The image above shows us a star cluster officially designated NGC 2264, which is informally called the Christmas Tree Cluster. It's about 2,500 light years away, and features young stars between one and five million years old -give or take the 2,500 years it took the light to reach earth. The stars range from a tenth the size of our sun to seven times its size.

This is a composite picture, taken by three kinds of telescope cameras. The green is the gas among the nebula, taken by an optical camera from the National Science Foundation’s WIYN 0.9-meter telescope. Foreground and background stars in white were revealed by infrared data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey. The blue and white blinking lights are from X-rays detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Did I say they blinked? They do, like twinkling tree lights, shown in an animation in the NASA article about the image. The twinkling effect was added for the video, but the stars really do twinkle, just not in sync with each other. That, and the choice to render the gas image in green, is NASA's Christmas gift to all of us. -via Bored Panda

(Image credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: T.A. Rector (NRAO/AUI/NSF and NOIRLab/NSF/AURA) and B.A. Wolpa (NOIRLab/NSF/AURA); Infrared: NASA/NSF/IPAC/CalTech/Univ. of Massachusetts; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare & J.Major)

Christmas cards have only been around since 1843, and they didn't start out with cozy pictures of Christmas trees or wise men following a star. The greetings were nice, but the illustrations were designed to make you say, "Whaaaat?" and then maybe laugh at their sheer absurdity. A recurring theme was food taking revenge on people who cooked and ate it. Above, we have two turkeys wishing the cook a Merry Christmas as they shove him into the fire on a spit. Below, A piece of meat and a Christmas pudding do the same to a cook, with the help of some geese.

The gallery includes animals behaving badly, too. A flock of songbirds marches in single file (more or less) carrying torches. They look less festive and more like they are coming to burn your house down. Roaches drink your coffee, or maybe your hot cocoa. A monkey pulls a cat's tail. You get the idea. But what's this one all about?

Maybe they are on their way to terrorize another chef. See a gallery of 27 baffling vintage Christmas cards at Flashbak. -via Damn Interesting

"The Christmas Duck Song" suddenly lands, 14 years after "The Duck Song" by Bryant Oden captured the internet. "The Duck Song," with an animated video by Forrest Whaley, became an instant meme in 2009 and spawned three sequels, a children's book, and many parodies. The song is a riff on the old joke, set in a lemonade stand instead of a bar because it was written for children.

In the Christmas version, the duck annoys Santa Claus, who never has grapes because he lives at the North Pole. It ends with less annoyance and more joy and generosity than you would expect from a duck. Because it's Christmas.  

Christmas trees, originally a German custom, became popular when German immigrants came to America, and when Queen Victoria's German husband, Prince Albert, put up Christmas trees for the royal family. Over time, the fad led to a shortage of fresh trees in Germany, and people began making artificial trees out of feathers. In the US, the reason we started using artificial trees was that a real Christmas tree festooned with candles or hot incandescent lights was liable to burn the house down.

Quite a few people tried designing a Christmas tree that wouldn't catch fire, but they didn't look much like the real thing. And then a brush company that made everything from toothbrushes to toilet brushes got involved. The same technology that produced toilet brushes made artificial trees look fluffy enough. So we can thank toilet brushes for the look of our modern Christmas trees. Read how all this came about, including some odd failed patents, at Atlas Obscura.   

(Image credit: SeppVei)

With his series Lost in the Pond, Laurence Brown has made a career of comparing the place he grew up in, the UK, with the United States, where he has lived for the past fifteen years or so. Both places celebrate Christmas in a big way, but it turns out the most popular songs played on the radio over his lifetime are different, depending on the country he was in at the time. It never occurred to me to wonder whether the Christmas songs we've heard over and over for decades ever made it in Britain, but apparently a lot of them didn't. Brown highlights eight Christmas songs he never heard before coming to America, ranked in order  from best to worst, and gives us his initial impressions. I mostly agree with his rankings, but for different reasons.  

