Cultrface – a blog dedicated to culture and how it enriches our lives.

The Christmas Eve myth of talking animals

I had no idea about the European superstition of animals talking in human voices at midnight on Christmas Eve (so 00:00 on Christmas Day).

The legend—most common in parts of Europe—has been applied to farm animals and household pets alike. It operates on the belief that Jesus’s birth occurred at exactly midnight on Christmas Day, leading to various supernatural occurrences. Many speculate that the myth has pagan roots or may have morphed from the belief that the ox and donkey in the Nativity stable bowed down when Jesus was born. In any case, the story has since taken on a life of its own, with different versions ranging from sweet to scary.

According to The Christmas Troll and Other Yuletide Stories by Clement A. Miles, variations of the legend can be surprisingly sinister for holiday lore

[…]

Another tale, this time hailing from the German Alps, features animals foretelling their caretakers’ death. On Christmas Eve, a young farm servant hides in the stables hoping to witness the animals’ speech, where he overhears an alarming conversation between two horses:

“We shall have hard work to do this day week,” said one horse.
“Yes, the farmer’s servant is heavy,” replies another horse.
“And the way to the churchyard is long and steep,” says the first.

The servant dies a few days later, leaving those horses to do some heavy lifting.

In these stories, occult knowledge is bad, and research beyond normal bounds creates not only unwelcome knowledge of misfortune, but also misfortune itself.

via Mental Floss

The fact this coincides with the idea that you MUST be asleep on Christmas Eve evening or Santa won’t deliver your presents makes me wonder if St Nick is in on it…

(via Language Log)

The top 10 posts of 2022

Back for a second year, I’ve compiled the top 10 posts published in 2022 (see last year’s if you’re interested). I’m calling the cut off point here as I’ll probably forget to do this on 31st. I’ve actually published less this year (358 vs. 399) and I’m a little sad I missed the 1-a-day average but whatever.

Here are the top 10 posts of 2022:

  1. What if there was a Breaking Bad spin-off about Hank’s MINERALS?
  2. Cool boba tea flavours at the 2022 Pokémon World Championships
  3. Appleton Estate x Sean Brown rum spill coasters
  4. Backpacking through Britain, from John O’Groats to Land’s End
  5. The best of Johnson from Peep Show
  6. An interview with Sy Brand
  7. Why is kawaii so popular in the West?
  8. The semiotic and religious themes found in Snow White
  9. The Marginalian on James Baldwin and long distance love
  10. Jamaican Stout ice cream

Japanese speed wrapping

Japanese SPEED WRAPPING Gift Experience ★ ONLY in JAPAN

I suck at gift wrapping but for wrappers in Mitsukoshi Ginza, untidiness—and slowness— are not an option as they wrap gifts in 13 seconds (with a ribbon). The video goes into the speed wrapping technique, the origins of wrapping in Japan, and furoshiki, the art of cloth wrapping.

Seattle startups, Artly and Picnic, create robots that can make coffee and pizzas

Automation in food prep is stepping up a gear in Seattle as two startups have served their own robotic creations to help cafés and restaurants. Artly, headed by CEO Meng Wang, created Jarvis to help make coffee for a café in the city’s central business district:

Jarvis moves slowly, yet meticulously, from one station to another to make a cup of cappuccino. Jarvis makes the espresso, pours the milk, steams the foam and puts it all together, topping it off with a carefully drawn foam leaf.

The result is a cup of cappuccino, ready to go.

What stands out about this cappuccino? Its maker. Jarvis is a robotic arm, not a human barista, at Artly in Pike Place Market.

While Jarvis is busy, a human staff focuses on interacting with customers, explaining the concept to newcomers and placing orders using a tablet.

And then there’s Picnic that offer “automated pizza made easy”:

[…] Another Seattle-based startup, Picnic, offers automation solutions for a staple of the American diet: pizza. Its food prep station can produce up to 100 pizzas in one hour using metered toppings.

