sam ✅🇬🇪
@sam@chven.us
sam ✅🇬🇪
@sam@chven.us
The invention of Santa Claus in 1800s New York: a history.
St Nicholas was a Christian bishop who lived in Anatolia in the 200s-300s. Historically he's best known for his involvement in the Council of Nicaea in 325, and for an incident there where he punched the heretic Arius in the face. 1/
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Nicholas slapping Arius, early 18th century fresco, Soumelá Monastery, Trabzon Province, Turkey
By the Early Modern period, folklore had sprung up around him in much of Europe. By the 1600s in the Netherlands, there was a tradition that he brought gifts to children on the eve of his saint's day (6 December), riding a miniature horse on rooftops and coming down the chimney.
Early textual evidence for this folklore comes from a 1720 dictionary of proverbs (https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/view/bsb10522891?page=202,203):
'St Nicholas enters the chimney with his little horse, to put something in [children’s] shoes...' 2/
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Jan Steen, Het Sint-Nicolaasfeest (1665-1668, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
So far St Nicholas was normally depicted as a Catholic bishop.
Dutch colonists brought this tradition to the eastern USA. Christmas, and a Catholic saint, didn't go down well in Puritan New England. But Christmas celebrations in 1700s Virginia and North Carolina could be impressive. 3/
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Penne Restad, Christmas in America: A History, p. 12
In 1770s New York, we hear of 'St. a Claus' bringing gifts to children on the Monday after 6 December. Dutch influence was strong there: St Nicholas was the patron saint of both Amsterdam and NYC.
Washington Irving's satirical A History of New York (1809-1812) highlights St Nicholas' importance, no longer riding a hose, but a horse-drawn wagon - though he still rides on rooftops. He also smokes a pipe, and has a characteristic gesture of laying his finger along the side of his nose. 4/
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Washington Irving, A History of New York, 1812 edition, p. 106
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Washington Irving, A History of New York, 1812 edition, p. 107
The history of Santa proper begins here.
The modern elements were mostly invented in 1820s New York:
- the sleigh
- the reindeer
- flying in the air
- the fur suit
- the big wobbly belly
- coming at Christmas instead of 6 December. 5/
The Northern Hemisphere experienced very cold weather in the 1810s. In 1817-1820 New York, the Hudson River was closed by ice for over 100 days each year.
In 1821 'Santeclaus' first appears in a fur suit and a sleigh pulled by one reindeer -- no longer a bishop in a horse-drawn wagon. 6/
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Hudson River closings by ice for each year from 1789 to 1823. Source: https://earth2class.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Hudson-winter-ice-phenology.pdf
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'Old Santeclaus with much delight', New York, 1821. Source: Yale Digital Collections, https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2014510
This was the first ever appearance of a reindeer in connection with Santa.
In 1823, most of the rest of Santa's apparatus appeared, thanks to the anonymous poem 'A visit from St Nicholas'. This poem adds the _eight_ named reindeer, the jolly laugh, the big belly, and the motif of flying -- though St Nicholas only 'flew' to get from the ground to the rooftop by the chimney. 7/
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The Troy Sentinel, 23 December 1823, page 3. Source: https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=tts18231223-01.1.3&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN----------
The poem also reintroduces elements seen in Washington Irving: pipe-smoking, and laying a finger to the side of his nose.
No one claimed authorship of the poem until the 1840s.
In the meantime, German colonists in Pennsylvania brought with them the tradition of the Christkindl ('Christ child'), an angelic figure who became popular in 1500s Germany as an alternative to St Nicholas, but less overtly Catholic. 8/
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The Christkindl as depicted in 1845, in Heinrich Hoffmann's Lustige Geschichten und drollige Bilder für Kinder von 3 bis 6 Jahren
An 1821 report from North Carolina has the Christkindl coming at Christmas, anglicised as 'Christkinkle'. He isn't identified with St Nicholas yet, but he does bring gifts to good children, and rods to naughty children, just like St Nicholas. 9/
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Penne Restad, Christmas in America: A History, p. 50
In the 1840s the English-speaking world went bananas over Christmas.
