The Extraordinary Power of Solitude & Christmas Mysteries Revealed

Today, on Something You Should Know, we say happy Thanksgiving and happy Easter, so why do we say Merry Christmas? Then, being connected with other people is great, but there's also some magic in solitude. You know, solitude is often thought of as an empty place, right? A place where there's nothing to do and all that's there is rumination and loneliness and anxiety. But solitude can be a full place. It can be a place that you can fill with what you choose to put there. Also, how owning a pet can make some people much more attractive. And how we celebrate Christmas. Things have changed a lot over time. After World War II, we shifted Christmas to the modern, what I would call the Coca-Cola version of Christmas, which is the presents, the tree, the chimney. Lots of the story that had always been there, but were given additional weight. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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Charles Dickens used it in his book A Christmas Carol in 1843. Ebenezer Scrooge says, If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding. The phrase Merry Christmas caught on more in America than in Britain, perhaps because Merry also means tipsy or drunk in Britain. There, they say Happy Christmas mostly. In C. Clement Moore's book Twas the Night Before Christmas, written in 1823, it originally ended Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night, but was changed by the editors in later editions to Merry Christmas. And that is something you should know. The holidays are all about togetherness. For many of us, it's the one time of year we gather with friends and family we rarely see otherwise. One of the things that makes this season feel so special is all those people. And we've talked plenty on this show about the importance of connecting with others. But some people feel over connected this time of year, like they barely get a moment to themselves. And that raises an interesting point. Solitude isn't a bad thing. In fact, spending time alone can be surprisingly good for you. My guest, Robert Copeland, has spent more than 30 years studying the power of being alone. He's a psychologist, researcher and teacher and author of the book The Joy of Solitude, How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World. He's here to explain why solitude matters and how to make it a healthy part of your life. Hi, Robert. Welcome to something you should know. Hi, Mike. I'm so glad to be here. So we have talked so many times, had so many guests on talking about the importance of social connection, that having friends and family and being part of a social group is good for your mental health. It's good for your physical health. It's just a good thing. And you're talking about spending more time alone, that we need time alone. Is it your sense that people are not getting enough alone time? Yeah, that's one of the issues that we've actually explored over the last two years. Historically, we've been, and for good reason, really concerned about people who feel like they're getting too much solitude. So that's what loneliness is. It's the feeling that you are not getting enough social connection. You're not getting enough social interaction. It's a discrepancy between your social life that you would like and your perception of your actual social life. And when that's not living up to your social needs, so you feel lonely. And it's often equated to the feeling that you're getting too much solitude. And that's really important to study. Over the last few years, we've also studied the sort of new idea that maybe it's also possible to feel like you're not getting enough solitude. And so this is kind of like the mirror image of loneliness. Because a word didn't exist in the English language to even define that term, we made one up. We call it a loneliness. And that's the feeling that we are not getting enough time alone. It's a discrepancy between the quality and the quantity of the solitary time that we would like to have and what we are actually experiencing. Well, how would you know it would seem that you would know whether you feel like you're getting enough or not getting enough solitude and that it would be easy to fix, particularly if you needed more solitude, you would just close the door and lock it and then people can bother you. That's a fair response. If you don't know that it's a thing, if you don't know that it's possible to feel more stressed or more anxious or more sad or more angry because you're not getting enough solitude, if you don't know that that's even a possibility that it can impact you like that, it can be difficult to actually understand why you're feeling stressed. And when we've interviewed people, that's a common thing that they said. They would feel stressed, they'd feel anxious, they'd feel angry and they just wouldn't know why. And when we did some experiments and we did some research on it, it turns out that feeling like you're not getting enough time alone can lead to exactly those feelings. It can make you feel sad, it can make you feel frustrated, it can make you feel angry. And just giving a name to it and raising awareness at least allows for the possibility that people will say, oh, okay, so now I understand why I'm feeling so stressful and maybe I should just close the door and give myself a little bit of extra alone time each day. You know, I wonder if you can experience both of these things at the same time or almost at the same time where, you know, one moment you feel like you're just over connected and too many people need your attention and other times maybe you feel really lonely. You're making a really insightful point because what we're talking about is a satisfaction with a very specific component of our life. So loneliness is a dissatisfaction with our social lives. And you said something that's very true. You can spend a lot of time with people but still feel