Author: Bess Lovejoy

Being a mall Santa might seem like a relatively easy job: Put a kid on your lap, ask them what they want for Christmas, pose for a quick photo, and send them on their merry way. But any Santa who’s done even one season at the mall will tell you the job takes dedication.

“There’s no harder job in all of Christmas than being the mall Santa,” says Paul Sheehan, who worked as a Santa at a mall in rural New Hampshire and is now in his 36th season as a professional Mr. Claus. “Between Black Friday and Christmas Eve at 3 pm, I had seen over 17,000 kids. Someone in a bigger city, they’re doing twice and three times that.”

But there’s a reason thousands of rotund, bearded men don the suit every year: While demanding, being Santa is also incredibly rewarding. We spoke with a few professional Kris Kringles about what it’s like being the season’s biggest celebrity. 

1. THEY GO TO SANTA COLLEGE.   

If you’ve ever perched on Santa’s knee at your local mall, there’s a good chance he was a graduate of Santa University, run by Noerr Programs Corporation, an events company that trains and distributes Santas to more than 278 major malls and shopping centers across the country. Each Noerr Santa has to pass a background check and undergo several rounds of interviews. And a real beard is required. “That’s part of the magic,” says Ruth Rosenquist, Noerr’s Director of PR. 

Every August, Noerr hosts its Santa University in Arvada, Colorado, where hundreds of “gentlemen of great mirth and girth” gather for four days of training on everything from Santa ethics to how to ho-ho-ho. “It’s amazing to sit with all these guys in their red shirts and suspenders,” Rosenquist says. “You look up and you’re speaking to Santa. It’s the best audience in the world.” Watch a sneak peek below: 

2. RULE #1: ALWAYS STAY IN CHARACTER.

If you’re wearing the red suit, you must behave like Santa at all times. This means having a jolly temperament and never snapping or yelling at a child, no matter how frustrated you may be. 

“The most important thing they need to understand is that they are Santa and they always are to remain in character of Santa,” says Rosenquist. “They’re never to break that character.”

For some of the more professional St. Nicks, the white beard and big belly stays with them all year, so they have to be careful about how they’re representing the jolly old elf in public. This means being on one’s best behavior and fielding questions like, “Santa, what are you doing at the grocery store?” 

Robert Hildreth, a professional Santa of 30 years, says he doesn’t drink when he goes out for dinner with his wife Carol Hildreth (a.k.a. Mrs. Claus), because he wants to be the model image of Santa for children. “You gotta watch what you say and do because the kids are looking at you,” he says.

But playing a convincing Santa all year round comes with its perks, like the occasional free meal. “We’ve had a couple incidents where we’ve gone into restaurants and the little ones notice us,” Carol explains. “He’ll go over and talk to them a bit and then when we go to pay the bill it’s already been taken care of.”

3. THEY KNOW WHERE THE MALL’S SECRET BATHROOMS ARE.

“I refuse to go to the public restroom if it’s at all avoidable,” says RG Holland, one of Noerr’s men in red. “The whole deal of being Santa, particularly at the mall, is when you’re dressed as Santa you have to stay in character and it’s kinda hard to be in a Santa suit staying in character in front of a urinal.”

In some malls, Santas have their own designated dressing area complete with a bathroom. And if not, they improvise. “I find the restroom in the mall that is the most obscure and private,” Holland says. “If I have trouble finding those, I find the nearest department store and use one of their restrooms that’s out of the way.”

4. THEY SECRETLY SWAP.

If a Santa needs to take a lunch break or his shift is ending, sometimes another one will step in without anyone noticing. “In the busiest of malls, we often set it up so there are two Santas and we try to match in terms of physical appearance so it’s not that obvious in mid-day when we swap,” says Holland. “We don’t want anyone saying ‘That’s not Santa!’ A lot of times even parents and especially kids, if they didn’t see us together, they wouldn’t know which was which.” 

5. THEY GET A BODYGUARD.

According to Rosenquist, every Noerr Santa gets an escort when he leaves the set. This is supposed to discourage the mobs of fans from attacking him.

6. THERE’S A RIGHT WAY AND A WRONG WAY TO BLEACH A BEARD.

While some naturally-bearded Santas are blessed with snowy white bristles, others aren’t so lucky. In that case, bleaching is the best option, but only when it’s done gradually and with great care. “It’s gotta be done in stages,” says Rosenquist. “If you try to go snowy white all at once, you’ll burn your hair and it gets yellow.” Smart Santas begin the coloring process in October in preparation for the holiday season.

7. THE MONEY’S PRETTY GOOD.

Noerr doesn’t disclose how much it pays its actors, but according to Rosenquist, it’s a salaried position, and the rate can vary by location. Ed Warchol, president of Cherry Hill Photo, another Santa distributor, says his Santas earn “well into the five-figure range for just six weeks of work.” 

8. AND SENIORITY HELPS

The more experience a Santa has under his belt, the bigger his paycheck. “We always look for experience,” says Rosenquist. One 18-year veteran St. Nick said he could make $30,000 in one season. 

For some comparison: according to a cheeky report from insurance information site Insure.com, the real Santa Claus would earn roughly $140,000 a year if he were compensated for all the work he does, including overseeing the toy factory and piloting the sleigh on Christmas Eve. 

9. THEY MIGHT KNOW SIGN LANGUAGE.

Noerr teaches Santas-in-training key ASL gestures so they can communicate with deaf children. They’re also advised to learn basic Spanish. Rosenquist says the demand for Santas of different races and backgrounds is growing. “We are in a lot of markets that are heavily Hispanic, so having bilingual Santas is of supreme importance,” she says. 

10. THERE’S A SECRET SANTA GREETING. 

In public, Santas speak in code to one another as a show of camaraderie. “I’ll go up and ask him if he’s being good this year,” says Holland. “That’s a giveaway.” Or, if a Santa lookalike answers to “Brother In Red,” you know you’re talking to a St. Nick.

11. ROUND BELLY NOT REQUIRED

“You don’t necessarily have to have the belly full of jelly,” Rosenquist says. “We don’t measure our Santas by their waist, we measure them by their hearts.” Noerr’s training program actually includes a session on how to eat properly and avoid the health risks that come with being Santa-sized, like diabetes and heart disease. If Santa needs a bigger belly to be convincing, he can be “enhanced” with padding.

Some Santas also wear makeup to maintain a rosy glow. “Number 30 rouge for the cheeks and maybe a little touch on the nose to give him a little bit of weathered look,” one actor told This American Life. 

12. CONDIMENTS ARE TO BE AVOIDED.

“If he’s presenting that day, it’s pretty much just water and sandwiches with no ketchup or mustard in them,” says Carol Hildreth. “Otherwise the beard gets dirty.” And nobody wants Santa all up in their face if he’s got bad breath, so good Santas keep breath mints on them at all times. Robert adds an extra special touch: His beard oil is peppermint-scented.

13. THEY HAVE TO STUDY.

“One of the things you have to have at your fingertips at all times is all the culture that goes with Santa,” says Sheehan. This goes way beyond being able to recite the names of Santa’s reindeer. Sheehan tries to keep up with every new movie or TV show in which Santa makes an appearance and memorize the plot so he’s not caught off guard by an inquisitive child. “You could be blown away by a new movie out this season that you haven’t seen yet, but the kid has like six times,” Sheehan explains. “They’re asking details about what happened in the movie and you don’t know what’s going on.”

Santa also has to know all the latest toys—after all, he makes them. “I go through the toy catalogues every year,” says Sheehan. “In a nutshell, it’s staying current. Like any dentist or doctor has to read professional journals, it’s the same with us but we have to stay up on everything that has to do with Christmas.”

14. “I’LL ASK MRS. CLAUS” IS CODE FOR “I DON’T WANT TO ANSWER THAT.”

Kids say the darndest things on Santa’s knee, and no amount of studying can prepare a Kris Kringle impersonator for all the odd questions or bizarre requests. You know you’ve stumped Santa when he brings up the wife.

“I blame a lot on Mrs. Claus,” says Holland. “If anything comes up that’s questionable, I say ‘I’ll have to check with Mrs. Claus about that.’ It really defuses a lot of skepticism.”

But Mrs. Claus does more than just take the blame for Santa’s shortcomings. She often helps shy kids feel more comfortable. “Sometimes the little ones are afraid of the big guy in the red suit and the beard but they’ll come to someone who looks like grandma,” says Carol Hildreth. “So they’ll sit on my lap and then talk to Santa.” 

