The Roman two-faced god of transitions and the start of a new year.
Since the Romans “borrowed” large amounts Greek culture, it’s fun to find mythological traditions that are uniquely Roman. Janus is a Roman god with no Greek equivalent. He was created before the importation of the Greek pantheon and even before the foundation of Rome itself. Typically he is depicted as just a head with two faces looking in opposite directions. He’s the god of transitions, change, beginnings & endings, of doorways & gates, etc. He faces both the past and the future.
Originally spelled Ianus, since the letter “J” wasn’t added to the Western alphabet until after 1524 CE, janus meant “arched passage, doorway” in Latin. There were numerous jani (ceremonial gateways) built throughout Rome as superstitious freestanding structures for good luck and to bring about good beginnings.
The exact origin of Janus is unclear. There are theories that he was originally a sun god, as the sun would be the beginning of a new day, but this isn’t certain. What is better known is that he presided over beginnings and was invoked at the start of ceremonies. His being the gatekeeper to the gods meant you made an offering to him before reaching out to any of the other gods.
Janus in profile. Sometimes the faces are identical, but other times the one face is older & bearded while the other face is clean-shaven & younger.
Start All Over Again
Janus’s role as the god of transitions led to the month of January being named for him, as on January 1st we start not only a new day but a new month and a new year as well. The Romans believed that how something started was an indication of how it would go. An inauspicious start could prove disastrous to a new venture so it was important to make an offering to Janus.
So it became customary on January 1st to not only honor Janus, but to give gifts & well-wishes to other Romans. This could set the standard for the rest of the year. At the start of a new year it’s valuable to not just look back, but also to look forward to something new.
The pound, the lira, dinero, the dinar – they all come from Roman money.
Early in the Roman Empire the Romans used Greek coins as their currency, in keeping with how the Romans “borrowed” lots of Greek culture. Eventually they replaced Greek coins with bronze ingots, replaced those with lumps of bronze called aes rude (aka “rough bronze”), and finally started seriously producing bronze coins called “as” (plural, and amusingly, “asses”) around 280 BCE.
In addition to bronze coins, the Romans started to produce silver coins around 226 BCE which became the denarius (plural, “denari”). The denarius became the standard currency and was worth 10 asses. As the Roman empire spread across the world their currency went with them which formed the basis of other currencies.
Mucho Dinero
Denarius, the name of the Roman silver coin, became the basis for the word “money” in several languages.
Italian = denaro
Slovene = denar
Portuguese = dinheiro
Spanish = dinero
Denarius also became dinar, the name of the currency still used today in several North African and Middle Eastern countries.
Weight
The Romans called one pound of weight a libra, related to why the Zodiac symbol for Libra is a set of scales. Unfortunately the Romans had a confusing problem of semi-regularly changing their weight and coin values. To create order from centuries of changes, Charlemagne created a new system in the 780s CE where one pound (a libra) of silver equaled 20 solidi (gold coins) which equaled 240 denari.
As the Roman system spread, the word libra was translated to local languages. The local translations became the names of multiple world currencies.
Turkey, and formerly Italy (among others) = lira
France before the revolution = livre
In English we abbreviate 1 pound of weight as 1 lb, the “lb” coming from the word libra. As for the pound currency, the pound uses a stylized “L” which also comes from the Roman libra. This is why the pound symbol is an “L” and not a “P”.
Beyond just getting the £ symbol from the word libra, countries that used the pound system frequently also took the three-tiered Roman monetary system of libra to solidi to denari. This became the basis of the pound, shilling, pence system of money. This triple system eventually was eliminated as the decimal system of currency became the standard. The British converted to the decimal system in 1971 but only eliminated the shilling in 1991.
Added info: In the Harry Potter series the wizarding world also uses the Roman inspired three-tiered monetary system, but features galleons, sickles, and knuts instead of libra, solidi, and denari (or pounds, shillings, and pence to keep it British). In this system 1 galleon equals 17 sickles which equals 493 knuts.
Santa’s reindeer are all female and possibly on drugs.
Our primary source of information regarding Santa’s reindeer is the 1823 Clement Clarke Moore poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (aka ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas). As one of the most influential cultural artifacts regarding Santa Claus, the poem tells us that Santa’s sleigh is pulled through the air by eight reindeer. Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, is optionally added to the front of the team based on the Robert Lewis May 1939 story.
Who is flying the sled?
Reindeer are a species of deer and, as an Arctic and sub-Arctic animal, they are well-suited to assist Santa at the frigid North Pole (even though they are not naturally found at the pole). They graze primarily on lichen which is found a bit south of the North Pole. Their ability to see ultraviolet light, an ability shared with other deer, allow reindeer to spot food, predators, and mates more easily amongst the highly reflective snow.
