ultima lingula

A far better and far more festive example of pareidolia than found in the knobby highlands of Cydonia and Arabia Terra—the so-called face on Mars has been captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Orbiter near the planet’s southern pole during a temporary thaw in the ice that normally obscures the geographic features there. The artistic elements of this impact crater that suggest an abstract angelic host with wings, heart and halo are created by a nice collusion of a sublimation pit, a sinkhole left when ice turns directly into gas without the intermediate liquid phase, erosion and ancient volcanic activity.

hallmark holiday

From the always engaging circulation desk of Open Culture, we are reminded of the commission that Salvador Dalí had from a greeting card magnate in 1960 to create a series of Christmas cards. Though the industry’s reputation is for the anodyne, it had been making forays into the avant garde since the 1940s, introducing contemporary artists to mass-markets by showcasing Pablo Picasso and Georgia O’Keeffe and other contemporaries. Dalí’s interpretation of the Magi, Nativity and other holiday iconography (see also here and here), however, proved too controversial for the general public, with ultimately only two cards out of the ten the surrealist artist was contracted for being printed.

presepio, threepeeo

For this long slog of a year, the Vatican has elected to showcase a profoundly different manger scene that while we think all find this somewhat other than expected and some taking more exception with the choice of the display than others of nineteen to-scale figures executed in terracotta sourced to a crèche that pupils and art teachers made for their town, selected from a Nativity Scene consisting of fifty-four pieces in total—steeped in the tradition of the earthenware—over a ten-year period from the mid-1960s to the mid-seventies.

There’s a helmeted astronaut in attendance as a nod to the contemporaneous 1969 Moon landing plus a centurion that some are comparing to Darth Vader (see link above), though the sculpture pre-dates the franchise by a few years. As one observer enthusiastically commented, it would be a nice ensemble—in miniature—for heath and home. Previously on tour in the 1970s in Israel, Palestine and Trajan’s Forum in Rome, the selection echoes the Pope’s missive from last Christmas—Admirabile signum—that it is customary and expected to include symbolic, contemporary characters to make the display busier and better address the everyday nature of holiness and grace.

щелкунчик

Debuting in Saint Petersburg on this day in 1892 (Old Style, 6 December), the stage, fairy ballet (балет-феерия) adaptation of the short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann—The Nutcracker and the Mouse King—opened as a double-feature with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ultimate opera Iolanta, a one-act performance about the Duchess of Lorraine, Yolande de Bar—a romanticised biography of figure who was more retiring and reserved in real life. Though initially not well-received and critics using rather harsh language, the overture and suite that the composer score was an enduring success, with countless Christmas season performances accounting for an incredible forty percent of attendance for ballet companies in North America in normal times.

8x8

don’t wait for me beneath the mistletoe: the Allusionettes compose a festive carol for 2020 

ashika: chubby seal pillows  

extravehicular activity: a brilliant infographic of every spacewalk undertaken—from Voskhod 2 onward 

your branches green delight us: a stunning abstract Christmas tree in Tokyo crafted from a thousand corded mizuhiki balls 

solargraph: a forgotten pinhole camera took the longest exposure photograph on record

oină: archiving images of a ubiquitous red ball with white polka dots in Romania’s recent past 

disbarred: US attorney general to step down before Christmas  

boughs of holly: a round-up of seasonal plants beyond the tree and trimmings

hamildolph

Via Memo of the Air, we are transported back a few years to enjoy this carol recounting one particular up-and-coming reindeer as told in the timeless style of rapped-through narrative of one of America’s Founding Fathers by a capella group the Eclipse Singers.

hobby-horse and the hoodening

Via the always intriguing Strange Company we are directed towards one explanation of the common apirition in the southern Welch Yuletide custom called Mari Lwyd (Y Fari Lwyd) of parading around a horse’s skull on a pole whilst draped with a cloak decorated with ribbons and sashes as an aspect of wassailing and ritual entreaties to one’s neighbours for food and drink—a sort of call-and-response called the pwngco. You’ve been pwn’d.  Some conjure it represents a remnant of once widespread mystery plays that featured a popular subgenre regarding Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt, with Mari Lwyd representing the donkey that bore Holy Mary—one proposed etymology, though this is disputed, with Grey Mare being more likely, especially given the preponderance of similar hooded animal parades spread across the British Isles that reflect a syncretion (see also) of ancient, pre-Christian rites. Much more detail about this custom at the link up top.

krampusnacht

Later on for this Saint Nicholas Eve, the hirsute, horned devil (see previously) visits the wicked and incorrigible with a thrashing and a lump of coal, assisted by Knecht Rupert. Less discretely and less charitably in some jurisdictions, Krampus is accompanied by Nicholas himself to distribute gifts for the naughty and nice respectively.

