Prognosticator of Prognosticators

On February 2, 2023 By Sarah AngletonIn Animals, Traditions, Weather12 Comments

On February 2, 1887, exactly one year after Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper editor Clymer Freas suggested the idea of an official Groundhog Day, a group of well-dressed and maybe just a little bit silly local businessmen who referred to themselves as the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club began a tradition that has to go down as one of the most ridiculous annual ceremonies I actually pay attention to.

I refer of course to that preferably not so bright Candlemas morning when the world’s most famous rodent named Phil appears before an adoring public to make an official statement regarding the amount of winter weather that remains to be endured.

The groundhog, aka woodchuck is an animal that is at least as good at long-range weather forecasting as it is at chucking wood, which it would probably do a lot of if it could. Image by Mona El Falaky from Pixabay

Officially known as Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators, and Weather Prophet Extraordinaire, Phil is allegedly the oldest groundhog on record at the whopping age of 136. That’s approximately 130 years longer than the expected lifespan of a groundhog.

Phil’s “Inner Circle,” which includes the world’s only human speaker of Groundhogese, explains that his exceptionally long life can be attributed to a life elixir he takes every summer, the side effects of which can cause him to occasionally change his physical appearance somewhat dramatically.

Okay, it’s quirky. Maybe even just plain weird, but the Groundhog Day celebration draws as many as thirty to forty thousand visitors to the tiny town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania every February second. Hordes of groundhog enthusiasts flock to Gobbler’s Knob, the site of Phil’s proclamation near Downtown Punxsutawney, and probably spend a fair bit of cash while visiting the community.

The movie that put Punxsutawney and Phil on the map was actually filmed in Woodstock, Illinois, which also has stupid cold February mornings. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And so, it makes perfect sense to have continued the event since the 1993 film Groundhog Day forced Bill Murray to live the day over and over again, and let the world know about this silliest of festivals. What makes less sense is that the annual tradition occurred for one hundred and six years before that. I somehow doubt that the members of the original Punxsutawney Groundhog Club foresaw a day when Hollywood would come knocking on Phil’s burrow.

Then again, they do have a connection to the Seer of Seers, and his accuracy in predicting whether spring is right around the corner or we will experience six more weeks of winter, is about 36%. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s less accurate than a coin flip.

But he is just a really old rodent. And groundhogs have not always been a part of such predictions. The Candlemas long-range forecasts themselves are actually much older, with a general acceptance that “If Candlemas Day is clear and bright, Winter will have another bite.”

Looking at this halfway point between the winter solstice and vernal equinox as a predictor of weather patterns coming into spring even predates Candlemas as a part of the Celtic celebrations of Imbolc. Groundhogs didn’t get mixed up with it until German immigrants brought the tradition with them to Pennsylvania and made it their very own.

Phil, looking super thrilled to be here. Chris Flook, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

But I guess it’s okay that they’re mixed up with it now. Punxsutawney Phil’s festival in Gobbler’s Knob has inspired at least thirteen similar festivals throughout the Eastern United States, because I guess it’s something to do while we wait out the last six or so weeks of winter. So, here we go again.

I have been known from time to time to be delighted by silly traditions and I confess that I have a fair few bizarre events on my bucket list. Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, dear reader, is not one of them, mostly because February mornings in Pennsylvania are really stupid cold. For you, however, I did watch the livestream of Phil’s pronouncement this morning from the comfort of my warm living room while still in my pajamas.

I may not have been there, but Miss Pennsylvania was, and so was the governor of the state, as well as a large number of reporters who were probably questioning their career choices. The top hat-clad president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club was there, too. He had a lengthy conversation with a rodent, who I’m sad to say, predicted six more weeks of winter, and there’s only a 64% chance he’s wrong.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Advice for Avoiding Goblins and Drummers

On January 5, 2023 By Sarah AngletonIn Holidays, Traditions8 Comments

A few days ago, on January first, I took down my Christmas decorations. I did this for a few reasons. First, as much as I love the holiday season, after six weeks of it, I do get tired. And it really is six weeks at our house. We decorate the day after Thanksgiving, more or less without fail and remain decorated until at least the new year.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, then you may recall that our version of decorating is no small task. It involves nine feet of Christmas tree, snowflake throw pillows, much garland wrapping, and lighted geese in the front yard. This is nowhere near an exhaustive list, but it gives you an idea. As it says on our seasonal welcome mat, we’re like really into Christmas.

