Over the centuries, yuletide revelers have enjoyed far different culinary fare than we do today. Here are seven Christmas dishes of yesteryear that are sure to confuse—or tantalize—your taste buds.

1. PEACOCK

 
During the Medieval ages, some wealthy Europeans dined on peacock at Christmas dinner. The colorful, plumed bird was often baked into a pie, or roasted with its head and tail still intact. Adding to the flamboyant display, the peacock’s feathers were reattached (or the skinned bird was placed back inside its intact skin), and its tail feathers were fully fanned out.

Peacocks likely looked impressive on a banquet table, but the meat reportedly tasted terrible. “It was tough and coarse, and was criticized by physicians for being difficult to digest and for generating bad humors,” author Melitta Weiss Adamson writes in her book Food in Medieval Times. “To make the meat more easily digestible, it was recommended to hang the slaughtered bird overnight by its neck and weigh down the legs with stones.”

In addition to peacock, swans and geese were also on the Christmas menu. But by the 1520s, another roast delicacy—turkey—had been introduced to Great Britain. Explorer William Strickland is credited with bringing the turkey from the New World to England, and King Henry VIII was reportedly one of the first people to enjoy the new bird for Christmas dinner. Edward VII is said to have made the meal trendy.

2. BOAR’S HEAD

 
In Medieval and Tudor England, wealthy parties celebrated Christmas by feasting on boar’s head. The boar’s head “formed the centrepiece of the Christmas Day meal,” writes Alison Sim, author of Food and Feast in Tudor England (as quoted by the Food Timeline). “It was garnished with rosemary and bay and evidently was presented to the diners with some style, as told by the many boar’s head carols which still exist.”

One English Christmas carol, dating back to the 15th century, is actually called the “Boar’s Head Carol.” Its lyrics include lines like “The boar’s head, as I understand/Is the rarest dish in all this land/Which thus bedecked with a gay garland/Let us servire cantico (serve with a song).” You can listen to a version here.

3. OYSTER STEW

 
Today, oysters are a delicacy, but for early Americans who settled along the East Coast, they were a plentiful and nutritious food source. People enjoyed them in stuffing, roasts, and chowder—and 19th-century Irish-American immigrants used them to make a traditional Christmas Eve stew.

Most of these Irish transplants were Catholic, and their religious traditions required them to skip the meat on Christmas Eve. Instead, they enjoyed a soup made from dried ling cod—a common fish back in the Old Country—milk, butter, and pepper. But since Irish Americans couldn’t find dried ling cod in America, they substituted it with fresh, canned, pickled, or dried oysters.

4. MINCEMEAT PIES

 
Historians trace mincemeat pie (also called mince pie) back to the 11th century, when Crusaders returned from faraway lands with spices. These spices worked as a preservative, so they were baked into pies containing finely chopped meat, dried fruits, and other ingredients.

Mincemeat pies eventually became associated with Christmas. Bakers added three spices to their pies—cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg—to represent the three gifts the Magi gave the baby Jesus. The pies were also baked into the shape of Jesus’s manger, and a model of the Christ Child was placed on top. People believed that eating a mincemeat pie on each of the 12 Days of Christmas (December 25 to January 6) would bring them good luck.

Over the centuries, the pies grew smaller and rounder, and their filling became less meat heavy, containing ingredients including suet, spices, and dried and brandied fruit. Today, some people still eat mincemeat pie in England—and on December 15 some British scientists fired a meat pie into space—but it’s not commonly seen on Christmas dinner tables in the U.S.

5. SUGARPLUMS

 
As a child, you might have been inspired by one of ballet’s most famous movements—The Nutcracker‘s “Dance Of The Sugarplum Fairy”—to wonder what a “sugarplum” actually is. The answer? A hard candy.

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the term sugarplum was interchangeable with the words dragee or comfit. All referred to a hard, sugary layered candy. Often, the candy contained caraway, cardamom, fennel, ginger, cinnamon, walnut, aniseed, and almond cores. It took time, skill, and special equipment to make these sweets, so they were originally quite expensive and eaten only by wealthy people. Later, innovations in manufacturing made both sugarplums and other candies cheaper, and available for consumption by the masses.

In addition to getting a shout-out in The Nutcracker, sugarplums are also famously mentioned in Clement Clark Moore’s anonymously published 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas” after its first line. But today, you’re far less likely to see the candies mentioned in a ballet or poem; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, sugarplum is now obsolete.

