You know how every year, as soon as Halloween is over, it seems that Mariah Carey takes over all the music speakers in the world, and her 1994 song "All I Want for Christmas is You" plays nonstop wherever you go? Carey herself has noticed and capitalized on the phenomenon. But after thirty years, too much of a good thing is still too much. When you get down to the last week before Christmas, you just want to get away from that song. The Carey takeover is like a horror story, in which you cannot escape no matter what you do. Fabrice Mathieu made it so, by mixing Carey's music video with clips from more than 40 movies of all kinds. He calls this mashup "All I want for Christmas is... Silence!" You can see the wide-screen version at YouTube. You can also click "more" in the description and see a list of the movies used.   -Thanks, Fabrice!

All you need to do is drive around your neighborhood to see the inflatable lawn decorations to realize how many pop culture Christmas characters we now have. There's the Grinch, Elf on the Shelf, Frosty the Snowman, and of course, Rudolph. Outside of Santa Claus, they are all less than 100 years old. But there could have been many more. The success of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which was created as a promotion for Montgomery Ward department stores, led to many retail outlets creating their own Christmas characters that didn't stand the test of time.

The story of the first man who played Mr. Jingeling, Santa's keeper of the keys at Halle's department store https://t.co/Olchu3phaH #CLE #ThisWasCLE #holidays #holidayseason pic.twitter.com/KXIQcgUD86

— Cleveland Historical (@CLEhistorical) December 23, 2017

Does anyone remember Mr. Jingeling, the locksmith who helped Santa Claus? Unless you live in Cleveland, probably not. How about Billie the Brownie? Or Uncle Mistletoe and Aunt Holly? There were also Twigbee, Bawlmer Bear, and Mr. Bingle, among others. Read about these lesser-known Christmas advertising characters who were big in their day, but never reached the global fame of Rudolph, at Smithsonian.

The warm weather in Gävle is melting all the beautiful snow 😭 Still hoping for a white Christmas. pic.twitter.com/mmiR8RKIw7

— Gävlebocken (@Gavlebocken) December 17, 2023

Every year at the beginning of December, the town of Gävle, Sweden, erects a giant goat made of straw (Gävlebocken) for Christmas. And every year, we wonder whether the goat will survive until New Year's Day. The Gävle Goat (previously at Neatorama) gets burned to the ground more often than not, despite a fence, security guards, and a 24-hour live webcam. Arsonists face heavy fines and/or jail time if caught. But this year, the goat is in danger from a completely different enemy- nature.

An unusually wet summer in Sweden led to the production of straw that has more grain still attached. Jackdaws have discovered this food source, and have been flocking to the goat to pick apart the straw to reach the grain. There's not much the goat committee can do about it, apart from replacing the goat, and they've decided to let it stand. Note the thinning horns in the image above. You can see the gathering number of jackdaws in this video clip. Only time will tell if the goat falls apart before Christmas, but all agree that a goat collapsing due to hungry birds is better than a goat destroyed in a flaming conflagration.

A timeline of the Gävle Goat's fate from its first incarnation in 1966 shows how many times it was destroyed before January and the method of its downfall. This year's Gävle Goat can be seen anytime via the live webcam.  -via Metafilter

The Mediterranean fruit fly is an invasive species that is causing intolerable damage to crops in California. So why is the USDA breeding more of them and releasing them? It's for competition. The medflies from the labs are treated to make them sterile, and then released to mate with wild medflies which will then produce no offspring. This method is not as quick or thorough as spraying pesticides, but it's certainly a lot safer for people, crops, and the environment as a whole. It's a case of taking the long way around for long-term benefits. Still, the process of growing, sterilizing, transporting, and releasing these flies is quite complicated, as Tom Scott shows us. Then they have to be monitored, which is only possible because they've also been marked. Another thing I learned: ginger root oil helps male flies become more successful at mating. How long until someone bottles that for sale? Oh, it's already happening? I'm not surprised.

Talk about a unique gift! The Chernobyl Spirit Company is offering vodka dubbed ATOMIK, distilled from grains grown in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The drink comes in essences of apples, pears, or plums, and it's not radioactive, or at least not any more radioactive than vodka produced elsewhere.

When the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Pripyat, Ukraine, suffered the world's worst nuclear meltdown in 1986, we thought that entire area would never be habitable again. You still can't live there, officially, but nature has displayed an amazing recovery in the almost forty years since the disaster. Trees and other plants grow, and wildlife has moved in to the places people used to live and work. The boar on ATOMIK bottles is an example of a thriving population in the Exclusion Zone. The grains used in ATOMIK show some radioactivity, but once they are distilled, that radioactivity is gone.  