Second, after a Christmas spent with the deep freezer working overtime, the Midwest offered up a miraculous sixty-degree, sunny day perfect for pulling up lantern stakes from the yard and removing light strings from the roof. If I could ignore the coming two-and-a-half months of cold that remain this winter, it felt a bit like a spring cleaning kind of day.

I’m talking about the kind of day in which one might take a minute organize the Christmas storage boxes in the basement instead of continuing to shove the reindeer salt and pepper shakers into the same box as that string of broken lights that may offer up some replacement bulbs for the ones we used to use that looked kind of similar, except they included purple bulbs in addition to red, green, blue, and yellow.* That’s right. Not only did I put away our cherished Christmas decorations. I threw away a bunch of old, broken ones we no longer use. I was basically on fire.

The 2022 calculated cost of the gifts in *Twelve Days of Christmas* is $45,523.27. In case you needed another inflation index, that’s up 10.5% from 2021. Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay

And obviously the third reason I took down the Christmas decorations promptly on January first is because I didn’t want to risk, depending on who you ask, a case of bad luck, a possible goblin invasion, or the shock of hosting twelve drummers drumming in my home.

Because evidently Christian tradition dating back to the sixth century suggests that holiday decorations are perfectly acceptable at least until Epiphany, the day the wise men arrive on scene and twelfth and final day of Christmas. To leave them up any longer is, for many, a holiday faux pas that might just bring you bad luck or goblins or at the very least a disgruntled homeowners association.

I’m not sure I fully understand. Outside of singing the song about giving someone an alarming number of birds, I have never observed the twelve days of Christmas. Most of the traditions I grew up with and have continued in my own home occur in the lead up to and on the day of Christmas itself, which is why by the twelfth day of Christmas, on January 5^th or 6^th (depending on particular brand of Christianity or perhaps counting habits), I’m plum tired out.

I didn’t even put them away in a wadded mess this year. Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

Right now, I’m looking around my bland, non-Christmas-decorated house on a day that is neither sixty degrees nor sunny, and I’m grateful to have gotten all the work out of the way several days ago. I’m also happy to report that there doesn’t seem to be a penalty for taking the decorations down early.

But if yours are still up, then today might just be the day. I tell you this because I care and because I don’t want to see your home invaded by goblins. Or drummers.

*I wish I could honestly claim this isn’t a real example from my life, but it is.

Rockefeller Around the Christmas Tree

On December 15, 2022December 14, 2022 By Sarah AngletonIn Holidays, Traditions12 Comments

On December 24,1931 a construction crew was hard at work on a twenty-two-acre building site between 48^th and 51^st Streets in Midtown Manhattan. Two hundred twenty-eight buildings had been razed, forcing the relocation of several thousand tenants for what was originally meant to be the new site of the Metropolitan Opera.

James G. Howes, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons

The stock market crash of 1929 and the economic depression that followed made the planned move impossible. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who had leased the land from Columbia University for the Opera’s use quickly reformulated a plan to build up a mass media entertainment complex with Radio Corporation of America and its subsidiaries. Over the next several years it would develop into the Rockefeller Center with nineteen buildings and a sunken square annually featuring an iconic ice rink guarded by a humongous Christmas tree passed by half a million people per day.

But on Christmas Eve of 1931, the public wasn’t yet thrilled with the plans for the space and there was still a lot of zoning red tape in the way. The Italian-American crew, however, was hopeful. They had work, when so many did not, and the promise of much more on the horizon. And it was the night before Christmas. What they needed was a great big tree.

