Some years ago, we learned about snapdragon, a Christmas game that involves sticking your hand in a bowl of flaming brandy to snatch a raisin. While it sounds painful and dangerous, the game was a part of Christmas tradition for hundreds of years. The staff at Atlas Obscura got together on Zoom to find out why, by playing the game themselves.  

True, all of us hesitated before putting our hands into the fire. As the writer of this piece, I took it upon myself to snatch out the first almond. “It’s fine, no pain!” I shouted, showing off the burning nut before popping it in my mouth.

Soon, we were all grabbing at the raisins and almonds fearlessly. While brief bursts of heat did make us occasionally snatch our hands away, the sting faded quickly, and no one got burned. Some early accounts of snapdragon recommended throwing salt on the flames, without any explanation of what it would do. As it happens, pinches of salt tossed on the fire makes the flames pop and flare brilliant gold, for just a second.

While we started the game nervous about dipping our hands into literal fire, it soon became clear that snapdragon is really, really fun. So why does no one play it anymore?

A U.S. Forest Service fire scientist explains why the game works, and we get a recipe for proper snapdragon fire at Atlas Obscura.

(Image: public domain)

Aaron Gage noticed how the lyrics to "Deck the Halls" would fit into Black Sabbath's "War Pigs." Viewers at reddit clamored for the whole song, but he said he didn't want to wear out the welcome, and the rest of the song didn't fit quite a well as this part. I have to say that I agree- once you've heard the joke, there's no reason to drag it out to feature-length. But it's a good joke.

Beginning in the 1940s, Hallmark commissioned renowned artists to create Christmas cards for the company. One of those artists was Salvador Dali. It was a bold move for Hallmark.

Dali made modern art popular and accessible. He’d painted the Christmas-themed interactive ‘Double Dalí’ cover for Vogue magazine’s December 1946 issue. So Hallmark contracted him to create cards in 1948. His images of a headless angel, a glowing but featureless baby Jesus, and three wise men atop snarling camels did not sell. In 1959 they hired him for a second time, a commission for which Dali requested “$15,000 in cash in advance for 10 greeting card designs, with no suggestions from Hallmark for the subject or medium, no deadline and no royalties.” The results (half of which he dashed off in the bathroom of his New York hotel room within an hour of signing the contract) were too racy, avant garde and perverted for Hallmark. They produced just two of the Dalí cards, a nativity scene and a depiction of the Madonna and Child – neither of which sold well. Hallmark swiftly dropped Dalí’s cards from their product line.

Dali had better luck with the pharmaceutical laboratory Hoechst Ibérica in Barcelona, who produced Dali -designed Christmas cards to send to their clients for several years. See Dali's Christmas cards for both companies at Flashbak. -via Nag on the Lake

Joaquin Baldwin (previously) spent 101 days making this video as his quarantine beard grew out. You see the beard wax and wane as he sings "Better Days" by Radical Face. There's a video explaining how he made this, which is kind of long. The short explanation is that he shot a reference video, sorted the frames by computer to know where his face should be each day, meticulously lined up each shot, and then edited 2,117 still photographs together. It was way more work than he had anticipated. -via Geekologie

Finland is a wonderful country where the sun shines for a few minutes each year and the language is impossible to learn. Finns avoid social interaction whenever possible, rarely smile, drink boatloads of coffee, and aren't at all afraid of the Russians, yet they have been ranked the happiest people in the world for years. We already know that Finns have a great sense of humor about themselves. British author Joel Willans lives in Helsinki and created Very Finnish Problems, a network of websites that pokes gentle fun at the things that make Finland unique.



You can find lots more at the Instagram account for Very Finnish Problems. Also see a ranked list of their best memes at Bored Panda.

In a year when there were almost no concerts, no music festivals, and hardly any live music even in small venues like bars, some songs managed to catch our ears. DJ Earworm is back with his annual remix of the biggest 25 songs of the year (in the USA). He calls it Something to Believe In. You'll find a list of the songs at YouTube. -via Metafilter 

Check out our collection DJ Earworm's end-of-the-year remixes here.

Between the 1860s and World War I, railroads were built to tie the various communities of New Zealand together. They were heavily advertised with beautiful posters under the auspices of Railways Studios, the creative department of New Zealand Railways' advertising branch. The studio also produced propaganda posters and ads for other products, but the railway posters are their legacy. These travel posters, described as "more beautiful than they needed to be," are the subject of Peter Alsop's new book Railways Studios: How a Government Design Studio Helped Build New Zealand.

Alsop and company’s book is filled with many examples of graphic art that flirts with the finer stuff, although the vast majority of its gems lack attribution since most New Zealand Railways posters were signed “Railways Studios,” if they were signed at all. Take the circa 1929 poster created by an anonymous artist, whose assignment was to promote the Night Express, a roughly 24-hour run on South Island connecting Christchurch and Ivercargill. In that poster, above blocks of text detailing the train’s “Southbound” and “Northbound” timetables, we are confronted by a moody, cloud-filled sky rendered in various shades of blue. Beneath this depiction of heaven hovering over earth, a trio of sheep graze in a pasture. Two appear to be in mid-bolt or about to, but one of the animals stands still, facing the other direction. Only by following the creature’s gaze do we see a pair of train tracks, and only then do we notice the tracks are partly illuminated in yellow, presumably by the headlamp of the Night Express, which the artist has cleverly left out of our field of vision. This is a great painting, no matter what it was selling.

Read about Railways Studios' work and see some fine examples at Collectors Weekly.