¡no lupita!

Released on this date in 1959 in Mexico (in October of the following year internationally, in America markets  under the same title though sometimes distinguished as Santa Claus versus the Devil), this René Cardona and Adolfo Torres Portillo collaboration premises that Santa has a workshop in outer space and defeats a demon called Pitch who was dispatched to Earth by Lucifer to spoil Christmas by killing its spirit and cause all of humanity to do Satan’s despondent and joyless, and by defacto  evil, bidding. The movie received the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (see previously) on Christmas Eve 1993 and one can watch the lampoon in its entirety below.

o tannebaum

Much like that bellwether tree stood up in Rome four years ago, the poor sacrificial spruce (with stowaway, another climate refugee) left to slowly desiccate and die at Rockefeller Center, already bedraggled and reflective not only of this dreadful year but of our seemingly incipient and insurmountable toxic relationship with the environment, ought to be accorded the single dignity of being the last offering to this tradition born out of bleak austerity into this genuflexion before capitalism and conspicuous consumption. We could deck the place with a nice hologram instead.

all this trouble over a fat little man in a red suit

As our faithful chronicler informs, the sci-fi comedy (self-descriped as “yuletide science fiction fantasy” and hoped to find a niche for a perceived market gap) by Nicholas Webster and Paul L. Jacobson, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians—universally panned though significantly debuting the figure of Mrs Claus a full three weeks before appearing on the Rankin and Bass (previously) television special Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, premiered in cinemas on this day in 1964. It was to receive the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 treatment on 21 December 1991—shortly after MST3K was syndicated by the Comedy Central cable network and thus solidifying its enduring popularity aside from making the movie a cult classic. A young Pia Zadora has her film debut as Girmar—the Martian Girl.

coal in your stocking

Though apparently tabled or scrapped, there was bizarrely, negotiated and budgeted out to the tune of a quarter-billion dollars, a stimulus plan concocted by the undersecretary of the US department of Health and Human Services to save Christmas by inoculating mall Santas (and their entourage of elves and consort Clauses) with untrialled, experimental vaccines, enabling kids to have the experience of sitting on Kris Kringle’s lap and having their photograph taken. Jesus wept. Not only are Santa’s helpers risking their health by taking a preventative therapy that may not be effective and possibly detrimental to their health, they also risk becoming full-on disease vectors, bio-weapons after chatting with scores of asymptomatic carriers per day in the run-up to the holiday season, which is far from universally celebrated. I think Santa would rather be a model citizen and encourage social-distancing, practise good hygiene and avoid unnecessary risks, including forgoing milk and cookies from strangers. This addle-brained proposal is likely to be cancelled but one wonders how close it was to being pushed forward and what other horrors that the Trump administration might try to sell as a Christmas miracle.

dansa ut julen

Literally dancing out Christmas, some Swedish communities are celebrating Knut’s Day (previously) as the end of the holiday season by “plundering” the tree of its ornaments and ceremoniously tossing it out on this twentieth day (imagine that carol) of Yule—Tjugondag jul—set aside as Knut’s name day (see also).