The real story is the Chernobyl Spirit Company, whose goal is to show the area's recovery and to help support those affected by the meltdown and Ukrainians affected by the war. The company was founded by a group of unsalaried scientists. They designate 75% of their profits to such support, and have so far have donated more than $30,000. Read about ATOMIK and how it reveals the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone's recovery at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: Chernobyl Spirit CIC)

(Image credit: Chad Doebelin)

Christmas trees are trees, decorated with Christmas lights. That's all they really have in common. Really, iy doesn't even have to be a tree, just vaguely tree-shaped. Some people go the extra mile to make their tree extra nice, or personalized, or they go with a theme, often something that's close to their heart. Surely you recognize the game Portal in Chad Doebelin's clever Christmas tree, but did you notice the TARDIS tree topper? I bet if we look closer, we'll see other pop culture references. And speaking of pop culture references, here's an excuse to put up two trees.

(Image credit: sabins253)

But you don't have to have a theme for your Christmas tree. Sometimes it just takes a little planning to achieve a stunning effect. This one is the result of seven hours spent decorating it.

(Image credit: Morana_Saracevic)

Those are just the tip of the iceberg. A bunch of people shared their awesome Christmas trees that are lovingly decorated, themed, or cleverly cobbled out of things they already had. You can see 50 examples of Christmas trees that might make you rethink yours at Bored Panda.

But if those trees truly make you feel inadequate, Bored Panda also has a gallery of images from those who selected "laziness" as their Christmas decorating theme.

When you get too many Christmas gifts, or gifts you just don't care for, what do you do? Some people just keep them or regift them, but 20 to 30% of all merchandise these days is returned for money or store credit. What happens to all that returned merchandise? It was once up to each individual retailer to deal with returns, but the retail industry has now developed a complicated and centralized infrastructure to receive, sort, classify, and dispose of unwanted goods. And that system ramps into high gear after Christmas.

Inmar Intelligence is one of the larger third-party logistics companies that deals with half a billion returned items every year. Amanda Mull of The Atlantic visited their returns-processing center in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, where each item is inspected by a materials handler who follows the standards set by the various companies they contract with. Returned items are inspected, judged, and then either repackaged for sale, sold to a resale company, donated, recycled, or destroyed. Find out how all this happens at The Atlantic. -via Nag on the Lake

Gmünd, Austria, has a church in two pieces, with a road between them. The minister preaches from the pulpit in one half of the church, while the congregation sits in the other half to listen. The two parts are open to the air, so that each party can see the other. It's called The Divided Church, for obvious reasons.

There's a story behind this church, although it's not a case of the government building a road and the church refusing to move, as you might expect. The road was there first, and it had a little roadside shrine where travelers could pray for safe travel over the mountain -or for mercy as they were led to execution. In 1748, the shrine was expanded into a chapel, with an open side so that the pastor could preach to people who gathered outside on the road. Eventually, the pastor arranged to have a room built for congregants to sit in out of the weather just across the street. Read how the shrine grew into a chapel and then a unique church, and see more pictures, at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Johann Jaritz)

On December 16, 1773, exactly 250 years ago today, protesters threw a shipment of tea into Boston Harbor. In elementary school, we learn that it was an illustration of the building frustration of the American colonists that eventually led to the American Revolution. That's where we learned the phrase "taxation without representation!" At the time, though, some of the man who became the Founding Fathers were horrified at such vandalism, and thought the perpetrators should be arrested or at least have to make restitution for the £10,000 in tea they destroyed.

The tax situation that led to the Boston Tea Party, as it later was called, was more complicated than just a tax on tea. It certainly wasn't the only protest, either, but it was more memorable and fun for elementary students than, say, the Boston Massacre. Colonists in New York and Philadelphia intercepted shipments of tea before they could reach land. In Boston, patriots surrounded ships in the harbor and prevented them from unloading for a couple of weeks before they seized the tea. On December 16, thousands of colonists witnessed the destruction, but told no one and left almost no written records, lest the British authorities find out who was responsible. Learn the real story of the Boston Tea Party, which was planned earlier and involved more people than you learned about in school, at Smithsonian. 

PS: They're doing it again tonight.

#LIVE Boston Tea Party 250th Anniversary 👀

Boston celebrates 250th anniversary of Tea Party with re-enactment of famous 1773 uprising against the British.

Live coverage over at: https://t.co/CBHJNC8gy9

Follow and keep updated. pic.twitter.com/wNkFqWo8O9

— HumanDilemma (@HumanDilemma_) December 17, 2023

Minnesota is choosing a new state flag, and thousands of designs were submitted. They've been winnowed down to three finalists, all with very simple designs, which do not include surfer Sasquatch. CGP Grey is very much into vexillology, and believes most of our state flags should be redesigned to get away from the "state seal on a blue background" theme. That's exactly what Minnesota is doing, even though their new seal is a vast improvement. When the Minnesota flag submissions were announced, Grey was quick to post a video about them, but it was limited to his Patreon members. Now he's eager to register his opinions on the three finalists.

