Today is Santa’s List Day. According to legend, it’s the day when Kris Kringle finalizes his list, double checks it for accuracy and puts the elves to work manufacturing gifts for children who’ve toed the line of acceptable behavior within their age groups.
Times have changed at the North Pole. Nowadays many parents and mental health specialists view “naughtiness” as a label that is damaging to a child’s self-esteem. As a result, elves must crank out even more toys as lumps of coal gather dust in a nearby warehouse. (Santa’s workshop runs on solar power.)
Even the most well-behaved child might take the news that Santa has locked in his list as a sign that anything goes for the next three weeks. It’s a risky move; although Santa has refused to grant access to journalists, it’s quite possible that he employs tech-savvy elves who scan social media and halt the assembly line in cases of egregious misconduct.
There’s no way to know if workers are capable of making an XBox One. Unlike most sweatshop labor forces, elves have 11 months of the year to learn to make new things. Hopefully, they get a little time to relax and sip a mai tai at a resort that caters to diminutive people. (Keebler Beach, perhaps?)
If the workshop sources more complex items from Amazon like everyone else, the turnaround time is shortened and, theoretically, bad behavior can be punished on short notice. In the age of Amazon Prime’s free shipping service, will Santa shut down operations and put the reindeer out to pasture?
With Arctic ice melting at an alarming rate, it won’t be long before elves implement a Kickstarter campaign to buy a houseboat for Santa. Just for today, kids can show their appreciation for Santa’s dedication by being good to the extent required of them. Those expecting a big item like a computer or a drone should consider holding off on melting Barbies or setting the family hamster on fire until December 26th.
Happy Santa’s List Day!
#buyahouseboatforSanta
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Even if you’ve never heard of Chester Greenwood, chances are, he’s been keeping your ears warm for years. Greenwood was born on December 4, 1858, in Farmington, Maine.
At the age of fifteen, he fashioned the first pair of earmuffs, with his grandmother’s help, from wire, beaver fur and velvet.
He was awarded a U.S. patent for his “ear-mufflers” in 1877. By his mid-20s, 50,000 pairs of Greenwood Champion Ear Protectors were being mass-produced annually at a local factory.
He accumulated over 100 more patents for such diverse inventions as a mechanical mousetrap, steel-toothed rake, donut hook and a shock absorber that became the basis for a component of airplane landing gear.
Farmington became the Earmuff Capital of the World. By 1937, when Greenwood died, his company had its best year ever, selling 400,000 pairs.
In 1977, the state of Maine declared December 21—the first day of winter—Chester Greenwood Day. Farmington parade organizers moved it to the first Saturday of December because it is closer to Greenwood’s birthday, provides a slightly better chance of mild weather and always falls on the weekend so families can attend together.
Festivities in Farmington
The day’s celebrations include the annual Chester Greenwood Day 5K Run/Walk, Gingerbread House Contest, Chili Challenge and Polar Bear Dip. As always, the highlight of the day is the Chester Greenwood Day parade.
Recent parade themes have included 2016’s “Holiday Celebrations around the World” and 2015’s “Favorite Characters.” All are welcome to participate, as long as they have a flat-bed truck and giant earmuffs. Floats without them are disqualified, which means that everything from a Nativity scene to a Spongebob Squarepants sock hop must sport a huge pair of these:
All floats are judged on originality, appearance, and quality of onboard performances. There are a couple more guidelines on the submission form.
Floats, or any other units, advocating, opposing or depicting any social issues are subject to approval of the Chester Greenwood Day Parade Committee. Entries by political (ballot) measures supported or opposed by individuals, groups, political action committees or by any other form are not allowed.
The Parade Committee reserves the right to withdraw any unit of which the costume or performance does not meet these rules and regulations, or does not conform to the standards of reasonable public behavior.