The workers and their families chipped in to purchase a twenty-foot-tall balsam fir that they erected in the middle of the muddy construction site and decorated with cranberries, paper, and tin cans. I’m sure the tree wouldn’t have looked all that impressive alongside the fifty-footer that two years later officially became what the Rockefeller Center’s website refers to as “a holiday beacon for New Yorkers and visitors alike.”

Daniel Dimitrov, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Even fifty feet seems tiny when compared to the trees now used, which typically range between seventy-five and eighty-five feet tall, and once even as much as one hundred feet. The decorating of this beast of a tree takes dozens of workers more than a week to complete before the nationally broadcast lighting ceremony that takes place every year after Thanksgiving.

Still, I think twenty feet is pretty impressive, if not even a little bit excessive. Many years ago, when my family and I lived in a different house in a different state, our living room had a high, vaulted ceiling. My husband, who pretty much loves all things Christmas, decided we needed a bigger Christmas tree to better fit our space than the measly seven-and-a-half-footer we’d been getting by with.

I couldn’t find a picture of our twelve-foot tree, but it pretty much looked like this, except three feet taller.

I took some convincing, but he found a good deal on an artificial (due to family allergies and general disdain of sap and spiders) tree that was twelve feet tall and since he was willing to move the ladder around to decorate the top five feet, I agreed to the purchase.

That first year the tree was a little sparsely decorated with our seven-and-a half-feet worth of ornaments and I can see why the construction workers at Rockefeller Center would have resorted to using tin cans to fill the space. The tree was gorgeous, and it made my husband very happy. I did, however, feel a little bit like I was living in a shopping mall. Or maybe at Rockefeller Center.

It didn’t completely break my heart when the next house came with lower ceilings and we had to trade down. Over the years we’ve managed to reach a compromise and now put up a nine-footer, which is still awfully pretty, but doesn’t require nearly as much ladder manipulation to decorate.

I do see him staring at it sometimes, though, probably thinking he could fit another several inches beneath the ceiling. Maybe someday we will. It is, after all, a holiday beacon for us and for visitors alike.

A Little More Magical

On December 8, 2022December 8, 2022 By Sarah AngletonIn Architecture, Holidays, Traditions17 Comments

During the season of Advent in about 1880 or so, the mother of Gerhard Lang made her young son a cardboard calendar featuring twenty-four sweets, one per day, with which to mark off the time until Christmas. She surely wasn’t the only mother to do something like this for her child.

Advent was introduced as a four-week (give or take) period of preparation leading up to Christmas by Pope Gregory I in the early seventh century. It took a while to catch on, but by the nineteenth century, German families in particular were finding clever ways to keep track of the days. Some used tear-away pages or tally marks on doorframes. Others lit candles or placed markers on ladder rungs.

But it was Gerhard Lang who is generally given credit for popularizing the advent calendar style most people use today, as a direct result of the creativity of his mother and his resulting magical childhood. When Gerhard grew up and became a printer, he remembered the calendar his mother had made for him and began mass producing a twenty-five-day calendar with doors to be opened each day leading up to Christmas in the month of December. Behind each door was a picture or Bible verse.

I guess that’s one way to make your holiday season a little more magical, but I think I’d rather have the chocolate.

Then in 1958, Cadbury began producing Advent calendars with twenty-four chocolate treats to be enjoyed one at a time from December first to somewhere around December fourth, which is about as long as any chocolate Advent calendar has ever lasted for me.

But like Gerhard Lang, I had a pretty magical childhood. Not only did my dad usually purchase an inexpensive chocolate Advent calendar for me and for each of my siblings from the local high school German club’s annual fundraiser, but my mom also made a calendar for the family that we took turns opening.