The influence came largely from England, where some German customs were adopted, like the Christmas tree and Advent wreath; and Charles Dickens began publishing his Christmas books, starting with A Christmas Carol (1843). 10/
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Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) as depicted in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), with Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge
The influence reached America, leading Charles Clement Moore to claim authorship of 'A Visit from St Nicholas'. Christmas books published in Pennsylvania now fully identified the Christkindl -- now 'Kriss Kringle' -- with St Nicholas/Santa Claus. 11/
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Penne Restad, Christmas in America: A History, pp. 50-51
Most of the rest of Santa's iconography was invented in the 1860s by Thomas Nast, a German-born New Yorker.
Nast's cartoons, designed to reflect Northern optimisim in the Civil War, created Santa's workshop; his list of children's behaviour; and a postal address at the North Pole. 12/
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Thomas Nast, cartoon in Harper's Weekly, 29 December 1866. Highlighted at top is Santa's postal address: 'Santa, Clausville, N.P.' Source: ThomasNast.com, https://thomasnast.com/cartoons/santa-claus-and-his-works/
Just one major new element arrived in 1939, when the company Montgomery & Ward commissioned an employee, Robert L. May, to devise a Christmas story. May's story was a poem about a ninth reindeer, the red-nosed Rudolph. Ten years later Johnny Marks turned May's story into the well-known song. 13/
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Cover of one of the Montgomery & Ward booklets with May's poem (source: Wikimedia.org)
While some elements of Santa are older than the 1820s, and some more recent, my own sense is that it was the events ot 1817-1823 that cemented his core elements. That's when Santa became independent of St Nicholas -- with a wintry combination of reindeer, sleigh, fur, and Christmas.
The icy winters of 1817 to 1820 were a long-term effect of the eruption of Mt Tambora in 1815 (which also caused the Year with No Summer, in 1816). Could you say, then, that Santa is a volcano god? 14 and end/
The fedi experience
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Girl walking down a road with her hands over her ears with the words "mentioning any minor software issue" next to her. Following her down the road is a boy obnoxiously playing a trumpet at her, the words overlayed "The problem here is that you're using proprietary software and just giving your data away to corporations, what you need to do is adopt free open source..."
Wow what a view captured by Perseverance just 8 hours ago. This is probably her new science site: Witch Hazel Hill.
#Mars Dec. 16, 2024 (Sol 1359)
📷 https://areo.info/mars20/ecams/1359
#Perseverance #rover #Sol1359 #WitchHazelHill #PerseveranceRover #NorthernRimCampaign #space #science #research #news #STEM #Mars2020 #geology #planetaryscience #Martian #landscape #photography #news #Astrodon
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A photography of a Martian landscape, captured by the Perseverance rover on the west side of the rim of Jezero Crater.
Engineering at its most magnificent. The unique and uniquely beautiful Falkirk Wheel rotary boat lift opened in 2002. It fulfils a role originally accomplished by a flight of 11 locks when the Union Canal opened in 1822. More pics and info: https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/falkirk/falkirkwheel/index.html
#Scotland #Falkirk #FalkirkWheel
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The Falkirk Wheel rotary boat lift. The image shows the Falkirk Wheel from a corner angle with the rotary element halfway through its cycle in the centre of the frame and the support for the fixed end of the canal on the right, with the lower pool bottom left. The visitor centre is in the background. The scene is in sunlight.
The long-running Fedi server mstdn.social (not to be confused with mastodon.social 🙂 ) has just received a takedown request from the Russian government for hosting @Bellingcat, a news site which has long been critical of Putin:
https://mstdn.social/@stux/113652461647125214
Thankfully mstdn.social isn't in Russia so Putin has no power over it.
If anyone wants to turn this into a Streisand Effect kind of thing, you might want to follow @Bellingcat and slip a donation to @stux at https://mstdn.social/@stux/113623791580168625
Support truly open social media! Buy @stux a Ko-Fi for Christmas >>> https://ko-fi.com/mstdn
@FediTips @Bellingcat Thank you! ❤️
@FediTips @Bellingcat @stux Fingers crossed Russia doesn't take it any further.