Christmas greeting card from 1921 featuring Santa and his flying antlered reindeer.
In pop-culture Santa’s reindeer are almost always depicted as having antlers. Both male and female reindeer grow, shed, and regrow their antlers. Male reindeer shed their antlers around November once mating season has ended but female reindeer keep their antlers until late May (giving expecting reindeer mothers the ability to defend food sources throughout the winter). That said, castrated male reindeer will retain their antlers February or March. Therefore all of Santa’s reindeer are either females or castrated males.
As for Rudolph, who could confusingly be a female reindeer with a male name, his/her red nose could be attributed to the reindeer nasal system which contains nasoturbinal bones. This system of curled bones increases the surface area with thin tissue inside reindeer noses which helps to warm air on the way in and recapture moisture when breathing out. It may not be glowing red, but for ordinary reindeer their noses are an evolutionary feature that enable them to live in harsh winter conditions.
The Amanita muscaria, aka the Fly Agaric mushroom, is the iconic mushroom featured throughout pop culture, which is native to Northern Europe.
Magic Mushrooms
In any of the original stories of Saint Nicholas his mode of transportation would have been a horse or a donkey. The introduction of reindeer moves the story, and Santa Claus, to the frosty areas of Northern Europe/Asia. As for flying reindeer, the ability to fly is not commonly found in reindeer. One theory for this association comes from the shamanistic religions of these northern cultures.
Due to the historically migratory nature of Laplanders they did not have a regular supply of alcohol until the recent past. It would have been fairly cumbersome to move alcohol production on a regular basis, let alone the challenge of keeping the yeast alive & active in the extreme cold. So instead as a way to come closer to God, or just go out of their minds, they had Amanita muscaria (aka the Fly Agaric) hallucinogenic mushrooms.
On their own the Fly Agaric mushrooms are hallucinogenic but poisonous. To reduce the toxic poisonous effects, but still get the hallucinogenic benefit, you have to process them. Outside of just eating lichen reindeer will also sometimes eat the Fly Agaric mushroom. The people of these northern regions learned you could “process” the mushrooms through the reindeer. After the animals had eaten the mushrooms people would collect and ingest the reindeer urine to receive the psychoactive benefits of the mushrooms with less of the toxic effects. Interestingly they would also “process” the mushrooms through other humans, which has a long (and fairly disgusting) history of people drinking the urine of others to get high.
As for flying reindeer, when the reindeer are high on the mushrooms their movements are erratic (but not flying). When humans are on the mushrooms however, they have reported taking shamanistic journeys with winged reindeer transporting them to the highest branches of the World Tree. Less dramatically, sitting around high on mushrooms people may have thought their reindeer were flying before their eyes.
An empty gas tank allows water condensation to accumulate and potentially damage your engine.
In Winter, Keep Gas In Your Car
When warm air and cold air come into contact with one another they create condensation. This is how storms work. An “empty” gas tank contains more air than gasoline and when that air is warmer than the colder air outside, condensation can build up inside the tank and drip down to mix with the gasoline.
When water and gasoline mix, the water sinks to the bottom. Among other possible effects, if the weather is cold enough the water can freeze in the fuel line and prevent gasoline from getting to the engine. A frozen fuel line will prevent you from starting your vehicle. This is why you’re supposed to keep your gas tank full in the winter. While not a concern in warmer climates where winters are mild, this can be a considerable problem in environments that experience especially cold winters.
Winter Blend
Something that helps combat freezing temperatures is winter blend gasoline. Between summer blend and winter blend, gasoline designed for winter is cheaper but also worse for the environment. However, winter gasoline’s higher volatility allows it to ignite more easily in colder weather. So if you have frozen water in your fuel line, or it’s too cold for the engine in general, any winter blend gas able to reach the engine should at least start your vehicle more easily. Still, if you experience especially frigid winters, you should always keep gas in your tank.
Added info: In areas of extreme cold, where the temperature can regularly go to -15° C (5° F), engines can strain to start and engine fluids can become more viscous. In these regions vehicles are frequently equipped with block heaters, which are aftermarket add-ons that are plugged into an external power source to heat up the engine before starting the car. It is not uncommon in parts of Alaska and northern Canada to see cars with electrical plugs hanging out of the their grills which are attached to block heaters.
Charles Dickens spent most of his life in the “Little Ice Age” where his earliest Christmases were snowy, which influenced later pop culture.