Behind each door of the homemade version, my mom would write tasks we needed to do to get ready for Christmas. This included things like decorating the Christmas tree, making Christmas cards, or baking Christmas cookies. Sometimes our tasks were service projects for others or chores that needed to be done before Santa could come. Other times we found them more fun, like driving to look at Christmas lights or visiting with the big jolly elf himself. Seriously, my childhood was magical.

As far as anyone has found, this is the world’s tallest Advent calendar. (Thank you to my sister for the picture. I haven’t gotten there to see it for myself yet.)

And this year, in my hometown, the season has gotten even a little bit more magical. A few months ago, one of my favorite former teachers (who gets credit for my appreciation of The Great Gatsby) was in the town square and happened to notice something. He looked up at a tall brick Farmer’s Bank building that has stood guard over the old downtown for more than a century and counted the windows. On one side, there are exactly twenty-four of them.

An idea was born. The teacher solicited some help from around town (including the artist who designs my book covers) and approached the bank to ask if they might make what they believed would be the world’s tallest Advent calendar. The answer was an enthusiastic yes.

And that’s how Christmas in my corner of the world became a little more magical.

A Small Fault in These Parts

On October 6, 2022 By Sarah AngletonIn Traditions11 Comments

On April 10, 1567, Englishman Ralph Adderly wrote a letter to soldier and politician Sir Nicholas Bagnall. In it, Adderly described his brother-in-law John Bagot in an almost flattering way. The original excerpt is in pre-uniform English spelling, but translated to meet a more modern reader’s expectations it says this:

“I do assure you he is unsuspected of any untruth or other notable crime (except a white lie) which is taken for a small fault in these parts.”

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this is the first known reference to the phrase “white lie,” largely held to be a lie that’s not so bad—one that is told in order to avoid conflict, forestall embarrassment, or to protect the recipient, and is more or less benign in nature.

Of course, one man’s bent truth is another man’s vicious load of . . . well, you get the idea. Still, most of us have probably told the occasional white lie when the plain old truth might be needlessly hurtful or when we’re writing a blog post and our research has been somewhat less than thorough because man has it been a week.

I mean, I would never do such a thing, but I assume a lot of you probably have.

I know that the students and faculty of my youngest son’s high school have done so. It’s homecoming week here which means this coming weekend will be packed with football, parading, and dancing. The weekdays, too, have been filled with powderpuff football, pep rallies bursting with team spirit, and themed dress-up days.

My favorite so far has been “white shirt/white lies day.” On this day, students and teachers wore white tee shirts on which they had written a white lie. Some of the shirts I saw included: “I’m a people person,” “I’ll pay you back,” “I’m not smarter than you,” “I don’t seek validation,” and my personal favorite, “Just because I’m blonde doesn’t mean I’m dumb.”

I’m not entirely sure that the school should be promoting lying of any kind, just as I am entirely certain that some parent will be complaining about it at the next schoolboard meeting. It won’t be me, because I thought it was awfully clever, and in a way, kind of perfect for this particular school’s homecoming celebration.

And then there’s the pretty dresses and the corsages. Image by Stacey Kennedy from Pixabay

The notion of homecoming at my son’s school is itself a little bit of a white lie, as this is only the school’s second year in existence and the first year there will be a graduating class. What this means is that technically speaking, there is literally no one to come home to this school.

But every high school has homecoming football and pep rallies and dances and parades and spirit days. It’s too much fall fun to miss. So, what if it’s all a little bit of a lie? It’s not hurting anyone, and the decision to do all the homecoming things for the benefit of all the nonexistent alumni avoids the conflict that would arise from not doing it, which would also surely find its way to the next schoolboard meeting.

In the wise words of some guy named Ralph Adderly, it seems like nothing more than a small fault in these parts.

Harpin’ Boont on the Bucky Walter

On February 24, 2022 By Sarah AngletonIn Language, Traditions10 Comments

It was somewhere around 1862 when John Bregartes arrived in the Anderson Valley of California, a little more than a hundred miles north of San Francisco, and founded the little town of Boonville. And it wasn’t long after that when the farmers, ranchers, and loggers who came to live in this fairly isolated community started to develop a language of their own.

Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Of course, every region’s got one to some extent. If you come to my corner of the world here in St. Louis, for example, you might drive farty-far to get some t-ravs, go to the laundromat to warsh your clothes, and then grab a concrete for a treat. If someone accidentally bumps into you along the way, you’ll likely hear them say “Ope!” and they’ll expect you to respond with a friendly, “You’re fine.”

We’ve all got our little quirks, maybe made slightly more accessible by the mingling and spreading of regional expressions across the internet where I learned not so long ago that a take-a-plate dinner in New Zealand is the same thing as a potluck supper in the Midwestern US.

But what Boonville, California has going is much more than a few quirky expressions that rose up over time. By the dawn of the twentieth century, it had an entire language all its own.

I’m not sure what the Boontling word is for potluck. U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Though Boontling is based on English, it contains more than a thousand unique words and expressions that show influence from Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Spanish, and Indigenous languages and is peppered with the names and experiences of generations of Boonters.

So, Bucky Walter is a payphone, because bucky is the word for nickel and a guy named Walter was the first person in town to have a telephone. To me this sounds a little like getting directions from a local that include turning left at the corner of the field Fred used to own that once had that big red barn that burned down thirty years ago. Except it’s a whole language with standardized grammatical patterns and there’s no GPS to guide you to the right address.

No one is quite sure why the small town invented its own language, though there are plenty of stories. Most suggest that it was a convenient way for one group of people to speak secretly about another group (wives gossiping about husbands, elders wanting to exclude youngsters, or vice versa), which led eventually to the tightknit residents of Boonville using it to keep themselves to themselves when strangers came to town.

Where St. Louis goes to eat its frozen custard concretes. Philip Leara, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The real mystery to me, however, is why it has persisted for so long. This peculiar language which has never traveled much outside of the Anderson Valley and has probably never been spoken by more than a thousand people at any time its history, has existed for nearly a century and a half. How cool is that?

Unfortunately, the number of fluent speakers has dwindled in recent years to include only a handful of people. Over the years it has generated lots of interest for linguists, but not as much for the youngest generations of Boonters. One source I found laments the fact that the elementary school no longer teaches Boontling, which indicates that at one time it did.

The Anderson Valley Historical Society would like to keep the language alive a little bit longer and has provided a nice glossary to get you started if you’ve a mind to learn to harp Boont on the Bucky Walter. Maybe you can even get together with your apple head, pike to grab aplenty bahl steinberhorn, and have yourself the bahlest harpin’ session you ever had. Or you could just stick to English and go out for concretes.

A Blog Post for the Rest of Us

On December 23, 2021February 17, 2022 By Sarah AngletonIn Holidays, Popular Culture, Traditions14 Comments

I am a big fan of holiday tradition. My family has a lot of them, from watching Christmas Vacation on the day after Thanksgiving to eating cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas day. Some of them are pretty normal, like spending an evening driving around to look at Christmas lights or eating a special dinner before attending church on Christmas Eve. Others are a little more unique like topping our Christmas tree with a star that is in turn topped with a candy cane or donning new pajamas after church on Christmas Eve before going to the movies.

But I like to think that none of our traditions are quite as out there as the one observed in the O’Keefe household on December 23. It was sometime around 1966 when author Daniel O’Keefe introduced his family to a new kind of celebration, one that marked the anniversary of his first date with his wife and took a moment to step away from the commercialism of the Christmas season.

O’Keefe called the family celebration “Festivus,” and when his mother died ten years later, they continued to celebrate the day as a unique little holiday “for the rest of us,” meaning those who were still alive to enjoy it.

Some traditions are not worth keeping alive, like chestnuts roasting over an open fire. Turns out they’re kind of gross.

The observance of Festivus in the O’Keefe household involved a simple family meal, a clock placed in a bag that was then nailed to the wall, the airing of grievances, recognition of the mundane as the miraculous, and feats of strength.

