soon became a popular sport.

These days, bowling’s not quite as popular as it once was. After reaching a height in the mid-20th century, during which 2.3 million Americans joined bowling leagues and a bowling alley was installed in the White House, participation plummeted—between 1998 and 2012, the number of bowling centers in the U.S. dropped by almost 25 percent. But while there might be fewer enjoying the game today, there is a bright side: It has been a long time since anyone was arrested for bowling.

The concept of a book town first came into being in the 1960s, when the fortunes of Hay-on-Wye, a small market town on the Welsh/English border, were transformed by the power of books. The opportunity to regenerate struggling villages and towns by opening up secondhand bookstores and welcoming literary events has since been embraced by many other locations around the world, creating a network of fascinating places to visit, all with books at their heart.

1. HAY-ON-WYE, WALES

In 1961 entrepreneur Richard Booth opened a secondhand bookshop in the small market town of Hay-on-Wye (population: c. 1600). The shop proved very popular and before long had grown to become one of Europe’s largest. Soon many more specialist and secondhand bookshops popped up in the town, transforming the local economy and raising its bibliophile credentials. To crown Hay’s status as the world’s first book town, a literary festival was set up in 1987 and is now the foremost literary event in the UK, tempting in 250,000 book-loving visitors each year.

2. BREDEVOORT, NETHERLANDS

Bredevoort (population: c.1525), a small medieval town in the Netherlands, was designated a book town in 1993 because of its more than 20 secondhand and antiquarian bookshops. Every third Saturday of the month, the town square hosts a book market, attracting book dealers from all over the country to sell English, German, and Dutch books. Bredevoort is one of the founding members of the International Organisation of Book Towns, and hosts many literary events to support the local book economy.

3. REDU, BELGIUM

In 1979, villager Noel Anselot returned from a trip to Hay-on-Wye inspired and decided to regenerate his own tiny village (pop: c. 500) in the beautiful Ardennes region of Belgium by attracting booksellers. He wrote to many bookdealers across the region, inviting them to set up shop in some of the original village buildings (such as barns, houses, and sheds) to keep the look of the village intact. The project was a success, and now 17 bookshops specializing in secondhand books and comics are based in the village. Redu holds a number of book-related exhibitions and events every year, including a book night when the bookshops stay open all night long. The town was officially declared a book town in 1984 after holding its first book festival. To cement Redu’s reputation as the first book town in continental Europe, it is twinned with Hay-on-Wye.

4. HOBART, NEW YORK

In 1999 this lovely Catskills town (current population: c. 440) was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost town. The only business was a rundown diner. Local resident Don Dales saw an opportunity and began buying up empty stores. After noticing the success of one antiquarian bookshop, Dale himself opened up two more bookstores in 2004. Today there are six bookshops, teeming with books on every subject from cookbooks to rare children’s books, as well as an annual Festival of Women Writers. It’s quickly become a tempting weekend destination for book-loving New Yorkers.

5. FJAERLAND, NORWAY

Fjaerland (population: c. 300) is located amidst the stunning fjords of Norway, making it one of the most remote book towns in the world—prior to 1994 when a road was built, Fjaerland could only be reached by boat. The tiny village hosts its bookshops among abandoned village buildings, including a former stable, grocery store, post office, and ferry waiting room. Because of its isolated location and the vagaries of the Norwegian weather, the book town is only open to visitors from May to September.

6. WIGTOWN, SCOTLAND

Wigtown (population: c. 1000) has been Scotland’s designated national book town since 1998. After the town’s main employers, the creamery and whiskey distillery, closed, this remote Scottish town was in danger of becoming derelict. Fortunately, its regeneration was secured when Wigtown won a national search (beating off stiff competition from five other towns) to create Scotland’s only book town. Booksellers quickly moved in, setting up over twenty bookshops and a very successful literary festival.

The 20-sided die you see above could have been built by ancient Egyptian Dungeons & Dragons players, but it wasn’t. Rather, it was made by an unknown craftsperson at some point between the second century B.C.E. and fourth century C.E.—a relic from an age when casting the dice often had higher stakes than hit points.

Made in the shape of an icosahedron (a polyhedron with 20 faces), the die is constructed out of serpentine, which ancient Egyptians often used for their amulets and vessels. The die could have been made during Egypt’s Macedonian period, during which it was a major center of Greek trade and culture, or during its later time as a Roman province, when Egypt kept its strong trade ties with Greece. That would explain the Greek letters carved into the faces of the die. 