15. THEY’RE NOT ALLOWED TO PROMISE. 

One of the worst things a mall Santa can do is promise a child they’ll get what they want for Christmas. “If you promise stuff the parents can’t provide then it’s rough on them and it makes Santa look bad too,” says Holland.

Noerr coaches its Santas to deliver a message of hope, but to make no guarantees. “The most you can say is that you’ll try,” says Sheehan. “Even if I know you’ve bought it for them, I’m not gonna tell them that because god forbid the garage catches fire and the toys are gone.”

16. THEY HATE CRYING BABY PHOTOS.

But for some reason, parents love them. “Unfortunately some think that’s the thing to have,” Holland says. “I do everything I can to avoid them. Parents say it’s ok if they cry, but the crying picture is not any fun for the kid and it’s not any fun for Santa either.”

The best way to avoid a screaming, sobbing child is for parents to stay close, rather than shoving the kid in Santa’s lap and walking away. “Give the kids time to acclimate to Santa,” says Robert. “The child is scared and crying and screaming because they don’t know who you’re handing them off to. Please don’t throw your kids to us.”

“Some of these people slug their kids around like they’re 10 lb bags of potatoes,” says Sheehan. “I had a woman in the mall who almost tossed the child to me. She let go of the kid before I had a grip on the kid, then walked away and was wondering why the child was crying. Parents are the worst part of the whole thing of being Santa.” 

17. THEY WISH YOU’D DO THE HEAVY LIFTING.

The constant up-and-down that comes with hoisting kids on and off your knees for 12 hours a day can cause all kinds of aches and pains. After their shifts, the older Santas are probably going home to ice their knees or put a heating pad on their backs. 

“Like any business you go into there’s always something that wears out, some part of the anatomy that takes a beating,” says Sheehan. “For Santa it’s the knees and hips. By the end of the season, you’re really going to be hurting.” 

If you want to make your local mall Santa happy, save him a little bit of effort by lifting your child onto his lap.

18. NOT EVERY SANTA CAN NAIL THE SIGNATURE LAUGH.

“Interestingly enough, there are some Santas who just can’t ho-ho-ho,” Rosenquist says. “We try to get them to do it but for some of them it’s just not their nature.”

19. KIDS’ TOY PREFERENCES ARE CHANGING.

The old standbys never change: Lots of boys want a fire truck and girls want an American Girl doll. But according to Sheehan, requests for gender-specific toys have fallen over the last two or three years. “So I will hear boys asking for an Easy Bake Oven and the girls will like LEGOs and the kinds of toys you can build something with,” he says. “There is a shift and transition there that’s happened in last couple years.”

20. THE PROFESSIONALS HAVE LIABILITY INSURANCE.

All it takes is one squirming child who falls off a knee and Santa could be liable for thousands of dollars in damages. As a precaution, the professionals carry their own insurance.

“We carry $2 million of liability insurance,” says Robert Hildreth. Luckily he’s a member of a Santa training and advocacy group called International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas, which helps him get a group rate on insurance. “We’ve never had to use it, but it’s nice to have it there,” he says.

21. IT’S ALL ABOUT BEING A GOOD LISTENER.

The most important part of a mall Santa’s job, according to Sheehan, is to lend an ear to kids who might be feeling lost. “Being with Santa might be the best thing that’s gonna happen to that kid all day,” he says. “I try to make it warm and affirming and raise them up. Everyone needs affirmation.”

Some kids ask for the impossible, like the return of a deceased family member or a reunion between divorced parents. “There are some things Santa can’t do, but we’ll pray with them,” Holland says. “Another thing I like to do is tell them that as long as they remember the person who’s gone, they’re still with them. You have to really philosophize with some of them and tell them stuff in a way that makes sense and that they will come away feeling like it’s gonna be ok. The parents get the pictures, the kids get the experience.”

All images via iStock. 

With the gift-giving season round the corner, you might be tempted to get all your shopping done online—but that would be a shame because nothing beats the magic of a real toy store this time of year. Whether you are looking for traditional wooden toys, obscure manga characters, beautifully crafted bears, or just a giant box of LEGO, the following toy shops around the world will cater to your every toy-related need.

1. HAMLEYS, LONDON

Hamleys in Regent Street, London is one of the world’s most iconic toy shops, and 5 million people a year still flock to this paradise of playthings to get their fix of the latest toys. Founded in 1760 by William Hamley, who initially named his High Holborn store “Noah’s Ark,” the store did so well that another (this time eponymously-named) branch was opened in Regent Street in 1881. Over the years, Hamleys has had many up and downs—closing for a time during the economic depression of the 1930s, remaining open despite getting bombed five times during World War II, and putting on a grand display of toys at the 1951 Festival of Britain—but it has always remained a London institution. Today, Hamleys has seven floors full of toys, games, puzzles, and dress up, and a visit to the shop is always enlivened by their famous in-store toy demonstrations.

2. LARK TOYS, MINNESOTA

Lark Toys in Kellogg, Minnesota is more than just a huge family-run toy store—they also have a working carousel with beautifully carved and painted animals, an 18-hole outdoor mini-golf course, a kids’ bookstore, and a fudge and candy store. Lark stocks a huge variety of traditional toys from puppet theaters, with plenty of interactive areas for the kids to get involved. There is also a charming display of antique toys in their “memory lane” section, which serves as a mini-museum.

3. KID’S CAVERN, MACAU

The super-stylish Kid’s Cavern toy store in Sands Coati Central in Macau opened in 2012 and boasts an interior designed to amaze. The 35,000-square-foot shop has giant superheroes, bright LED light displays, and an actual flying toy plane. The shop stocks children’s clothes and accessories as well as plenty of toys from all the biggest brands, but the element sure to brighten every kid’s day is the magical candy store containing every color and variety of sweet thing imaginable.

4. LEGO STORE, LONDON

Newly opened in November 2016, the LEGO Store in Leicester Square, London is the largest in the world at 9800 square feet. The store is furnished with many huge LEGO models, including a life-sized display of a London Underground train (created from an astonishing 637,903 bricks) and a 20-foot high model of Big Ben (which took 2280 hours to build) complete with a working clock face that is illuminated at night. There are also numerous nods to the store’s London location, with LEGO William Shakespeare, a bowler-hat wearing mascot, and a LEGO version of the iconic London tube map. Of course alongside all these marvelous giant LEGO models, shoppers can also buy just about any LEGO set they can think of.

5. STEIFF MUSEUM AND SHOP, GERMANY

The most famous teddy bear manufacturer in the world is Steiff, which was established in 1880 in Germany by the remarkable Margarete Steiff, who created the now world-famous brand despite a serious disability due to childhood polio. The iconic Steiff teddy bear was designed in 1902 and came to international prominence at the Leipzig Toy Fair in 1903, when Hermann Berg, a toy-buyer for an American company, saw the potential and put in an order for 3000. Marketed as “teddy” bears in America, after President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, the bears proved a massive and enduring success. Today children can visit the town where it all began and take a tour of the Steiff Museum and Factory, with a huge display of the many animals produced over the years. Alongside the museum is a large shop selling the complete range of Steiff animals, from a classic teddy bear to a giant giraffe. For bear lovers keen on a bargain there is also a factory outlet just outside the museum which sells discounted Steiff toys.

6. SI TU VEUX, PARIS

Located in one of the most beautiful covered arcades in Paris, Si Tu Veux, in the City of Light’s 2nd arrondissement, is a proper old-fashioned magical toy store. The quaint shop stocks traditional European wooden toys, games, dress-up costumes, and puzzles, and is sure to enchant even the most jaded child away from their iPhone.

7. KIDDYLAND, TOKYO

Located in the famous Harajuku district of Tokyo, Kiddyland’s flagship store is perhaps the coolest toy store in the world. Kiddyland is famous for stocking original Japanese toys, many of which are only available in Japan. A paradise for character fans, there are four floors of Hello Kitty, Rilakkuma, chicaboos, Snoopy, tamagotchis, and numerous other cute Japanese brands.

8. THE LITTLE DOLLHOUSE COMPANY, TORONTO

The Little Dollhouse Company in Toronto is one of only a few dedicated dollhouse stores in North America. The store includes 85 built dollhouses to explore, each fitted out with miniature furniture. The store also includes a workshop where visitors can watch craftspeople create everything from tiny bowls of cereal to elaborate miniature chandeliers. The shop caters to everyone from those looking for their toddler’s first playhouse to avid collectors salivating over the $50,000 mansion.