Actually, it’s not entirely clear to me whether all of these elements existed in the original O’Keefe Festivus celebration or if some of them come only from the Seinfeld episode that launched this quirky family tradition into the mainstream in 1997. Daniel O’Keefe’s son Dan was a writer for the sitcom and allegedly he didn’t want the tale of Festivus explored in an episode, but was overruled by his fellow writers who heard about it and thought it was hilarious.

The holiday looked a little different on the small screen than it had in the O’Keefe household. The clock and bag nailed to the wall (for what reason, no one can say) was replaced by an unadorned aluminum Festivus pole, and the airing of grievances began with George’s father Frank Costanza announcing, “I got a lotta problems with you people and now you’re going to hear about it!” after a fairly generic meatloaf dinner. Feats of strength became a wrestling match with the head of the household, the pinning of whom signaled the end of the celebration. And the inconvenient coincidences and misunderstandings worthy of any good sitcom episode became Festivus miracles.

There it is, in all its high strength to weight ratio aluminum glory, right next to the leg lamp from *A Christmas Story.*

When asked by Mark Nelson, the writer behind FestivusWeb.com and Festivus! The Book!, the definitive work on the holiday, whether Dan O’Keefe still observes Festivus, he answered. “No.” But thanks to the Seinfeld episode, lots of people now do. Festivus poles have adorned the Wisconsin’s governor mansion, the Florida State Capitol building, and, I recently discovered, the holidays through the ages tree display at the “Christmas Traditions” festival in St. Charles, Missouri.

It’s worth noting, too, that as I type this, editing software has no problem with the word “festivus,” as long as I capitalize it. And if for some reason you hop on Twitter today, I’ve no doubt #Festivus and #AHolidayForTheRestOfUs will be trending.

But Festivus will probably not be a big part of my day. In preparation for writing this post, I revisited the Seinfeld episode (“The Strike,” season 9) with my 14-year-old who said, “Well, that’s stupid.” He’s not wrong. It is stupid, but come to think of it, I do have a few grievances to air:

Yesterday, I ended up on a group text with literally no one whose name is saved in my phone and endured an hour or so of twenty unidentifiable people wishing all of us a merry Christmas while I was trying to use my phone to listen to an audio book.
Missouri drivers continue to ignore the basic stop sign rule of stop first, go first, and instead, insist on waving on the other drivers at a 4-way stop. I’m especially annoyed when I get waved on and it is actually my turn. Because I know the rule and don’t need the prompt.
My children continue to leave a trail of dirty socks and dishes everywhere they go. I do not know how to make this stop.

If I managed to serve a meatloaf that my children would eat, that would be a Festivus miracle. Image by valtercirillo, via Pixabay

Also, though it doesn’t seem likely that I will wind up wrestling anyone today, my youngest son has recently become obsessed enough with working out that he has created a fitness schedule for all of us through winter break and I’m pretty sure it’s leg day. I’m going to say that counts as my feat of strength.

And then there’s the fact that in the midst of all the other silly, but somehow important, Christmas traditions around my house, I managed to post to my blog just two days before the big day. That is something of a Festivus Miracle.

So, dear reader, Happy Festivus. I guess. Enjoy your meatloaf. Feel free to air your grievances in the comments.

The State of Christmas Puke

On December 2, 2021 By Sarah AngletonIn Holidays, Traditions11 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad December is finally here. The last half of November is a little bit of a blur to me. It included two memorial services, lots of family visiting, many houseguests, a gigantic gathering for Thanksgiving at my house, and a book launch.

It’s not as bad as it might seem at first glance. I enjoyed catching up with family I don’t see very often. My houseguests were helpful people who I love a lot and, for a while, included an exceptionally snuggly six-month-old. Big family holiday gatherings, while chaotic, are also really fun and this one was no exception. The memorial services were emotionally challenging, but ultimately uplifting, too. And the book launch was stressful, with ongoing promotional efforts that fall way outside my comfort zone, so pretty much exactly what I expected there.