Historians aren’t entirely sure why such dice exist, but it’s thought they were sometimes used for divination. The die could even be an example of an alphabet oracle—a text-based divination tool that could stand in for a flesh-and-blood oracle or seer when needed.

In an alphabet oracle, each letter of the Greek alphabet had a corresponding phrase that you could use to determine your fortune. One such alphabet oracle was found on an inscription discovered in the ancient city of Olympos. Although it’s thought that shards of pottery were used with that oracle, the process is just as doable with dice. Roll the Greek letter lambda, for example, and the oracle would tell you that “the one passing on the left bodes well for everything.” A zeta told you to “flee the very great storm, lest you be disabled in some way.”

Unfortunately, the die you see here didn’t come with a corresponding guidebook, so it’s impossible to know if it was associated with an oracle or not. Another possibility is that such dice were used for games. Ancient Egyptians are known to have used dice for senet, a popular board game thought to have been kind of like backgammon. The game has been found in the tombs of Egyptian royalty, and gameplay has been linked to the mythological Egyptian journey through the underworld.

The 20-sided die is far from the first of its kind, of course. Dice are thought to date back millennia, and the oldest known example was associated with a 3000-year-old board game of the ancient Near East called the Royal Game of Ur.

These days, 20-sided dice are most familiar to role-playing gamers. As games historian Jon Peterson writes, 20-sided dice became commercially available around the early 1970s—right when table gamers were beginning to recognize the need for dice that would allow for more outcomes and make games more realistic. Among those gamers was Gary Gygax, who ended up creating Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson in 1974.

Ancient fortune-telling tool or remnant of a centuries-old D&D predecessor? You can visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and speculate for yourself—the die is on display in Gallery 138.

Winston Churchill had no time for silly military codenames. In a 1943 wartime memo on the subject of coining operation names, he cautioned: “Do not suggest the character of the operation or disparage it in any way, and do not enable some widow or mother to say that her son was killed in an operation called ‘Bunnyhug’ or ‘Ballyhoo.’” Understandable. However, military operations—British or otherwise—haven’t always followed these principles, and some of their names seem downright ridiculous. Although there’s rarely a (public) explanation of why the weird names were assigned, that doesn’t make them any less amusing. Here are just a few of the more memorable.

1. OPERATION DRACULA

Operation Dracula was the Allied South East Asia Command’s plan to reconquer the Burmese capital of Rangoon near the end of WWII. Part of the Burma Campaign, the operation was led by British and Indian forces via sea and sky to wrest the region from Japan, which had invaded in 1942. Begun in 1944 as an outgrowth of the earlier Plan Z, the mission was abandoned—maybe because the sun came up?—but then reinstated the following year. The British and Indian forces encroached on Rangoon as monsoon season began, only to find that the Japanese had skipped town a few days earlier, whereupon it was occupied by the Indian 26th Division without opposition.

2. OPERATION POWER GEYSER

 
This one was a counterterrorism effort that involved a group of 13,000 top-secret commandos who served as military security to support the 2005 U.S. presidential inauguration of George W. Bush. The elite troops carried state-of-the-art weapons as they lurked in the shadows of the White House and the Capitol while the inauguration went down. A Power Geyser, by the way, is a fighting move from the video game series Fatal Fury, where character Terry Bogard blasts the ground with his fist, thereby devising a field of explosive energy around him that sends his opponents flying.

3. OPERATION ALL-AMERICAN TIGER

 
Tigers are pretty boss by themselves, but what if you had not only an American one, but an ALL-American one? The U.S. military ended up giving this name to the November 2003 Iraq War mission to search and clear farms and villages around the Euphrates River in the Northern Iraqi town of Al -Qaim as they tried to capture a handful of insurgent leaders. They ended up detaining 12 men as a result, including a few who were on the American “Most Wanted” list. Not bad.

It’s fun to make up origin stories here, but this codename is actually no mystery. It stems from the nickname for the 82nd Airborne Division—“All-American”—and the “Tiger” squadron of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, both of which launched the first phase of the plan. And for what it’s worth, it was specifically the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment from within the 82nd who worked on this plan, and those guys have their own nickname: “The Devils in Baggy Pants,” plucked from the diary of a disgruntled Wehrmacht officer who was killed in WWII.

