Christmas Spectacular Eight

0:15Hi, I'm Ryan Davis and I'm Kiernan Schmidt and this is out of office a travel podcast This seat taken? Ho, ho, ho, ho! Keernan! Ryan, I mean, I almost feel like we shouldn't say it's a travel podcast on this particular episode. This is the one time, I mean, we do, we bake in some international flavor. And especially today, we are featuring a tradition from overseas. But today, we're really a Christmas podcast because this is our yearly, this is our eighth annual Christmas Spectacular episode. So I say to you, my friend, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you. And, you know, we can say Merry Christmas again, right?

1:00Okay, all right. Again, we're a big tent podcast. You're trying to please the, you know, maybe our more conservative listeners. But yeah, we have a, you know, you and I both grew up celebrating Christmas. So we do do a Christmas episode. But of course, we welcome people of all faiths and all holidays around this time of year. And even if you're not celebrating a holiday, just enjoying this this special season. Festivus, which I love. I still want to go to a Festivus dinner dinner one year. Has that become like a thing that's a real thing people do? It was for a while. I think it's been replaced by other things, but I could bring it back.

1:40Now, you you sort of have made a tradition where you now kind of flee family at holiday time, at Christmas time. You you you tend to go quite far away. And so I assume that you're you're ensconced in South America or let's do the Judy alert. Let's tell your mom where you're neglecting her from this. Well, you know, us gays also have a chosen family. So I spend Christmas with with them. When you say us gays, who are you? Is that the royal royal us? I can speak. Yeah, I can speak for all gays. Oh, have you been elected to that position? I was. So I am in actually in Madrid, which is a city that does Christmas really well.

2:26I spent all weekend. That's cool. So tell me, what's the decoration like? How are you picking up Christmas? And what's the weather like at this time of year? It's chilly, but it's not too cold. I had to buy my first winter jacket in two years because I haven't had to wear a jacket. um and so now i have one uh yeah there's a lot of christmas trees a lot of wreaths there's a lot of big public um you know uh decorations and all the stores are decorated and everyone's in a very festive mood you know i spent the the weekend walking around a bunch of uh christmas markets and um you know it was uh it was really lovely and yeah i think the city really wears christmas well.

3:10And I was thinking it would be fun, maybe a next Christmas spectacular to talk about, you know, what are the, what are the cities that really do Christmas? Well, you know, I think of London and Paris, Berlin, I feel like, you know, what's, what's your favorite Christmas city that you've been to? You know, I don't, I I've only traveled, or I tend not to try to travel in December because I want to be sure that I'm home for the Christmas holidays. So of course I lived in London. I, I, I mean, obviously New York is one of the great christmas cities new york is a definitive christmas city it's like where all the christmas movies take place we have the macy's parade well that's thanksgiving but sure oh and yeah don't we know we have a christmas parade too don't we no oh never mind i don't think so but also the the thanksgiving day parade of course confusingly ends with santa claus so right sorry that's what i'm thinking um and uh i did uh travel to uh paris for a brief time and that was a very solid Christmas showing during the Christmas season.

4:12And then Morocco, which is, of course, primarily a Muslim country. And Christmas is not as well done there. Yeah, it's it's not as well. I guess they don't you know, it's not their holiday. But I do remember at the hotel in in in one of the hotels that we stayed in Morocco, They had an absolutely bonkers Christmas tree that it was like it was like monocolored lights that were like flashing, like really aggressively. Like it looked like in the next room, Frankenstein was being brought to life. That's how these like lights were blinking on and off. And it was it was not my ideal way of celebrating.

4:54And I will dig up the video I took of that insane tree and put it up on the Instagram. i love i love like dark well now that's at oh oh oh podcast on instagram like oh podcast or like oh what a weird tree uh oh podcast uh no i look for i like i like a little dark uh christmas you know uh uh the first lady sometimes criticized for some darker uh decoration she does there i think they look pretty good and uh it's sort of like uh what's nightmare before christmas kind of vibes. That's funny. That's very funny. I feel like no matter how hard they try not to have the decorations look like that now, it still kind of creeps into the current White House Christmas decor.

5:37Yeah, yeah. But you know, I like it. It's not my it's not the worst thing. No, I mean, personally, I'm we're staying real cozy. This Christmas season, I've got the tree set up. And you know, Thanksgiving was late. So I had to get the tree the weekend after Thanksgiving was a little late, was putting up all the ornaments. And this is a major announcement for loyal listeners. But by the way, I've had quite a few loyal listeners reaching out to me with pictures of their Spotify wrapped to show me how much they listen to the podcast. I just want to say thank you very much, particularly two are standing out in my mind.