Since Picnic was founded in 2016, its robots have assembled pizzas in many places, including Seattle’s T-Mobile Park and the Las Vegas Convention Center. The company has seen a growing interest in its robots. This summer, Picnic announced partnerships with pizzeria Moto’s West Seattle location and a Domino’s store in Berlin.

(via Seattle Times)

Binging with Babish makes the pizzas and ice cream from Home Alone

Binging with Babish: Home Alone Special

Home Alone is a Christmas staple and what better way to enjoy the movie than eating pizza and ice cream while you do it? Binging with Babish tried his hand at making the pizzas from Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2 (1992), as well as the mac & cheese and ice cream from Home Alone.

Classic Christmas cuisine from a culinary connoisseur.

Christmas food related: Fancy a feuerzangenbowle this Christmas?

Picking tea in Mauritius

Tea picking in Mauritius – Mauritius Now

Mauritian tea culture is an important part of the island’s heritage, having originated during the 18th century when it was a French colony. The above video shows Sati, a tea picking veteran who has spent the last 40 years in the job.

Mauritius drink related: Equiano, the world’s first African-Caribbean rum

Tea related: England’s tea obsession came from Portugal

Testing the penguin suits in Batman Returns

Batman Returns - Penguin Suit Performance Test

Remember those penguins in Batman Returns? They were people in suits. The above video shows the actors testing out the suits and there’s an accompanying blog post from the Stan Winston School of Character Arts describing the process:

“Our mechanical puppets were slightly larger than real penguins,” explained Stan Winston Studio Batman Returns team member Chris Swift, who sculpted the suit-and-head version. “There were 3 sizes of penguin puppets for the film;” added fellow team member Andy Schoneberg, “18-inch black-footed, 32-inch king, and 36-inch emperor penguins.”

“Then we had even larger versions,” said Swift, “which were little people in suits, with mechanical heads. The heads and the flapping wings were puppeteered, but the walking was done by the little people in the suits.”

As for the main Penguin (aka Oswald Cobblepot), did you know he ate real fish in the movie?

JSTOR on Christmas in Japan during the 60s

For JSTOR, Julia Métraux looked at the popularity of Christmas in 60’s Japan and where it originated:

Anthropologist David W. Plath observed a growing tradition of celebrating Christmas in Japan in the 1960s. Originally introduced by missionaries in the sixteenth century, the holiday and its trappings only really gained traction in the nineteenth century.

“By the 1870s some famous Tokyo stores such as Maruzen and the Meiji-ya were displaying Christmas decorations and were importing Christmas cards and gifts,” Plath noted, and by the 1920s, “Christmas was percolating downward and outward into the lower classes and rural regions.”

If you fancy a more Japanese-style Christmas, you can follow tips from The Japanese Shop and read more about the nation’s yuletide traditions via Kansai Odyssey.

Hard Drive on the pizza from A Goofy Movie

Earlier today, I had an incredibly cheesy quattro formaggi pizza for lunch (not quite the cheesiest in the world but I felt like it was up there) and, in hindsight, I should have gone for a margherita. And then it reminded me of this recent Hard Drive article about the pizza from A Goofy Movie and ways to cope without its existence in our 4-dimensional world:

There probably aren’t many things you remember from the 1995 animated Disney flick A Goofy Movie, but there’s one part you can still picture crystal-clear from this whimsical tale of father-son hijinks: the pizza scene.

You know what I’m talking about. The five-second clip where Max’s friend P.J. picks up a slice of za so deliciously ooey-gooey that the melty cheese drips down his gloved cartoon paw. I bet you can still visualize him grabbing that stringy goodness and plopping it right back on top of the pizza as he prepares to take a decadent bite.

You’re salivating at the very thought of it, aren’t you?

Tragically, you’ll never, ever taste this perfect pie.

I think I came very close today but they’re so right.

Pizza related: Sexy MFing pizza and Pizza In The Wild

23 minutes of art movements through history

A Brief History of Art Movements | Behind the Masterpiece

Do you know your Renaissance from your Renoir or your pop art from your Pollock? Well, the above video from Behind the Masterpiece might help you with its brief history of art movements. It covers everything from prehistoric art, through to ancient, medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, neoclassical, all the way to minimalism and contemporary. Get your cultr!