6. POSSET

Long ago, the English enjoyed a predecessor to eggnog called posset, a kind of “wine custard” made from hot milk curdled with hot ale, wine, or sherry, and mixed with sugar and spices. The drink remained common from the Middle Ages until the early 19th century; over time, it disappeared from the culinary landscape.

Throughout the centuries, winter revelers enjoyed variations on the recipe, and eggs were eventually added to the mix. But since milk, eggs, and liquors like sherry and Madeira wine were either expensive or hard to come by, the drink’s popularity dwindled among the masses. Meanwhile, in America, early settlers created their own version of posset, which we today know as eggnog.

In the video above, you can watch Jonathan Townsend, host of YouTube living history channel Jas. Townsend and Son, cook his own version of posset, as adapted from an 18th-century cookbook. His posset has breadcrumbs.

7. ANIMAL CRACKERS

The string on animal cracker boxes was originally for hanging the box on a Christmas tree! #GeekFacts pic.twitter.com/DQnSnSulgd

— Geek & Sundry (@GeekandSundry) December 23, 2014

Ever wondered why boxes of Barnum’s Animal Crackers have a string attached to them? In 1902, the National Biscuit Company (today known as Nabisco) introduced the circus-themed boxes filled with animal-shaped cookies as a seasonal promotion. Since people often adorned their Christmas trees with candy and/or treats, Barnum’s festive containers were hung on branches as decorations.

From the discoverer of titanium to a prehistoric plant expert, these Christmas kids helped us better understand the natural world and our place within it.

1. JOHN PHILLIPS (1800-1874)

John Phillips was born on December 25, 1800. In 1808, when he was just 7, he lost both of his parents in quick succession and was taken in by his uncle William Smith, a surveyor and fossil-hunter now known as the “Father of English Geology.” Later in life, Phillips also became a great geologist, and in the 1840s, he drew upon his uncle’s work to identify and name three significant eras in Earth’s history: the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. He also authored several papers on the subject of astronomy.

2. WILLIAM GREGOR (1761-1817)

A British chemist, mineralogist, painter, clergyman, and Christmas kid, Gregor is primarily remembered as the man who discovered titanium. He first came across a sample of this element on the sandy banks of a stream that ran near the Cornish village of Manaccan (also spelled Menaccan) in 1790. The following year, Gregor wrote a paper about the newfound metal, and in honor of its place of origin, he proposed calling the element either menacanite or menachine. Ultimately, though, the German chemist Martin Klaproth independently discovered titanium in 1796, and this was the name that stuck [PDF].

3. RICHARD E. SHOPE (1901-1966)

In 1918 and 1919, an influenza pandemic killed between 20 and 50 million people worldwide; in the United States, 28 percent of all citizens came down with the disease, which claimed 10 times as many American lives as World War I. Meanwhile, pigs in the Midwestern U.S. were dying of a similar illness.

Richard E. Shope, a pathologist employed by the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, suspected the two outbreaks were related. So in 1928, Shope visited Iowa—where he had been born on Christmas Day in 1901—to investigate a possible link between the two illnesses.

At the time, scientists believed that influenza was caused by a bacteria of some kind—so when he arrived in Iowa, Shope began searching infected swine for microscopic suspects. He managed to identify a bacteria species that was present in most of the runny-nosed pigs he examined. However, when he injected this one-celled organism into healthy pigs, they failed to contract the disease.

Starting again, Shope looked for other potential disease-carriers within the sick pigs’ mucus. In 1931, he filtered the samples to remove any bacteria and introduced this new filtrate to some non-infected swine. Soon, the control pigs came down with a mild case of porcine influenza, proving that the flu was caused by a “filter-passing agent”—in this case, a virus. When Shope combined the virus with the bacteria, the test animals came down with more severe symptoms. Encouraged by his results, American and British scientists conducted a series of tests, which showed that human and pig influenza were indeed close relatives. Building off of Shope’s research, a British team went on to isolate the human influenza virus for the very first time in 1933. If it hadn’t been for this breakthrough, flu vaccines might not exist today.

4. GERHARD HERZBERG (1904-1999)

Spectroscopy is a technique that allows scientists to study the interactions between matter and electromagnetic radiation. By most accounts, Gerhard Herzberg literally wrote the book on this subject: His classic three-volume textbook titled Molecular Spectra and Molecular Structure has been nicknamed “the spectroscopist’s bible” [PDF].