6:14One wrote in named Jocelyn and one named joe for jocelyn we were her number one podcast listen this year with many many hours spent uh with ryan kiernan uh yeah i uh um you know i had i i always like those raps i think they're they're a lot of fun oh yeah they're fun brilliant how old were you in your in your uh spotify age uh i i don't i don't uh i don't have spotify oh okay i'm a i'm a very i'm i'm a i'm a cheap man you know i was 73 i was 70 i was 73 i mean chances are i'd be knocking on like 92 i mean how old is dick van dyke you just turned 100 i'd probably be 99 i think i am in my tastes i am most like dick van dyke i would say oh happy birthday dick van dyke that was absolutely 100 years young he looks good we needed some yeah he looks good uh david letterman uh uh very funny thing that he was saying that he now gets confused for Dick Van Dyke.

7:16And he's like, people used to know who I was. Oh, when you got the beard look that that happened. I know. But here's the major announcement for the loyal listeners who look forward to the Christmas spectacular every year. This year, I pretty much single handedly, I'm kind of forcing it on you, Ryan. I am killing one of our show traditions, which is the ugly ornament contest. And this is where you and I would each bring each other an ornament. That would be our gift to one another. And we would try to find the ugliest ornament. And this is prompted by a couple considerations. One is that, as listeners of past Christmas Spectaculars will know, I never really felt like Ryan got it.

7:58I got it near the end. You got it near the end. Remember the teeth? Yes. So, yes. So at first you were bringing like cute things, but you were saying they were ugly. It was very confusing where I was giving you genuinely ugly ornaments, usually something that someone on Etsy was selling, like a fork that was like bent in a weird way. And they called that an ornament and charged$35 for it. But then like two years ago, so somewhere around Christmas Spectacular 6, it kind of clicked in that you got what I was trying for. It took six years just for anyone who's keeping count. But you finally started getting actually ugly ornaments.

8:38And then I came to realize, you know, I don't want these things. It's of limited value because we're an audio podcast. And it just didn't take it. It wasn't as good an idea as I thought. So we're killing it from here on out. Well, I have been lugging around these seven ugly Christmas ornaments in my suitcase. Wow. Three years. Yeah. Without a tree. Yeah, maybe I can just hang them in this Airbnb and just horrify the owners when they come back. Well, and for those who are new and who, you know, this doesn't mean anything, the ugly ornament tradition, just to orient you a little bit. This is, I would put it in the context of Good Friday.

9:22You know Good Friday, Ryan? Of course. So Good Friday is the one day a year that the masses are not said in Catholic churches. There's no Eucharist given because we're mourning the crucifixion of Christ. Okay, now that's not got to do with Christmas, but here's how it's similar. This is the one episode of year of Out of Office where we don't follow our regular format of, you know, a little chit chat up top and then a topic, a travel topic or an interview, followed by the last stop. I mean, it's a classic Christmas episode of any, you know, any TV show they were allowed to do this. ER would have a Christmas ER.

10:02Just a pure party festival feel. And that's what we're going for. Yeah. We're going to have Paul. Paul Lind is going to be a special guest. Oh, my God. You're really showing all every year of that 73 years old by referencing Paul Lind. Do you know how old that reference is, Ryan? My God. I think our listeners will get a chuckle out of it. So, so Ryan, we're going to, we're going to do as we typically do, we're going to discuss a little bit of interesting history and international traditions around Christmas. And then this year, we're also going to, as we do every year talk, we're each going to bring one song.

10:46So it's sort of like the last stop, but we, we like to highlight one song, maybe not the, you know, it's not Bing Crosby white Christmas. We try to bring a song that maybe is lesser known and, you know, YouTube immediately suspends our accounts because we're not allowed to sample any of the song. So we'll try to do like, you know, three seconds and see if we're allowed to do that. And otherwise, we'll link to them in the show notes, of course. And then we discuss them and then we lift up mugs of eggnog and we head on our merry way. I got approval to play all of all of my song that I brought. So, oh, why is this?

11:22What kind of weird thing did you bring? Is it like a homemade song? I have. OK, you know, don't ruin it. Don't ruin it. Don't ruin it. I don't want to be surprised for that last segment of the show. Just one more question on the Judy alert again, which is where we tell Ryan's mom where he is so that she can send him what I'm sure are very thoughtful Christmas gifts. And Ryan, you've remembered to send something to Judy, I hope. I have. Yes, I did. I did all my Christmas shopping yesterday. So, oh, fantastic. Right. Right. Good time. And where now I know you're on like sort of a European sojourn through the holiday.

