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

illusory yellow pic.twitter.com/xIxX6eHMcq

— Akiyoshi Kitaoka (@AkiyoshiKitaoka) November 30, 2023

Japanese experimental psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka (previously at Neatorama) consistently fools our eyes with his optical illusions. In this graphic, you see three circles: cyan, magenta, and yellow. But there is no yellow. You can zoom in or use an eyedropper tool to check, but Nicolas Jacob already did that for us.  

What we perceive as a yellow circle are white stripes, the same as in the background of the graphic. What's different is that the yellow circle area is made up of black stripes instead of the blue stripes that the rest of the graphic has. In subtractive color mixing, the perception of color is produced by the absorption of light by other colors. Yellow is produced by the absence of blue, so the black and white stripes on a field that is otherwise blue-striped produces the illusion of yellow. Notice the green area of overlap is made of cyan and black. Color is in the eye of the beholder. Or is it? -via Boing Boing 

In 2015, the world went crazy for Mad Max: Fury Road. The fourth film in the Mad Max franchise was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won six. Nine years later, we get another look at George Miller's post-apocalyptic world with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. It's a prequel that tells the origin story of Imperator Furiosa, this time played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Chris Hemsworth co-stars. The movie is directed by George Miller, with several of his collaborators from Fury Road returning for the prequel.

You might be surprised that the kidnapping of young Furiosa is set at 45 years after the collapse, years before she meets Max, who was a young adult during the collapse. But considering how this world has been altered and retconned since the first Mad Max movie in 1979, you shouldn't think about it too much. Like Fury Road, Furiosa tells a story that has nothing to do with the real world. Miller is still working on another sequel centered around Mad Max himself. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will open on May 23rd in Australia and May 24th in the US. It will also be shown in IMAX theaters. -via Metafilter

Do you ever find yourself gesturing with your hands as you talk on the phone to someone who can't see you? It seems so natural that we don't think about it. Is that something we learned, or something that just comes with language? Lauren Gawne is a linguist who studies gestures in different cultures. She tells us that people who have never been able to see use gestures when they speak, and will gesture even when speaking to another blind person.

Further, blind people will use the same kinds of gestures that other people with the same language use.  but that doesn't always work across different languages. A study of blind people who speak English or Turkish showed that speakers of both languages use the same gestures that sighted people speaking the same language use, but the gestures that matched other English speakers are not the same gestures that (blind and sighted) people speaking Turkish used. Since these gestures were not learned by watching, there must be something about the language that naturally includes gestures. -via Metafilter, where you'll find more links.

(Image credit: Derrick Coetzee)