9. CHARLES RO SUPPLY COMPANY, MASSACHUSETTS

Charles Ro Supply Company, in Malden, Massachusetts may be America’s largest toy train shop, with 30,000 square feet of the largest inventory of model trains in the country. Every Saturday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. they run their whole electric train on six different tracks across three separate floors. The track runs G-gauge and O-gauge trains through varied scenery that includes waterfalls, a mountain pass, a town, and an old-time depot, all ensured to delight children and adult collectors alike.

10. FORBIDDEN PLANET, LONDON

Forbidden Planet is the world’s largest chain of comic book stores, and the London megastore on Shaftesbury Avenue is its spiritual home, packed full of merchandise connected to comics, manga, sci-fi, and cult TV shows. Expect shelves heaving with Dr Who, Star Wars, Adventure Time, Marvel, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer merchandise.

North Korea is a country shrouded in mystery, somehow as intriguing as it is tragic. Reports of famine wiping out a significant portion of the country’s population in the ‘90s, a seeming disregard for anyone outside the elite in the capital city of Pyongyang, and the total suppression of information from outside sources make it a difficult place to get to know, not to mention live in. Yet the country seems enraptured by its leaders: When Kim Jong-Il died in 2011 citizens lined the streets, many weeping uncontrollably.

The Kims have a lot of tools at their disposal to help deify them, but none have harnessed it better than Kim Jong-Il. Kim was a film obsessive, the proud owner of one of the largest private film collections in the world, with reportedly over 20,000 movies—almost all of them bootlegs, since it was illegal to import western media into North Korea. He experienced the power of cinema first-hand, and knew he could exploit it for the benefit of his and his father’s regime.

Infamously, he kidnapped South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and his ex-wife actress Choi Eun-hui in 1978, forcing them to make North Korean propaganda films for years before their daring escape in 1986. But even before that, in 1973, Kim Jong-Il published his propaganda manifesto On the Art of the Cinema, a 300-page, quasi-impenetrable opus filled with musings about what it takes to make a great film. The book was instantly a must-read among North Korea’s filmmaking studios—meaning they were literally forced to read it, not that it was a hit—and shaped North Korean cinema for many years. It also offered some (occasionally quite obvious) lessons to filmmakers around the globe, including these:

1. “THE SEED IS THE CORE OF A LITERARY WORK.”

 
It might seem that talking about literature would be a bit of a sidestep for a book on filmmaking, but Kim Jong-Il dedicates the first 100 pages of his book to “Life and Literature.” He discusses literature as a source material for great cinema—combined, of course, with the great struggle and life experience of the North Korean people. In subchapters laced with clumsy metaphors, Kim likens a written work to a living thing and tells us that “in order to build the organic structure of a literary piece, it is necessary to have a clear vision of the fundamental principle which permeates all the elements of an artistic image and welds them into an integral whole.” Which, plainly speaking, means that story is everything. Without a compelling story with a clear goal (or “seed”), a film falls flat at the first hurdle.

2. “THE MOOD MUST BE EXPRESSED WELL.”

This lesson boils down to one thing: make us look good. Is the film set in the “exploitative society” of the West where “the majority of the population live in low spirits, plagued by worries and anxiety because they are poor and have no rights”? Well, make sure the mood of the scene reflects that. Irony aside, a real lesson for filmmakers here is to develop their craft, because “mood can only be correctly expressed by artists who have attained a high level of creative skill.”

3. “EACH SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC.”

 
A rookie mistake for filmmakers and screenwriters is forgetting that their scenes serve to propel the narrative forward, or to reveal more information about a character. “A film has to compress a considerable amount of narrative into a small space,” Kim points out, and meandering through a scene without any clear conflict (relating back to the “seed” from lesson one) could mean that “the film as a whole [would] have no dramatic structure, and dramatic description [would] be impossible.” (Other filmmakers might note that’s not a hard-and-fast rule—Quentin Tarantino famously plays with this idea in Pulp Fiction’s “Royale with Cheese” scene.)

4. “BEGIN ON A SMALL SCALE AND END GRANDLY.”

You could never accuse Kim of being a fan of subtlety and nuance (this, after all, is a man who claimed his birth was heralded by a double rainbow and whose favorite movies were said to be Friday the 13th and Rambo), and his musings on story arcs reflect this. “First impressions are important in a film,” the Dear Leader says, before elaborating: “if the beginning is too complicated, it will be difficult to follow the development of the story.” Solid advice: ease your audience into the narrative adventure you’re about to take them on.

What about the grand ending? Well, make sure it has meaning. Kim talks at length of grounding the story in a relatable human struggle rather than anything fantastical, and claims that “introducing some stunning occurrence or the total impact of something completely strange and unheard-of, in the hope of evoking meaningless exclamations of wonder, is a vulgarity which is incompatible with art created for the people.” That’s big talk for somebody who would go on to produce an absurd Godzilla rip-off that gained so-bad-it’s-good cult infamy.

5. “LIFE IS STRUGGLE AND STRUGGLE IS LIFE.”

 
“Art presupposes life,” Kim says. “Without life there could be no artistic creation. An artistic work which does not mirror life honestly is useless.” (We’re guessing he’s not a big sci-fi guy.)

The end goal of North Korean cinema was, and is, to instill an exaggerated sense of national pride in the audience, and watching characters struggle—plus, crucially, overcome their struggles—on the big screen is one big way to create that pride. Of course, stories about overcoming struggles aren’t limited to North Korea alone (as Kurt Vonnegut demonstrates in this clip). Identifying with a lead protagonist’s struggle helps keep the audience rooting for them.

6. “IN CREATIVE WORK ONE MUST AIM HIGH.”

When Kim says “aim high” here, he’s referring more to creative standards than commercial success (ignoring the fact that state-produced films are always a commercial success in North Korea because viewing is often mandatory). According to Kim, “even if certain individual scenes are quite impressive, an able director will be concerned if the work as a whole appears vague and unconvincing” and ultimately a sincere belief in the work you’re making will help, as “the force of the passion he experiences when nurturing an excellent seed fuels his activity.”

7. “THE SECRET OF DIRECTING LIES IN EDITING.”

 
Again, Kim isn’t breaking any ground here—the Russian filmmakers of the early 20th century were among the first to harness the power of editing. Look no further than the Kuleshov Effect (an editing technique based on the idea than an audience will derive more meaning from two shots in a sequence than one shot shown in isolation) to see the kind of impact their work is still having on cinema today.

“Throughout the whole course of making the film, the director must constantly consider the work from the point of view of editing,” Kim says. He has a point: Considering how a scene is going to be stitched together in the edit is vital, but can easily be forgotten about on set. Kim goes on to say that the director “must always seek, by exploring new possibilities, to enhance the role played by editing.”

8. “FILMING SHOULD BE REALISTIC.”

Kim’s ideas of realism are tailored toward the camera as witness to the honorable workers’ struggle. He says that “there is nothing in society and nature, in human life or the physical world, which cannot be captured on camera,” and in doing so one can create “a rhythmical flow of imagery which will evoke a tapestry of emotions.” However, his understanding of cinematography and composition is clearly limited, with statements littered throughout the chapter such as “the camerawork of a film should portray everything clearly and concisely” and “the cameraman should portray life in a natural and realistic way”—none of which are elaborated upon.

He does, however, acknowledge that movement plays a vital role in the visual makeup of a film, explaining that shooting “should create cinematic movement by combining the movement of an object with that of the camera.” In other words, don’t just leave your camera sitting motionless on a tripod unless there’s a very good reason for it. Life, after all, rarely stands still.

9. “BEFORE ACTING [THE ACTOR] SHOULD UNDERSTAND LIFE.”

 
When he kidnapped the director Shin Sang-Ok, one of Kim’s major complaints about North Korean film was the melodrama. He bemoaned that actors were constantly crying in the movies—and I mean really crying. Which is why he emphasizes the importance of a non-theatrical realism: “The actor should not ‘act’ before the camera but behave as he would in real life,” Kim instructs, before launching into a lengthy diatribe about how the actor and character should become one and the same. (One wonders if he’d appreciate Jared Leto’s method acting.)

10. “MUSIC SHOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO THE SCENES.”