The timeslice photography of Matt Kenneally

A tree in Richmond Park © Matt Kenneally

Matt Kenneally is a British photographer known for his “timeslice” style of photography. The concept involves taking multiple photos of a scene over an extended period of time, taking “slices” from each one, and splicing them together to create a single visual timeline of light and form.

Follow him on Instagram and buy a print from his shop.

Cigarettes as commodity money

Commodity money is form of currency where a commodity dictates its value. This is different to representative money we use in our day-to-day lives like coins and banknotes, as this is a proxy for value (ie. a 100 US dollar bill represents the value of 100 US dollars but the ink and paper used to create them are not worth 100 US dollars).

One example of commodity money is cigarettes:

People left their surplus clothing, toilet requisites and food there until they were sold at a fixed price in cigarettes. Only sales in cigarettes were accepted – there was no barter […] Of food, the shop carried small stocks for convenience; the capital was provided by a loan from the bulk store of Red Cross cigarettes and repaid by a small commission taken on the first transactions. Thus the cigarette attained its fullest currency status, and the market was almost completely unified.

Radford, R.A. (1945). “The Economic Organisation of a PoW Camp“. Economica. 12 (48): 189–201.

A commonality between commodity money and representative money is that both currencies are subject to economic changes such as inflation and deflation.

Peter R. Senn also wrote about cigarettes as currency in this 1951 Journal of Finance article:

The notion is widespread that for a long period of time and in a large economic area cigarettes served as currency in Germany after the recent war. Probably the most explicit statement of this belief, which the writer finds erroneous, is the following: “In Britain it [the cigarette] never, even at the height of the American occupation, went so far as to replace the existing metal or paper coinages. In occupied Europe it did.” While we examine here only the German case, it is probable that situations similar in many respects existed elsewhere.

In order to understand the role played by cigarettes as money, it is essential to examine the historical background of the problem. Up to the fall of 1946 American cigarettes were not considered either as a general measure of value or as an instrument of exchange.2 The Reich- mark (henceforth RM) was still reasonably stable, black market trading was limited, and the worst period of Germany’s economic decline had not yet begun. Although the price of cigarettes was very high, it was fixed by the general laws of supply and demand.³

Usually cigarettes were sold for Reichmarks, which at that time could be exchanged by American and British soldiers for pounds or dollars. Consequently, a soldier could sell part of his ration, have all the money he desired for his non-military expenses, and still save his whole paycheck. Large dollar and pound profits were made in many cases.

More on the subject

I'm dreaming of a White Christmas Calculator

The folks at Omni Calculator have created a White Christmas Calculator that can tell you your chances of snow on Christmas Day depending on location.

If you want to improve your chances of having a white Christmas experience, we will show you which city you should choose as your destination. Finally, we will let you know whether you will be able to build an igloo! The white Christmas calculator provides data for 200 places across the USA and Canada. Put on the tree lights (ensuring you’ve got the perfect coverage with the christmas tree decorations calculator), decorate the house, prepare delicacies and look forward to spending a marvelous white Christmas with your friends and family!

The downside, as the quote suggests, is that it only works for the USA and Canada so UK hopefuls will have to rely on the Met Office and a lot of luck, as white Christmases are getting rarer over time:

As of Thursday 15 December, bookmakers estimate the chances of a white Christmas this year at no better than 35% for the places they are taking bets on. The best chance of a white Christmas is in Edinburgh.

The Met Office climate scientist Prof Lizzie Kendon said: “As our climate warms, our winters in the UK are becoming warmer on average which is already leading to a reduction in the number and severity of cold extremes we experience.

“Although this trend will continue under further global warming, the UK can still expect to experience cold spells of weather due to the natural variability of the British weather. Although becoming less frequent, days below freezing known as ice days will still be possible in the future although they will be rarer.”

Keep those gloved fingers crossed!