lonely. Just imagine going to a party where you don't know a lot of people, you spend the evening, you know, standing off to the side watching everybody apparently having a really nice time, having intimate conversations, laughing and, you know, sharing inside jokes. And you feel very disconnected from them even though you're right among them. And you might leave feeling even more lonely than when you got there. You might spend the day at work surrounded by other employees but not have a strong social connection with any of them and leave feeling more lonely than when you got there. So it's certainly possible to be among people and not and still sort of feel lonely. So you can be dissatisfied with that and feel like you're not getting enough good quality time with people. The same thing works with solitude. You can be spending some time alone but it might be time spent when you're having two chores that you don't want to do or you're being forced into solitude because you've moved to a new place and you haven't made any new friends yet or you might spend your time in solitude worrying and, you know, thinking bad thoughts. That's not a high quality solitary experience and so you could have that time alone and still not feel very satisfied with it. And you could be so busy that you just don't have control over your schedule. So you don't have control over your social schedule. You don't have control over your solitary schedule and you can end up dissatisfied with all of it. When you ask someone about the benefits of social connection and friendships and all that, they're quick to list many very good ones. What are the benefits of solitude other than, you know, it's quieter? Yeah, so I mean, a quieter is actually a pretty good place to start. The word, the one word that I would use to sort of as an umbrella term for all of the benefits of solitude, a lot of it has to do with freedom or different kinds of freedom. So for one thing, solitude provides freedom from. So when you're among other people, when you're outside in the world, it's noisy, it's busy, there's a lot of input into your senses. You have to watch how you behave. You have to watch what you say. You have to modulate your facial expressions and your posture and you've got to pay attention to what other people are saying and you're being bombarded with all these different kinds of sounds and input and it can really be exhausting. So for one thing, solitude is just a chance to catch your breath. It's freedom from that input. It's a chance for you to restore your battery, right? Calm yourself down. Solitude is a place where you have the freedom to, you know, have a respite, let the edge off of your negative emotions. It's a place where you can be more likely to experience calm. So you know, for one thing, it's just a break and I think quiet is a pretty good way of summarizing one of the, you know, one of the big advantages. So that's the sort of the freedom from the other side of that is also it's a freedom to. Solitude is a place where you have privacy, where you have control and autonomy over what you get to do. You choose to be you. You act as you choose. You can do the activities that you choose and there is an empowerment that comes with being able to, you know, make your own choices and do your own things and it becomes a place where you can engage in self-exploration and a chance where you can reflect and grow. And I also like to think of solitude as an incubator for creativity and problem solving. Well, it seems like everybody decides for themselves whether or not they have enough solitude or too much solitude and adjust accordingly. I mean, who else could decide that? The amount of solitude I may need may not be the same as you. Oh, that's, that's an extremely important point. And here I talk about something that's called the Goldilocks effect. Okay. So this is straight out of the fairy tale, right? So we all know the fairy tale of Goldilocks and the three bears and she's in the house and she's trying the three bowls of porridge and one is too hot and one is too cold. And then she finds the one that's just right, but it's just right for her. And that's what we think is going on with solitude and with socializing. So for each person, there's a just right amount of time alone and the just right amount of socializing that's going to be sort of maximal for optimizing your own well-being. But the thing is it's different for everyone. And so everyone needs to almost do like a little experiment. And what I suggest to people is, you know, keep a diary for a week or two. Well, you just record how much time you spent alone each day and how much time you spend with other people each day and record how you're feeling at the end of the day. And then just start looking for patterns and make some small adjustments and how much time you're spending with others, how much time you're spending alone if you can and see how that impacts upon your mood. Because you're right. It's only you individually who can say, this is the right amount of a long time for me. This is the right amount of solitary time for me. And finding that balance, that's what's going to help you do the best. That's what's going to make you feel the best. And that's why I'm always very suspicious when people make, you know, strong, prescriptive statements like everyone should spend six hours a day socializing and take a two hour walk in the woods and then they will be happy. It just doesn't work that way because it's different for everyone and that's okay. It just seems though, I mean, for people who need more time with others, people who don't have a lot of social connection, that seems to get that seems very difficult, that that's because you've got to coordinate your schedule with other people and it's, you've got to find some time and something to do that you both like and blah, blah, blah. Solitude seems to be pretty easy to call up and put into your life because you're just closing the door