Longtime Neatorama readers are familiar with PJ McQuade's pop culture Christmas cards and ornaments, featuring characters from Star Wars, Twin Peaks, Jaws, Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, and other movies and TV shows. These are guaranteed to make you the coolest card sender in your friend circle, and confuse your grandparents to boot. This year, McQuade is debuting an expanded line of new cards featuring Pedro Pascale, the Jordan Peele movie Us, The Dark Crystal, Predator, Legend, Khan from Star Trek, and a special trio of Alan Rickman's geekiest roles (Galaxy Quest, Harry Potter, and Die Hard). Let's check out the inside of those cards.

These new designs are available not only as Christmas cards, but Christmas tree ornaments, refrigerator magnets, and stickers, too. You can get those items in combo packs and cards in multi-packs and variety packs. Also check out some old favorites and even fandoms you aren't familiar with. Get your order in now at the Etsy store Castle McQuade. And you might as well order your Valentines Day cards, too. 

The Jewish a cappella group Six13 (previously at Neatorama) always has a new parody for each holiday with lyrics that explain the celebration set to popular music. Chanukah/Hanukkah begins on Thursday evening and runs through Friday, December 15th. This year, Six13 used a selection of 13 songs from Taylor Swift's Eras tour to explain various parts of the Chanukah celebration. Coincidentally or not, today Taylor Swift has been named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2023. If you want the name of the Taylor Swift song they are singing, hover over the control bar at the bottom of the video, and it will be displayed. Several of these songs are available on Six13's latest album, Vol. 8: Lights. Happy Chanukah!

This is the image that captured photographer Tara Lilly the title of International Wedding Photographer of the Year for 2023. Mikaela and Mitch got married in the great outdoors of Whistler, British Columbia. A bird called the whiskey jack landed on Mikaela's head just as Mitch was beginning to say his vows. She cried, "I'm Snow White!" and the picture was taken. The serendipitous moment was not planned, but the photo was nevertheless beautifully shot. A good time was had by all.

The winners in the various category competitions are also stunning, and reflect a real sense of adventure among brides and grooms. One couple are both marine biologists, and had portraits made underwater. Another couple climbed a sheer rock face in formal wear, and still another couple went rappelling at night to capture the stars behind them. And the photographers went along. See the winners in the various categories in this gallery, and click through to see the finalists for those categories.  -via Nag on the Lake

It's common among Christians to include a nativity scene in their Christmas decorations, depicting Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus. Many also include the shepherds, the three wise men, and/or an angel, along with camels and livestock. While the basics are there, thesenativity sets aren't the same all over the world. In some Latin American countries, it's not unusual to see devils included in a nativity scene, representing the demons who tried to keep the shepherds from reaching the Christ child. In Scandinavia, various trolls and folklore fairies find their way into the scene, depending on the local lore. Amish nativity scenes are presented without faces, for traditional religious reasons. Read about all these at Atlas Obscura.

Not included in the article (but it should have been) are the caganers of Catalonia in Spain. No one knows how that tradition started.

(Image source: Courtesy The Marian Library, University of Dayton)

Ulysses S. Grant led the Union Army to victory in the Civil war, and later became president. Grant was raised in an abolitionist family, but wasn't forced to attend church and remained mostly apolitical before the war. That background didn't seem to be at all strained when he married Julia Dent, who was a slave owner like her father before her, in 1848. Since Julia was a 19th-century woman, that meant that U.S. Grant was technically a slave owner. No matter who officially "owned" a household of enslaved people, Grant benefitted from their labor at his father-in-law's farm called White Haven in Missouri, where the family lived. Grant had no particular qualms against the institution of slavery, up until late in the war, when he saw it was a dying institution.  