Still, I’m tired. My family is tired. My dog is probably going to do nothing but nap for the next month. And my house is kind of messy. I wasn’t sorry to see the month of November fade into the past. We all are in need of a little Christmas.

Who needs an elf on the shelf when you’ve got one of these?

I have mentioned in this space before that I’m married to a man who likes Christmas lights. Early on in our marriage, he liked Christmas lights a lot more than I did, though over the years he has slowly converted me. I think this is partly the fault of the Christmas light industry because lights are so much more efficient and long lasting than they used to be. There was a time when it made perfect sense to buy one new decorative something each year, because surely one of the older ones had run its course. Now they just accumulate. And I have learned to embrace it.

He put up lights the Saturday after Thanksgiving this year, the same time I decorated the tree, wrapped the banisters in garland, set up the nativity scene, and found a home for our Hawaiian shirt-clad Santa garden gnome.

When it was all done, we gathered together to take in the scene, including colorful lights along the roof line, glittering ice cycles above the front door, snowflakes dangling above the garage, a lighted wreath, two giant neon snowflakes above the front windows, chasing lights lining the driveway, a glowing snowman, and holiday projections. That’s not actually the full list, and if you’ve read my book, Launching Sheep & Other Stories, yes, we still have the Christmas geese, though they have undergone major surgery in the last few years.

Maybe we could be the Show Me Your Christmas Geese State.

It’s almost more than I can fully take in. As one of my oh-so-charming sons declared, it’s like “Christmas puked on our house.” Gross as it may sound, that is probably an apt description, and it even feels somehow appropriate since I recently learned that we live in “The Puke State.”

Missouri had quite a few nicknames over the years before settling on the current “Show Me State” boldly proclaimed on our license plates. Our most disgusting one allegedly arose from the 1827 discovery of lead ore near the town of Galena in the northern part of Illinois. Citizens of Missouri were quick to take notice and swarm to the area in hopes of growing rich on the mining boom.

And boy did they swarm, so much so that former Illinois Governor Thomas Ford wrote in 1854, it was as if Missouri had puked onto its neighboring state. And that’s how we became The Puke State, and how Missourians came to be known as Pukes. Of course, if one looks at current population trends, we could give the nickname back to Illinois.

My current welcome mat, and also a possibility for a state slogan without the word puke in it.

But I don’t think we should. The Missouri legislature has never actually adopted any state nickname, perhaps thinking they might have more important things to do. “Show Me State” became unofficially official in 1980 when it appeared on the license plate design. Still, I think there’s some flexibility here.

Now, I’m not suggesting that I’d like to be referred to as a “Puke.” It’s not a very nice word. But if we reframe it a little, we could probably make it work for us, maybe combine our unofficial slogans a little bit. I certainly wouldn’t mind, in concept, living in the state Christmas pukes on, with all its glittery lights and good holiday cheer. And I have to say, my neighbors are bringing it this year. Maybe November was rough on everybody and we all just need a little Christmas. So go ahead, Missouri, show me your Christmas puke.

Why Ghosts are so Bad at Telling Jokes

On October 28, 2021July 28, 2022 By Sarah AngletonIn Halloween, Traditions9 Comments

Halloween is nearly upon us, which means it’s that time of year when we all better be prepared for little costumed ghouls and goblins to knock on our doors, throw flour in our faces, and tell us they hate us before scurrying off to dance wildly about the leaping flames of a bonfire in the middle of the street.

Or maybe not. I recently watched the musical movie Meet Me in St. Louis for the first time, which in itself is a shock, given that I live just outside of St. Louis and have been known to join in a singalong of the title song with 40,000 or so of my closest friends at sporting events in the city. But that’s nothing compared to the shock of the film’s depiction of a typical St. Louis Halloween celebration circa 1903, as experienced by Agnes and Tootie, dressed as a “horrible ghost” and a “terrible, drunken ghost.”