The Little Ice Age was a several hundred year period of unusually cold weather around parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Depending on how you want to define it, the period ran from either the 1300s or 1500s to around 1850. There are various suggested causes for this cold weather, but the result was cooler summers and especially cold winters.
In England the winters could get so cold that the River Thames would freeze. Over the centuries there were 24 times when the river was solid enough to host the River Thames frost fair, a winter celebration on the frozen river complete with vendors, dancing, sports, and more. The last such festival was in 1814 during which they walked an elephant across the frozen river.
Bob Cratchit carrying Tiny Tim in a snowy London from A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
Born in 1812 in the south of England, Dickens’s family moved to London in 1815. As part of the Little Ice Age, the first 8 Christmases of Dickens’s life were snowy white Christmases. At a developmental stage in his life these white Christmases had a significant influence on Dickens’s idea of what Christmas should be. Dickens included a white Christmas in several stories, the first of which was 1836’s The Pickwick Papers and later, and most famously, in 1843’s A Christmas Carol.
The enormous popularity of A Christmas Carol, and the popularity of Dickens in general, greatly influenced our western cultural idea of what Christmas should be. It helped revive the celebration of Christmas in Britain, which had been on the decline during the Industrial Revolution. Snowy white landscapes, crackling fires, hot meals, mulled wine, mistletoe, wrapped packages, carols & merriment, it all became part of the ideal Christmas.
The 1942 movie Holiday Inn gave us the hit song White Christmas sung by Bing Crosby. The 1954 movie White Christmas (seen above) also featured Bing Crosby singing White Christmas.
Our idea of a snowy white Christmas is directly linked to the staying power of Charles Dickens and that, for a young Dickens, Christmas was always white. After the Little Ice Age ended southern England has not see many white Christmases. Today there is around a 9% probability of a white Christmas in London, but the idea of a snowy Christmas persists. The 1942 movie Holiday Inn, which gave us the hit song White Christmas sung by Bing Crosby, only furthered the Dickens idea of a snowy Christmas.
The typeface designed for children that, through misuse, has became the butt of designer jokes.
In 1994 Microsoft designer Vincent Connare was tasked with creating a new typeface for the children’s program Microsoft Bob. To appeal to kids, Connare created a typeface that mimicked the letterforms found in comic books. Thus was born, Comic Sans.
Comic Sans was widely distributed with Windows 95 as well as with every Macintosh by 1996. This meant that almost everyone who owned a computer had access to Comic Sans. People were free to use the font in anyway they saw fit. Comic Sans, the playful typeface intended for children, soon found itself being misused on everything from local government memos, to resumes, to lost pet signs, etc. It’s these kinds of misuses that made Comic Sans the butt of so many jokes and the target of so much derision. Thus began Comic Sans’ ignominious distinction as one of the worst fonts ever made.
Just a few of the ridiculous uses of Comic Sans in the wild.
Greater Accessibility
Despite people’s low opinion of it, Comic Sans has advantages over other fonts. In mimicking the handwriting style of comic book fonts the letters of Comic Sans have irregular lines. The letters aren’t perfectly straight nor do they have or perfectly even curves. These irregularities make Comic Sans a more accessible font for people with dyslexia. Numerous dyslexia associations have said that Comic Sans is the best font for dyslexics because of its “character disambiguation” and “variation in letter heights.”
Ultimately it’s easy to make fun of Comic Sans because of how people have misused it, but these jokes say more about the person who chose to use Comic Sans than the font itself. Comic Sans is a font designed for children, not for general use. Most people aren’t designers and they’re simply picking something different, something fun. But as a rule of thumb, unless you are designing for children, it’s probably best to not use Comic Sans.
The hell-raising sleigh song that became a Christmas standard.
Jingle Bells was published in 1857 under the title One Horse Open Sleigh. It wasn’t until it was reissued in 1859 that it got the title we know today. It was written by James Lord Pierpont, the uncle of Wall Street titan John Pierpont Morgan (aka. J.P. Morgan). By all accounts James Pierpont was a pretty awful person. He lived for adventure, traveled the world, abandoned his family, didn’t attend his first wife’s funeral nor did he care for their children after she died, he fought for the south in the Civil War despite being from an abolitionist family in Massachusetts, etc. That said he did write one of the most famous Christmas songs of all time despite the fact that the song isn’t about Christmas.
Risqué High-Speed Sleigh Riding
Jingle Bells is one of several Christmas favorites that have nothing to do with Christmas. The lyrics & melody changed within Pierpont’s lifetime but in general the song is about a sleigh ride. Looking to the lesser known additional lyrics the song is specifically about getting away from the watchful eyes of the people in town and a boy taking a girl out for a secluded sleigh ride. The song then has the protagonist relaying his story to other guys and telling them to pick up girls in their sleighs and have a good time while they’re young.