The fourteenth evening of anti-government protests has begun in Georgia.
Mastodon isn't perfect.
But the fact a social network exists that is completely free to use
has no venture capital investors
has no shareholders to answer to
has no growth targets
with a web interface with zero tracking cookies
and mobile apps with zero trackers at all
with ten thousand server administrators who donate their time for user safety
is - in my opinion - mindbogglingly cool, given the state of the world we live in. Not everything has to be shit. People make things better.
The PeerTube mobile app is out!
A simple way to explore platforms and enjoy #videos.
Free from doomscrolling and dark patterns, this app respects your attention.
Learn all about behind the scenes and the upcoming updates on our blog: https://framablog.org/2024/12/10/peertube-mobile-app-discover-videos-while-caring-for-your-attention/
With our huge thanks to @NGIZero Entrust program and to @nlnet: those funds allowed us to dip into mobile dev, a new territory for us.
At Framasoft, we aim to keep those talents within our team. We are raising funds for our 2025 budget, and you can help here : https://support.framasoft.org
Hehe (bug already reported)
Also I find it impossible to log in with an account? And the lack of PiP and background playback makes this just as painful to use as the website....
I hope for the best! The app is already on apps.obtainium.imramr.dev !
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Screenshot of the peertube app's language selection, where the option "english" appears 5 times, once in spanish, and the only other option is french
As many users have asked for it, there is now an option to make the number of followed and following accounts public (still disabled by default). These are only the numbers; the lists themselves are never published.
Some fixes to blocked instances code (posts from them were sometimes shown).
Fixed non-appearing buttons Approve and Discard if the account requesting a follow were being followed.
If you find #snac useful, please consider contributing via LiberaPay: https://liberapay.com/grunfink/
This release has been inspired by the songs All Is Lost by #KatieGarfield and All Is Not Lost by #TonyAnderson.
@grunfink great release! Thank you!
Is there any particular reason you cannot personally choose to reveal your followed by/following lists? Is it just a philosophical thing? I'm gonna move to snac when I get less lazy, and it'd be a nice thing to have.
#RaspberryPi 500 Computer Launches with the Official Raspberry Pi Monitor, Based on #RaspberryPi5 https://9to5linux.com/raspberry-pi-500-computer-launches-with-the-official-raspberry-pi-monitor
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Photo of the Raspberry Pi 500 computer with the RaspberryPi Monitor and Mouse.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha walked out of the OSCE plenary hall in Malta as Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov began his speech.
Earlier, in his speech, he had called Lavrov a "war criminal."
In addition to Sybiha, the foreign ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic, and several other foreign ministers and diplomats also left the hall.
Students from dozens of schools across Georgia are refusing to start the school week.
They are protesting against police violence and expressing support for the demonstrators.
#Georgia #Georgiaelections #Tbilisi #Protests #EU
Students of Batumi State University have halted the educational process and declared a strike.
They are calling for an end to violence against protesters, freedom of assembly, and a return to European integration.
#Georgia #GeorgiaProtests #Batumi #Protests #EU #EuropeanUnion
You might use Mastodon and the rest of the Fediverse through your server's website or through an app, but there is also a third option that many people prefer: web apps.
Web apps are special kinds of websites that can also be installed like apps. They appear as app icons, keep you signed in, work separately from your browser and provide notifications just like any app does.
Web apps are extremely easy to install, there's a complete beginner's guide at:
➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-to-install-web-apps-for-mastodon-and-the-fediverse
that's funny, because I've always thought a lot of apps behave pretty much like a website and the app is unnecessary.
A lot of app store apps are actually just web apps packaged to be downloadable from app stores!
But web apps don't give Apple or Google any money or control, so they tend to get downplayed. It's also harder to access a user's data from a web app than an app store app, so companies who want to spy on their users do it through app store apps.
This is a very good and informative piece done by PBS. Explains everything you need to know about #Georgia and #protest there.
