Archive Category: Christmas

Merry Christmas! (No, Not Late: Russian Orthodoxs are Just Now Celebrating It)

Due to differences between the West’s Gregorian and the Orthodox calendars, the Russian Orthodox church has is just today (January 7, 08) celebrating Christmas.

Daniel Corrigan of Citypages has a slideshow of the Christmas Eve services in northeast Minneapolis.

Link - Thanks Jeff Shaw!

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Worst Christmas Ever: Man Spent Christmas Eve Stuck in Septic Tank

How did you spend Christmas Eve? Was it at an awkward family gathering? Scrambling to buy last minute gifts? No matter how stressful it was for you, Robert Schoff has got it beat: he spent it trapped upside down in a full septic tank!

The 77-year-old Des Moines, Iowa man began his holiday with a toilet problem. So he went out to his septic tank and tried to remove the clog. Instead, it removed him. The senior lost his balance and fell into the slop, with his head trapped inside and his feet kicking wildly in the air. The 5′5", 135-lbs. man tried yelling for help at the top of his lungs but no one heard him.

He stayed that way for about an hour unable to escape his smelly predicament until his wife began to wonder where her husband disappeared to. [...]

Eventually 911 and fire officials rushed to the scene and pulled him to safety. A long shower followed. "I thought it was the end of my life," he reflects. "Thank God my wife saw me. I don’t think I could have stood staying in there much more."

Afterwards, Robert said that "It was the worst Christmas Eve" he’s ever had. And that’s no bull: Link

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Christmas Customs

Curious Expeditions takes a look at some of the holiday customs of Europe, including the arrivals of Krampus and Black Piet, building the Hungarian Luca Chair, and burning Jack Straw to ring in the New Year. Link

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Travel Trailer Light Show

(Yahoo video link)

Just because you live in an Airstream trailer is no reason you can’t synch your Christmas lights to music via computer. -via Fark

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Musashi’s Christmas Song

(YouTube link)

Kitty cats Musashi, Leo, Luka, Seri, and Marble sing Jingle Bells. Link to Musashi’s website (in Japanese) -via Viral Video Chart

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Holiday-O-Matic

Pul the virtual lever and generate a random but festive holiday message. My first one said “May your New Year be relaxing and filled with turducken.” Then you can send your greeting to friends via email. For each message sent, a donation is made to Rotary First Harvest, an organization that connects farmers and food banks. Link -via the Presurfer

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Soviet Christmas Cards

Here’s a delightful collection of vintage Soviet Christmas cards celebrating Russia’s space program.

See as Santa Ded Moroz rides a space rocket Sputnik while small boys in the space suites send a New Year greetings to all people of the Earth.
In a picture at the left Santa steers three Soviet space vehicles at once - Vostok, Voshod, Souyz. All design very much reminds Pod Racers from the Star Wars. May be he goes to Tatooine?

Ded Moroz is the Russian name for Santa. There are four pages of aerospace cards, and other vintage cards can be accessed through the postcard index at the bottom of the page. Link -via Cynical-C

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Stormtroopers Arrest Santa!

An Imperial Stormtrooper commando broke into Santa’s Factory on the North Pole yesterday evening, killing an undetermined number of elves, arresting the owner and confiscating his sled. Joe Kwazansky, local spokesman for the Evil Galactic Empire in Los Angeles, appeared in a press conference this morning confirming the rumors of an Imperial takeover of Christmas’ celebrations.

Read the rest of the story at Gizmodo. Link -via Fark

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Cthulhu Santa

Well, you better watch out
You better not die
You better not pout
I’m telling you why
Cthulhu Santa is coming to town!

Anyone got more info on this fantastic needle felted Cthulhu Santa? Found at Super Punch, who has a list of more fun Christmas links.

Update 12/18/07: Made by Amy Rawson of Thirdroar and her boyfriend - Thanks Amy!

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LEGO Snowflake Ornament

Photo: "Big Daddy" Nelson [Flickr]

This is LEGO unlike anything we’ve seen before: Nelson "Bid Daddy" Yrizarry used white tree leaf pieces to create fantastic snowflakes out of LEGO! The snowflakes are even sturdy enough to hang as ornaments.

Link [Flickr] - via The Brothers Brick

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Flying Spaghetti Monster Ornament

Shelly Hattan of Civil Bitch blog (can I say that?) knitted this Flying Spaghetti Monster "Chrifsmas " ornament. She even shared the knitting pattern so you can make one too!