Herzberg came into the world on December 25, 1904 in Hamburg, Germany. His passion for science blossomed at an early age: As a boy, he could often be found reading up on chemistry and astronomy in his spare time. By the time Herzberg turned 25, he’d earned a Ph.D. in engineering physics and gotten 12 scientific papers published. In the mid-1930s, the rise of Nazism drove Herzberg and his Jewish wife—fellow spectroscopist Lusie Oettinger—out of their native Germany. They relocated to Canada, which Herzberg would call home for the better part of seven decades. Over time, several different fields—including astronomy and chemistry—would benefit from his command of spectroscopy. Using the process, Herzberg was able to detect hydrogen gas molecules in Uranus and Neptune’s atmospheres in 1952. Spectroscopy also helped the scientist shed some new light on free radicals (atoms or groups of atoms with an odd number of electrons). Herzberg’s incredible body of work earned him the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1971.

5. INNA A. DOBRUSKINA (1933-2014)

Paleobotanist Inna Dobruskina was arguably the world’s leading authority on plant life during the Triassic period, which occurred between 252 and 201 million years ago. She was born in one of Moscow’s “communal apartments” on December 25, 1933. As an adult, she taught at the Geological Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences—and risked incarceration by secretly distributing anti-Communist pamphlets for several years. In 1989, she emigrated to Israel, where she became a faculty member at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her life’s work took her around the world; by the time Drobuskina passed away in 2014, she’d prospected Triassic deposits in such countries as China, France, Austria, South Africa, Russia, and the United States [PDF].

During her days in the U.S.S.R., Dobruskina was often confronted with workplace sexism. On one Sino-Soviet expedition along the Amur River, her male subordinates dared her to imbibe a shot of undiluted alcohol. Determined to put them all in their place, Dobruskina gulped down enough to fill an entire 250-milliliter glass (a shot is just 44 milliliters). Afterwards, the men on that team never tried to challenge her again.

6. ADOLF WINDAUS (1876-1959)

Another Nobel laureate who happened to have been born on Christmas Day, this Berlin native took home the 1928 Nobel Prize for chemistry. The award was granted to Windaus in recognition of the lifetime’s worth of research he’d conducted on sterols, a class of organic compounds that includes cholesterol. Windaus’s interest in this topic began shortly after he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Freiburg. At the time, little was known about sterols, and the scientist dedicated his career to plugging the gaps in our understanding of them. Through careful research, Windaus would discover that these compounds are closely akin to bile acids. He also learned that a fungal sterol called ergosterol can be utilized to cure rickets. Furthermore, it was Windaus who first determined the chemical composition of Vitamin D.

BONUS: ISAAC NEWTON (1642/43-1726/27)

If you could somehow resurrect Isaac Newton for an interview, he’d tell you that he was born on December 25, 1642—but modern historians cite January 4, 1643 as his actual birthday.

Confused? Take it up with Julius Caesar. In 45 BCE, the Roman dictator implemented a standardized, 365-day calendar (with leap years every four years, eventually) we now call the “Julian calendar.” Unfortunately, it relied on astronomical calculations that overestimated the time it takes the Earth to complete one full rotation around the sun by 11 minutes and 14 seconds. As the centuries passed, those extra minutes and seconds added up; by the mid-1500s, the Julian calendar had fallen about 10 days out of sync with the planet’s rotation. Clearly, something had to be done. So in 1582 CE, Pope Gregory XIII mandated a new calendar. Dubbed the “Gregorian calendar,” it was designed to facilitate some much-needed leap year reform (among other things). The Pope also erased the synchronization problem that the Julian Calendar had created by eliminating 10 full days from 1582. So Thursday, October 4 of that year was immediately followed by Friday, October 15.

But while Roman Catholic countries like France and Spain adopted the Gregorian calendar right away, Great Britain—Newton’s birthplace—didn’t follow suit until 1752. When the UK and its colonies finally implemented this calendar, they did so by striking 11 days from existence, doing away with September 3 through September 13. At the time, Ben Franklin is said to have remarked, “It is pleasant for an old man to go to sleep on September 2 and not have to wake up until September 14.”

By then, Isaac Newton had been dead for years. According to the Julian Calendar, he was born in 1642 and died in 1726. However, for consistency’s sake, historians have retroactively adjusted all pre-1752 years to conform to the Gregorian calendar—so today’s scholars cite January 4, 1643 as Newton’s birthday and March 31, 1727 as his death day (another part of the reform was to move when the New Year was celebrated, meaning Newton died before the new year under the Julian Calendar, but after under Gregorian). So there you have it: Arguably the greatest scientist in history both is and isn’t a Christmas baby.