#Tbilisi #georgiaprotests #freedom #democracy #politics #worldpolitics
Georgia's ruling party, the Russian puppet regime "Georgian Dream", is showing who they truly are. Openly cutting ties with the West, specifically the EU, so they can once again make Georgia an autocratic Russian colony. The people of Georgia are having none of it and the regime is beating them to a pulp. The regime is also targeting journalists because they are embarrassed and afraid of the world and the Georgian people seeing who they really are. But we see. #Tbilisi #Georgia #EU
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Young woman facing a police line in Tbilisi at night with smoke, wrapped in an EU flag waving a Georgian flag.
Libreboot T480 and Libreboot M920 coming soon, on https://minifree.org/
If anyone still wants Haswell (4th gen) T440p, W541, 9020 etc, order now. It'll be gone soon (won't be deleted from Libreboot, only minifree).
Libreboot replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware. I run the project; Minifree sales fund the work.
I'm doing a new Libreboot release soon, with ThinkPad T480 and ThinkCentre M920q support. Intel 8th gen. They'll replace the Intel 4th gen (Haswell) machines that I currently sell.
edit: my move isn't about politics. Looks like things are not going to be much better where I'm going.
Dear Supplier, if you send me an email containing the words "black" and "Friday", my mail server will first send it to an aggressive cross-cut shredder, then set fire to it, and finally place it's ashes on the compost heap.
Hint: Your email is unlikely to be read.
I watched live on TV as #Georgian #journalist Guram Rogava, was assaulted by one of the unmarked "police" operatives, while he was reporting on brutality against protesters in #Tbilisi #Georgia
Politicians and activists are targeted explicitly, what seems to be a clear punitive operation.
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A photo of my ThinkPad displaying my new custom boot logo which has the FreeBSD orb logo at the top and the text in white saying "Think" with a red circle replacing the dot above the I. Then the text continues but in red "FreeBSD"
@justine I love it!
@justine
As long as you are just using it on your own machine, and you are not distributing it, I'd imagine that any risk would be marginal.
@justine this thing gets incredibly sexy. No surprise that Black&red are often mixed together in lingerie. Seems like I am very reactive to such combination, on laptops too.
#itsBlackFridayButDontPurchaseAThinkpadYouFoolCarefulAtYourBankAccount
@justine wow!
LOGO.GIF file that I made, and for the more adventurous the Gimp template xcf that's suitable for a 1920x1080 screen. That way folk can swap out the logo and the text FreeBSD to whatever they please.Zebra Rock, a mysterious rock with black and white stripes, captured by Perseverance in Stereo3D
To go 3D: eyes' lines of sight parallel/left image for left eye/right image for right eye
Calibrated images by the Mastcam-Z team at Arizona State Univ., Sol 1268, Sep. 13, 2024
#Mars #Perseverance #ZebraRock #FreyaCastle #3D #Stereo3D #stereoscopy #geology #planetaryscience #Mars2020 #rock #rocks #solarocks #science #Stem #astrodon #Mastcam #MastcamZforall #photography
In the justly derided later seasons of the X-Files, they produced one masterpiece episode, easily among the all time best: The Lost Art Of Forehead Sweat. The "peak" of that ep is this scene, in which Dr. They explains exactly what's happened in the last decade. This is the ballgame. Watch it or not, it probably won't matter. But you should.
@mrcompletely Holy shit
@drewphish I mean there it is.
@mrcompletely It's like the person who wrote this had a time machine. Eery.
@drewphish funny that everyone thinks this is old. It's from 2018.
@mrcompletely I had no idea that show was still around then. None!
@drewphish they did a few seasons widely spaced after the main run of the show. This is the only great thing they came up with in that time.
Added a new user option to disable automatic follow confirmations (follow requests must be manually approved from the people page).
The search box also searches for accounts (via webfinger).
New command-line action import_list, to import a Mastodon list in CSV format (so that Mastodon Follow Packs can be directly used).
New command-line action import_block_list, to import a Mastodon list of accounts to be blocked in CSV format.