These lyrics were most likely influenced by where & when Pierpont wrote the song. At the time the town of Medford, Massachusetts (where he wrote the song) had a strong winter sleigh racing scene. It was also a rum producing city. People would race their sleighs at top speed (frequently while drunk) down Salem Street. It was like a drunker 19th century version of American Graffiti. Today the town of Medford has a plaque commemorating the song and says the song is about sleigh racing. None of this is very Christmasy.
“The Sleigh Race“, Currier & Ives, lithograph, 1859
Jingle Bells … In Space
While in space for the 1965 Gemini 6 project, astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra snuck sleigh bells and a harmonica aboard the capsule. Alluding to Santa Claus, on December 16th they reported seeing “… a satellite going from north to south, up in a polar orbit.” They then proceeded to play Jingle Bells to an initially very confused mission control. Their instruments were the first every played in outer space and are now in the Smithsonian.
During the mid 1960s the song began to take-on alternate lyrics, the most famous of which is the Batman themed parody. The Batman Smells version seems to have started around the time of the original Adam West television show. Australia has Aussie Jingle Bells to better align to the summer heat of Christmas down under.
Added info: the titular “jingle” doesn’t refer to a type of bell, but rather it is a verb telling you to jingle/shake bells. Sleighs can run fairly silent on snow and so jingling bells are a safety feature serving as an audible signal that you are approaching.
The lost Pennsylvania mining town with an uncontrollable fire raging underground.
For most people who have heard of Centralia they know it as a spooky abandoned ghost-town. They might even know it as the inspiration for the film adaptation of Silent Hill. But before Centralia was abandoned it was a normal small Pennsylvania mining town like most others in the area.
The abandoned Old PA Route 61, now known as the “Graffiti Highway”, before being covered in dirt by the state in 2020 to discourage visitors
The Fire
In the spring of 1962 one of the town trash dumps, which had previously been a strip mine, was set on fire in an attempt to clean it up for Memorial Day. The fire got out of hand and spread down into the abandoned mining tunnels below the town. The fire was not put out.
Given the estimated amount of anthracite coal under Centralia the fire could burn for another 250 years. Temperatures easily exceed 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. As the fire rages underground it expels gases above ground and causes the ground to shift both up & down. Even as roads buckled and sinkholes collapsed people continued to live in town.
The fire was relatively benign until late 1979 when it was discovered that the basement of Coddingtons gas station had a floor temperature of 136° F and the lot across from the station had steam coming out of the ground. The gas station was in the direct path of the underground fire that was aggressively spreading in multiple directions. In the 1980s hot mine gasses were spewing from the ground and into homes. Residents were sickened by carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.
The fire has spread across multiple fronts generally moving southwest but there is an additional fourth front to the East.
Eminent Domain
In 1980 there were around 1,000 residents of Centralia. As the fire spread across multiple fronts, and the toxic conditions worsened, people began to move out in larger numbers. By 1992 there were only 5 remaining residents. What was left of the town was claimed by the state of Pennsylvania under eminent domain. Per an agreement with the state, as the remaining residents move away or die, the state demolishes their homes.
As of 2017 one of the few remaining homes left in Centralia.
Today there are still a few die-hard residents remaining. Centralia is now a grid of streets with no street signs, only four buildings, and a few cemeteries. Sidewalks are interrupted by the occasional cut-in for driveways which no longer exist. There are walkway stairs that go nowhere. You could drive through Centralia and not even notice. Nature has reclaimed most of the space that used to be people’s homes and businesses as the underground fire continues to burn.
Rather than being a freaky ghost-town, Centralia is a sad story about the end of a small town community. The documentary the Town that Was does a great job documenting the town’s history and its slow disappearance.
Real pine trees are environmentally friendlier than artificial plastic trees unless you reuse an artificial tree for many years.
The case for real trees
Christmas trees are grown on farms like any other cash crop. These trees provide environmental benefits, from cleaning the air to the fact that their very presence prevents commercial development of the land. Even after a tree is cut down another will be planted in its place. Tree farms, unlike manufactured artificial trees, also provide local jobs helping the immediate community.
After the season is over pine trees can have a second life as a host of things. Some zoos give used Christmas trees to animals to play with, as well as to eat. Most municipalities have some sort of recycling program for trees. NYC has a mulchfest where they recycle old trees providing the city with valuable mulch. Even the Rockefeller tree gets recycled into lumber for Habitat for Humanity homes.