4. OPERATION BEASTMASTER

 
From the name, this one sounds like it absolutely, positively must have happened in the ’80s, but actually it was not until 2006 that Operation Beastmaster cleared three neighborhoods in the Baghdad suburb of Ghazaliya—an area itself codenamed “IED Alley East.” Even though none of them used scimitars or were able to telepathically communicate with animals like in the movie, U.S. troops worked in tandem with the Iraqi Army to great success, leading the latter to uncover seven weapon caches as well as a deposit of roadside bomb-crafting supplies. The mission also resulted in the capture of an (unnamed) high-value target. Sounds like that beast got mastered.

5. OPERATION MINCEMEAT

 
Guess the British military managed to sneak this strangely named mission under Churchill’s nose somehow. Operation Mincemeat involved a decoy corpse—a possible (if gross) clue for the name’s origin. As Allied forces were preparing an attack on Sicily in 1943 during World War II, they wanted to convince the Germans that they were headed to Greece and Sardinia instead. So they took the body of Welsh laborer Glyndwr Michael, who’d died from eating rat poison, and planted some phony top-secret papers describing a plan to attack Greece and Sardinia on it, as well as a photo of a fake girlfriend, then let it float to an area off Spain where a particular Nazi agent was located. It worked perfectly. The plan was initially part of a memo containing possible ideas to lure German U-Boats toward minefields and was titled #28: A Suggestion (not a very nice one).

If this sounds like something from an old-timey detective pulp, well, there’s a reason for that. The scheme originally came from the mind of Ian Fleming, who later authored the James Bond books, back when he was an assistant to the head of British Naval Intelligence. Fleming confessed that he’d borrowed the idea of a dead body with false papers from a spy novel he’d once read.

6. OPERATION VIKING SNATCH

 
Despite what you might guess given some slang connotations here, Operation Viking Snatch—which attempted to stop a rash of weapons-smuggling during the Iraq War—was named and carried out within the last decade. The operation took place in September 2007. The name almost certainly derives from a snatch strap, which is a kind of tow rope used to pull bogged-down vehicles out of sand or mud, with Viking Offroad being a company that manufactures them—so, a Viking snatch strap. However, it can probably be assumed that whoever picked this codename was quite aware of its additional entendres and used it anyway.

7. OPERATION BEAVER CAGE

If you thought the last one sounded crass, there’s also this one. Operation Beaver Cage was a helicopter assault launched by the U.S. Marines upon on a Vietcong base in the very populous Que Son Valley, south of Da Nang. Lasting from late April through mid-May of 1967, the Marines walked away with 66 captured Vietcong soldiers and the operation was considered a success. No word on where exactly the name came from, but it’s worth pointing out that although beavers are native to North America and Eurasia, there are none to be found in the wild in Vietnam.

8. OPERATION SAFE NEIGHBORHOOD

 
Although it sounds like it’s an edict by the street captain to drive slowly when kids are at play, this endeavor—along with its little sister, Operation Safe Market—was actually a 2007 effort to make residential neighborhoods, marketplaces, and areas of traffic congestion safer for Iraqis to live and work in during the Iraq War. Basically, they were cracking down on car bombs, with additional measures to decrease general sectarian violence. Not much of a secret codename, but it’s kind of adorable.

9. OPERATION GRIZZLY FORCED ENTRY

 
The “forced entry” part makes sense, anyhow: In the summer of 2004, U.S. soldiers went out on a counterinsurgency raid in Iraq under this codename, busting into private homes to search and seize high-value targets. The guys they were looking for were suspected of attacking coalition forces, and the search was conducted in Najaf, a city just south of Baghdad. The grizzly bit is less clear, but the Americans might just have been flattering themselves.

10. OPERATION MAGNETO

 
Almost 20 years before the superhuman mutant of the same name was DIY-ing magnetic fields in the 1963 debut issue of X-Men, Allied forces were using this word during WWII to refer to a 1945 conference among Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, and FDR. While not strictly a military operation, the three leaders met in Yalta, USSR, in February of that year to discuss how to secure an unconditional surrender by the Germans (and also how to divvy up all the post-war geographical spoils). Operation Magneto, along with Operation Cricket, the prep meeting that happened few days prior, were collectively known as Operation Argonaut.