Tardigrades—a.k.a. moss piglets or water bears—are the scientific gift that just keeps on giving. Everything about these microscopic animals is extreme. They’ve been on Earth since long before the dinosaurs. They can withstand blistering cold, intense heat, years without food or water, and hanging out in the vacuum of space. They’re practically unkillable. So it makes sense that their sex lives would also be interesting.

That’s why scientists have produced a video of two moss piglets having sex. The researchers/cinematographers responsible for the tape described the tender-yet-disgusting process in an article in the Zoological Journal.

The sex you’re about to watch is not representative of all tardigrades, just one species, Isohypsibius dastychi. There are more than 1000 different tardigrade species out there, and not all of them reproduce sexually. But I. dastychi certainly does.

For those of us unaccustomed to watching tardigrade sex (we’re going to assume that’s mostly everyone), here’s what’s happening. The female (L) has molted and laid eggs inside her discarded old skin. The male (R, perpendicular) has curled himself around her and is stroking her as he ejaculates onto the eggs.*

The researchers write that the action was “much more complex than expected,” and note that this “mutual stimulation” went on for at least an hour.

Not bad, little tardigrades. Not bad.

*We did warn you that this would be disgusting.

The holidays are the best time to sit around and catch up on all of the movies you’ve missed out on over the past year, and now Amazon and Google are making sure that you don’t need to break the bank to do so. Both companies are offering $0.99 movie rentals on tens of thousands of films across all genres.

Unlike a lot of sales that are limited to older titles or a select few films, you can get a massive discount on movies that barely just left theaters, like X-Men: Apocalypse, Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad. You can also use it on holiday classics like Elf (2003) or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989). 

To get the Amazon deal, all you need to do is use the promotional code MOVIE99 upon checking out. It’s even easier for Google: the deal is automatically applied right at checkout. Both deals only allow one discounted rental per account, so choose wisely. Both sales expire on January 23, 2017.

Sea stars are much stranger than we imagined. Biology students at the University of Southern Denmark implanted a group of the animals with microchips and went about their business. When they checked in days later, the chips were lying on the floor of the sea stars’ tank.

The students realized that the sea stars had spit the trackers out—not through the original implantation sites in their skin, but through the tips of their arms. As Mary Beth Griggs notes in Popular Science, “That would be like a human getting shot in the leg and then ejecting the bullet from their fingers without any internal injuries.”

Rather than getting frustrated, the young biologists put their scientific curiosity to work and decided to conduct formal experiments to better understand the animals’ behavior. The researchers microchipped another 53 sea stars and monitored them using ultrasound scanners, watching the animals’ bodies to see where the chips were going.

What they saw was strange. The chips moved through the sea stars’ bodies at a rate of about 10 percent of the distance from entry to exit point per day, but the route they took was far from direct. First, they were sucked into the sea stars’ body cavities. From there, they took what the researchers call “a somewhat haphazard wander” through the body, down the arm, and out the tip. It’s hardly an efficient process, and it took about 10 days, but it did work—and the sea stars didn’t appear to be hurt or distressed as they did it.

Like so many discoveries about the natural world, these findings raise more questions than they answer. Why would an animal need to do this? Why don’t they just spit out foreign objects from the same holes they came in? How are they even doing this?

One question, at least, has a very clear answer. Are sea stars bizarre, wonderful, alien monsters? Yes. Yes, they are.

[h/t Popular Science]

Santa Claus as we know him today has only existed since the 19th century, and he first slid down the chimney in a 1812 book by Washington Irving. But the fireplace served as a venue for magical visitors long before Santa Claus. During the 15^th century, the French scholar Petrus Mamoris became concerned about a widespread belief that witches could pass through solid objects like walls and closed doors in order to enter homes. Believing Christians were granting too much power to the occult, Mamoris offered a practical explanation: witches, elves, and the like simply entered via the chimney. This idea gained widespread cultural currency. In Renaissance-era fairy tales, fairies appeared via chimneys, and during the same period, witches were said to fly up their chimneys on broomsticks to attend Sabbat meetings.