Grey named the finalists Star Rise, Old Wavy, and Polaris Tricolor. He has a definite favorite, and gives us the many reasons why he approves. As much as you may like modern elements in a new flag, one of the most important considerations for a particular design is how it will hold up over the next 100 years. We will see if the Minnesota legislature takes Grey's points to heart when they select their new flag.

Update: Grey's pick is also the Minnesota commission's pick. The bad news is that they will probably change it.

Over the last couple of decades, American have been immersed in the phenomenon of the Christmas romance movie, which are all very much alike but people watch them like they are consuming comfort food. A similar but much older genre of Christmas entertainment can be found in the United Kingdom, where the Christmas murder mystery is a thing. Murder mystery novels rose in popularity in the early 20th century, as they put the reader into the role of detective, trying to figure out whodunnit. Anything that popular is bound to eventually have a Christmas version, and that happened in the 1930s, and again, and again.  

The Christmas mysteries are now known as "cozy crime" stories, because the elements are so familiar, and the plots follow a standard crime investigation that leads to the murderer's reveal at the end. While murder and Christmas aren't the most natural pairing, such novels have become beloved in the land that gave birth to them. Every year, mystery fans look forward to the Christmas stories they've become used to. Read how this strange but common genre of fiction came about at Atlas Obscura.

Many fantasy fans look at J.R.R. Tolkien as the grandaddy of the genre. He certainly put in the work, with years of world building and research behind each plot in his many works. His Magnum Opus was The Lord of the Rings, an epic adventure that comprised three volumes, plus the prequel book The Hobbit. Tolkien even manufactured languages for his characters. But Tolkien was not the first to use the elements of fantasy in his stories. Many ancient legends included elves, magical rings, dragons, swords, and wizards. Other parts of The Lord of the Rings incorporated historical characters and events. Although Tolkien did not invent these elements, he was a master at bringing them to life in his writing, weaving them together in a convoluted quest told in poetry and prose that enchanted millions, and continues to do so today. The author's lifetime of travel, study, experience, and keen observation all contributed to what The Lord of the Rings came to be. Weird History looks back at the sources of these elements that Tolkien used so well.

Eighteenth-century explorers in the Pacific Northwest, around the Salish Sea, observed that native people kept a certain breed of domestic dog and harvested its fur to spin and weave into cloth. The Salish woolly dog was a small and beloved pet, which produced a fibrous fur that proved to be much warmer than sheep's wool. The woolly dogs were an emblem of the Skokomish Nation and represented wealth.  

As Europeans settled in the PNW, the woolly dog went extinct in the late 1800s. We have blankets and fabric made from their fur, but only one example of the breed itself, in a pelt saved from a dog named Mutton, which was sent to a Smithsonian representative in 1859. In 2021, evolutionary molecular biologist Audrey Lin began a DNA study of Mutton's pelt. The DNA analysis revealed the woolly dog's genetic lineage, the Skokomish breeding traditions, and the fact that it had 28 genes controlling the production of its unique fur. Lin even found evidence of Mutton's diet, and how it varied from dogs raised by natives. You'll find the full science paper here. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History)

We've seen how well rock songs mesh with Christmas classics, like mashing up Brenda Lee with AC/DC and mixing "Deck the Halls" with Black Sabbath's "War Pigs." It doesn't stop there. DJ Cummerbund brings us a masterful mashup for Christmas, with Jose Feliciano singing his classic "Feliz Navidad" to the bangin' tune of "Rebel Yell" by Billy Idol. He calls it "Rebel Navidad." But that's just the beginning. This song also incorporates recordings from Randy "Macho Man" Savage, Rob Zombie, Terrence Gene Bollea, Wham!, Martijn Brattinga, and Rush. The more, the merrier!

The winners of Netherlands' annual Worst Slogan of the Year contest might also be called the best slogans of the year, depending on your point of view. A slogan with a naughty pun is remembered, and that's what's most important. The top three in this year's poll are all English puns. The grand prize (a custom tile) goes to the bicycle rental company Tuut-Tuut in Castricum, North Holland, for "Put the Fun Between Your Legs." Makes plenty of sense. Second place went to sewing machine company Rijkers Naaimachinespecialist for "Have a naai’s day!" It's not naughty, just fun. You have to know that the Dutch word "naai" means "sew," but more than 90% of Netherlands residents know both languages. A pet store called 4cats took third place with "Everything for your pussy!"

There are more slogans and bad puns from the contest you can read at NL Times. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Google Maps)