This is another lesson that seems so painfully obvious it’s hard to believe Kim managed to spin it out to seven pages, but here we are. Using the wrong music is still a mistake you see today—filmmaker and YouTuber Darious Britt touches on recent examples of it in this 2015 video. One key mistake: You can’t just throw a piece of dramatic music over your scenes to add drama if there’s none there already. “Only when film music both conforms with the spirit of the times and suits the specific situation depicted can it pluck at the people’s heartstrings,” Kim says.

For decades, lavish holiday window displays at department stores have been one of the first signs of the season. But have you ever wondered how the designers behind the windows create those enchanting arrangements? Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at everything that goes into making the holiday windows so magical at this time of year—from the best way to arrange lights to the pre-season all-nighters.

1. EVERY HOLIDAY WINDOW HAS A PURPOSE.

The holiday windows are supposed to make you feel something, says Jacques Rosas, New York-based artist, founder, and CEO of Jacques Rosas, which does holiday window installations in stores such as Godiva, Elizabeth Arden, and Bed, Bath & Beyond. Whenever Rosas is working on a window, he asks about the personality of the store, what they’re imagining, favorite decorations, traditions, and more—all starting with what they sell. “I try to pull settings that have nostalgia for them,” Rosas says. “I think the magical part is the nostalgia.” He loves the feel of an old-fashioned Christmas—last year, he decked out one store window with handmade stockings, old ornaments, and a real train.

2. YOU WON’T SEE MANY CHRISTMAS TREES IN THE STORE WINDOWS.

 
At least not any real Christmas trees, Rosas says. Usually, the windows are hot, dry places, so any live trees would dry out and die. They could also catch fire, so a lot of the newer buildings won’t use them even if they could create the right environmental conditions. “We tend to use a lot of fake stuff,” Rosas says.

3. YOU ALSO WON’T SEE ANY PRODUCTS.

While stores’ windows throughout the year are supposed to sell products, this time of year is all about the entertainment, says David Spaeth, CEO of Spaeth Design, which does holiday windows for Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Tiffany & Co. and Bergdorf Goodman. Sure, you may see a product or two in some of the windows (it’s not a hard-and-fast rule), but this is the time to seduce customers with gorgeous snowflakes or pretty (fake) trees instead of fantastic outfits.

4. BUT YOU WILL SEE LIGHTS.

Lights are what draws customers to the windows, and they can really make the displays pop. But you’d be surprised at how few lights will make a big splash, Rosas says. “There’s not a lot of lights—that’s a big mistake,” he says. “If you do too many, the reflection will play tricks on the viewer, and you won’t actually be able to see anything but lights.” Instead, he uses a few perfectly placed lights that bounce off each other. Rosas also tends to use plenty of wood composite, fiberglass, bark, paper, and plastic to create his scenes. But don’t be surprised to spot other wacky items in holiday store windows, like Lite-Brite (yes, the retro toy), coffee stirrers, and even taxidermy. Anything goes when it comes to creating the perfect holiday window.

5. THEY PLAN AHEAD.

When the holidays start dying down, these designers are just getting started on the following year, says Michael Bednark, owner of Bednark Studio, a Brooklyn-based fabrication studio that is responsible for some of the Macy’s holiday windows throughout the country. Design talks start in January, and by March, the ideas are set. It takes two more months to figure out rendering, and the summer months are for fabrication (building the physical elements). Installation starts even before Halloween—by about mid-October, Bednark says.

6. THEY HAVE WORKING HABITS COMPARABLE TO VAMPIRES.

Ever wonder how holiday windows pop up like magic? That’s because the artists work through the night to put them up so that they’ll appear in the morning. Installation for the simpler windows usually takes six to eight hours, Rosas says. “We have to be like wizards,” he explains.

7. THE MORE INTENSIVE WINDOWS TAKE WEEKS TO INSTALL.

 
A regular window display is an overnight job, but the team working on the Macy’s windows pre-builds them inside the shop. There’s a fake window inside every single Macy’s store, filled with the entire holiday window display. “We pre-build inside the shop so we can make sure that everything fits,” Bednark says. The pre-build takes about four weeks. If it’s a go, it’s moved into the regular window, which takes three weeks.

8. TO MAKE IT LOOK PERFECT, THE ARTISTS TOUCH EVERY LIGHT.

The reason store windows look amazing while your holiday display looks just passable is because these designers really pay attention to the details. “When you decorate a tree, or you’re doing your lights and everything, the secret to really nice displays is to touch and adjust each branch, each light, and position everything as if everything was its own individual thing,” Rosas says. “That’s the secret to styling.”

9. WHEN THE SEASON IS OVER, THE DISPLAYS ARE USUALLY TOSSED.

 
Some stores will re-use the decorations in-house, but many will toss them because the décor is so unique. Basically, they don’t want to wear the same outfit two days in a row, Spaeth explains.

10. THE HOLIDAYS AREN’T THEIR ONLY BUSY SEASON.

We’re obsessed with holiday store windows, and they’re great for business. But these artists are busy year-round, Rosas says. In addition to doing store window displays for every season, they also decorate show rooms, do trade show displays, and even create sets for TV shows and product launches. In Rosas’ studio, they have two 7500-square-foot spaces, and they use these for creating fake store windows or for marketing experiences. For example, a yogurt company may hire Rosas to use that studio to build an entire yogurt set as a backdrop for a yogurt product launch. The yogurt company would then invite members of the media to the room, where they’d take pictures and do interviews. “We try to inspire people to write about [the company] there,” Rosas says.

11. IF YOU WANT TO REPLICATE THE LOOK, GET OUT YOUR CHECKBOOK.

 
To hire a professional display artist to do your holiday windows, expect to pay anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 per window, depending on the number of details and amount of work it will take, Bednark says. In other words, making this kind of magic doesn’t come cheap.

In 1931, British aristocrat and naturalist Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild sold his extensive bird collection to the American Museum of Natural History for the bargain price of $225,000. The acquisition of the roughly 280,000 birds—estimated to have been worth as much as $2 million—was a great coup for the museum, and it took curators years just to unpack it. Many fellow ornithologists were surprised that Rothschild, an obsessive bird collector, had been able to part with his specimens, but the public wouldn’t learn the reason behind the sale until after his death.

Walter Rothschild was born in 1868, the scion of the extremely wealthy Rothschild banking family. From a young age he was obsessed with animals, and spent hours observing the insects in the family garden. His family encouraged his passion and gave him funds to start collecting a menagerie, which by the time he went off to university included kangaroos, cranes, storks, zebras, wild horses, emus, a spiny anteater, and a pangolin.

 
Once Walter’s studies were over, he was expected to go into the family business, which he did dutifully, but his heart wasn’t in it. Although he stayed at his desk for 15 years, his focus remained on curating his animal collection. Bankrolled by his parents, Walter employed numerous people to collect exotic specimens from remote parts of the globe, which he kept at his private zoo in Tring (about 40 miles northwest of London) or had stuffed for his collection. Walter eventually compiled what is said to be the largest collection of animal samples ever amassed by a private individual, with over 300,000 bird skins, 200,000 bird’s eggs, 30,000 beetles, and numerous mammals and reptiles.

Despite being very shy, Walter was a determined character, a fact evidenced by his quest to prove that wild zebras could be tamed. Having rejected the consensus that the animals were untameable, Walter employed a horse trainer who worked with a number of zebras in his collection until they were sufficiently cowed to be tethered to a cart. Walter then drove a carriage pulled by six tamed zebras across London and up to the gates of Buckingham Palace. 

 
Although Walter was an eccentric—he also liked to ride on the back of his giant tortoise, dangling a lettuce leaf in front of the creature to inspire movement—he was deadly serious about collecting and recording exotic species. Due to his family’s vast wealth, he was able to search far and wide for new and exciting animals. As a result, he was responsible for identifying and naming 153 new insects, 58 types of bird, and three spiders, and perhaps most famously for identifying a sub-species of giraffe, the Rothschild giraffe, during a trip to east Africa in the early 1900s.

Although Rothschild loved all nature, his chief love (some might say obsession) was the cassowary, a giant flightless bird with a colorful neck that’s native to Papua New Guinea and the surrounding islands. Rothschild obsessively collected cassowaries both alive and dead, studying their habits, plumage, and behavior. In 1900 his efforts came to fruition when he published his magnum opus, A monograph of the genus Casuarius, complete with numerous beautifully illustrated color plates of the birds.

But as meticulous as Walter was about his collecting, his personal life was messy. For 40 years, he kept a secret that eventually drove him to despair and forced the sale of a large portion of his life’s work.