Throughout European folklore, the hearth and chimney act as a liminal space connecting the natural and supernatural worlds. According to legend, many supernatural creatures exploit this special intermediary space to enter homes—for good or ill. Scottish and English legend feature the brownie, a household spirit that aids in domestic tasks, but only at night, and enters and exits via the chimney. In Slovenia, a shape-shifting fairy called the Skrat brings riches to human families who cultivate his favor, flying down the chimney in a fiery form when delivering money. According to Celtic lore, a nursery bogie called the bodach sneaks down chimneys and kidnaps children. Some chimney-traveling spirits appear specifically during the winter holidays. In Greece, goblins known as Kallikantzaroi slip down the chimney to wreak havoc during the Twelve Days of Christmas. Italy’s La Befana, sometimes called the Christmas witch, delivers gifts the night before Epiphany, leaving her presents in shoes set by the fireplace.

While La Befana wasn’t making widespread deliveries in the early United States, other mythical holiday gift-bringers were. Pelznichol—also called Pelznikel, Belsnickel, or Bellschniggle—traveled among German immigrant communities in 19th-century Pennsylvania, scaring naughty children and rewarding good ones. This whip-wielding wild man was a bit more intimidating than jolly old Santa Claus, but he served a similar purpose.

According to a December 19, 1827 issue of the Philadelphia Gazette, “He is the precursor of the jolly old elfe ‘Christkindle’ or ‘St. Nicholas,’ and makes his personal appearance, dressed in skins or old clothes, his face black, a bell, a whip, and a pocket full of cakes or nuts … It is no sooner dark than the Bellschniggle’s bell is heard flitting from house to house … He slips down the chimney, at the fairy hour of midnight, and deposits his presents quietly in the prepared stocking.” Pelznichol comes from the German word pelz, meaning hide or fur coat, and Nichol, meaning Nicholas. Literally “Furry Nicholas,” Pelznichol was a forerunner to the American Santa Claus—and a mythical companion of the same ancient saint.

While the character of Santa Claus draws from numerous mythical sources, his namesake is St. Nicholas, the 4th-century Bishop of Myra, an ancient town in what is now Turkey. In the most famous tale involving St. Nicholas, the bishop anonymously delivers bags of gold to a poor family to use as dowries for their daughters, keeping the father from selling the girls into prostitution. Early versions of the story have the saint tossing the money through the window—appropriate, given that St. Nicholas lived during the 3rd and 4th centuries, 900 years before the chimney. But as the story changed over time, St. Nicholas began dropping the gold down the chimney. A 14th-century fresco in a Serbian church shows the chimney had become part of the legend by the early Renaissance period.

Thanks to his generous dowry gifts and a host of miracles—including resurrecting a group of murdered boys who had been chopped into pieces—St. Nicholas became the patron saint of children, and his feast day was associated with special treats for the little ones. By the 16th century, it was tradition for Dutch children to leave their shoes on the hearth the night before the Feast of St. Nicholas. They would then wake to find the shoes filled with candy and presents, which they believed the saint had lowered down the chimney. Though Catholic saints were renounced during the Reformation, St. Nicholas stayed popular in the Low Countries, even among some Dutch Protestants, and Dutch settlers brought their traditions to North America.

The name Santa Claus is an Americanized version of the abbreviated Dutch name for St. Nicholas, Sinterklaas, but Dutch colonists did not popularize him, as most of these were saint-averse Reformation Dutch, and their influence waned once New Amsterdam became New York. In 1809, it was writer Washington Irving who helped spark an interest in St. Nicholas when he featured the saint in his satirical Knickerbocker’s History of New York, which made fun of antiquarians obsessed with the city’s Dutch heritage. In an expanded version of Knickerbocker’s published in 1812, Irving added a reference—the first known—to St. Nicholas “rattl[ing] down the chimney” himself, rather than simply dropping the presents down.

It was the famous poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”—known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”—that popularized the idea of Santa Claus tumbling down the chimney. Initially published anonymously, the poem first appeared in print in 1823 and it wasn’t until 1844 that Clement Clark Moore, a professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at a bible college, claimed the work, though his authorship is still disputed by some. The poem features Santa Claus descending down the chimney “with a bound,” then rising up the chimney after delivering his gifts. The poem began to be published annually in newspapers and magazines, and the illustrator and political cartoonist Thomas Nast cemented its vision of Santa Claus with his drawings of a plump, cheerful, bearded man delivering gifts in a sleigh.

Millions of American children came to believe that Santa Claus slid down the chimney to deliver their presents. But what does Santa do if there’s no chimney? As coal and wood stoves took the place of open fireplaces in many American homes, a parallel tradition developed: Santa squeezed down the stove pipe. By 1857, this image was common enough that The New York Times referred to it as a given.