Of course, the mother in me had a visceral reaction to the scene, which is rude and scary and feels terribly dangerous. And I was also confused, because that is not how Halloween is done in St. Louis today. In fact, one of the more charming things about the city is that we have a really sweet and innocent and fairly unique tradition on Halloween night.

Now, it’s not uncommon to see neighbors gathering around fire pits, sipping hot chocolate and handing out candy, but in the nearly eight Halloweens I’ve been here, I’ve never once come across a gang of children tossing furniture into a bonfire in the middle of the street. And while I suppose we do get the occasional horrible ghost or terrible, drunken ghost that shows up to ask for a Halloween treat, I usually see a lot more Disney princesses and superheroes than anything else.

The best part is that almost all of our costumed visitors come prepared with a joke or two to share. I’m talking scary awful, groan-worthy jokes, like the kind you would read in a bubblegum wrapper or like the kind that might encourage you to give someone a piece of candy just so they’ll go away.

Not every kid will tell one. There are always some who are too little or too shy or too nonverbal, and that’s okay. Our candy distribution is not dependent on anyone’s joke-telling prowess, but it is a fun little tradition and no one really knows for sure how it got started.

The best guess comes from local folklorist John Oldani who believed it descended from an influx of Irish immigrants holding onto remnants of the Gaelic harvest festival of Samhain. A lot of Halloween traditions were likely influenced by Samhain, including costumes, pumpkin carving, bonfires, and the offering of a song or poem or even a joke in exchange for a fun size Snickers.

No one seems to know why this took hold so firmly in the St. Louis area and not really elsewhere, except that perhaps the city started encouraging it as an alternative to pranks and vandalism and bonfires in the middle of Kensington Avenue. It seems to have arisen alongside trick-or-treating itself around 1940 or so. Maybe it was even a reaction to the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis that convinced the mothers of St. Louis that we needed a little more charm to our Halloween.

However it happened, the city has embraced it and come Halloween night, I’m pretty sure I’m going to hear some truly awful jokes. Maybe I’ll get lucky and hear some poems, too. And there’s probably a full-size candy bar in it for any terrible, drunken ghost that sings “Clang, clang, clang went the trolley.”

If you’ve got a good (or bad) Halloween joke, I’d love to hear it!

A Salute to Twenty-One

On August 5, 2021August 5, 2021 By Sarah AngletonIn Courtship, Traditions17 Comments

It’s the number of dots on a standard six-sided die and the total over which you can’t go in a hand of Blackjack. It’s the age at which a young American can legally drink and the number of the Amendment that restores the right to do so after the eighteenth Amendment took that right away.

In 1808, it became the official standardized number of cannon shots fired for a royal salute in Great Britain, a tradition that started as a symbol of exhausting one’s easily accessible ammo in order to signal peaceful intent. The United States wouldn’t adopt the number for saluting purposes officially until 1890, because ‘Mericans tend to be stubborn and they preferred their salute to correspond to the number of states in the union. Eventually, that began to seem like an awful lot of trouble, and twenty-one, like a pretty good compromise.

For me, the number twenty-one has gained a new significance this week as my husband and I celebrate twenty-one years of marriage. That’s twenty-one years in which we have lived in five different homes in three states, become the parents of two children, and shared so many private jokes that we probably don’t really need to talk at all anymore to make each other laugh. We’ve supported each other through schooling and job changes, through lots of frustrations and even more joys.

For almost ten years, he has been the first to read nearly every post that finds its way to this space, and a few that didn’t make cut, and has titled many of them. We share an appreciation for stupid puns, little known ska/punk bands, and overstuffed burritos.

So, this week, we mark an amazing twenty-one years. A quick internet search tells me that the traditional symbol for the twenty-first anniversary is brass. We’re not gamblers or big drinkers and I’m fresh out of cannons, but we are pretty big fans of brass. Happily “our song” comes with a healthy dose of it. Sounds like a celebration to me: