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Christmas is far stranger than it seems, even in America. Add in foreign traditions like Krampus or Zwarte Piet, and it gets even weirder. Probably the most bizarre Christmas custom I’ve heard of, though, is that of the Tió de Nadal (the “Christmas log”), also known as the “Caga tió,” meaning – I’m not making this up – the “pooping log.”

The Tió de Nadal, according to Wikipedia, is a popular character in Catalan mythology in Catalonia, Spain. Basically, it’s a small, hollow log, typically adorned with legs, a face, and a festive hat. Sounds cute, maybe, but it gets weirder. Wikipedia goes on:

Beginning with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), one gives the tió a little bit to “eat” every night and usually covers him with a little blanket so that he will not be cold at night.

On Christmas day or, depending on the particular household, on Christmas Eve, one puts the tió
partly into the fireplace and orders it to “poop” (the fire part of
this tradition is no longer as widespread as it once was, since many
modern homes do not have a fireplace). To make him “poop”, one beats him
with sticks, while singing various songs of Tió de Nadal.

The tió does not drop larger objects, as those are brought by the Three Wise Men. It does leave candies, nuts and torrons.
Depending on the part of Catalonia, it may also give out dried figs.
When nothing is left to “poop”, it drops a salt herring, a head of
garlic, an onion or “urinates”. What comes out of the tió is a communal rather than individual gift, shared by everyone present.

Catalans even sing carols to the Tió de Nadal. Here’s one such song (translation included):

caga tió, caga torró, avellanes i mató, si no cagues bé et daré un cop de bastó. caga tió!”

poop log, poop turrón, hazelnuts and cottage cheese, if you don’t poop well, I’ll hit you with a stick, poop log!

giving log, give us treats, give us sweets! if you don’t want to give, I’ll hit you with a stick, give it up!

If you’d like to participate in this strange, ancient tradition with your own family, there is a helpful how-to guide here.

(Source unknown.)

(Link.)

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is today one of the most popular and immutable fixtures of the Christmas season. But has it always been thus? Where and when did the Rudolph story originate? After all, you may have noted that Rudolph does not feature in the beloved 1823 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas / The Night Before Christmas”; the poem lists only eight reindeer (“Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer and Vixen, / On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixem”), and Rudolph is not among them.

Rudolph, it turns out, was created by the Montgomery Ward department store in 1939. From the Smithsonian:

Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer first appeared in 1939 when Montgomery Ward
department store asked one of its copywriters, 34-year-old Robert L.
May, to create a Christmas story the store could give away to shoppers
as a promotional gimmick.

The
retailer had been buying and giving away coloring books for Christmas
every year; and it was decided that creating its own book would save
money. In the first year of publication, 2.4 million copies of Rudolph’s
story were distributed by Montgomery Ward.

Rudolph was further popularized, of course, by Gene Autry’s 1949 song (lyrics by Robert May’s brother-in-law) and Burl Ives’s 1964 TV special. You can read more here and here.

Watch this video – no further explanation is necessary. I’m sure you’ll agree.

Astronomical events such as this don’t come around often. Be sure to head outside tonight to check out the lunar eclipse, if it will be visible in your area (it’s supposed to be particularly spectacular for North Americans). For more information, you can visit the useful page NASA set up for the occasion. According to NASA,

the eclipse will last about three hours and
twenty-eight minutes. For observers on the east coast of the U.S. the
eclipse lasts from 1:33am EST through 5:01 a.m. EST. Viewers on the west
coast will be able to tune in a bit earlier. For them the eclipse
begins at 10:33 p.m. PST on December 20 and lasts until 2:01am PST on
Dec. 21. Totality, the time when Earth’s shadow completely covers the
moon, will last a lengthy 72 minutes.

Our friend Ryan brings our attention to this unusually-headlined article (this one, especially, sounds like a bad low-budget film, and one that I’d gladly watch). The article’s short, so I won’t let my commentary get in the way of your curiosity:

Scientists in Kenya have located one of the world’s rarest and oddest-looking flies after a long hunt for an insect dubbed the “terrible hairy fly,” experts said on Wednesday.

Scientists first stumbled across the yellow-haired fly in 1933 and then
again in 1948. Since then, at least half a dozen expeditions have
visited a site between the towns of Thika and Garissa to find it again.

At about one centimeter long and so far found on a single 20-meter high
rock, the Mormotomyia hirsuta looks more like a spider with its hairy
legs, scientists said.

Unable to fly and partial to breeding in bat feces, the fly is thought
to live only in the dank, bat-filled cleft of an isolated rock in the
Ukazi Hills. It also has non-functional wings that resemble miniature
belt-straps, and tiny eyes.

More details – and a photo – here.

Everything truly is bigger in China – they have ghost cities, not ghost towns, and they are huge. In fact, it would be easy to run out of adjectives trying to describe their size:

In 1856, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech so inspiring, so captivating, so compelling-… that every reporter present forgot to take notes, and everyone who attended, lacking a written record, eventually forgot about the speech’s content, too.

The speech was so compelling, in fact, that it is often credited with helping to launch Lincoln’s national career (like Barack Obama’s 2004 speech at the DNC). There’s even a historical marker commemorating the spot where it occurred.That the speech was so important, though, makes it all the stranger that it was “lost.” From Wikipedia:

The speech known as Abraham Lincoln‘s “Lost Speech” was given on May 29, 1856, in Bloomington, Illinois.
Traditionally regarded as lost because it was so engaging that
reporters neglected to take notes, the speech is believed to have been
an impassioned condemnation of slavery. It is possible the text was deliberately “lost” owing to its controversial content.

There are no known transcripts or written accounts of the Lost Speech,
other than a brief summary in the local press. Eyewitnesses have offered
snippets of some of Lincoln’s content that day. William Herndon asserted that some of Lincoln’s House Divided Speech
was not based on new concepts at the time of its delivery. He wrote
that Lincoln’s “house divided against itself cannot stand” originated
with the famous Bloomington speech of 1856.

Others speculate, of course, that listeners were merely distracted from the content of the speech by Lincoln’s notoriously scratchy voice. You can find out more here.

The actual Bowie/Crosby version of this is probably one of my favorite Christmas songs, but this parody manages to be highly amusing while staying true to the original.

For reference, here’s the original:

While it may be quite snowy tonight, depending on where you live, you should still make it a point to get outside and glance up at the sky. The Geminid meteor shower, the most intense of the year, peaks tonight and tomorrow (Dec. 13 and 14). Not only is it a spectacular display, it’s also a mysterious one, too:

[The Geminid meteor shower] lasts for days, is rich in fireballs, and can be seen from almost any point on Earth.

It’s also NASA astronomer Bill Cooke’s favorite meteor shower–but not for any of the reasons listed above.

“The Geminids are my favorite,” he explains, “because they defy explanation.”

Most meteor showers come from comets, which spew ample meteoroids
for a night of ‘shooting stars.’ The Geminids are different. The parent
is not a comet but a weird rocky object named 3200 Phaethon that sheds
very little dusty debris–not nearly enough to explain the Geminids.

Read more here. And be sure to tune in to your local sky tonight!

I found this fascinating and highly amusing. Pictured below is the rotating billboard advertisement for a podiatrist in Los Angeles. Long story short, locals hold that if this happy foot is facing you as you drive by, you’ll have a good day – the sad foot, a bad day. From Homegrown Evolution, via Boing Boing:

The podiatrist’s sign above marks the entrance to our neighborhood. It
charmed us the first time we saw it: It’s a foot — with feet!  And we
immediately named it the Happy Foot/Sad Foot sign. Soon we learned that
other people called it The Happy Foot/Sad Foot Sign as well. The name
seemed predestined and universally applied, and it was recognizable
enough that we could pinpoint our location off of Sunset Blvd. by
saying, “You know the Happy Foot/Sad Foot sign?”

The Foot rotates slowly, unless it’s broken, which it often is of
late. But when it’s rotating, you are always tempted to check out which
side is facing you when you first come into sight of it.  A happy,
smiling foot is portends a good day, or at least a general thumbs up
from the universe. We’ve always thought so, and come to find out, many
other people also practice this form of primitive divination.

Read more here.