It might seem ridiculous to imagine the portly gift-bringer somehow stuffing himself into a six-inch stove pipe, but during the mid-19th century, Santa Claus was envisioned differently in one key way: he was miniature. In his poem, Moore calls Santa “a jolly old elf,” suggesting his size is elfin: he is a “little old driver” in a “miniature sleigh” with “eight tiny reindeer.” He has a “droll little mouth,” and it’s his “little round belly” that “shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.”

Illustrations from the time, including many of Nast’s drawings, show a miniature Santa who needs to stand on a chair to reach the stockings on the mantelpiece. But while this elfin Santa could slide easily down the chimney, even he would have difficulty squeezing through a stove pipe. In published letters to Santa, some children inquired about his method of entry: “Do you crawl down stove pipes?” Of course, Santa Claus is magical, so while children may have been curious about the practicalities involved, it wasn’t a barrier to belief. One boy told Santa confidently in 1903, “I watch for you every night in the stove.”

Adults were not as sanguine. In 1893, Harper’s Weekly published a worried opinion piece about the decline of Santa Claus. The stove pipe made it harder to believe in Santa, the author observed, but the rise of steam radiators and hot-air heating made it essentially impossible:

“We know of no contemporary personage who is suffering more from allowing himself to drop behind the times than our friend Santa Claus. […] The downward course of Santa Claus began with the introduction of the cast-iron stove. As long as the old-fashioned fireplace lasted he was secure. As the children gathered around this romantic old fraud, toasting their toes while their backs gradually but surely congealed, the story of Santa Claus and his chimney-descending habits seemed entirely probable. There was scarcely a single stumbling-block for faith. […] But after the arrival of the comfortable albeit unromantic stove, when the child was told of Santa Claus, he simply looked at the pipe and put his tongue in his cheek. Still, he tried to believe in him, and succeeded after a fashion. Then even the stove disappeared in many households, to be succeeded by the steam-radiator or a hot-air hole in the floor. The notion of Santa Claus coming down a steam-pipe or up through a register was even more absurd than the idea of his braving the dimensions of a stove-pipe. […] Now it occurs to us that all this might have been avoided if people had had the wisdom to keep Santa Claus up with the times. […] When the air-tight stove was introduced, a mode of ingress other than the chimney should have been provided.”

This author needn’t have worried; Americans were not about to let Santa Claus disappear from cultural memory. Indeed, as the 20th century dawned, he became only more popular, as businesses enlisted him for copious advertising campaigns, like the famous 1930s Coca-Cola ads designed by Haddon Sundblom.

Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.

Additional Sources:
Christmas in America: A History
Consumer Rites: The Buying & Selling of American Holidays
Nicholas: The Epic Journey from Saint to Santa Claus
Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men: The Origins and Evolution of Saint Nicholas, Spanning 50,000 Years

Major airlines are cutting their fares to keep up with the competition, making travel more affordable and accessible than ever. Cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami are known for their tourism, but why not check out a hidden gem that’s yet to be overrun with tourists? These under-the-radar destinations have all the amenities of a travel-friendly city without the crazy crowds and tourist traps—and your dollar will get you further, to boot.

1. CLEVELAND, OHIO

Nestled on the coast of Lake Erie, Cleveland is undergoing a travel renaissance. Since 2011, over $3.5 billion has been spent on visitor-related infrastructure investments, says Nick Urig of Destination Cleveland. “What some still think is just a stop on the interstate is home to some of the country’s most renowned cultural institutions, quirkiest museums, [famed] sports teams, and most-visited green spaces,” Urig tells mental_floss.

In particular, Downtown Cleveland has transformed significantly in recent years. In its first few months of opening, the Hilton Cleveland Downtown was booked solid during the Republican National Convention and Games 3 and 4 of the NBA Finals. “And with the World Series having happened just steps from the hotel, we know we will only see the numbers of visitors and events in the city continue to rise,” Stuart Foster, VP of global brand marketing for Hilton, tells mental_floss. “As a Cleveland native, it’s incredible to see all the transformation happening in this great city.”

It’s also affordable. According to Kayak, median flight prices to the city from the U.S. and Canada are 22 percent lower than they were in 2015, and median hotel rates are under $250 a night. When visiting, you’ll want to make time for the West Side Market, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. “The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of the only nationally recognized art museums to offer free admission to its permanent collection, which features more than 45,000 pieces of art from artists like Dali, Monet, and Warhol,” Urig says.