and keeping other people out. It doesn't seem as effortful. I mean, I can't even imagine it's as effortful to have solitude as it is to have social connection. I wonder if you might say that to a parent of three young children. There are certainly lots of people who are in situations where there are huge demands on their time and they are at work all day and then they come home at the end of the day after being around people all day and they have a family to take care of and they are with a romantic partner and they may find it almost impossible to get a moment by themselves. Certainly parents of young children are among the group that tell us that they miss time alone the most. One of the things that I think we should try to normalize is asking for that time alone. There's a lot of social pressures, particularly in western, you know, North American society, to socialize and that's a good thing. As I always say, you know, it is good to socialize and it is good to spend time with other people. It helps us, it makes us feel better. But sometimes it's also good to spend time for yourself and although some people might be in a situation where they can coordinate their schedules and plan in those solitary activities, which I think is a wonderful thing to do, not everybody's schedule is as flexible or has that kind of openness that allows them to do exactly what you're suggesting, which is just go in and close the door. If a mother of three, you know, young children goes in and closes the door to her bedroom, two minutes later they're all going to be knocking. Well, yeah, yeah, I'll give you that. I'll give you that. I'm speaking with psychologist Robert Copeland. He is author of the book, The Joy of Solitude, How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World. Of the Regency Era, you might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place, or as the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. The Regency Era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency Era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History, Regency Era, wherever you get podcasts. Hi, I'm pianist Maniacs. On my new podcast, Classical Music Happy Hour, my guests and I talk about life and music, and we also like to play games. Is it a composer or is it cheese? Oh, I know this game. Knowing Mozart, it's probably all of the above. It's all of the above. Is this a fake or was this a flop? Flop. That's more mistakes than I made in my last recital. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. So, Robert, when you look at people who do this well, who do solitude right, and I know everyone's different, but what is it they typically do? I mean, with their time, with their solitude, they don't just sit in a room in the dark and do nothing, or maybe they sit and watch Netflix and binge Netflix for a couple of hours. Is that a good use of your solitude? I mean, the short answer to that is yes. So, I think there's a lot of myths about solitude. One of them is that you need a two-hour walk in the woods to reap any benefits. And that's simply not true, although a two-hour walk in the woods can be certainly wonderful for some people. There's research that suggests that even 15 minutes a day is a reasonable amount of time for some people to spend alone, and they see concrete benefits for doing that. For some people, they might not even find that easy. They might have to start even smaller. And I like to say you need to, just like you're training for a race, right? You don't run the whole marathon on the first time. You have to kind of build up your solitude muscles, build up your capacity for solitude, and increase that time a little bit each day so you can plan it in and make it part of your regular routine. But you were touching on sort of what you do when you're alone. And again, I think there's this myth that in order to gain benefits from solitude, you need to, you know, put out a yoga mat and fold your legs and meditate for two hours. And again, meditation is great and has lots of benefits for our health and for our well-being, but that's not the only thing that you can do when you're alone in order to get some of these solitary benefits. It turns out if you're engaging in an activity that you personally find meaningful, enjoyable, engaging, it keeps your attention, it keeps your interest, then that is, you know, just as beneficial as perhaps even sitting and meditating for that time. The key is to find an activity that's personally interesting for you and that works for you. It's again, it's that same kind of personalization that I was talking about in terms of how much time you spend alone. Also, what you do with your solitary time is very much a personalized choice. And that's also okay. I guess the one caveat I would say on that is maybe don't use your solitary time to face time with friends, because then you're kind of, I would call that social washing your solitary time because you're using it still to communicate with other people. And that's not really solitude. And also maybe just don't scroll through social media because we know that doesn't make anybody happy under any circumstances. Well, I can imagine that people get this idea that it's a waste of time. Being alone and doing basically whatever you want is wasting your time. And then you feel guilty because you're just wasting your time rather than being out there with people doing productive things. Some people do very productive things when they're alone. Alone is, you know, solitude is a place where you can, you know, be directly focused and engaged and get lots of important tasks done. But it doesn't have to be only for that. And it's perfectly okay to have some downtime, to have some leisure time. And in fact, and I think we should be getting the message out about this even sort of, you know, shouting more loudly from the top of buildings, that it's okay to take a little bit of me time. It's okay to take a little time for yourself. And the experience of just having that downtime, doing something that's just enjoyable, or that's relaxing for you, it pays off. It makes you more productive when you are, you know, back to work. It makes you more sociable and enjoy your social interactions more when you are back with people. There's now good research suggesting that going back and forth, alternating between periods of solitude and periods of socializing, that is the optimal combination for making us feel happy, for, you know, raising our feelings of well-being. It's a best way to do creative brainstorming, you brainstorm in a group, and then you go off and think by yourself and you go back to the group. And it actually makes you feel better about your later social interactions. So if you have, you know, a romantic partner who you want to say sometimes to, you know, I love you, but I need to spend a few, you know, some time by myself right now. It's not because we have a bad relationship. It's not because, you know, there's a problem, but you can actually tell them now. Research suggests if you let me spend a little bit time by myself, it's going to pay off for both of us, because we're going to have more positive interactions. It's going to help our relationship later. Is the amount of solitude basically, it's just up to you? I mean, if you, but can you ever have too much or as long as it feels right, it's right. Yes. No, I agree that we, you know, we should be putting limits both on socializing and on solitude, right? So for some people, especially if you are extremely extroverted, you're a social butterfly, you always want to be around people, you know, you will go out of your way to avoid any time by yourself. And that's when I think people could use a little push to spend a little bit of extra time alone, you know, alone, even if they don't think they're going to enjoy it. We tend to be pretty poor predictors of how we're going to enjoy social and solitary experiences. So my advice for extroverts and sociable people who really spend most of their time and enjoy being with other people, that's great. And please go and do that, but also give yourself a little bit of a push to spend time by yourself and build up those solitude muscles. And then you have some people who really do enjoy spending that time alone, right? They enjoy the quiet time, they enjoy doing their own things, and maybe they're less comfortable when they're with other people. And for people like that, I would say, give yourself a little bit of a push to go interact with other people. You might not think that you're going to enjoy it, but it turns out even for people who are introverted and socially anxious and feel nervous about interacting even with strangers, even a short interaction with a stranger raises our mood and makes us feel better. So I think all of us could probably use a slight push in one direction or the other. But do you think that people who don't have enough solitude, like the mother with three kids knows it? Or are there people who don't have enough solitude, but are completely oblivious to that idea that they know I have plenty of time alone, I'm fine. Yeah, I mean, I'd like to hope that over the last few years, we've tried to sort of popularize the idea that it could be a problem to not get enough time alone. Some really interesting research suggests that when you are feeling like you want more alone time, you tend to blame the people around you. So when members of one member of a romantic couple feels like they are alone, that they don't have enough alone time, it makes them more angry at their romantic partner. And when a manager at work is feeling like they are overwhelmed and not having a moment to themselves, they tend to have more harsh interactions with their employees. So it certainly comes out in maybe even unexpected ways. And so I think it is really, it's almost like a public service announcement to make sure that people understand that this is a thing. If you don't get enough time alone for you, whatever that means, whether it's your 15 minutes or your four hours per day or however much it is, if that's not enough for you, if your need for solitude is not satisfied, it's likely to make you feel stressed, it's likely to make you feel sad or angry. And the only way that you'll be able to reduce those feelings is by giving yourself that sort of timeout. But are those feelings the test? In other words, if you feel fine about your alone time, you're fine about your alone time. I think that's pretty reasonable. So I mean, again, most people are going to fall somewhere in the middle, right? So some people are huge extroverts way on one end of the scale and others are huge solitude levels way on the other end of the scale. But most people fall somewhere in the middle, which means that we're all going to find a relative equilibrium, a relative balance between socializing and solitude. And that's just fine. And if you're feeling generally okay about it, then you're actually probably in the minority. We've done quite a few studies where we've just tried to get people satisfaction with their solitude and satisfaction with their social times. And you know, people are stressed. And when you're stressed, it means you don't feel like your time is your own and you can't control those circumstances. And we found that only about 20% of people are satisfied with the amount of time they get alone and the amount of time that they get with others. Well, it's interesting that there is, I guess, kind of a negative connotation. Like, you know, when kids are sent to their room, it's because they've been bad. So they get a time out. Like being alone, that's a punishment. And, you know, I don't want that. No, you're absolutely right. And I think we can try to change the script on that a little bit. And think again about solitude as, you know, solitude is often thought of as an empty place, right? A place where there's nothing to do. And, you know, it's all that's there is