One more thing: Throwing candy from any float is forbidden as this may cause children to run into the street and be struck by extremely slow-moving parade vehicles. (Flying sweets also pose a risk of eye injury to paradegoers not wearing glasses.) Anyone throwing anything from any entry will result in everyone on the float being banned from the parade for life.
Now, get out there, have fun and celebrate the man who invented ear hats!
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Remember the adage: Consuming an individual portion obviates the need for intervention by a medical professional during the Earth’s current rotation around the Sun. (Or words to that effect.)
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The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting has become a worldwide symbol of the holiday season. The tree is lit on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, celebrated with live musical performances at Rockefeller Plaza and broadcast around the globe on television and the internet.
What’s the truth behind the legend? Worldwide Weird Holidays investigates.
Tree Story
Oneonta, New York, lost a longtime resident on December 10, 2016: a 14-ton, 94-foot-tall Norway Spruce we’ll call Bruce. (They’re all named Bruce.) He’d called the town home for nearly a century when the Eichler family contacted Rockefeller Center’s head gardener and chief Christmas tree hunter, Erik Pauzé. He visited, liked what he saw and Bruce’s fate was decided.
“We’ll miss the shade but for the most part we’re happy to gain the space back because it did monopolize the entire yard,” Craig Eichler said.
On Thursday, Bruce was cut down and loaded with the help of two hydraulic cranes onto a custom-made telescoping trailer that can stretch to 100 feet and accommodate a tree up to 125 feet tall, although the width of New York City streets limits the height to 110 feet.
Bruce was then bound like Gulliver and driven 140 miles to New York City on a route carefully plotted by a committee of local and city planners, under the watchful eye of a police escort.
At his final destination, the same cranes were used to fix Bruce into place by skewering his trunk onto a steel spike. A team of thirty giant-tree specialists attached guy wires to his midsection to hold him upright, then erected scaffolding to assist the workers who would later festoon him with 50,000 lights strung on more than five miles of electrical wire. Since 2007, the tree has been “green” (evergreen?), using LED lights and drawing part of its power from a 365-panel solar array installed on the roof.
The Star
Bruce will have a fabulous, if hefty, headpiece. In 2004, the old fiberglass star decorated with gold leaf was replaced by the Swarovski Star, designed by German artist Michael Hammers. It weighs 550 pounds, is 9.5 feet in diameter and sports 25,000 crystals with a million facets. In 2009, Hammers decided to upgrade the star’s lighting system by adding 720 tiny white LEDs and 3,000 feet of wire to the star’s interior, which were then connected to 44 circuit boards.
That’s a lot of look.
History
Although the official Christmas tree tradition began in 1933, the year 30 Rockefeller Plaza opened, the practice began during its Depression-era construction, when workers decorated a twenty-foot-high balsam fir tree with “strings of cranberries, garlands of paper, and even a few tin cans” on Christmas Eve of 1931, according to Daniel Okrent’s Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center.
In the above photo, construction workers receive their paychecks next to the Christmas tree they’d set up on the Rockefeller Center site. Pauzé estimates from the number of tree rings that Bruce is approximately 95 years old, so he was likely a sapling in 1931.
Visiting Hours
If you’d like to see Bruce get lit up like a, well, you know, make your way to Rockefeller Plaza between West 48th and 51st Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues before 9 pm. Expect a lot of company, many security restrictions and possible rain.
But you won’t be allowed to bring umbrellas, backpacks or large bags, according to the New York City Police Department. The streets surrounding Rockefeller Center will be closed from 3 pm until after the ceremony. Highly armed officers will patrol the area—only as a precaution, of course.
visual approximation of Bruce
Bruce will be lit until midnight tonight, then from 5:30 am until midnight daily; he is expected to receive up to 750,000 visitors per day. On January 7, 2017, his lights will be doused forever at 8 pm and the process of removing him from his final perch will begin.
His remains will be donated to Habitats for Humanity. Those who benefit will never know how famous their house’s sturdy timber once was. I’d like to think that’s how Bruce would have wanted it.
Happy holidays!
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