That secret? He was being blackmailed. For many years Walter supported two demanding mistresses—aspiring actress Marie Fredensen and Lizzie Ritchie, both of whom he met at a party held by King Edward VII. He set both women up in London apartments and juggled spending time with them, until Lizzie found out about Marie. She began threatening Walter, and attempting to confront his mother. Walter found the pressure unbearable, and resorted to ignoring her pleading letters. It took his younger brother Charles to negotiate terms, ultimately buying off both women with property and cash.

However, Lizzie and Marie weren’t directly responsible for the sale of the bird collection. Walter also allowed himself to be blackmailed for 40 years by a third former lover. The increasing demands for money, and his desperate desire to keep his scandalous love life secret, exerted huge pressure on him. By 1931, he was desperate for cash to silence his blackmailer. The easiest way to obtain money was to sell off his beloved bird collection, and the AMNH—with readily available money and with a strict promise to keep the collection intact—offered a speedy and secret sale. This was the beginning of the end for Walter; his health began to fail soon afterward, and within a few years he was dead.

The story of the blackmail wasn’t revealed until 1983, when Rothschild’s niece and biographer Miriam Rothschild published her account of her uncle’s life, Dear Lord Rothschild. But although she revealed the existence of the blackmail, she didn’t name the blackmailer. Miriam says she knows who it is, but will only describe the individual as “charming, witty, aristocratic and ruthless.”

It is difficult not to feel pity for poor Walter, but some comfort can be taken in the knowledge that when he came to sell his extensive bird collection, he was able to negotiate keeping the most precious part—the 65 cassowaries he had expertly stuffed. So today, when you stroll around the American Museum of Natural History, or the Natural History Museum at Tring—where the rest of his collection was gifted to the nation after his death—take a moment to enjoy the extraordinary diversity of bird and animal life represented there, and whisper a little thanks to this great Victorian eccentric.

Step into, say, Little Odessa in New York City, where the sidewalks are flecked with caviar stands and the signs are in Russian, and you might feel like you’ve left the country. But there truly is a way to leave the United States while in midtown Manhattan (although with fewer blintzes): Clear security and enter United Nations headquarters.

Many people don’t realize that the U.N. is actually an international territory. It’s defined as an “extraterritoriality,” meaning that it’s exempt from any local law. As the U.N. explains [PDF], “No federal, state or local officer or official of the United States, whether administrative, judicial, military or police, may enter UN Headquarters, except with the consent of and under conditions agreed to by the Secretary-General of the Organization.”

The history of how this surprise international territory came to be is fascinating. Sovereignty was a political hot topic at the time the U.N. was established, just after World War II in 1945. To provide neutral ground, the Canadian government offered to donate its Navy Island in the Niagara River, a body of water that marks part of the U.S.-Canadian border.

But two months after the U.N. was formed, Congress voted to invite the organization to base itself in the U.S. That’s when more than 200 sites around the country started jockeying to hold the new headquarters, as Rutgers history professor Charlene Mires recounts in her book Capital of the World: The Race to Host the United Nations.

Out-of-the-way spots like the Black Hills of South Dakota pushed to be considered. Mires summarizes the competition this way: “At times it seemed the world’s diplomats could agree on only one thing: under no circumstances did they want the United Nations to be based in New York.”

In the end, only an unexpected $8.5 million donation from the Rockefeller family placed the headquarters in expensive, logistically complex New York City. The gift was especially toward purchase of nearly 18 acres of Manhattan land overlooking the East River, then a rundown industrial area of slaughterhouses and a railroad barge landing. The Rockefellers owned an apartment building across the street.

If you’re thinking, “Great! If I ever need to flee the U.S. authorities I’ll try there for safe haven,” be warned. U.N. officials seem to have sewn up every potential corner in a patchwork of laws. They established their own firefighting department, security force, and post office branch (although New York City services are also occasionally used). And they put out explicit rules about avoiding jail: “The United Nations is bound by an agreement with the United States, its host country, to prevent its Headquarters from being used as a refuge for persons attempting to avoid arrest under the Federal, State or local laws of the United States,” they say. “People being extradited by the United States Government are also denied use of United Nations Headquarters in attempts to avoid arrest.”

There’s no record of anyone trying to give birth in U.N. headquarters with hopes of a birth certificate reading “international territory” (the way occasionally expectant mothers are said to try on planes). The closest anyone seems to have come is a baby delivered a couple blocks away, by a cop during morning rush hour on FDR Drive earlier in 2016. And there’s been seemingly no major crimes committed in an attempt to thwart American justice—the most violent events the headquarters appear to have seen occurred in 1964, when a bazooka was fired across the East River during a speech by Che Guevara and a woman tried to charge into the building to stab him.

For New Yorkers who hate the traffic snarls and diplomatic license plates that major U.N. gatherings entail, know that some of the diplomats hate the location, too. Montreal and Dubai have been offered up as potential new headquarters sites—but since the U.N. just remodeled its headquarters in the past few years, don’t look for New York City to lose its 18 acres of international territory anytime soon.

You might spot a word or two of it in the odd bit of pop culture these days—a Todd Haynes movie, a Morrissey song—usually included as a fun if arcane historical reference. But for British gay men (and sometimes women) in the first half of the 20th century, Polari wasn’t just a cute jargon: It was a secret code, one that was absolutely necessary.

Being gay in Britain before about 50 years ago was dangerous business, and even being perceived as gay then could cost you a prison sentence (homosexuality was decriminalized in the UK in 1967). In fact, gay culture was discussed so rarely that newspapers would report on gay people who were arrested as being guilty of “gross indecency,” since it was considered taboo to even write (or speak) the words “gay” or “homosexual.” Gay people therefore needed a way to communicate about their relationships (and gossip) without being understood by eavesdroppers. Polari came about as a form of insider argot, built from many different languages, shifting and changing as it evolved. As language professor Paul Baker of the UK’s Lancaster University writes in his 2002 book Polari—The Lost Language of Gay Men, it was a lingo of “fast put-downs, ironic self-parody and theatrical exaggeration.”

Although Polari saw the height of its popularity in the mid-20th century, its roots are much older. A similar argot called Parlyaree had been spoken in markets and fairgrounds at least as early as the 18th century, made up partly of Romany words with selections from thieves’ cant and backslang (words that are spelled and spoken phonemically backwards, such as yob for “boy” or ecaf for “face”). As this lingo grew popular, it picked up pieces of French, Yiddish, Italian, Shelta (spoken by Irish Travellers), London slang, and Cockney rhyming slang, among other tongues. This lexical potpourri was the word on the streets in England, used in fairgrounds as well as circuses, menageries, fish markets, and the British Merchant Navy, among other locales. A version of it was used by criminals and prostitutes, too.

Also incorporated into Polari, by way of the theater association, was the “broken Italian” used by street puppeteers who put on Punch and Judy shows. These colorful, and often violent, puppet productions have origins in 16th century commedia dell’arte theatre and were especially popular in British seaside towns. Examples of “Punch Talk” recorded in the 1850s include munjare (food), bivare (drink), and lente (bed). Even the name Polari is an Anglicization of an Italian word: parlare, “speak.” By other accounts, the roots of Polari are at least partially to be found in the lingua franca used by Mediterranean sailors and traders in the Middle Ages and beyond.

It’s difficult to say when exactly Polari began, but at some point performers—especially actors, and especially gay actors—began to use a distinct argot to communicate with each other, often for the purpose of gossiping. In addition to being useful for discussing intimate business, Polari could also be used as a shibboleth—if you fancied someone, you could drop a few words into a conversation to see if they picked up what you’d put down, and if not, no harm done. As such, the Polari glossary evolved to include a large number of racy terms, so that people could talk about hooking up without being picked up by the cops (there were lots of euphemisms for the cops, too). Trade is a gay sex partner. A cottage is a public bathroom used for sex. TBH stands for “to be had,” which described that a person was sexually available. A kerterver cartzo is a sexually transmitted infection. A dish is a butt, and other words for anatomy include cartes, lallies, pots, and packets.

Speaking of synonyms, an omi in Polari is a man, and a dona is a woman—but she can also be called a palone. An omi-palone, therefore, is an effeminate man, or sometimes just a gay one, while a palone-omi is a lesbian. Omi is sometimes spelled homie too, which might suggest that it’s the origin of the word homie in American urban slang, but it’s not—the American homie comes from “homeboy,” a friend from back home.