Link - via Craft

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30 Years of LucasFilm Christmas Cards

Since 1977, LucasFilm has commissioned original art for its company Christmas cards. Many of them, like the 1981 card shown, feature Star Wars characters. This year’s card has a company of pop-up Stormtroopers. See that and more at Slashfilm (warning: contains Ewoks). Link -via Dump Trumpet

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Bizarro: Politically Correct Christmas

Ah, Dan Piraro really got me goin’ with his Bizarro comic making fun of the political correctness-gone mad this Christmas.

In the United Kingdom, there were reports of school scrapping nativity plays and local community councils renaming Christmas "Winterval". The secularization of Christmas had gotten so ridiculous that recently, even the Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and the Human Rights Commission in United Kingdom said enough is enough:

Muslim leaders joined Britain’s equality watchdog Monday in urging Britons to enjoy Christmas without worrying about offending non-Christians.

"It’s time to stop being daft about Christmas. It’s fine to celebrate and it’s fine for Christ to be star of the show," said Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Mr. Phillips, reflecting on media reports of schools scrapping nativity plays and local councils celebrating "Winterval" instead of Christmas, worried the unintended consequences of secularizing the holiday would "fuel community tension."

So he joined forces with minority religious leaders to put out a blunt message to the politically correct: leave Christmas alone.

Links: Christian Science Monitor article | Dan Piraro’s website: Bizarro

(In other news, it is rumored that Britney Spears is starring as Mary in a bizarre satire film called "Sweet Baby Jesus." Not as Mary Magdalene, but as the Virgin Mary. Sigh.)

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Grow a Xmas Tree

Make a Christmas ecard with a personalized animated message on your Christmas tree! Check out the one I made for Neatorama. Link (via Dump Trumpet)

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Christmas Wax

Enjoy a collection of mp3s of Christmas music recorded on wax in the early 20th century. This includes music from the Edison Concert Band and the Edison Mixed Quartet. Eddie Cantor’s rendition of The Only Thing I Want for Christmas (Is Just To Keep The Things That I’ve Got) is especially recommended. Link -via Metafilter

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Scans of Vintage Christmas Catalogs

WishbookWeb has a fantastic collection of vintage Christmas catalog scanned for your browsing enjoyment!

Available are old Ward, Sears, Spiegel, and JC Penney Christmas catalogs from the 1940s through the 1980s.

Link - via The Cartoonist

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Santa Lives in Kyrgyzstan

We’ve posted a story about Santa living in Finland, but according to Swedish engineers, that’s wrong.

Santa, they concluded after an exhaustive calculation of what’s required for the jolly fat man to deliver presents to kids all over the world, lives in Kyrgyzstan:

"We estimated that there are 48 people per square kilometer on Earth, and 20 meters between each home. So if Santa leaves from Kyrgyzstan and travels against the Earth’s rotation he has 48 hours to deliver all the presents," Anders Larsson of Sweco tells AFP.

That’s assuming Rudolph and the other reindeer hurtle through the air at 3,604 miles per second, or 13 million mph.

The researchers concluded that Kyrgysztan was the most efficient spot from which to start the jolly fellow’s global delivery service.

Link

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The Lindsay Lights

(YouTube link)
The Lindsay Lights in Thornhill, Ontario have been drawing crowds since 2002. Over 80,000 lights, most of them LEDs, blink to musical sequences that are broadcast on FM radio. The lights go on every night at 5PM through January 5th. The Lindsays and their lights have raised over $42,000 for local charities! Link to story. Link to website. -Thanks, Jerrold!

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Worst Christmas Albums Ever, Photoshop Edition

Earlier we posted the most Bizarre Christmas Albums, but those were real albums. Worth1000 has a collection of even worse cases, since they come from the imaginations of the submitters! Link -via J-Walk Blog

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Tacky Christmas Yards

Tacky Christmas Yards collects and critiques photographs of homes decorated with Christmas lights. “Violations” include mixing themes, lawn characters of different sizes, unharmonious arrangements, multiple Clauses, and overdone lighting. Several houses in my town would put these to shame, especially the few that put Santa on the roof of the nativity stable. Link -via the Presurfer

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DIY Modern Paper Christmas Ornament

I am so digging these onion-slice shaped modern paper Christmas ornament that you can make yourself with strips of paper, some twine, and a stapler.