11. OPERATION TOENAILS

 
A part of the Solomon Islands, the isle of New Georgia was invaded by the WWII Allied forces over the summer of 1943, and they called it Operation Toenails. The reason behind the name seems to have been lost to history. This mission was the first major Allied offensive exacted in the Solomon Islands since New Georgia’s neighbor, Guadalcanal, had been secured the previous February, and it led to the subsequent capture of the rest of the Solomons, concluding with the island of Bougainville. This invasion was part of the two-pronged, equally-oddly named Operation Cartwheel, the group of attacks that the Allied troops conducted in order to first isolate and then descend upon the Japanese military base at Rabaul, on the Solomon island of New Britain.

12. OPERATION CHATTANOOGA CHOO-CHOO

 
The plan here was to systemically bomb German railways in 1944. Seems as though someone was like “Okay, we’re bombing trains. Okay, what’s a train-themed name that we can use that doesn’t actually have the word train in it? Or railway? In any known language?” “I’ve got an idea, sir. The Nazis will have no idea what a ‘choo-choo’ is.” This was a successful mission, by the way—the railways were extensively damaged, forcing Germany to scramble for laborers to repair them when there was already a huge labor shortage. Glenn Miller would be proud.

13. OPERATION FREQUENT WIND

 
Transpiring at the end of April 1975, Operation Frequent Wind was the wrap-up phase of the evacuation of American civilians and at-risk Vietnamese in Saigon prior to the Fall of Saigon, wherein the North Vietnamese Army showed up and took over. Hours after the mission ended, North Vietnamese tanks came crashing through the gates of the Independence Palace, and President (of two days) Duong Van Minh surrendered, signifying the end of the Vietnam War. One can guess at the codename’s origin here, considering it was a helicopter-based evacuation and that it was also tremendous—81 helicopters transported 7000 people to offshore aircraft carriers over the course of two days, making it the largest helicopter evacuation on record.

14. OPERATION LION CUB

 
Operation Lion Cub had two very important missions on December 21 and 24 of 2004—to commandeer a convoy full of toys to the villages of Wynott, Al Alam, and Al Owja in Iraq, where soldiers would hand them out to Iraqi children. The codename is perhaps a nod to the ancient symbol of Iraq, the Lion of Babylon. Family Readiness Groups in the U.S. and Germany had collected the toys over several months as part of a Christmas donation drive, and the operation received a very positive response from both the kids and their parents.

15. OPERATION GIMLET VICTORY

 
There’s not a whole lot of info out there on Operation Gimlet Victory, other than that it happened in 2004 during the Iraq War. There were a handful of other U.S. counterinsurgency operations with gimlet in their names—Operation Gimlet Crusader, Operation Gimlet Silent Sniper—that were staged in the city of Kirkuk during the same year, so one can assume that this one was, if not the victorious denouement of those operations, at least related to them. The name likely refers to the tool kind of gimlet and not the cocktail kind, but it still sounds like what happens after you slog through your tedious Friday at work and finally make it to happy hour.

To err is human, and we’ve all done it, especially in the form of a typographical error. But different types of typos can have hugely varying consequences—there’s a big difference between spelling your coworker’s name wrong in an email and committing an error in a book that will be preserved in print for all history to refer to. Typos can be profitable, too, of course—according to legend, the name Google is derived from a misspelling of “googolplex.” But useful or embarrassing, sometimes typos are forever, perhaps even more in the age of the internet. Here are some of publishing’s most memorable blunders.

1. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 classic has a handful of small typos, of the “to/too” and “if/it” persuasion, but perhaps the cutest is the place where characters are referred to as “harmoniously abandoning themselves to the rhythm of the music—like two small chips being tossed about on a rough but friendly sea.” One can probably assume he meant “ships,” but there’s always a chance that he was talking about a sea of pico de gallo.

2. THE GOOD EARTH

 
One can tell the first, second, and third printings of Pearl S. Buck’s 1931 novel apart from later printings by a blooper on page 100, line 17, wherein a wall against which people set up their huts is being described. “It stretched out long and grey and very high, and against the base the small mat sheds clung like flees to a dog’s back.” Editions of the book that include the misspelling can go for as much as $9500.

3. CRYPTONOMICON

 
The original hardcover edition of Neal Stephenson’s 1999 sci-fi thriller famously contained a number of simple typos (“a” instead of “at,” “that” instead of “that’s”). There is also a switch-up on page 700—the word “factitious” is used in place of “fictitious.” However, many fans maintain that Stephenson did this deliberately and that the typos comprise a hidden message, per one of the themes of the book—cryptographers attempting to crack World War II-era Axis codes.

4. HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

 
The first book in the beloved Harry Potter series would be treasured by muggles even if it didn’t carry a typo, but a selection of copies are valued at a small fortune for this reason. The mistake is found on page 53, in a list of school supplies that young wizards are expected to bring to Hogwarts: “1 wand” is listed at both the beginning and at the end. That said, the typo did reappear in a few later printings even after it was caught in the second round, so it’s only the true first editions that are worth beaucoup bucks.

5. TROPIC OF CANCER

 
It’s almost like Henry Miller wasn’t even trying here—or that his publisher wasn’t even trying to hire a proofreader. His 1961 novel about general debauchery in Paris led to over 60 obscenity lawsuits and features a whole mess of typographical errors, such as “He listend to me incomplete bewilderment” (page 271), and “Even after he has slept with one of these mythical cratures he will still refer to her as a virgin, and almost never by name” (page 91). One might even suspect that Miller wasn’t … altogether sober while he was writing it.

6. “THE WICKED BIBLE”

 
This 1631 edition of the King James Bible by Robert Baker and Martin Lucas included an accidental new twist on the 7th Commandment, informing readers that “Thou shalt commit adultery.” This managed to incense both King Charles I and the Archbishop of Canterbury—its publishers were hauled into court and fined £300 (a little over $57,000 in today’s U.S. dollars) for the oversight and they had their printing license revoked. Most of the copies were subsequently burned, and the book picked up the sobriquet “The Wicked Bible” or “The Sinners’ Bible.” Only about 10 copies remain today—one was put up for sale by British auction house Bonhams just last year.

7. THE ROAD

 
In the first edition of Cormac McCarthy’s postapocalyptic The Road, page 228 reads, “A moment of panic before he saw him walking along the bench downshore with the pistol hanging in his hand, his head down.” The rest of the paragraph talks about being on the beach, though, so it’s safe to imagine that’s what McCarthy meant. Unless it was a bench down the shore. Presumably a long one that you can walk along?

8. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

 
As with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain took great creative license when he was writing about Huck Finn, and the book is full of things like “spos’n” in place of “supposing” and “gwyne” in place of “going to” to illustrate the Southern dialect the boys speak. But among the intentionally flawed bits of spelling and grammar, there is a legitimate error hidden in first edition of Huck Finn: “I took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom of it with the was.” (It should be “with the saw.”)

9. A DANCE WITH DRAGONS

 
The entire Song of Ice and Fire series—the books that the HBO show A Game of Thrones is based on—is rife with typos and consistency errors, but Book Five arguably has the most. For instance, on page 854, where Queen Cersei descends a staircase and muses: “’I am beautiful,’ she reminded himself.” The word “wroth” is consistently misused in this book as well—e.g., page 53: “Even in the north men fear the wroth of Tywin Lannister.” (Wroth is an adjective, meaning angry—author George R. R. Martin should have used “wrath,” the noun form.)

10. GRAVITY’S RAINBOW

 
The 1973 novel, Thomas Pynchon’s best-known, contained a handful of typos, including: “Over croissants, strawberry jam, real butter, real coffee, she has him running through the flight profile in terms of wall temperature and Nusselt heart-transfer coefficients …” It should be “heat-transfer,” of course.

11. THE QUEEN’S GOVERNESS

 
Karen Harper regularly receives major props for accuracy when it comes to historical detail in her popular, mostly Tudor-themed novels, but the same can’t be said for lexical detail. In her 2010 hit The Queen’s Governess, Harper made a small but memorable slip. When heroine Kat Ashley, lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn, is awoken in the night by ruffians who demand to see Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth, she remarks: “In the weak light of dawn, I tugged on the gown and sleeves I’d discarded like a wonton last night to fall into John’s arms.” Okay, to be fair, folks in Tudor England probably didn’t have a lot of experience with Chinese food, but even so, you’re not supposed to unwrap wontons before you eat them (the word she was looking for, of course, was wanton).

12. PLAGUE SHIP

 
There’s a weird one in Clive Cussler’s joint novel with Jack Du Brul, where a character finds himself in an overturned ATV: “He goosed the throttle and worked the wheel, using the four-wheeler’s power rather than moist his strength to right the six-hundred-pound vehicle.” Sort of makes sense—in an emergency, you gotta reserve all your juices for later.