In colonial America, people drank way more alcohol than would be considered safe today. They rode horses instead of driving cars, the water wasn't all that safe, and alcohol eases pains that medical practices couldn't help. George Washington certainly drank his share, and distilled whiskey on his farm Mount Vernon.

Like many people, Washington enjoyed eggnog for the holidays. The president's eggnog recipe survives (although not written by Washington's own hand), and it's quite, let's say, hearty. The recipe calls for four kinds of booze: brandy, whiskey, rum, and sherry, in addition to milk, cream, and eggs. The finished product seems to be about 35% liquor, and would have preserved the milk and eggs for a long time. His kitchen would produce it by the gallon when guests were expected. A good time was had by all. Read about Washington's drinking habits and his eggnog recipe at Mental Floss. -via Strange Company 

Happy Holidays everyone!

Here is a Santa Claus from every province, from west to east and through the territories.

1. British Columbia pic.twitter.com/FY3J8sWU5e

— Craig Baird - Canadian History Ehx (@CraigBaird) December 21, 2023

Craig Baird is a historian with a podcast called Canadian History Ehx. As a Christmas gift to his followers, he harnessed artificial intelligence to create a series of Santa Claus portraits for each Canadian province and territory. Sure, there are stereotypes involved, but they are all lovingly rendered. He even takes back the Santa from Nova Scotia by giving him a re-do at the end.

A Santa Claus from every province, from west to east and through the territories.

11. Nunavut pic.twitter.com/o3FkC9vdlc

— Craig Baird - Canadian History Ehx (@CraigBaird) December 21, 2023

Wait until you get a load of Quebec's Santa Claus. See the entire collection of Canadian Santas at Twitter, or at Thread Reader if you prefer.

Until today, the only thing I knew about Charles II was that he's the reason the current British King is named Charles III. Charles II ruled Scotland, then went into exile during the reign of Oliver Cromwell, and later became king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. You can bone up on Charle's place in history at Wikipedia, because this video is only concerned with his personal life, meaning his many lovers. Charles II had a wife plus a long line of mistresses and flings that ended up in the history books. They were court members, actresses, commoners, friends of friends, and even at least one spy. One of them could be called the love of his life, but she was not his wife, and neither did she keep him from other women. None of this was kept secret; after all, the king was the king in the 17th century, and popular opinion had no sway over his behavior. Come to think of it, even today when the king has no real power, popular opinion still doesn't have any sway over his behavior.  

Well, maybe you will, because of the picture. But I was surprised to learn that the 1983 film Trading Places (Una poltrona per due) with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd is an Italian Christmas tradition. Although the movie was a hit and is set during Christmas, it barely registers as a Christmas movie today, possibly because of its New York Stock Exchange plot that could have occurred at any time of the year. But every Christmas Eve, TV station Italia 1 airs Trading Places, and the nation tunes in. It's a shared tradition like Swedish people watching Donald Duck cartoons on Christmas Eve, or Germans watching Dinner for One on New Year's Eve. They were all broadcast one year in the days before cable TV, everyone saw it, and it became a thing they did every year.  

Excitement is growing for this year's broadcast, and there's even a Facebook page dedicated to the annual showing. Read about the Italian tradition of watching Una poltrona per due at Cracked.

Tom BetGeorge always goes all out in producing extravagant computerized holiday light shows, but I was surprised to find that we haven't posted his Christmas lights since the Star Wars show in 2015! We've always posted them for Halloween, however. BetGeorge launched his 2023 Christmas light show with aplomb and a standup routine delivered by Christmas trees. The full show comprises five musical interludes, so you can skip through to listen to your favorite. They are:

“I Believe in Santa” Meghan Trainor
“You Make It Feel Like Christmas” Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani
“Noel (He Is Born)” Tommee Profitt Feat. Stanaj
“Livin’ On A Prayer” Bon Jovi
Taylor Swift Medley (mix created by Tom BetGeorge)

Veering away from labor-intensive drones, this year's extravaganza has fireworks instead. Two of the songs are accompanied by fireworks because it's too expensive to shoot off fireworks during the whole show every night. You can try to guess which songs. At the YouTube page, he gives a shout out to the Linden-Peters Fire Department for standing by just in case. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

We can all think of names that are no longer given to babies because they seem old-fashioned. For my generation, that included Mabel, Gertrude, and Ethel, which reminded us of our grandmothers. Now I'm afraid my own name signals "old." That happens with men's names, too, but for men it's often less because of fad and fashion and more for their association with someone famous, whether real or fictional.

