Unsolicited Advice

Now that we've got all the good stuff out of the way, behold what is widely held to be the worst holiday special ever produced. If you want some warning, here's a brief explanation of what in God's name is wrong with this thing . If you're brave and/or masochistic... well, here you go:

Clement Clarke Moore's famous poem, "A Visit From St. Nicholas", aka "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", as read by Vincent Price.

From From The Heart of Israel: Jewish Tales And Types , collected by Bernard Drachman. James Pott & Co., New York, 1905. At the time this book was published, "Israel" was more a concept than an official place; the independent state of Israel wasn't established until after WWII, in 1948. Most collections of "Jewish folklore" are comparatively modern stories from the Jewish populations of Europe. (I'm pretty sure the 'province of Posen' referenced here is present day Poznań, which sets this story in then-Prussia, now-Poland.) I tried finding something older, but there's almost nothing out there from the Middle East between the Bible and the printing press in age. I would be very surprised if there weren't Jewish variations of the tales of Nasruddin, a figure in Arabic-language lore that spreads from North Africa all the way into Turkey, who is alternately portrayed as a very wise man and a complete wiseguy. A lot of the same clever "

I feel compelled to point out that stories need not be old to qualify as folk tales. Though the popular notion that Santa's sleigh was drawn by flying reindeer dates back at least to "A Visit From St. Nicholas", published 1823, the story of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was written by an employee at Montgomery Ward in 1939, at the request of his boss, for distribution as a Christmas season promotion. Ten years later, the poem was set to music by country singer Gene Autrey. The famous Rankin-Bass stop-motion animation special linked below dates to 1964, and has been imitated -- but never quite matched -- many times since.

From Manx Fairy Tales , by Sophia Morrison. David Nutt, London, 1911. Humans are so very odd about names. I spend a fair amount of time on subreddits like r/UnresolvedMysteries and r/gratefuldoe, where the denizens can be laser-focused on finding who the unknown dead are, and giving them back to their families. The latter sub was founded, in fact, after reddit managed to crowdsource a solution for the identity of the Grateful Doe, a young man dubbed thus because he perished in a car accident after attending a Greatful Dead concert. They've ID'd several Does since, many of whom have had their names and stories released to the public by their thankful families.

From the Book of Cossack Fairy Tales , translated by R. Nisbet Bain. George G Harrap & Co, London, 1916.

From The Book of Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, West Africa , by Elphinstone Dayrell. Longmans, Greene &Co, London, 1910.  Casting unwanted things, particularly children, into the water is a motif that recurs in tales from all over the world. One wonders what it is about humans that makes them think rivers and oceans will sweep away all their sins. And what it is that makes us so afraid that things we want to get rid of will be washed back in to haunt us.

From The Swedish Fairy Book, edited by Clara Stroebe. Frederick A Stokes, New York, 1921.

From Stories of Greece and Rome, by Emilie Kip Baker. Macmillan &co, New York, 1913

From The Cat & The Mouse: A Book of Persian Fairy Tales , edited by Hartwell James. Henry Altemus, Philadelphia, 1906. One might wonder why the cat is allowed to get away with being such an asshole here. Other than 'because cat', I mean. The reference to being a "Mossulman" (i.e., Muslim) puts this story in a mainly-Muslim region, and according to Islamic tradition, cats are beloved of the prophet Mohammed. A shorter, much less-murderous folk tale holds that Mohammed had a pet cat whom he loved so much and spoiled so thoroughly, that one day when the cat laid down for a nap on the sleeve of the robe he was about to put on, he fetched scissors and cut the sleeve off rather than disturb it. I try not to repeat that to any actual cats. I don't want them getting ideas.

From Italian Popular Fairy Tales , by Thomas Frederick. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1885.

From American Fairy Tales , by L Frank Baum. Yes, the same guy as the Oz books.

From Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts, and Fairies . Translated from the Korean of Im Bang and Yi Ryuk by James S Gale. E P Dutton &co, New York, 1913.

From South-African Folk Tales , collected by James A Honeÿ, MD. The Baker & Taylor Co., New York, 1910.

From Told In The Coffee House: Turkish Tales , collected and done into English by Cyrus Adler & Allan Ramsay. Macmillan &co, London, 1898.

From Hawaiian Folk Tales , compiled by Thomas G Thrum, published 1907 by A C McClurg & Co. I don't know a great deal about Hawai'ian lore, nor about Hawai'i, for that matter. I mainly went with something interesting, that involved only a moderate amount of cold-blooded murder, and didn't have any women sold into slavery or being awarded as brides.

From Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants And Herdsmen , translated from the French of Alexander Chodsko by Emily J Harding. George Allen, London, 1986.

From The Arabian Nights: Their Best Known Tales . Edited by Kate Douglas Wiggin & Nora A. Smith. Charles Scribners Sons, 1909, New York. I had a hell of a time picking something from the Arabian Nights (original title: ألف ليلة و ليلة‎, "Alf-layla wa layla", 'The thousand nights and one night') for this. It's easy to find collections of the best-known stories, but all of the collections that have passed into the public domain in the US are Victorian or Edwardian, and involve content that would not pass muster today. The point at which any given story contained a jump scare in the form of "a monstrous black" coming out of nowhere, in the same tone we'd use for "a giant slobbering ogre" now, was the point at which I stopped reading. I ultimately went with Gulnare of the Sea for a couple of reasons. One, I was intrigued by the familiar motif of a beautiful mute woman from the sea -- similar images occur in the tale of the Little Mermai

From Myths of the Cherokee , compiled by James Mooney. Washington Gov't Printing Office, 1902. Have fun with the diacritical marks. I cannot speak to the accuracy of the transcription system in use here -- given our track record dealing with the natives, my guess would be 'poor' -- but the language in question has six tones, a glottal stop, and differentiates between short and long vowels. Best of luck to you all in your attempts to read Cherokee as written by a US government ethnographer.

From Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales. "The Shoes of Fortune" actually goes on for quite some time, but there is a limit to both my patience, and the patience of any small humans to whom this may be read at bedtime. The rest of the stories, as well as others, can be found here .

Hello, rat-fans! I hope you have all enjoyed your holiday weekend. The rats did! As a reminder, this year's advent calendar is now running on the public blog, but to see the regular weekly-ish blog entries in the month of December, you can become a Patron . This is especially important right now, as I've just found out I'll have to move again by the end of February. I hate moving and was on track to deal with it again "by September", not "by March", so I spent my holiday weekend either in a dead panic, or trying to ride that fine line between medicating myself out of a dead panic and being in a coma. Yay. If you're in need of some holiday gifts, you also have the option of buying some of my hand-knit creations over at Etsy, or splurging on a Ratmas gift set . This serves the dual purpose of funding me and  giving me less crap to pack later, so consider it a mitzvah . Now that's over with, on with the show! First we have Ratsgiving Br