13. FREEDOM

 
It was lauded as “the book of the century” after being released in the U.S. in 2010, but when Freedom, Jonathan Franzen’s follow-up to 2001’s The Corrections, was published in the UK, an early, unproofed version of the manuscript was mistakenly used, resulting in a final print that was absolutely riddled with typesetting errors. The misprints in the British version numbered in the hundreds. HarperCollins ended up recalling thousands of copies of the novel and let fans exchange their tainted books for new, corrected copies, going as far as to set up a “Freedom recall hotline.” Maybe Franzen should have saved the title “The Corrections” for this book instead.

14. THE PASTA BIBLE

 
In 2010, Penguin Group Australia had to ditch about 7000 copies of The Pasta Bible when it was discovered that a recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto told cooks to “add salt and freshly ground black people,” rather than pepper. The gaffe was blamed on a spellcheck error and the company’s head of publishing brushed it off as “a silly mistake,” but it ended up costing the company a not-silly 20,000 Australian dollars (about $14,900 USD in 2016).

15. TWILIGHT

 
The first edition of Twilight is festering with typos, which is perhaps unsurprising, seeing as it was written in just three months and was sent to press in a similar hurry. Most of the blemishes are of the “whose/who’s” and “though/through” variety, but there are a few funny ones, including “I ate breakfast cheerily, watching the dust moats stirring in the sunlight that streamed in the back window.” One can imagine that Stephenie Meyer, who went from being a stay-at-home mom to finding herself on Forbes’ list of the world’s highest-paid celebrities in the space of just a few years, probably didn’t lose too much sleep over it.

This Christmas, you might find yourself elbow-deep in frosting and candy canes, trying to construct a gingerbread house that doesn’t collapse. But it turns out that creating a gingerbread house isn’t just a Christmas construction project—it’s a ritual with sometimes surprising connections to royalty, brutal fairy tales, and global trade.

Although versions of gingerbread date to ancient Egypt and Greece, the gingerbread we eat today has its roots in the Middle Ages, when cakes became all the rage in Europe as an increasingly global world opened up to new spices and ingredients. First there was fruitcake. The once-hot, now played-out treat came into favor after medieval cooks finally got access to dried fruit from Spain and Portugal thanks to increased trade in the 13th century.

That led to a vogue in cakes and breads, which spread as better construction made having an oven in your house less terrifying. Trade with the East also made the ingredients in gingerbread available for the first time. Early gingerbread recipes contain spices that were once coveted and expensive, like cinnamon, sandalwood, and saffron, which became increasingly accessible after the Crusades. Gingerbread became big business, and local variations began to arise. Lebkuchen, a gingerbread-like spiced treat, became popular in Germany, and guilds of gingerbread makers began to emerge in the 15th and 16th centuries.

As gingerbread makers got better at their craft, they began to press the luxurious creations into intricate molds and even paint them. The sweet treat became a popular way for rich rulers to impress visitors, as when Elizabeth I handed out gingerbread men to visiting dignitaries.

Then, a simple story thrust gingerbread from yummy treat to full-blown cultural phenomenon. Though the original doesn’t reference gingerbread specifically, the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” told the story of two children who are left to starve by their poor, hungry parents, then enticed and imprisoned by a wicked witch in a house “built of bread and covered with cakes.”

After the Grimms published the tale in 1812, building gingerbread houses became a popular pastime in Germany. Food historians debate whether the Grimms’ story simply drew on gingerbread houses that were already popular, or whether it gave people the idea in the first place, but it certainly seems that constructing gingerbread houses became a popular activity among Germans right around the time the Grimms began publishing their bestsellers.

By then, of course, gingerbread was already associated with Christmas. And nobody celebrates Christmas like the Germans, who pioneered everything from Christmas presents to Christmas trees to some of the most popular carols.

In the 19th century, many gingerbread house-making Germans, armed with their favorite holiday traditions, moved to the United States in multiple mass waves of immigration. The opera “Hänsel and Gretel” by Engelbert Humperdinck, which premiered in Germany in 1893 and in the United States two years later, featured a gingerbread house that may also have increased the popularity of the confectionery construction.

By 1909, Good Housekeeping was suggesting that moms make a “Jack Horner pie” (the term was used as a catch-all for any pastry that had goodies inside) featuring a miniature gingerbread house for a Hansel and Gretel children’s party. And with each Christmas, more elaborate gingerbread creations could be found.

These days, gingerbread structures are so popular that many become tourist destinations, as in the case of a three-ton gingerbread village built each year by a New York chef. And next time you see one, you might want to remember its convoluted history—one that belies its sugar-sweet looks.

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.