2. BOISE, IDAHO

“Boise is often called a ‘mini Austin’ for its similar characteristics: laid-back, outdoorsy, hills and rivers in the city, identical capitol buildings,” says Erin Bulcher, Content Manager at FareCompare.com. Domestic round-trip flights to Boise are about $350 on average, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Once you get there, you can stretch your dollar by taking advantage of Boise’s many free outdoor activities. With the Boise River running straight through it, the city offers amazing fishing, whitewater rafting, and scenic views. “Boise is a place you can hike or ride a bike in the hills, come off the trail and hit up a pizza joint or grab a drink at a local bar,” Bulcher says. She recommends simply walking the Boise River Greenbelt, a 25-mile trail that follows the river and passes through museums, golf courses, and beautiful scenery.

3. PORTLAND, MAINE

The East Coast’s version of Portland is a charming city with small-town vibes, and it’s definitely worth a visit. “What used to be a place to pass through on the way up Maine’s rugged coast is now packed with a week’s worth of must-try restaurants and brews,” says David Solomito, VP of NA Marketing at Kayak. “Dining options abound but traditionalists like to stop by the foodie haunt that started it all: Fore Street.”

Known worldwide, the gourmet restaurant opened in 1996 a block from the waterfront in Portland’s Old Port District. On the National Register of Historic Places, the Old Port features cobblestone streets and 19th century buildings, but it’s also known for its bustling nightlife. You can take a walk down the city’s main drag, Congress Street, to check out the many bars, shops, and art.

If you prefer to stay outside of the hub, check out Portland’s historic West End—and better yet, stay in a classic New England bed and breakfast (the Pomegranate Inn is a fun option). Once you’re fed and rested, head to the Portland Museum of Art, which is free every Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. and $15 otherwise. And of course, you have to see a lighthouse or two in Portland; for that, you can drive up the coast and stop at the gorgeous Portland Head Light in Fort Williams Park.

4. SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

It’s probably best known for being home to the Alamo, a must-see historic mission that sits smack-dab in the middle of San Antonio’s downtown area, but there’s a lot more to the city than that. The San Antonio Riverwalk, for example, stretches through downtown and is lined with restaurants, galleries, and hotels. “While everyone remembers the Alamo, they often forget about San Antonio,” Solomito says. “The city defines Tex-Mex culture, so be sure to head to Rosario’s, or another of the city’s many great restaurants, for an authentic taste.”

“Recently the city is seeing a bigger travel surge because it’s a smaller city of Texas but has all the Southwestern charm,” says Jennifer Buglione of Texas-based public relations firm Giant Noise. You’ll want to check out the McNay Art Museum, San Fernando Cathedral, and for a little kitschy fun, the Buckhorn Saloon & Museum. For a more upscale experience, try the Paramour, a swanky rooftop bar close to the Museum of Art in Downtown San Antonio; compared to the price of fancy cocktails in New York and L.A., the $12 drinks here will feel like a steal.

5. MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

Let’s face it, when you think getaway, you probably don’t think of Minnesota. However, Minneapolis is a gorgeous outdoorsy city known for its music and theater—and since it’s still considered under-the-radar, it’s generally pretty affordable.

Visitors shouldn’t miss the Minnehaha Falls, a 53-foot waterfall within the city limits; it is arguably even more beautiful in the winter when the Falls freeze over. And art lovers should be sure to check out the Walker Art Center or Midway Contemporary Art Gallery. If you choose to stay at the Le Méridien Chambers Minneapolis, the hotel will give you free entry to many of the museums around the city. For a more upscale experience, stay at the The Foshay, the W’s Minneapolis location (you can still snag a room and breakfast for less than $200 per night). Both hotels also offer complimentary biking tours of the city.

Kayak also named Minneapolis one of their Top 10 cities to visit for New Year’s Eve. Median flights for late December and January are around $285, and hotels are less than $200. It’s cold in the winter, yes, but Minneapolis has an 11-mile interlocking skyway system that spans a whopping 69 city blocks, so you’re covered (literally).

All images courtesy of iStock.

 
Archaeology might raise more questions about the Bible than it answers, but that doesn’t stop millions of religious tourists from flocking to the Holy Land every year to try to walk in the footsteps of figures like Jesus and Moses. Here are nine sites of biblical importance beyond the Old City of Jerusalem.