The people that Julia kept as slaves were under conflicting legal status. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, but it only pertained to enslaved people in the Confederate states. Slave states like Missouri and Kentucky that remained in the Union were not included. Julia was under the impression that they had been freed as well, but kept them with her anyway. The enslaved people were apparently under the impression they were still enslaved. In 1864, Julia's longtime nursemaid, Jules, disappeared while traveling with Julia in Kentucky, and crossed the icy Ohio River into Indiana and freedom. The Grant's slaveholding days were numbered. Read about U.S. Grant, his wife Julia, and the people they enslaved at Smithsonian.

Even if you've never seen the holiday staple The Nutcracker, you recognize the music by Tchaikovsky. Every community that stages the ballet gives an opportunity to dozens of young dancers to perform on stage with real ballet dancers. But the production went through some hard times when it was new. The story is based on a rather dark tale written by E.T.A. Hoffmann in 1816. Some of the more tragic and thought-provoking details were dropped before the story became a ballet. Tchaikovsky hated composing the music. He was constrained by the choreographer's demands and considered the work dull. When the ballet debuted in 1892, it got mixed reviews from critics and audience members. The story was nonsensical, and there were too many children in it! But over the years, people came around, and those things became a big part of its charm. Read some facts about the history of The Nutcracker at Mental Floss.

When you watch a movie in a language you don't speak, do you look for a dubbed version, or do you turn on the subtitles? It makes a difference, because teams who dub movies into another language translate it completely separately from the teams who type up subtitles, which are also used as closed captions. Dialogue in dubbed movies makes an attempt to match the lip movements of the actors. Or sometimes they don't try all that hard, as you've no doubt noticed in some really cheaply made films. And then there's the problem of translating puns, which aren't funny if you just interpret it word by word, or even grammatically, if the context doesn't make sense in another culture. If you listen to a dubbed movie and turn on the captions, too, you might notice a lot of differences, which will cause you to lose the plot quickly. The last minute of this video is an ad.    

Some of the most recognizable quotes you hear are not really quotes. Abraham Lincoln never said, "You  can't believe everything you read on the internet," and Gandalf never said, "May the Force be with you," despite the ubiquitous memes. Honestly, those are pretty easy to spot as fake. But some catchphrases you've heard all your life actually never occurred in the context you think they did.

For example, when you hear "Elementary, my dear Watson," you think of Sherlock Holmes explaining to his assistant how easily he used deductive reasoning to solve a crime. You may have used the phrase to make the same point. But in all the Arthur Conan Doyle stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, he never said those exact words in that order. He came close in the short story “The Crooked Man,” but the entire phrase was just the word "elementary." Read about that and four other catchphrases that we know so well that only became famous after they were misread, misheard, or misremembered at Cracked.

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

If you've ever studied the saga of the Russian Revolution in the early 20th century, you know how important it was globally. But... actually reading the convoluted story of war and politics will make your eyes glaze over. The one character that stood out to make it downright entertaining was Rasputin, the "mad monk" who was plucked from central casting to play both the wizard and the villain. He was mysterious, outrageous, and polarizing, and his story had supernatural overtones that make him a fascinating study even today. You have to train your eye to recognize Tsar Nicholas II and his family in photographs, but Rasputin stood out as an archetype. YouTuber Antimatter tells the story of Rasputin, accompanied by hundreds of still images of Rasputin himself, the artworks he inspired, and the many movies that featured him.

In 1950, the new Northgate Mall in Seattle wanted a tall Christmas tree. At the time, public Christmas trees could get a community or company a lot of publicity by setting a record as the tallest ever. The administrators of Northgate Mall decided theirs would be so tall that no one would even try to top it, ever. And they got their wish.

The tree selected was a 212-foot Douglas fir, weighing about 50,000 pounds. It was cut 70 miles from the mall, and that delivery was anything but easy. A crane accompanied the split truck that carried it, to help in the spots it became stuck. In fact, they shaved off the tree's branches to move it! The branches were re-attached at the mall, which made it look downright artificial. The project ran up ten times its allotted budget.  