12:00So where are you going to be hitting over the next few weeks? I'm going to go to Seville and I'm going to go to Rome and Florence and yeah. And a couple other places still kind of TBD. It's going to be exciting, though. Going to be in Seville for Christmas. And I'm looking forward to that. It looks like a Christmassy town. Are you going to be in Rome before the Epiphany on January 6th? You didn't have to tell me when the Epiphany. I think I do. As anyone who's listened to past episodes know, you know, you didn't even know. You've got an immaculate conception wrong every single year. I am going to be in Barcelona for the Epiphany as as is custom.

12:47Oh, shoot. I was really hoping you weren't going to go to Barcelona because I don't want you to see the Sagrada Familia before I do. So close to completion. Oh, it's I trust me. I was just there a few months ago. It's not that close. No, no. I was just reading. There's a great New York article about it. And it's still like 12 years off. Like they're completing all the major stuff, but there's still this giant wall that's just temporary. A huge section that isn't constructed yet. So when you look up, it doesn't look like you're almost near completion there. I like to think that maybe a Christmas Spectacular 20, we could do live from the completed Sagrada Familia together.

13:27And we can give each other beautiful ornaments, reproductions of the... That would be some of the ornaments that are on the exterior of Sagrada Familia. I like that idea a lot. Yeah, yeah. And so when are you hitting Rome? Because I'd be interested to know, I don't have a great sense of how Christmas comes to life in that most holy of cities. No, Rome is in January. Oh, okay. All right. I'm in Spain for the holiday. Excellent. I know Rome left a big impression on you. So it's exciting to have you go back. I've got some offbeat recommendations for you to hit now that you've done a lot of the major stuff.

14:03Yeah. And I should take my St. Sebastian tattoo to the temple of St. Sebastian. Oh, for sure. Great idea. Great idea. Now, Ryan, now I want to transition into the the the the cultural topic, the overseas topic. And, you know, this year I've been on a real I'm I'm like so back on my Anglophile riff because of having recently been in London. And it occurred to me that we've never talked about this great tradition that they have, and it's primarily British, but I've noticed it's like starting to come more and more into the U.S. Have you ever heard, are you familiar with the idea of Christmas crackers?

14:46I am because I'm a big fan of Love Actually. Oh, are they in Love Actually? I don't remember that. Yeah, they eat crackers. Or one of those. Describe your understanding of what a Christmas cracker is. Isn't it just sort of the kind of the cookies that they eat around Christmas? See, this is exactly what I thought would happen. See, you don't you don't know what Christmas crackers are. First of all, I think you're mistaking the fact that British people call crackers, call cookies biscuits, not crackers. Cracker is not a word for a cookie, Ryan. I thought they had like 10 words. I thought the English were with cookies like Eskimos are for snow.

15:29And maybe you're mistaken that crisps refer to chips, I think. That might be mixed in there a little bit. So is a cracker just what I assume like what a cracker actually is? I want to genuinely know, is this a joke or do you not know? It would be great if you don't know, because then I can fully explain it to you. No, I know. I know what my perception of a cracker is, but I don't know what the British think it is. OK, well, OK, this is great because I can give it to you. And I think this is going to be new information for a lot of people out there. And I'm going to even if you know what a Christmas cracker is, I'm going to let you know some of this very interesting history.

16:07And it's also given me an interesting thing to try next time I'm in London because there's a tie to the Victorian Albert Museum. Okay, so first I want to acknowledge, we were very generously gifted two sets of Christmas crackers from a company that's right out here in Acton, Massachusetts. But their mail order business is their big thing. You can buy things on their website and get it sent to you, especially if you have some Downton Abbey fans or other Anglophiles in your life. And the name of the shop is the Bees Knees British Imports, the Bees Knees British Imports. And they reached out and their whole thing, they're a bunch of expat Brits who live in the U.S.

16:54And they started this mail order business like well over a decade ago where they bring in really cool British decor, British toys, tons of British food that like I have never seen outside of England. And little did I know they have like a physical shop like 20 minutes away from me. But really, again, like the ordering business is their major thing. And they have all this cool Christmas decor out, Christmas ornaments of everything British and Scottish that you could imagine, really cozy, like teapots and tableware. It was super fun. They wanted to send us the Christmas crackers, but I said, no, you're so close to me.