Polari isn’t easy to research. Because the lingo was ever-changing, there’s no definitive glossary, and there is a wide variety of spellings. Many glossaries of Polari exist, but they’re difficult to verify—and the words included can differ hugely from collection to collection. So anything written authoritatively on the subject should be taken with a grain of salt, including this article. Even the name of the jargon itself is sometimes styled as parlare, in its original Italian form, and you might also see it spelled as palare—as in Morrissey’s 1990 song “Piccadilly Palare”—or perhaps palari, parlary, or palarie.

To complicate things further, some say there were actually two separate mutations of Polari within London: the East End version, which involved more Cockney rhyming slang, and a simplified West End version. Although there was a decently sized overlap between the two, it’s been said that the East End dwellers, who were located near the shore and had exposure to dock workers and sometimes foreign languages, used such complicated lingo that they were able to confuse the West End speakers, whose version of Polari was associated with office workers and theater types.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that Polari started to become more widely known, thanks in large part to the BBC radio comedy program Round the Horne. Among other members of its cast, the show featured characters Julian and Sandy (played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams), Shakespearean actors whose speech was generously peppered with Polari words and phrases. Both Paddick and Williams were familiar with Polari in their real lives and sprinkled improvised phrases into the program on the fly. Round the Horne was unusual in that it was a program on a mainstream station with two main characters who were more or less out of the closet, in a time and place when it was illegal to be gay.

After several years on the air, many of Julian and Sandy’s slang terms had made their way into everyday speech in the United Kingdom, such as vada (to see or look) and bona (good). One term in particular, naff, seems to have stuck firmly in the nation’s minds—and mouths. Although various origins for the term have been given, some sources say it was originally a Polari term that initially may have meant “heterosexual,” and then “unavailable for sex,” which later became “uncool” or “boring.” (By other accounts, it may come from the Italian gnaffa, “a despicable person.”)

The perhaps-best-known Polarism, though, is a term you might not know was Polari in the first place. The word drag, referring to women’s clothing when worn by men, comes to you through Polari, possibly stemming from one of various Romany words for skirt, andraka or jendraka (which in turn come from Sanskrit). The use of the word drag was also popularized by Round the Horne. There’s another Polari word that survives in today’s parlance as well, with a fairly recent renaissance: Carson Kressley from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy likes to throw in a dash of Polari when he tells someone to zhoosh up his hair (to style or to tidy up).

By the 1970s, Polari began to fall out of use; some considered it degrading, as it was often used to gossip about sexual exploits. Being gay was also no longer criminal, so the need for a private slang dissipated. The decline of Polari was rapid: In his book, Baker writes that “many gay men under the age of thirty have never heard of it.”

Polari is tenacious, though, and it still shows up in mainstream pop culture here and there, such as in some of the lyrics to “Girl Loves Me” on David Bowie’s 2016 swansong album, Blackstar. The year prior, filmmaking duo Brian Fairbairn and Karl Eccleston wrote and directed Putting on the Dish, a short film wherein the characters converse entirely in Polari, and in 2012, the entire King James Bible was translated into Polari by computer scientist Tim Greening-Jackson as part of a Manchester, England-based project called Polari Mission (the project also included an app with a downloadable dictionary).

Although intentionally shrouded in mystery during most of its development, this colorful lingo has a salacious appeal that’s kept it from vanishing completely—at least if you know where to vada.

A partial glossary of Polari:

ajax = nearby or next to
batt = shoe
bijou = small
Billingsgate = foul language (named after a London fish market where profanity was often heard)
bona to vada = nice to see you
B-flat omi = fat man
camp = excessive or showy or affecting mannerisms of the opposite sex
charper = to search (hence charpering omi = policeman)
dolly = nice or pleasant
cod = naff, vile
dry martini = left hand
feely = child, hence feely omi = a young man, usually an underaged man
fungus = old man
lally = leg
lattie = room, house, flat
lattie on water = ship
lattie on wheels = taxi
ling grappling = sex
meese = plain, ugly
naff = awful, drab, uncool
nanti = not, no
orderly daughters = the police (one of many effeminate nicknames for the cops used in order to undermine their authority; others include Hilda Handcuffs and Betty Bracelets)
ogle = eye (hence ogle filters = sunglasses, ogleriah = eyelashes)
riah = hair
riah-zhoosher = hairdresser
sharda! = what a pity!
strillers = piano
stimpcovers = stockings
sweet martini = right hand
tober = road
tosheroon = half a crown/two shillings and sixpence
troll = walk, wander
vadavision = television
vera = gin
walloper = dancer

Numbers 1 through 10 in Polari: una, duey, trey, quater, chinker, sey, setter, otto, nobber, dacha

Now known as the father of medicine, Hippocrates is credited with writing many manuals advising readers on how to deal with a variety of illnesses and ailments. One of his texts, On Regimen In Acute Diseases (400 BCE), contains a plethora of medical recommendations. The next time you’re battling dysentery, fighting pneumonia, or simply trying to get rid of a headache, consider these time-honored tips.

1. MAKE SURE YOU SEE A REAL DOCTOR.

According to Hippocrates, to get the best diagnosis and treatment plan you need to find a real doctor whose practice is rooted in science and the observations of anatomy. Avoid posers who have simply memorized the names of common treatments and try to pass themselves off as true, knowledgeable physicians. But note that even real doctors might not agree on how to treat acute diseases, which include pneumonia, fever, lethargy, and inflammation of the lungs and brain.

“Persons who are not physicians pass for physicians owing most especially to these [acute] diseases, for it is an easy matter to learn the names of those things which are applicable to persons laboring under such complaints … in acute diseases, practitioners differ so much among themselves, that those things which one administers as thinking it the best that can be given, another holds to be bad.”

2. FILL YOUR MEDICINE CABINET WITH FOOD.

You probably have prescription drugs, pain relievers, and ointments in your medicine cabinet, but what about food? Hippocrates recommends that you keep raisins, grapes, saffron, and pomegranates on hand. You can put these ingredients in healing drinks, and even press fig juice on a vein to stop bleeding. Roasted cumin, white sesame seeds, and almonds with honey can also help patients with lung infections. But be aware that although food can be curative, it can also cause health problems. Hippocrates warns that garlic and cheese, for example, can cause flatulence, nausea, and constipation.

“With respect to all the others, such as barley-water, the drinks made from green shoots, those from raisins, and the skins of grapes and wheat, and bastard saffron, and myrtles, pomegranates, and the others, when the proper time for using them is come, they will be treated of along with the disease in question, in like manner as the other compound medicines.”

3. PICK THE RIGHT WINE.

Different types of wines abound, so you have to pick the right one to treat your particular symptoms. Consult your doctor to choose wisely between sweet, strong, dark, light, and diluted versus undiluted wines. Be aware that drinking the wrong wine can cause long-term flatulence, artery throbbing, thirst, heaviness of the head, and spleen swelling. Even the right wine for your affliction can have some negative effects on your health, so keep in mind that no wine will be perfect.

“One must determine by such marks as these, when sweet, strong, and dark wine, hydromel, water and oxymel, should be given in acute diseases. Wherefore the sweet affects the head less than the strong, attacks the brain less, evacuates the bowels more than the other, but induces swelling of the spleen and liver; it does not agree with bilious persons, for it causes them to thirst; it creates flatulence in the upper part of the intestinal canal, but does not disagree with the lower part, as far as regards flatulence; and yet flatulence engendered by sweet wine is not of a transient nature.”

4. DON’T BE AFRAID OF SOAP.

Today, we think of washing our hands with soap as a preventative method to remove germs and prevent colds. But Hippocrates recommends soap as a treatment. He notes that when bathing, you should ideally be gentle on your skin, but if you must scrub yourself, use hot soap. Keep in mind that you should use more soap than you normally would, and pour lots of water over yourself to wash the soap off.

“It is better that no friction should be applied, but if so, a hot soap must be used in greater abundance than is common, and an affusion of a considerable quantity of water is to be made at the same time and afterwards repeated.”

5. REMEMBER THAT WATER IS OVERRATED.

It’s healthy to stay hydrated, but Hippocrates urges readers not to bother with drinking water. Although he admits that drinking a small quantity of water (in between other drinks of honey and vinegar) can help you cough up phlegm, water can do a lot more harm than good. It can create bile, increase the swelling of the spleen and liver, and produce unpleasant stomach gurgling. And if you have cold feet, definitely stay away from water:

“[Water] neither soothes the cough in pneumonia, nor promotes expectoration … it creates bile in a bilious temperament, and is injurious to the hypochondrium; and it does the most harm, engenders most bile, and does the least good when the bowels are empty; and it increases the swelling of the spleen and liver when they are in an inflamed state; it produces a gurgling noise in the intestines and swims on the stomach…and, if it be drunk while the feet are cold, its injurious effects will be greatly aggravated.”