When discussing baby names with my daughter, I mentioned Michael, and she shot that down. She said that name will always remind people of Michael Scott, the lead character of the TV series The Office. Really? Not Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, or the archangel? You never know what will stick in the minds of a different generation.

The graph above from Memetic shows some men's names that fell out of favor rather long ago, and for some of them, you can see the association that did them in. I would have added the steeper drop off for Herman when The Munsters was on TV. Clarence faded out for babies when It's a Wonderful Life became a hit movie, decades after its release. No doubt there are many other men's names that suffered the same fate. -via Digg

For decades, people thought that avocados with their huge seeds were spread across Central and South America by giant sloths that went extinct 10,000 years ago. That made sense, because avocados have very large pits, and it would take a huge animal to ingest them and poop out intact pits to grow further away from the parent tree. But it turns out there is no study, no data, and no evidence to support that. It was just an idea someone had that seemed to make sense. We reported it, and so did Sci Show. But now Hank Green explains where that "fact" came from and why it ain't necessarily so. It turns out that avocados didn't always have such huge seeds, and the reason they do may have more to do with human avocado fans than with giant sloths. Score one for mythbusting, and an example why there is always a need for fact checking and further research.

In a hereditary monarchy, you were ruled by a "rightwise born" king or queen, and no illness, disability, or incompetence could change that. Certainly death could, but not always for the better. Take the case of the Tudor monarchs of 16th century England. The line of succession was drastically altered by illnesses and injuries that medical science could not ease, and so was the behavior of those monarchs.

Henry VII expected his firstborn son Arthur to inherit the crown. At age 15, Arthur was married to Katherine of Aragorn, but the couple soon fell ill of what was called "English sweating sickness." Historians are still not sure what English sweating sickness really was. Arthur died of the illness, leaving his younger brother Henry as the only royal heir. Katherine survived to marry her brother-in-law Henry, who became Henry VIII.   

But Henry VIII suffered from other medical problems, as did Katherine, and their offspring, many of whom died before or shortly after birth, leading to a whole nation being jerked around in the quest for a royal heir. Read about ten medical problems that shaped the history of the Tudor dynasty at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Lucas de Heere)

Randall Munroe, best known for his webcomic xkcd, received a question for his "What if?" series. The question from Hunter Freyer was "What if you ignored all the rules of car racing and had a contest which was simply to get a human being around a track 200 times as fast as possible, what strategy would win?"

This would be much more fun for a creative, scientific mind to answer if there wasn't a caveat that the driver had to survive. In that case, the answer is pretty easy- we can use a number of acceleration methods. The possible speed of each is limited by what the human body can withstand, and Munroe explains why. But what's the fun in that? Let's speed up, theoretically. There are ways to go faster than any auto race has ever seen, completing 200 laps in an hour, but they involve great danger and possibly obliteration for the driver. Once Munroe drops the idea of a surviving driver, we can go exponentially faster, and he is glad to explain how we would do that.

“Oops, we’ve accidentally built a particle accelerator.”

-via Damn Interesting

On December 11th, NASA engineers deployed their NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, testing a new system designed to send video information by lasers from great distances. The distance was 19 million miles, which is how far the asteroid-hunting space probe Psyche is now. A video was beamed to earth and intercepted successfully, proving the technology has the chops to relay videos throughout our solar system.

The video displayed test patterns, space data, and a video of a cat named Taters chasing a laser light. NASA engineers love a cute cat video as much as the rest of us, and the laser light was an appropriate touch. Taters belongs to a NASA employee, and now he's a famous contributor to our space exploration program, and may have been intercepted by any aliens moving through our solar system. Read more about the communications experiment and see the video at Gizmodo.