17:32I want to go up and see the shop. And it was really, really cool. Very Christmassy. I that sounds lovely and so you get to what was what was really nice was I got to talk to the proprietors and they told me they have they carry over 65 different types of Christmas crackers so Ryan this is where I'm going to reveal to you what a Christmas cracker is now you'll see that I'm holding you see here it's a cylindrical cardboard tube you see that has a nice print of Santa on it yeah that's that's nice and then they also gave us this set um which has it's a little more fancy this is they they kind of have they run the gamut of um kind of premium beautiful christmas crackers to like silly um family friendly ones and here's uh what the tradition is so you take this cardboard tube and often on a christmas dinner it'll be set out on your plate so everybody around a table will have this Christmas cracker set there.

18:32And usually it's got like a bright pattern on it. It can look almost like Christmas wrapped or it's got a picture of Santa and that sort of thing. And inside, you see that it has like these kind of two handles on the side. At some point in the meal, you're going to pull with your neighbor each of these sides apart. And there are two little strips of chemically impregnated paper inside. and when you pull it that friction creates a loud bang so it kind of reminds me of like in harry potter i don't know if you remember in harry potter the letters that uh don't get opened they have like angry contents in them they explode and that's the whole idea of the christmas crackers you get this really satisfying exciting bang when you pull it apart and then you get to see the contents of the inside now let me pause here are there at least crackers inside or at least No, no.

19:27The cracker is the crack of the bang. The crack. So there's no there's no food involved in this at all. Well, you're having it at the dinner table typically. So there's food involved, but there's not. So what's inside? OK, so inside there are two things that are that are always inside. The first is a paper crown. OK, so kind of a tissue paper crown. So we're going to we're going to open these. We're going to take our crown and put it on our head. And that adds like a nice festive fun. Hey, ain't this a crazy night? This this is in love, actually, the paper crown. I'm sure it is. It is. It's a quintessential important part of the Christmas festivals in England.

20:05And I didn't know that they exploded those under their head. They explode. And I thought this was such a cool thing for bees knees to lend us because they gave us to they gave us one fancy one so we can get toys from inside or not toys so that we can get the like fancy kitchen goods that are in there. And then another one has some sort of kitchen goods. Yeah. Yeah. Let's wait until we break them open and then we'll we'll share what's inside. And then on the other, there's going to be this one's more family friend. There's going to be a toy inside. OK, but here are the two things that are always inside the tissue paper crown.

20:39So you got to put those on. And then secondly, a joke. Usually it's like a very not funny joke, kind of a dad joke. Usually it's a pun, something very silly. silly. And, and then you offer, uh, Kiernan, did you offer to, to write for them freelance? No, I don't think that they're a look. I think there is very easy to come up with these jokes as you, as you're going to know, those Kiernan specials. I'm, I'm, I'm very busy. Um, and I also, I don't like puns. I'm anti-pun. Um, uh, and, and, and then there's a gift. So you got a joke, a crown and a gift. Um, and now here's an important piece that the proprietors of Bees knees coached me on that I did not know, which is, you know how after Thanksgiving, when you do the wishbone, you're supposed to pull it with somebody else.

21:26Right. So, and that person who gets the bigger part of the bone has good luck. What you're supposed to do with a Christmas cracker is you're supposed to either pull it from across the table. So one person pulls from one side of the table, the other pulls from the other side of the table, or you cross your arms over each other and each holds one handle with their neighbors and then you pull apart across each other. So it's meant to be a communal experience. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and also very importantly, one of the, one of the owners said that some families will say, whoever gets the bigger part of the cracker gets the joke, the crown and the toy inside.

22:07But we all seem to agree that we don't like that. Everybody gets their own individual one and we know who owns what one and you get what's in there. Okay. So that's how we're going to play it too. I feel like there's a huge market to, to use this exact thing, but for gender reveals, I think that that's a very clever idea. And as always, uh, ever the entrepreneur, you're, you're thinking about how it could be applied, but that's actually what's, what's really interesting is that, um, in researching a bit of this, this, these crackers go back to the 1850s. That's when they were, um, first conceived.

22:41And sure enough, there's a travel. That's like Dickens. It's like Dickens Christmas time. Yeah, yeah. It goes back pretty far. And amazingly, like the person who created it, the company still persists today. Now everybody makes Christmas crackers, but they were the first ones. It was a candy maker, a confectioner and baker named Tom Smith who invented it in the neighborhood of Clerkenwell in London. And I lived for a time in Clerkenwell. uh clicking well yeah it's a that's a nice little neighborhood and so it all started he went on a trip to paris and he learned about french bonbons which were at that time that meant like a sugar covered almond and they were wrapped in this tissue paper that you would pull from either side and it would unwrap and that was sort of your surprise in there so he brought that back to London started to produce them for Christmas.