Read about the world record Christmas tree and see more pictures at Vintage Everyday. Read more details on the transport and erection of the tree here. -via Nag on the Lake

We make decisions every day, but we don't often think about the toll those decisions have on us. Deciding between too many options will drain our mental capacity, as will making momentous decisions that we might regret, or making too many small decisions. For people who make decisions for a living, this stress can cause problems for everyone. But we can do things to reduce that cognitive load, like recognizing the triviality of small decisions and not stressing about a decision after the fact.  

A household disaster led to the loss of my bedroom wallpaper. Just thinking about the difficulty of deciding on the perfect wallpaper to replace it, and the hassle of looking for it, made me decide to paint the walls instead, therefore simplifying everything. I can always paper later if I want.

This TED-Ed lesson on decision fatigue explains the concept and gives us more advice on how to reduce the stress of making decisions in our everyday lives.

The Antarctic Peninsula is the part of the continent that juts out the furthest to the north, toward Argentina. It is almost midsummer there now, and the snow is beginning to bloom a festive red and green. But those colors aren't for Christmas, and they aren't good news. The colors indicate the presence of a type of green algae that sometimes contains a red pigment. In order for the algae to thrive, temperatures have to be slightly above freezing, so that snow and ice is a watery slush. The algae bloom is occurring over a wider area every year, and affecting areas further south. meaning inland.

By some measures, average annual temperatures in Antarctica have risen by almost 3°C (5.4°F) since 1800, making it one of the areas most affected by climate change. While rising temperatures contribute to conditions that lead to algae bloom, the bloom itself is contributing to warmer temperatures. While the red and green snow may be pretty, it signals changes in the ecosystem that we may not be prepared for. Read about Antarctica's red and green snow at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Jerzy Strzelecki)

A crew from the BBC TV series Planet Earth III went to Ellesmere Island, the northernmost part of Canada, to find Arctic wolves and film their everyday lives. The island is almost as large as Great Britain, though, so finding any wolves at all was not going to be easy- particularly if the wolves did not want to be found. That apparently was not the case, because suddenly, there were wolves, a whole family of them approaching curiously, wanting to make friends and then stealing the crew's supplies. It's hard to imagine wild creatures that are so unfamiliar with humans that they would approach like there's no danger. Once the wolf pack was found, filming could commence, but the crew learned how many ways life can be harsh in the Arctic. Enjoy this behind-the-scenes glimpse, but be aware that the wolves hunt for their food, which can be grisly.  -via Digg

What do you call someone from Wyoming? I mean, just for the fact that they are from Wyoming? They are a Wyomingite, which is new to me. The term that we give to people from a certain place is called a demonym. It has nothing to do with demons, but is a combination of deme, the root of demographic, and nym, meaning name. Massachusettsan and Connecticuter were new to me also, possibly because I've never been to those states. See the map larger here. Can you spot the one state whose demonym has nothing to do with the name of the state? The demonyms are taken from Wikipedia's List of demonyms for US states and territories. Aside from the official demonyms, the list also has common nicknames for those people, and some interesting information. For example, we often say Hawaiian when we mean someone from Hawaii, but that word is reserved for people of Native Hawaiian descent, while the official demonym for someone from Hawaii is Hawaii Resident. -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: HMElza)

I honestly thought we'd settled this two years ago, but apparently people are still arguing about whether Die Hard should be classified as a Christmas movie. I mean really, if Miracle on 34th Street can be a Thanksgiving movie, a Christmas movie, and a courtroom drama all at once, why can't Die Hard be a Christmas film and an action movie? Sure, it's a matter of opinion, but those who think it's not a Christmas movie are wrong.

Disney+ UK recruited Alfie Boe and The Kingdom Choir to sing an anthem explaining all the reasons why Die Hard should be part of our Christmas movie marathons from now until the end of time. It is set to the tune of "Ode to Joy" from Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. -via Geeks Are Sexy