rumination and loneliness and anxiety. But solitude can be a full place. It could be a place that you can fill with what you choose to put there. And when you choose to go there, when you choose to go to that place and do things that you want to do, that you have the autonomy, the control to do, it can really, you know, help help you grow and help you understand yourself and make you, you know, understand yourself better, helps you understand others better. And like I said, ultimately improves your relationships with others. So it's clearly a balance. You need both time alone, time with other people. Yet mostly you hear about the need for connection. You don't hear a lot about the need for solitude, but clearly it's an important topic. I've been speaking with Robert Copeland. He is a psychologist who has spent 30 years studying the power of solitude. He is author of a book called The Joy of Solitude, How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Robert, thank you so much for being here. Okay, thanks so much, Micah. I hope that was okay. or wherever you listen new episodes weekly. Since we're publishing this episode on Christmas, it seems only right to wrap things up with one last Christmas segment and this time about Santa Claus himself and not the Hallmark version. My guest, Joe Beal is the founder and CEO of Microcosm Publishing and he has researched and written a book called A People's Guide to Santa Claus, The Secret History of Christmas from Saint Nick to Krampus and Yule. He's dug into some surprising, sometimes wild backstories of Santa and he's here to share what he found. Hi, Joe. Welcome to something you should know. Hello. Thanks for having me. Sure. So I know around the world there are variations of the story about Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas and who he is and where he came from, but is it that they all have a similar theme? They all kind of, it's somewhat similar or not? There's some similarity. I mean, and that's a good way of putting it, that there's not a lot of uniformity. I mean, in some cultures, Santa Claus is more of a punishing character where you're scared into submission and great behavior. And then in other cultures, you're rewarded into good behavior. And so I think that's probably the biggest fundamental difference. But then in many cultures, Santa Claus is really like a mischievous figure. That's really, that's where it gets you because in say Iceland or a lot of parts of Eastern Europe to this day, there's really a deeply held belief that Santa Claus is really there to make trouble and has a whole cast of characters that assist him with that. And so who is Santa? Well, and again, this is another hotly disputed item because in the original Santa Claus was Saint Nick, one of many Saint Nicks in Roman Christianity. But again, this is somebody that was never known to exist or there was there's no written record of him existing during his lifetime. Nobody began writing about him until 400 years after he would have lived. So he would have lived towards the end of the third century, you know, after Christ. But that's further complicated because, you know, Rome had occupied the region at the time. So they weren't keeping a lot of birth records about, you know, Christian bishops, which he was one, he was a very young bishop allegedly in the folklore. He had been captured from his, you know, he was from an area called Mira. And he was put in a Roman prison for a very long time again, all the without records, we don't know exactly how long. But when he was released and went back home, you know, he's like the bishop going back to where he came from, where he ostensibly rules to a certain degree. He came back to find out that he, everybody was telling him that the story was that he had died. And so it was his bravery of surviving a Roman prison that became, you know, so storied that they put him up for sainthood as, you know, partly as a result of that. But then like every Santa story, rumors began spiraling outward, stories became increasingly exaggerated. And that's sort of where we don't know the length of St. Nick's limit of his miracles. So we don't really know much of what happened there. But there was a guy there. There really was a St. Nicholas. Well, again, this is hotly disputed whether or not he actually ever existed, whether there was a real person or whether this was another figure that was held up to fulfill the character, because again, these type of stories predated the existence of the real person, depending on which culture you're drawing from. And so the Christians began using St. Nick as a way of present gift giving, obedient children. You could spend weeks of your life reading our various accounts, proving and disproving that he ever lived. But throughout time, though, the story has persisted in various versions. Who's prompt propping up the story? Why is this story so important that it continues to live on and grow and change? But why? It's like many, many other things. It's like the way Bigfoot has carried on in mythology for over 100 years. You really can't answer it other than it fascinates the imagination of the people that want to tell that story. And in a lot of cases, and in a lot of cultures, there's sort of an agenda around that. So during the Cold War, it was a way to shift Christmas to being against... At one time, we used to import a lot of presence from Germany. So World War II, to the relationship with the United States, there was quite a negative impact on that because we suddenly didn't want to be sending all of our economic might into a country that we were at war with. And so after World War II, we shifted Christmas from focusing on adults basically having a party to the modern, what I would call the Coca-Cola version of Christmas, which is the bright red suit, the presence, the tree, the chimney, the parts of the story that had always been there, but were given additional weight in about 1950. And then the beginning