6. LET OTHER PEOPLE BATHE YOU.

Are you a lazy bather? According to Hippocrates, that’s ok. Taking a bath can be useful in many diseases such as pneumonia and back pain, and sick bathers should treat their bath as a relaxing experience. Just don’t get in a bath if you have loose bowels or are vomiting. As you soak, do nothing for yourself, letting other people pour water on you, rub your body, and sponge you off.

“But the person who takes the bath should be orderly and reserved in his manner, should do nothing for himself, but others should pour the water upon him and rub him, and plenty of waters, of various temperatures, should be in readiness for the douche, and the affusions quickly made; and sponges should be used instead of the comb, and the body should be anointed when not quite dry.”

7. DON’T MAKE SUDDEN LIFESTYLE CHANGES.

Hippocrates would not be a fan of The Biggest Loser and other TV shows that encourage people to quickly and drastically change their diet and exercise routines. According to the ancient Greek physician, it’s actually better to continue a faulty diet rather than suddenly change it. So if you’re used to eating two meals a day, don’t abruptly cut down to one, or you risk becoming weak, suffering from heartburn, and having diarrhea. Not to mention potentially developing hot green urine and throbbing temples:

“But it is well ascertained that even a faulty diet of food and drink steadily persevered in, is safer in the main as regards health than if one suddenly change it to another … And, moreover, those who have been in the habit of eating twice a day, if they omit dinner, become feeble and powerless, averse to all work, and have heartburn; their bowels seem, as it were, to hang loose, their urine is hot and green, and the excrement is parched; in some the mouth is bitter, the eyes are hollow, the temples throb, and the extremities are cold.”

8. DRINK YOUR BARLEY WATER WITH FOOD.

Hippocrates loves ptisan, a boiled drink made from barley and water. Ptisan is better than other medicinal drinks made from alternate grains, and it nourishes the body and tastes pleasant, he says. Consult your doctor to determine whether you should drink unstrained ptisan or just the juice. If you’re used to eating two meals a day, drink ptisan twice with your food, and make sure to never run out of it!

“Ptisan, then, appears to me to be justly preferred before all the other preparations from grain in these diseases, and I commend those who made this choice, for the mucilage of it is smooth, consistent, pleasant, lubricant, moderately diluent, quenches thirst if this be required, and has no astringency; gives no trouble nor swells up in the bowels … Those, then, who make use of ptisan in such diseases, should never for a day allow their vessels to be empty of it, if I may say so, but should use it and not intermit, unless it be necessary to stop for a time, in order to administer medicine or a clyster.”

9. TREAT PAIN WITH HEAT.

Heating pads may be easy to find in drugstores today, but people in the ancient world had to make their own. Hippocrates explains that hot applications can dissolve pain, making you feel better. The father of medicine advises putting hot water in a bottle, bladder, or vessel, but making sure to put a soft barrier between your skin and the hot water so you don’t get burned (still good advice).

“When pain seizes the side, either at the commencement or at a later stage, it will not be improper to try to dissolve the pain by hot applications. Of hot applications the most powerful is hot water in a bottle, or bladder, or in a brazen vessel, or in an earthen one; but one must first apply something soft to the side, to prevent pain. A soft large sponge, squeezed out of hot water and applied, forms a good application; but it should be covered up above, for thus the heat will remain the longer, and at the same time the vapor will be prevented from being carried up to the patient’s breath, unless when this is thought of use, for sometimes it is the case.”

10. TRY DRINKING HONEY AND VINEGAR TO BREATHE BETTER.

Hippocrates discusses the many uses of oxymel, a mixture of honey and vinegar, as well as hydromel, a mixture of honey and water. Drink oxymel to breathe better, cough up phlegm, and clear your windpipe. But keep in mind that in some patients, oxymel can have nasty side effects such as flatulent and watery discharges from the bowels. Also, women should be cautious when drinking too much vinegar, for it can cause uterus pain.

“[Oxymel] promotes expectoration and freedom of breathing … It also promotes flatulent discharges from the bowels, and is diuretic, but it occasions watery discharges and those resembling scrapings, from the lower part of the intestine, which is sometimes a bad thing in acute diseases, more especially when the flatulence cannot be passed, but rolls backwards; and otherwise it diminishes the strength and makes the extremities cold.”

All photos via iStock unless otherwise noted.

Throughout the year crowds of the faithful flock to holy relics, like the supposed preserved umbilical cord of Jesus in Rome or the blood of St. Januarius in Naples. Such reverence for objects associated with the departed extends beyond the world of religion, though, and into the market for celebrity memorabilia. Like the corporeal remains of saints, even everyday celebrity possessions can become the focus of intense attention long after their owner has died. These items—and in rare occasions, the physical remains of stars themselves—are highly sought-after when they appear at auctions. Below are nine examples of death-related celebrity memorabilia that have emerged in public sales over recent years.

1. THE GUN THAT ENDED VERLAINE AND RIMBAUD’S AFFAIR

It was poetry that brought Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine together, but violence that eventually tore their passionate but turbulent romance apart. The poets’ nearly two-year relationship ended, literally, with a bang: in 1873, a very drunk Verlaine unsuccessfully attempted to kill his 18-year-old lover with a revolver in a Brussels hotel room, tired of Rimbaud’s capriciousness and longing to return to his wife and child. On November 30, 2016, that 7mm gun—pictured above on display in 2015—is being sold at Christie’s. (A serial number on its case ties it to Verlaine, as documented in a gunsmith’s records; it’s previously been in a private collection.) The gun fired two bullets, wounding its victim’s wrist and sending its shooter to jail for two years. Later that year, Rimbaud published Une Saison d’Enfer, a collection of poems partially inspired by his fraught times with Verlaine. For French literary enthusiasts, this may represent more than a weapon, encapsulating the emotions that led to some of the most celebrated works of 19th century French poetry.

2. A SCRAP OF WALLPAPER FROM THE ROOM WHERE LINCOLN DIED

The obsession that Civil War veteran Osborn Oldroyd had with memorabilia tied to America’s 16th president is perhaps unparalleled. A renter of Lincoln’s Springfield home, Oldroyd transformed the space into a museum after the politician’s assassination and was rumored to have cut off bits of curtain, wallpaper, and even flooring to sell as souvenirs. It seems he made similar incisions in the bedroom of the Petersen House, where Lincoln died, preserving a fragment of wallpaper in a book. That scrap sold at auction for $1000 in August 2016, evidently still an object of intrigue 150 years from that tragic day.

A much more grisly auction lot was the rocker in which the president was sitting when John Wilkes Booth shot him. Owned by the theater’s treasurer, it was sold in 1929 by his widow and purchased by Henry Ford for the price of $2400.

3. NAPOLEON’S DEATH SHIRT

Here’s one to curl up on your couch and read: Family Goes to War Over Napoleon’s Nightshirt http://t.co/2cFHE4iQyb pic.twitter.com/I7ygv1Y1B7

— T Magazine (@tmagazine) May 18, 2014

When Napoleon lay dying in 1821, he was perspiring profusely from a fever. His sweat-stained nightshirt was saved by his stablemaster Achille Archambault, who had remained by the exiled emperor’s side during his illness. In 2014, the garment was headed to an auction in Fontainebleau, where it was estimated to sell for up €40,000 (about $42,000 USD). But it proved too precious for an auction: Archambault’s descendants obtained an injunction at the last minute to halt the sale of the nightshirt and other possessions of Napoleon’s, worried that the items would go overseas and deprive their country of objects of its heritage. (Other, more private, parts of Napoleon have been repeatedly sold at auction—his penis is currently said to be in storage in New Jersey.)

4. TRUMAN CAPOTE’S ASHES

Portions of Truman Capote’s ashes have long been in demand. In September 2016, some of the famed writer’s remains, kept in a beautifully carved Japanese wooden box, were sold in a Los Angeles auction. They had belonged to Joanne Carson, who apparently said that owning the ashes brought her great comfort. That may now hold true for someone else: whoever it was that bought them for $43,750.