Blob Opera is an experimental generator in which you control four opera voices coming out of cute and colorful blobs. It's a bit limited in lyrics, but luckily it's also limited in letting you mix something out of tune. As you play with it, the generator will eventually offer a button in the lower right to switch to festive Christmas tunes. You can play a quick sample I recorded here. -via Metafilter

There are many types of fungus that will invade insects in order to reproduce, but most kill the host and then release spores. Two new species of fungus discovered in Denmark consume their fly hosts from the inside out, but keep them alive for as long as possible to walk or fly around while the fungus shoots spores out of the fly's abdomen over a larger area than they could from a deceased fly, which also brings them into contact with new victims. A study from the University of Copenhagen identifies these new fungi as Strongwellsea tigrinae and Strongwellsea acerosa.  

The unusual tactic of keeping the host alive while releasing spores is called active host transmission (AHT). It is an effective way of getting access to other healthy individuals. Scientists think the fungi could be producing substances that “dope” their hosts (sometimes colloquially referred to as “zombies”), meaning they can stay fresh enough to live for days after infection – only collapsing once there is nothing left in their abdomens but the fungus.

“We suspect therefore that these fungi may produce amphetamine-like substances which keep a fly’s energy levels high up until the end,” said lead researcher Prof Jørgen Eilenberg from the department of plant and environmental Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. Researchers also believe the fungi produce substances that keep microorganisms away from the fly fungal wound and keep it clean, but they are yet to test this.

While we don't know what species of insect is pictured, we can imagine the victim might look (warning: disturbing) something like this. Read more about the new discoveries at The Guardian. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Martin Cooper)

The latest mashup from YouTuber There I Ruined It (previously) features Billy Idol singing a lively Christmas song. The tune of "Jingle Bells" fits the lyrics of "Dancing With Myself," but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.

This one was a challenge from a co-worker. I hope you enjoy, and also hate it, as much as he did.

-via reddit

Let's go four decades back in time, back the set of the best Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back. Good Morning America premiered almost seven minutes of footage from the film set, from the difficult filming of the ice planet Hoth to lightsaber training.

A majority of the clips are being seen publicly for the first time, and include many lighthearted moments shot during production featuring lead actors Mark Hamill (Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) and Harrison Ford (Han Solo).

In 1979, cameras captured Hamill and the crew on location in Finse, Norway,—doubling as the planet Hoth— during a major snowstorm that hampered the production. Wearing a blue crew jacket with a name tag that reads “HEY YOU," Hamill jokingly invents the Tautaun Dance, named after the planet’s furry lizards.

“Three steps like this, and then you fall over,” Hamill says with a laugh.

-via The Mary Sue

Day 2 of my #AdventCalendar

[sound up] pic.twitter.com/BhpVBWjbIK

— Amanda (@Pandamoanimum) December 2, 2020

Twitter user @Pandamoanimum put together an Advent calendar to spread joy and laughter for the holidays. Or despair, who knows, your mileage may vary. Each day she posts a new video to the thread showing how things go hilariously wrong at Christmastime. Some are Christmas classics that you haven't seen in years; others will be new to you, but each one is aimed at making you giggle. There are 15 days to catch up with so far. Check back for daily updates. -via Everlasting Blort

By the time the Christmas season of 1918 rolled around, the influenza pandemic had raged around the US for months. Cases were going down in some areas, up in others. How could people keep the Christmas spirit and still stay safe? Kenneth C. Davis, who wrote a book about the pandemic, More Deadly than War, gives us a look at Christmas 1918. As now, there was little federal oversight, and local public safety regulations varied widely.  

Davis says San Francisco took it quite seriously, implementing a strong mask mandate in the fall as well as measures that’d be described today as social distancing. After cases rose sharply in mid-October, the city locked down harshly; the measures worked to keep the flu at bay and, a month later, the city reopened and dropped the mask mandate. But the flu was not done with the city yet. Come Christmastime, Davis says, the cases were again on the rise, and residents, having finally escaped from the pandemic shutdown, were not eager to go back.

“San Francisco wanted to institute the mask rule again but people resisted,” he says.

In other places, people decried the cancellation of church services for the holiday, and store owners were desperate to stay open and make sales. So really, things were not all that different in 1918. And 675,000 Americans died of the flu. Read about the pandemic Christmas of 1918 at Smithsonian.

If you were watching TV at all between 2006 and 2010, you are probably familiar with Lost. The series started out promisingly, with a plane crash and a group of survivors on a mysterious island. But this drama was no Gilligan's Island. The series was a sensation and was constantly discussed by fans, but it just got weirder and weirder as the series was renewed year after year. By the time Lost ended, it made no sense whatsoever. Screen Junkies takes a closer look at Lost in this Honest Trailer.

Janelle Shane can generate the weirdest things with artificial intelligence. As 2020 draws to a close, readers have suggested that she train a neural network on the year's headlines and see if the algorithm can come up with anything to compare. I mean, you have to admit that the news this year was unusually unusual. These are examples of real-world headlines.

Mysterious alien-like monolith discovered in Utah desert
What you need to know about ‘murder hornets’
The Mystery of The Platypus Deepens With The Discovery of Its Biofluorescent Fur
Famous Vienna hotel turns to drive-in cake

So Shane took up the challenge, although she admits that she tends to read more news about the natural world, so that may affect the type of headlines generated. She probably just avoided political news. Still, the results are spectacular.

Swarming bears are given deadly slingshots by Russian hunters
Good news / Bad news about crows in Burlington schools
When Killer Orchids Attack: How the Deadly Corpse Orchid Is Turning Up in U.S. Backyards
Massive radioactive sinkhole continues to grow in Russia
Why scientists believe the 'Killer Raccoons of the Pacific Northwest’ are responsible for this kill
Lycoperdons, the tiny deadly puffballs, are on the march again
From deep in the Earth, darkness “boils” to the surface
A sassy tardigrade previews new Doctor Who

That's just the beginning. Read more 2020 headlines generated by artificial intelligence at AI Weirdness. -via Fark