23:37And what I didn't know is this caught on for young men to give at Christmastime to young women. So instead of jokes, they would have like love poems in them at the time. Oh, I like that. And by the way, I said 1850. Not 1850s. He patented this in 1847. So I just want to correct that. But it wasn't the true cracker that we know today until the 1860s, when he had an idea, he threw a log onto a fire and heard the pop of the log. And he said, you know what, that's what my Christmas cracker is missing. It needs a small explosion. And so it worked to create the abrasive strips that are inside so that the pull gives a big crack.

24:26And by the way, I do want to forewarn, every once in a while, you get a Christmas cracker that doesn't give you the big snap. So I'm really hoping for the audio podcast here that we get the big snaps we're hoping for. Uh, yeah. So you're going to like pop this on air. Yeah, of course we're going to pop two of them on air. Oh my gosh. And this is how we're going to. And it's going to be a good podcasting because it has that crack. If it didn't, that would be bad. This is precisely because we were talking about what they were interested in having us feature. And it was all this visual stuff. And I was like, no, no, no, we're an audio podcast, even though we are going to get into video.

24:59That's a 2026 resolution we got. At 2027 at the latest. No, we're doing it. But just one more, just a couple more facts about Christmas crackers and Tom Smith. Tom Smith's son, Walter, took over the business, the novelty Christmas cracker production business. And he was super experimental and really made this into a major tradition. He would source fancy paper. He would make these elaborate hats. They would source gifts from Europe and America and Japan. And so it became this major business in this major moment to discover what's going to be their Christmas cracker this year. And the name, by the way, Cracker, because as you were saying, like, does this have to what is this just the crack?

25:50Apparently, they were originally sold under the name Kosake, Kosake and Kosake eventually evolved into Cracker. Cracker is better than Kosake. Cracker is a bit a bit better than Kosake. I agree. And here's here's a great little travel nugget that I picked up that I'm going to employ next time I'm in London. The V &A Museum, the Victorian Albert Museum, who have been doing such cool things. They just opened up a new branch that I visited in August, and they have another branch opening. They're really becoming this empire. They, one thing I love about them is that they collect a lot of kind of cultural bric-a-brac, you know, things that I feel like hundreds of years from now, they're going to be so happy that the museum existed that saw value in these daily items.

26:39And they have a vast collection of Christmas crackers, Christmas cracker catalogs, and all of these trends that have persisted over the last century and more in this great British tradition. It's so fun to think about all just the ways that this has probably been used and could be used. It's, you know, I like it. I'll shoot out a link to a cool festive page that the V &A Museum have of some of the most notable ones in their collections. But some of them are, you know, there's King Tut themes ones. There's car ones for when cars were starting to become more common. There's stars of stage and screen who are celebrated in crackers.

27:27There's World War I victory. There's World War II victory. So like, really, it is the history of Christmas encapsulated in this awesome tradition. And don't you feel like we're going to be part of it today? We are adding to this moment. I love that they were making crackers based on characters from West End Musical Hits. West End Musical Hits. And I'll tell you, one of the ones that's featured on that webpage that I'll put up is there was a Canada-themed musical review where the dancing girls dressed up as totem poles of the native people of Canada. And there are totem pole, I think they might call them totem girl crackers that are made to look like totem poles and you pull them apart and inside is a doll dressed up as one of the showgirls.

28:20Don't think that would fly today, that particular musical. A little problematic. It's a little problematic. Pretty problematic. Okay, and here's before, I can just feel the tension building. It's so exciting, this bang that we're about to get. But just one more fact, which is that the Tom Smith brand of crackers, this original creator of the Christmas crackers, they still to this day create luxury crackers, the Christmas crackers that go to the royal household, but they never reveal what gets put in those crackers. That's a secret that only the royal family knows. I bet it's something that the people of Britain paid for.

29:02All right, let's let's keep it light and festive. Okay, like like we're not paying for luxury for our leaders these days, Ryan. I mean, you know, we're not one to point a finger. I bet that they do Christmas right though, the Royals. I bet that's a beautifully decorated palace. Have you been there for Christmas? I've never been there, but I'm sure that they decorate out the public rooms just beautifully. And I believe that they're rarely in Buckingham Palace. I think they like to go to some of the further away palaces. I don't blame them. All right. So we're at the moment, Ryan. So now I'm going to ask you, do you want to do the fancy you know, more expensive kind of ritzy one first.