Transposed from the date (except in Denmark) of the regicide of the Danish duke at the hand of his rival and cousin on 7 January 1131 due to it failing too close to the Feast of the Epiphany, for the past century and the present one, Saint Knut’s Day coincides with Malanka (Маланка—that is Щедрий Вечір, Generous Eve) or since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1918 and putting aside the Julian one, Old New Year’s Eve for Ukraine, Russia and other Slavic lands. A syncretism of a far older folktale with instruction on how to herald the coming return of Spring and renewal and the observation that the Sun begins to turn toward the Tropic of Capricorn (the sidereal solstice and Midwinter for those in the Northern Hemisphere), it is also the last opportunity for partying and abandon before Carnival.

hark the herald ai’s carol

Reprising a 2017 experiment this time with more powerful machines, Janelle Shane (previously) had her neural network try its hand at composing Christmas songs, drawing from a dataset of two hundred and forty carols compiled by the Times of London, and the output really underscores how profoundly strange that the holiday with its strange fossilised language would be for outsiders.
With verses for Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer like “Its heart was full of sugar / And the most prized food item was its head” and “For sinful men such a deity doth appear / And wink and nod in reply.” If you subscribe to AI Weirdness at the link above, you can sign up to receive the full text of these and other experiments—which as an occupational hazard feature an inordinate amount of cusses and references to gun-violence. Grandma got run over by a reindeer.

The wretched world is run by ox and ass
The wretched world is run by ox and ass,
And in vain build I.

o come, o come, emmanuel

With the evening prayer of the last week of Advent (previously) denoted as the hortatory Antiphons—a short chant with refrain textually based on the Book of Psalms and a call to meditate on one of the aspects of Jesus as Saviour, the last and final falling on the eve of Christmas Eve exhortation that O God is With Us, expanded into the carol.

simpsons roasting on an open fire

On this day in 1989, the Fox network debuted The Simpsons, characters spun-off from a regular, animated interstitial from The Tracey Ullmann Show, with a Christmas special.
Intended as the eighth episode of the season, production delays had already pushed back release dates to the holidays and the producers decided to open with this show—which was a remarkably smart move in retrospect (The Waltons had a similar start with its pilot episode back in 1971) for the expository and establishing opportunities that come with such tropes.

✨

Via the always glamorous Everlasting Blört, we are treated to the third collection of Dublin-based designer Jen Nollaig’s third seasonal showing (and here we thought we just had to make due with wearing the tree skirt like Bernice on the sitcom Designing Women) of eyewear, jewelry, headdresses and entire costumes created out of repurposed Christmas decorations, positing that we should be as willing, excited and committed to trim ourselves as much as the tree and decking the halls. Much more to explore at the links above.

8x8

it putteth away dumpishness & sadness, and bringeth mirth: a 1559 recipe for mulled wine

fox and liberty forever: the chaotic General Election of 1790, the polling and purdah lasting from 16 June to 28 July, via Strange Company

the power of youth: the photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva behind the iconic image of Greta Thunberg’s TIME cover—we personally found this honour to be pretty moving as well

link in bio: the insidious nature of Walled Gardens (see previously) and social media’s attempts to corral the free Internet

the land of the asuras: a Buddhist monk leads a solemn ceremony to eulogise untaken time off from work in Japan—hardly done despite legislation that all workers take a minimum of five paid vacation days per year

🙀: this feline face filter underscores how poorly we understand our cats’ cognition

flight and blight: a survey of some of the historic character lost in New York City over the past decade

your branches green delight us: a tour of London’s Christmas trees 

gumdrops and gatehouses

Carrying on a holiday tradition of crafting and featuring Modernist and Brutalist confectionary miniatures, Present /&/ Correct juries a new selection of gingerbread architectural models. It’s fun to try to identify the individual candy-types that make up the different architectural elements and appreciate the designers’ resourcefulness. According to lore, ginger was to be among the gifts of the magi but this particular wise man had to convalesce in Syria (see also) and did not make it to Bethlehem with the others but propelled his gesture onward with the baking custom.

herrnhuter stern

We’re getting ready to hang up our Moravian stars as the first festoonery of the season and the process of constructing the lantern and piecing together the paper cones is always an engaging ritual.
The decoration and design originated in the 1830s in a Moravian church (see also) boarding school for boys near the town of Görlitz to impart students with a lesson in geometry—the twenty-six-sided star being called a rhombicuboctahedron. Around 1880, an alumnus of the Pædagogium made the stars and their instruction manuals for sale in his bookstore and his son went on to open a factory in 1897 in the village of Herrnhut under the auspices of the church that makes and distributes the stars to this day.