of... Maybe not the beginning. Santa had been a presence in malls before that, but it became more less about things like the Nutcracker or the Little Drummer Boy and more about, say, we have this ritual on Christmas morning with our family. So the ritual on Christmas morning about the family has been going on for how long? Well, in the United States, that became pretty normal around... In New England, it would date into the 1800s. And in the widespread United States into the... About 1920, that became pretty normal. And so, this is really not that long ago, all told. And one of the more fascinating aspects for me was talking to people about what their family of origin did to celebrate Christmas. But really, Christmas was supposed to always be about spending time together. And then it didn't really see the modern commercialization until about that point in 1950, where it became a point of like, we're going to go downtown and look in the windows and all the malls. And that was sort of a shift in another sense of how the family interfaced with it. And the shift happened because... Basically, because we didn't want to continue the relationship with Germany? That and during the Cold War, we didn't want to have that sort of relationship with the Soviet Union, who interestingly, they did not have Christmas in the earlier parts of the Soviet Union. But then they did add it later, because I think it's hard to market against, you know, something like getting presents and having time with your family. It's hard to otherwise that as an American tradition, because really, it's a pretty wholesome thing. But so, because America had a large economic boom after World War II, so we had a lot of money going into our economy. And then there had been a lot of wartime rationing. So I think part of it was like, we can relax, we can really celebrate this newfound wealth, we can get gifts for everybody. And this is kind of where we arrived at today. And then things like you know, Coca-Cola running a marketing campaign and creating the modern character alongside, you know, based on there were illustrations in Harper's Magazine, you know, about 70 years before that, you know, in the late 1890s, where they essentially took aspects of this character and modernized it. We don't know if the real St. Nick ever lived, but we do know that the modern version of Santa Claus is, I'd say, broadly agreed upon. But all of these things, it's like saying that Santa is real or fake. It's only as real or fake as say something like, you know, currency, money, you know, like it's like as real as the stock we put in it and the amount of belief and what we get out of it. Has Christmas always been tied to the birth of Christ? No. And again, that's another one that didn't really get unified until about 1500, where they really put that all together. Because as you may know, the birth of Christ, that's hotly debated exactly when that was to this day. And we know that that did not happen on Christmas. I mean, anywhere from, you know, there was a period in time where we were pretty convinced it was January 6th, you know, through research. But there's plenty of people that will contend for the summer. There's plenty of people that say there's no way it possibly happened in the winter. But the one thing that we have definitively ruled out is December 25. But again, a lot of that, the coagulation of Christmas, the birth of Christ, giving presents, a lot of that was to stamp out the pagan traditions and the way that different people celebrated the changing of the seasons. Once the Christian culture became the dominant culture, it was a way to sort of overwrite all of those and to really like cement their place on ruling the calendar. So a lot of what we've talked about, I mean, some of it is shrouded in mystery. We don't really know. It depends on who you talk to. It's not clear. But what is clear? What, when you did the research for this, what did you find that you can point to and say, you know, this is really interesting? You know, I think the thing that was really, really fascinating was the way that culture interfaced with Santa Claus. So for example, you know, there's lots of studies about how families wanted to see Santa in themselves. So when the white flight occurred to the suburbs, downtown Santa Claus, you know, places that you're at like a downtown mall, they began having black Santas. And that was really fascinating because through that, we got a lot of data at looking at, you know, how affirming it is to see a reflection of oneself in a figure, you know, when if you grow up, and I think this is true, you know, we do know that if St. Nick grew up in what is now Turkey, he would have been of a very dark complexion, if not black, you know. And, and so looking at it that way, everybody, when they create their modern version of Santa, it looks like what a person would look like in their culture. And so I think that is another fascinating aspect of how Santa becomes essentially a mirror of how we see our idealized self. What about some of the other peripheral characters in the story, you know, Mrs. Claus, the elves, where did that all come from? So that's a lot of that is a simplified version of other cultures. In Romania, I believe, is where the story of Santa having henchmen originated. And then a lot of various Nordic cultures as well, they would have their own versions of that. And I don't know, it's very unclear when, at which point, we, you know, Santa relocated to the North Pole, that's that's something that, you know, really probably was codified around 1950 in the United States. But originally, those characters were deeply mischievous. Even Mrs. Claus was originally a scarier version of Santa Claus in where Santa was the one that would bring you gifts. And Mrs. Claus would be someone that would maybe burry you for being a misbehaved child. But I think that doesn't really fit well with the modern idea of, you know, how the holiday works. So it became that