5. A DROP OF RONALD REAGAN’S BLOOD

When a vial purportedly containing a drop of President Reagan’s blood hit the auction block in May 2012, it received bids up to $30,086. But the sale was also heavily condemned, most notably by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, whose executive director threatened a lawsuit, saying that it violated Reagan’s privacy as a patient. The blood had been drawn at George Washington University Hospital after an assassination attempt in 1981, and had been kept by a lab worker. The blood remained in her possession until her son decided to sell it following her death in 2010. The individual who bought it then—for $3550—eventually decided to withdraw it from the May 2012 sale and instead donated it to the Reagan Foundation.

6. BONNIE PARKER’S BLOODSTAINED STOCKING

Among the trove of rifles, pistols, and rounds of ammunition found in the Ford driven by Bonnie and Clyde during their final shootout was a woman’s silk stocking. Stained with blood, it is believed to have belonged to the outlaw herself and was auctioned off in 2012 as the only item worn by Bonnie Parker that had ever been sold. The garment was part of a single lot of macabre Bonnie and Clyde memorabilia to emerge from that “death car”—in total, the lot fetched $10,800.

7. A LOCK OF THOMAS JEFFERSON’S HAIR

Lock of Thomas Jefferson’s hair sold for nearly $7,000 at auction https://t.co/aBxGTTZenf (via @Telegraph)

— BBC History Magazine (@HistoryExtra) May 16, 2016

Though it seems macabre today, hair collections were a frequent feature of the 19th century. When Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, his doctor, Robley Dunglison, snipped off a lock of hair as a memento. The 14 short, tawny strands were preserved for nearly two centuries in a glassine envelope, and in May 2016, someone placed a winning bid of $6875 for the hairs. They came, as one would expect, with a signed letter of provenance.

8. THE WATCH LIKELY USED TO CALL JFK’S TIME OF DEATH

Many questions still linger around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but we at least know for certain the time of his pronounced death: 1 p.m. That time was called by the neurosurgeon Dr. Kemp Clark, who likely observed it on the wristwatch he was wearing that day—a rare, 18k gold Patek Philippe that was fitted with a pulsometer. Christie’s offered up the gleaming timepiece in 2013, and it sold for $161,000.

9. MARILYN MONROE’S FINAL SIGNED CHECK

Marilyn Monroe’s death also continues to raise speculation and breed conspiracy theories. Was it suicide? A check for $228.80, believed to be the last the star ever signed, may suggest not: dated to the day before her body was found, the document—which emerged at auction in 2012—was made out to a furniture company that delivered Monroe a new chest. As the folks at Heritage Auctions put it, “Would one be concerned with new furniture on the last day of one’s life? Probably not!” The slip of paper sold for $15,000—certainly a unique example of one of history’s most desired autographs.

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Down to a sunless sea”

Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most famous poem, “Kubla Khan,” was written after an intense laudanum-induced dream; poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning largely depended on laudanum to function; and Lord Byron’s daughter, the celebrated mathematician Ada Lovelace, claimed laudanum calmed her overactive mind. The fact that many writers and artists of the Victorian period used laudanum is clear—but what was it about this heady drug that ensnared so many creative people?

Opium has been known since at least 3400 BCE, when the Sumerians produced the first written reference to the drug. The power of opium to dull pain while allowing the user to remain functional meant it was the drug of choice for those suffering both mental and physical anguish. In the 16th century, the alchemist Paracelsus created laudanum (possibly named from Latin words meaning “something to be praised”) by mixing a tincture of opium with alcohol. By the 17th century, the physician and medical pioneer Thomas Sydenham had simplified and standardized the recipe, marketing it as a cure-all. (Today the word laudanum refers to any alcoholic tincture of opium.)

By the 1800s laudanum was widely available—it could be easily purchased from pubs, grocers, barber shops, tobacconists, pharmacies, and even confectioners. The drug was often cheaper than alcohol, making it affordable to all levels of society. It was prescribed for everything from soothing a cranky infant to treating headaches, persistent cough, gout, rheumatism, diarrhea, melancholy, and “women’s troubles.”

Laudanum became widely used throughout Victorian society as a medicine, and soon many writers, poets, and artists (along with many ordinary people) became addicted. Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and many others were all known to have used laudanum. Some managed to take it briefly while ill, but others became hopelessly dependent. Most famously, the English writer Thomas De Quincey wrote a whole book—Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821)—on his use of opium and its derivatives. The book proposed that, unlike alcohol, opium improved the creative powers, an opinion that only served to make the drug more appealing to those searching for artistic and literary inspiration. A number of other writers also played on the perceived glamor of the drug, praising its ability to enhance the imagination.

Laudanum’s association with the Romantic poets likely stems from Coleridge’s addiction. Like many of his contemporaries, the poet suffered from poor health, and resorted to laudanum as both a painkiller and a sedative. Coleridge famously admitted that he had composed “Kubla Khan” after waking from an opium-induced reverie. But the drug that was at first inspiring soon became enslaving, and Coleridge’s addiction and resultant health issues plagued him for the rest of his life. The once-vibrant young man became listless and wan, and suffered terribly from withdrawal if he did not get his fix. In an 1814 letter to his friend John Morgan [PDF], Coleridge admitted it was not just the physical effects of the drug that grieved him, but its effects on his character: “I have in this one dirty business of Laudanum an hundred times deceived, tricked, nay, actually & consciously LIED. – And yet all these vices are so opposite to my nature, that but for the free-agency-annihilating Poison, I verily believe that I should have suffered myself to be cut in pieces rather than have committed any one of them.”

The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning first took laudanum at the age of 15 after suffering a spinal injury. After that, she used it for various ailments, including hemorrhaging of the lungs. When she began corresponding with the poet Robert Browning, who would later become her husband, she revealed to him that she took 40 drops of the drug a day—a pretty substantial dose even for an addict.

 
Golden-haired Elizabeth Siddal was another famous laudanum user. The muse, and later wife, of the great pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, she suffered from poor health and became hopelessly addicted to laudanum. For years she continued to function despite her addiction, until she lost a baby daughter in 1861—a tragedy that deepened her desire for the mindless oblivion offered by the drug. In 1862, when she had become pregnant once more, her husband returned from dinner one night to find her unconscious after an overdose. Rossetti called for a doctor, but when the physician sadly announced he could do nothing for her, Rossetti refused to believe the diagnosis and sent for three more doctors, who all confirmed Siddal’s untimely death.

Another famous victim of laudanum addiction was Branwell Brontë, the brother of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Together the four siblings shared the same tragic and lonely upbringing, which in the sisters unleashed a creative spark that kindled into some of the greatest works in English literature, including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Yet Branwell, who seemingly shared the same potential talent as a poet and artist (he created respected juvenilia alongside his sisters), instead descended into alcohol and laudanum dependency, his sensibilities seemingly too delicate to take the constant rejections an artist must endure. Branwell died a penniless addict at 31 years old in 1848, just a year after his sisters’ most famous novels were published.

That so many writers and artists were known to have taken laudanum is perhaps unsurprising considering that this was an era before aspirin, anti-depressants, or effective sleeping pills. But as the negative effects of laudanum became better-documented—the euphoria it provided was followed by crashing lows, restlessness, torpor, and sweats—it became clear that the drug needed to be better regulated.

Accounts by addicts helped sway public opinion: in one influential piece published in the Journal of Mental Sciences in 1889, a drug-addicted young girl revealed her anguish during withdrawal:

“My principal feeling was one of awful weariness and numbness at the end of my back; it kept me tossing about all day and night long. It was impossible to lie in one position for more than a minute, and of course sleep was out of the question. I was so irritable that no one cared to come near me; mother slept on the sofa in my room, and I nearly kicked her once for suggesting that I should say hymns over to myself, to try and make me go to sleep. Hymns of a very different sort were in my mind, I was once or twice very nearly strangling myself, and I am ashamed to say that the only thing that kept me from doing so was the thought that I would be able to get laudanum somehow. I was conscious of feeling nothing but the mere sense of being alive, and if the house had been burning, would have thought it too much of an effort to rise.”

By 1868 laudanum could only be sold by registered chemists in England and, in a nod to its dangers, had to be clearly labeled as a poison—the first restrictions on its use. In 1899 pure aspirin was developed, a far safer painkiller, heralding an era of better-regulated medicines. And although the tortured writer self-medicating with laudanum became a thing of the past, many other illicit substances soon stepped into the breach—leaving the trope of the drug-addled creative genius safely intact.