h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Reminds me a bit of this recent XKCD comic: http://xkcd.com/988 .
Especially the hover-text. "An 'American Tradition' is anything that happened to a baby boomer twice'.

I love that cartoon.

And you know? I hate just about every one of those songs.

I don't think I know all of the songs (well, most of the names are familiar, but I think I can only hum about half of them), but I don't mind them so much; then again, I don't hear them over and over again every year, only occasionally...

ALl of those songs are commercial 'instant folklore' inventions from the 1940s to the present. I loathe all that 'Merry Christmas, Baby' music - starting with the egregious Bing Crosby buh-buh-booing his way through 'White Christmas'. And people coming up with Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, etc...I think he was invented about 1946.

My idea of a cool Christmas song is the one I wrote about in this entry in PR: A87728223.

Or like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6IG6F6E5Ac

Or good old Handel.

That Huron Carol is fascinating, thanks; reminds me, in a way, of other kinds of 'local music' takes on religious music, like the Misa Criolla (on the off chance you're not familiar with it, here's a sample, sung by the marvellous Mercedes Sosa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b0H43b_FgI ).

Oh, also, this is quite unrelated to our subject, but I figured you might enjoy this lovely collection of old newspaper clips (like, often from the 19th century):
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/bad-news-from-the-past/
(Ignore the first item - it's really not in the spirit of the rest, and is by a different author. I understand that the original guy who did this, Cliff Doerksen, died last year.)
I got there through another story of his, about mince pie, which also feels like it would be right up your alley: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mince-pie-the-real-american-pie/Content?oid=1267308

Thanks for that website! Fascinating! (And .)

But the mince pie story......what a revelation...we did not know this...we are reeling in the aisles over here...who knew?

Seriously. What that writer says is true. It must be national amnesia. I had never heard of this horrible stuff. 'Mincemneat pie', to me, has always been a concoction of raisins and apples with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and molasses. Safe. Harmless. Incapable of giving you nightmares - or, indeed, anything but a mild sugar rush.

There used to be debate about the morality of rum extract, but by golly...

Do I believe that stuff would kill you? Law, yes. You'd deserve it, too. What fool decided to marinate MEAT for three weeks in a crock pot? That's just...unglaublich....

We are also shaking with laughter reading the other newspaper tidbits.

[Yes, 'tidbits'. Elektra has drawn the line on British English with that word. She says the Brit version is 'vaguely suggestive'. ]

Yay! Thought you would like this.

And I agree - the idea od candied meat pie sounds like the worst of both worlds; I'd rather have a meat pie where you can actually taste meat, or a fruit pie where you are not likely to run into suspicious bits. I suppose that before refridgeration it _was_ quite useful, though. And the history about prohibition was absolutely fascinating.

(As for 'tidbits', I have to admit I like the look of it better than the British version. It's somehow cuter than 'titbits'; maybe because of the way the d and b 'reflect' off each other. Besides, it's actually a fairly reasonable change in sound for the T to sound like a D, and oh how I do wish I knew the relevant terminology so as not to sound so vague about it. But it does happen in speech, and I'm sure you know what I mean.)

Yeah, I do know what you mean. And when I think of the word for it, it will be in German, due to brainwashing by German philologists.

But yeah, like that. I'm suspecting that's why people had problems and got nightmares. I suspect that stuff would kill me, with my food allergies.

The writer sounded skeptical about the nightmares. I don't think people realise that in the past, many people ate food with psychotropic effects. Remember how Scrooge thought Marley's ghost was 'an underdone potato'? With Welsh rarebit, it was the cheese mould.

Sorry it took a while to get back to this thread - but having finally finished my thesis, I have a bit more free time.
Anyway, what I've been meaning to write way back when is that in the comments for that article, someone did suggest that it was the large amount of nutmeg that caused the dreams and hallucinations (apparently nutmeg has a hallucinogenic quality). So yes, it's quite possible.
Then again, if you've looked at enough of the old newspaper clips in that blog you know that standards for things like objective, fact-based reporting were rather low back then. Not that newspapers today are perfect, but at least the kind of stories about 'woman gives birth to raccoon' and suchlike have been left to Weekly-World-News type publications. In that aspect, it's also possible that the stories about mince-pie-induced hallucinations causing murders are a bit of an exaggeraition.

Congratulations on the thesis!

Hm, nutmeg causing hallucinations? This is possible, I suspect, depending on your susceptibility. (Not like smoking bananas...)

I don't know about the mince pie, and do not wish to find out.

Thank you!
Had a little trouble with administrative stuff, which prevented me from turning it in on Thursday as I originally meant, but that trouble has been solved, and the three copies I need to turn in have been printed, and tomorrow I'll go to Uni and get them bound nicely and drop them with the secretary and be DONE! Ah, that feels good.

A great way to start the new year. For this calendar, anyway.

Yes, it has been.