1. MEGIDDO

Some apocalyptically minded Christians might head to Megiddo, also known as Armageddon, to see the place where the Book of Revelation says earthly armies will fight their last battle during the end times. But Megiddo has already seen its fair share of action. There are 26 layers of archaeological ruins here—including a Canaanite city, an Egyptian citadel, and a Persian city—and it’s listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

2. QUMRAN

 
European archaeologists first became interested in the settlement of Qumran, near the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, in the 19th century. It has ruins dating back to the Iron Age and hundreds of graves. But the site became world famous in the 1940s after the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves carved into the desert cliffs just opposite Qumran. The manuscripts are among the oldest surviving pieces of the Old Testament.

3. HAZOR

The archaeological record tells us that the Late Bronze Age was a time of great unrest in the Eastern Mediterranean, causing once-powerful cultures like the Hittites and Mycenaeans to suddenly collapse. According to the Old Testament, this period is also the backdrop for Joshua’s conquest of Canaan after the death of Moses. One of his key victories came at Hazor in Upper Galilee, and the Book of Joshua claims that he spared no mercy in sacking the city: “He put to the sword all who were in it, utterly destroying them; there was none left that breathed, and he burned Hazor with fire.” It’s a matter of debate whether layers of burned material at Hazor can be really be attributed to Joshua and the Israelites, or if the battle is largely myth. Excavations are ongoing and the sprawling ruins of the city are now a national park in Israel.

4. MACHAERUS

This hilltop fortress in Jordan is famous as the site of a fateful 1st century CE birthday party for Herod Antipas. Princess Salome supposedly danced for her stepfather Herod in the courtyard, and he was so pleased that he promised to give her anything she asked for. Beware of biblical promises: Salome asked for the head of St. John the Baptist, who at the time was already imprisoned in Machaerus, and Herod complied. The story is recounted in the gospel and by the Roman historian Flavius Josephus; the site is also important to Muslims who know St. John the Baptist as Prophet Yahyaibn Zakariyya. Visitors today can walk through the ruins of the Herodian royal castle overlooking the Dead Sea. Over the past decade, Jordanian and Hungarian archaeologists have been uncovering more of the citadel and reconstructing features like columns.

5. BEERSHEBA

 
The town of Beersheba in the Negev desert is an important biblical-era “tel,” or an artificial mound that has formed over many generations as old earthen buildings disintegrated and new ones were built. According to the Old Testament, the city was founded when the Jewish patriarch Abraham settled a deal over a well with the Philistine king Abimelech. Visitors to the ruins today might not be able to see Abraham’s well, but they can see the drains and cisterns of the ancient city’s impressive water system which dates back to the Iron Age.

6. MOUNT NEBO

Moses climbed this peak to get a view of the Promised Land, according to the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Torah. Some believe this site, which is in modern-day Jordan, is also the place Moses was buried, and it became a place of pilgrimage for early Christians. A group of monks built a church on the mountain in the 4th century, but the ruins of this building were only rediscovered in the 1930s. Some ornate 6th-century mosaics (see the top image) are still preserved there.

7. BETHLEHEM

Biblical accounts claim Bethlehem, now in the Palestinian West Bank, is the birthplace of Jesus. So it’s no surprise that on Christmas, Christians flock to Manger Square, located near the Church of the Nativity, which was built (and rebuilt) over the cave where Jesus is said to have been born. Jews have also historically made pilgrimages to Bethlehem to see the tomb of the Hebrew matriarch Rachel. Rachel’s Tomb is also considered holy to Christians and Muslims. Access to the site has been a point of political contention between Israel and Palestine. 

8. PETRA

 
Ancient Petra is one of the most spectacular sites in the Middle East, famous for its rock-cut facades built by the Nabataeans. Archaeologists are still uncovering new monuments in the city. This location, in modern-day Jordan, also intersects with biblical history. The surrounding valley is called the Valley of Moses, or Wadi Musa, and according to biblical tradition, this is the place where Moses hit a rock and brought forth water for his followers. The supposed tomb of Aaron, Moses’ brother, is located nearby.

9. MOUNT SINAI

In the Book of Exodus, Mount Sinai, in modern-day Egypt, is the place where Moses encounters God in the form of a burning bush and receives the 10 Commandments. St. Catherine’s Monastery was built below the peak, and thanks to its isolation in the desert, the compound has preserved some early Christian treasures, including a house full of monk skeletons.