Mrs. Claus took sort of a back seat to, you know, maybe she's like, taking care of Santa's business, making him cookies, you know, being cheery. And the elves shifted from people that were mischievous to also being in sort of an assistant role. And similarly, you know, the modernized reindeer, the sleigh, all that was, you know, taken from Nordic cultures and made into the version that, you know, essentially would be codified through cartoons. So talk about the presents. And, you know, we put presents under the tree, but why do we do that? What's the story there? The presents are more interesting. So, and this can be directly tied to the mythology of St. Nick, if he really existed. So there was, after St. Nick escaped from or was released from the Roman prison and came back to Mira, there were three children that were facing destitution. And so he took gold coins and he slipped them in through their windowsill and, you know, essentially so that the family would be able to survive outside of poverty. And this story was so inspiring to people in that region, you know, what would today be Turkey, that they began celebrating, you know, incorporating presents into the season. And, you know, it doesn't entirely fit the tradition because, you know, he's helping out somebody that is ostensibly a stranger who is in need. But people took it initially as that you would just sort of give presents to everybody. And then that shifted more and more into the nuclear family that you would give presents to people that you were related to. And then, you know, and then that was able to blossom over hundreds of years. Well, you had said that there were big moments in like the early 50s, World War II, maybe the 20s, some things started. What was Christmas like before that? Because that's not that long ago. So go back like 150 years. Do we know what Christmas looked like then? Right. So there was a point in time where the Christians actually tried to stomp out Christmas as unrelated to the faith. And so, again, much like the Soviets, this was fairly difficult because, you know, people really liked it. It was a fun holiday. And so they, you know, from what we know, you know, it was, we would have people gather, you know, and similarly to how Pagan celebrated the changing of seasons and, you know, the lengthening and shortening of the year, or of the daylight during the calendar year. Christmas was part of that where people would, you know, gather in their homes. They would have public celebrations. They would have, you know, different ways of essentially celebrating usually, you know, and they would, you know, they would have feasts and things like that, which I guess that's a part of the tradition that has been upheld. So what else about Christmas or Santa did you uncover that I might not know that would be fascinating to know? Christmas was connected to children in the first place because St. Nick, and this is again a nonverifiable story, but this is the version of the story that is shared, went into a pub one day, and he found, well, he just knew they don't really explain how he had this information, but that there were three children being pickled in the bar by the barkeep. And he reincarnated the children. Again, this is one of his many miracles. And this is how he was thought of as the patron saint of children at that time. And this again, just, I think it just captured imaginations, you know, not because of how many details are incomplete in this story, but because of the idea that he was thought to care about children so much that he went out of his way to, you know, rescue three kids that he didn't even know. And, you know, and this is at a time when life expectancy is not what it is today. And, you know, and so I think those are the kinds of stories about Christmas and about Santa and about St. Nick that to really hold onto is like, how do you live your values? And, you know, sort of who do you want to be? And are these traditions helping you to be more of that person? Well, great. Perfect way to wrap up our final discussion about Christmas this year. I've been talking to Joe Beal. He is author of the book called A People's Guide to Santa Claus, The Secret History of Christmas from St. Nick to Krampus and Yule. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Hey, Joe, God, Merry Christmas and thanks so much. Wonderful. Thank you so much. If you're a man and you got a dog for Christmas, your popularity is about to soar. A team of researchers surveyed over 1200 online daters and found that women were more than twice as likely as men to concede that they were only attracted to someone because they owned a pet. They were also twice as likely to judge a man based on how he interacted with his dog or cat. Furthermore, when asked, would you ever date someone who didn't like pets, an overwhelming majority of women said this would be a deal breaker, while men said yes or no in equal numbers. And that is something you should know. As I mentioned, this episode is publishing on Christmas Day, so let me take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And thank you for all your support and for listening to something you should know. Hey, it's Hillary Frank from the longest shortest time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. There is so much going on right now in the world of reproductive health and we're covering it all. Birth control, pregnancy, gender, bodily autonomy, menopause, consent, sperm, so many stories about sperm, and of course the joys and absurdities of raising kids of all ages. If you're new to the show, check out an episode called The Staircase. It's a personal story of mine about trying to get my kids' school to teach sex ed. Spoiler, I get it to happen, but not at all in the way that I wanted. We also talked to plenty of non-parents, so you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, the longest shortest time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at longashortestime.com.