The case for artificial trees
As of 2017, 95 million US households displayed a Christmas tree, and of those 81% were artificial. Artificial trees are frequently made in China with PVC plastic and metal. So in addition to the petroleum they are made from, petroleum is burned to ship them to a store near you and you burn even more petroleum to drive to that store. Even worse, if you decide after a few years you don’t want it anymore the “tree” becomes that much more plastic in a landfill since most plastic is never recycled. None of this is environmentally friendly.
The primary benefit of an artificial tree is that its environmental cost goes down the more years you use it. Once you own it there isn’t any fossil fuel involved in getting it out of storage every year (unlike the annual drive to & from getting a real tree). How many years you need to use an artificial tree for its benefits to outweigh its detractions is debatable. The low-end estimate is 8 years but the high-end estimate is more than 20 years – so it takes 1-2 decades for an artificial tree to become more environmentally sustainable than a real pine tree.
The verdict
The best tree is the real tree you can buy close to your own home from a local tree farm. Only if you plan on using an artificial tree for many years will it become the more sustainable option.
The pedal steel guitar shaped decades of country music and Ralph Mooney is a legendary master of the instrument.
Part of the sound of classic country is the pedal steel guitar. It’s the sliding, bending, sometimes crying sounding instrument that fills in the background as well as takes solos. Before most modern country abandoned classic country artists & sounds, the pedal steel was a standard part of the genre for decades.
The Hawaiian style lap guitar served as the foundation for what became the pedal steel guitar.
Steel TO PEDAL STEEL
The pedal steel guitar started life (without its pedals) in Hawaii. In 1889 Joseph Kekuku took a metal bolt he found along the railroad tracks in Honolulu and slid it along the strings of his Spanish guitar. He knew he had a sound that was different, a sound that would go on to influence both Black blues music and white country music. Kekuku created a new style of guitar, the lap steel guitar (aka the Hawaiian guitar), which was designed to be laid across the performer’s lap. By the 1930s these were electrified and they got setup with legs to get them off the musician’s lap.
A short history of Joseph Kekuku and the lap steel guitar.
In 1939 Alvino Rey worked to get the first pedals added to his steel guitar. In 1952 Zane Beck added knee levers. With pedals and knee levers, this formed a new instrument called the pedal steel guitar. The pedals & knee levers, when pushed, bend the strings to raise or lower the pitch of notes changing their sounds. This augmentation of notes was done before the musician would play the strings, but in 1953 Bud Isaacs bent the notes while they were already played on the Webb Pierce song Slowly. While it sounds normal now, at the time it was an entirely new way of playing. This was the dawn of a huge change in country music. A whole host of pedal steel players arose to shape country music and one of the best was Ralph Mooney.
Ralph Mooney playing with Wynn Stewart.
Ralph Mooney
Born in 1928 in Duncan, Oklahoma, Ralph Mooney moved to California when he was 12. He started playing the steel guitar but when he learned about the pedal steel he built his own. He started playing in bands and it was in 1950 that he met Wynn Stewart. Stewart, along with Buck Owens and others, helped define the Bakersfield sound and Ralph Mooney was a big part of that. Like any genre, country music has lots of subgenres and the Bakersfield sound was the subgenre coming out of California in the 1950s. It didn’t sound like the more polished music that was coming from Nashville at the time (aka “Countrypolitan”), it had more of a honky-tonk early-rock sound and the pedal steel was integral to that sound.
Mooney (seated at the pedal steel) eventually became a part of The Waylors, playing with Waylon Jennings.
Crazy Arms
Ralph Mooney’s pedal steel work alone would have made him a country music legend, but he was also the cowriter of the mega hit Crazy Arms. The 1956 version by Ray Price became a number one hit and stayed at number one for 20 weeks. It has since become a country standard but is so popular that it’s been recorded by musicians across genres such as Chuck Berry, Jerry Garcia, and Louis Armstrong.
So while there have been many great pedal steel players, Ralph Mooney helped shape the Bakersfield sound, Outlaw country, and ultimately influenced country music in ways that are still heard today.
Added info: The fantastic Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast has an entire episode devoted to Mooney which is a must-listen for fans of classic country.
A selection of Mooney classics
Mooney is name-checked before his solo begins in Wynn Stewart’s Sing A Sad Song.
Wynn Stewart’s Wishful Thinking
Buck Owens’ Together Again
Buck Owens’ Heartaches for a Dime
Waylon Jennings’ Lonesome, On’ry and Mean
Willie and Waylon’s classic Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