Here’s a guide by Derek and Lauren of The Curiosity Shoppe on how you can make your own: Link

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Santa Cam

Santa Claus keeps his office in Santa Claus Village near Rovaniemi, Finland (a part of Lapland, inside the Arctic Circle). He welcomes visitors year round, but if you can’t go, you can watch via webcam! There are two office webcams, inside and outside. Santa doesn’t work 24 hours a day, so mind the time difference in Finland. You cannot judge when it’s night by the outside webcam, since the sun will not rise in the Arctic Circle for weeks. Link

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Pac-Man Christmas Tree

Somehow, I missed this awesome Pac-Man "Christmas tree" (Holiday display? Pyramid?) on display in downtown Madrid when compiling the World’s Most Unusual Christmas Trees list.

The Pac-Man display is fully animated with thousands of colored LEDs.

Link - via Technabob, thanks Chad Cloman!

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Flying Spaghetti Monster Holiday eCard

Bobby Henderson of the Flying Spaghetti Monster fame would like to wish you a Happy Holiday… You can send the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Holiday e-Card (artwork by Andrew Shaffer) here: Link - Thanks Bobby!

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Core 77 Design Gift Guide for Christmas

It’s Christmas season, so it’s time for another one of Core 77’s Design Gift Guide. Allan Chocinov of the blog wrote:

… we’ve just just launched our 2007 Designer Gift Guide. As the name in the subject line suggests, the guide is filled with 77 totally awesome gift ideas, each for under $77. It’s a crazy, eclectic mix–everything from "Feather Doll Dusters" to "Forearm Forklift Lifting Straps" (okay, now you’re *really* going to have to take a peek!)–with lots of beautiful design objects, books, and philanthropies to discover inside.

Well, it’s mostly under $77: Link - Thanks Allan!

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Fred and Ginger

New Christmas Cards from Cara Scissoria this year include Fred and Ginger, as well as seven other designs that made me giggle! Be sure to check out “Poe Ho Ho”. Link -via Everlasting Blort

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The Night Before Christmas

(YouTube link)
Wilford left a comment under the Show Off Your Smarts contest for today that said:

The very first Christmas movie was “The Night Before Christmas” released in 1906. It was a silent adaptation of the poem of the same name by Clement C. Moore .

Of course, I immediately looked that up. It’s an Edison film! IMDb Link. -Thanks, Wilford!

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The First No-EEL.

The Mainichi Daily News of Japan reports:

An aquarium filled with exotic fish here is using an electric eel to power lights on a Christmas tree.

Each time the electric eel at the Aqua Toto Gifu aquarium touches a
copper wire in its tank, it sends power that lights up globes decking a
Christmas tree.

Via Aardvark

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Christmas Tree Farm Robbed by Grinch

The owner of a Christmas tree farm in east Tennessee found that someone had sawed off the tops of 28 large Christmas trees that were ready for market. The thief took about six feet of each tree, leading authorities to believe they will be sold as whole Christmas trees. The damaged Frasier firs would have been sold for $100 to $150 dollars each to organizations and businesses with high ceilings. Link -via Fark

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One Week at the Mall of America

Think that your Black Friday holiday shopping experience was bad? How about living in a mall for one full week?

For this article, reporter Matt Snyders of City Pages spent one whole week at the Twin Cities’ megamall Mall of America and lived to tell the tale:

… how to go about wrapping your head around a monolith that employs more than 11,000 workers, including clerks, security guards, tour guides, and ride operators? That spans 4.2 million square feet? That rakes in almost $2 billion a year from visitors? That, according to an awesomely arbitrary stat rundown on its website, can fit seven Yankee Stadiums into it?

One way is to eat, breathe, drink, and sleep in the place for seven days, inhabiting it during all open hours, 10:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Which is exactly what I did. I realized going in that boredom would be my greatest adversary. These misgivings were compounded by the guidelines I was determined to follow:

* I was not to leave the building for any amount of time during open hours.
* I was to at least step foot in every one of the mall’s 520-plus stores.
* I was required to sleep a minimum of one night in the mall. Somehow.
* No outside food, water, or alcohol. Everything consumed must be purchased onsite.
* No iPod or other distractions allowed.
* No poking fun at the mall’s Santa Clauses.
* Not even the one that kind of looks like a pedophile.

Link - Thanks Jeff Shaw!

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