If you find #snac useful, please consider contributing via LiberaPay: https://liberapay.com/grunfink/
What are Follow Packs?These "follow packs" can also be used from #snac pretty easily. To do it, just download the list you are interested in and run the following command for each one:They are just packaged topical lists of up to 35 accounts you can follow from your Mastodon or other Fediverse account. You can follow the entire pack by importing a file. And the entire pack loads into a list, so it becomes a feed for that subject. You can also just browse for accounts you might want to follow individually.
So, they’re like Bluesky Starter Packs?
Yes, but not quite as convenient. It’s not hard, but because Mastodon does not have a one-click way to do this, you need to download a follow pack file and then use Mastodon’s import facility. Instructions are provided in the directory and also below.
snac import_list $BASE_DIR $USER_ID /path/to/the/file.csvThe list will be created and the accounts inside followed. After that, you'll find a link to the list at the top of your private timeline. Please, take note that these lists are not automatically populated; they will eventually fill with the new posts from the new accounts, that will also appear in your timeline.
snac's web UI does not allow maintaining these lists, but you can do it with any Mastodon API client or from https://mastodonlistmanager.org (which is, em, also a Mastodon API client).
30 years ago today I was on the rail for the first time ever at a #phish show.
The first ever glowstick war that occurred during the Harpua was one of the only times I've seen the band legitimately shocked.
Green glowsticks started pouring from the balcony above Page + the band had no idea...
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The setlist for Phish's show on 11/25/84 at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.
...no idea what the hell was going on. I think even Mike smiled so you know it was serious. You can hear the crowd going nuts on the tapes.
At one point Trey caught a glowstick and threw it back and the place went nuts.
Musically, the Weekapaug->Mango segue was one of the best I've ever...
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...been in the building for. They just suddenly slammed on the brakes and were playing Mango. Magical.
This show was the day after Thanksgiving. We took the L down from Evanston and arrived at the venue at 12:30. We walked around the building and couldn't figure out where the line was going...
3/
...to be so we asked someone who looked like he might be working. He laughed and said "For the show in 7 hours?" Keep in mind this was late November in Chicago so it was cold AF.
He pointed to where the line started and we waited. Within a half hour some kid showed up who told us he had just...
4/
...dropped out of high school the week before to follow #phish. That kid's name? Antelope Greg. It was his fourth show or something like that.
We were the first people in the door and made a beeline for right in front of Mike. I was obsessed with the song Tube at the time (kind of still am)...
5/
...and made a sign that I figured would get his attention.
The sign read "Tube for Bill Schechter". Mike and I went to the same high school and both had a history teacher named Bill Schechter. This guy is the kind of teacher who you never, ever forget. I credit him with teaching me how to...
6/
...think critically. Like, a life-changing teacher that stays with you for the rest of your life. So I figured I would get Mike's attention by dropping Bill's name with absolutely zero context whatsoever.
Boy did my sign work. (Well, they sure AF didn't play Tube so not really LMAO).
7/
But Mike had to have looked at me 40 times during the opening Llama. Not kidding. He was trying to place me and of course couldn't. I got my sign read! I just didn't yet realize that successful request are *only* made to Trey and before shows.
But Bill Schechter and I sure had a good laugh...
8/
...about this when I saw him the next time. "And they didn't play the song??" he said. No but I would get a year later so all good.
Side note: I took Bill Schechter to one show and it was 11/28/97. He *instantly* got it. The You Enjoy Myself in the 2-slot rewired his brain. He slipped a note...
9/
...to a roadie that night and ended up getting a really nice note back from Mike who remembered him fondly.
Anyways, 11/25/94 was a blast and one of my best friend in the world's first show and I slept in my own bed and 1994 #phish is the fucking best.
Don't miss that segue!
10/10
@drewphish What a great story!!
@drewphish love this story!
Wanna help #PeerTube?
We need tests and feedbacks on our future mobile app!
Whether on iOS, Play Store or with an apk, download our test version and share your feedback on here: https://framaforms.org/peertube-mobile-application-release-candidate-1731599644
You have until dec. 8th to share, test and help us have a great release!
