The world is a fascinating place, and it's full of weird and interesting facts that you might have never realized were true. From a creature that can survive the harsh vacuum of space to the odd
state sport of Maryland, you're bound to learn something that makes you
think twice.
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
A mantis shrimp can swing its claw so fast it boils the water around it and creates a flash of light.
The Spanish national anthem has no words.
Honey does not spoil. You could feasibly eat 3000 year old honey.
Dead people can get goose bumps.
A
small percentage of the static you see on "dead" tv stations is left
over radiation from the Big Bang. You're seeing residual effects of the
Universe's creation.
The state sport of Maryland is jousting.
When
we breathe through our nose, we always inhale more air from one nostril
than with the other one — and this changes every 15 minutes.
If
you were to remove all of the empty space from the atoms that make up
every human on earth, the entire world population could fit into an
apple.
The woolly mammoth was still around when the pyramids were being built.
There are more possible iterations of a game of chess than there are atoms in the known universe.
If
you somehow found a way to extract all of the gold from the bubbling
core of our lovely little planet, you would be able to cover all of the
land in a layer of gold up to your knees.
It would take 1,200,000 mosquitoes, each sucking once, to completely drain the average human of blood.
Written language was invented independently by the Egyptians, Sumerians, Chinese, and Mayans.
To
know when to mate, a male giraffe will continuously headbutt the female
in the bladder until she urinates. The male then tastes the pee and
that helps it determine whether the female is ovulating.
It
can take a photon 40,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to
the surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to earth.
Water bears, or Tardigrades, are typically 0.5 mm in length and can survive virtually anything. Even the vacuum of space.
Basically
anything that melts can be made into glass. You just have to cool off a
molten material before its molecules have time to realign into what
they were before being melted.
The
critically endangered Kakapo bird has a strong, pleasant, musty odour
which allows predators to easily locate it. Hence, it is critically
endangered.
In 1903 the Wright Brothers flew for the first time. 66 years later, man landed on the Moon in 1969.
Is it fair for Shakespeare to overshadow Cervantes?
Miguel de Cervantes and William
Shakespeare died days apart, 400 years ago, each of them a giant in his
own language and literary tradition. But a difference in the scale of
quatercentenary celebrations in their respective countries and around
the world is leading some fans of the author of Don Quixote to cry foul.
While
"all the world's a stage" for the British bard thanks to the rollout of
the massive Shakespeare Lives programme of arts events around the
globe, celebrations of the life of his Spanish contemporary are perhaps
"more honoured in the breach than the observance".
Shakespeare
Lives aims to reach half a billion people worldwide - the first
screenings of The Complete Walk, 37 short films to represent the
complete body of the bard's stage plays, took place at the weekend. The
Spanish government's action plan for Cervantes, on the other hand, seems
far less ambitious... and leans heavily on exhibitions and conferences
in big city museums and libraries.
This has provoked some rather unchivalrous comments from bigwigs in the field of Spanish culture.
"We've
had 400 years to prepare for this," said Dario Villanueva, director of
the Spanish Royal Academy, shortly after a letter from UK Prime Minister
David Cameron introducing Shakespeare Lives was published in major
newspapers around the world.
"There are a few events lined up but the figure of Cervantes deserves a major gesture on the part of our top institutions."
The
Spanish Culture Ministry has admitted that the programme remains a
"work in progress" and that some events will not emerge from the
pipeline until 2017.
Cervantes v Shakespeare
The Cervantes Institute says that Don
Quixote has been translated into 140 languages. The British Council says
that Shakespeare works have been translated into more than 100
languages
Shakespeare plays have formed the
basis of more than 1,000 film scripts. About 50 feature-film versions of
Don Quixote have been made in various languages
Critically acclaimed film adaptations
of Shakespeare's works include Kenneth Branagh's and Laurence Olivier's
versions of Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann
Internationally successful film
adaptations of Cervantes' Don Quixote have been rare - Orson Welles and
Terry Gilliam both failed to complete film shoots of their quixotic
projects
Man of La Mancha (Don Quixote) and
West Side Story (Romeo and Juliet) are the best-known musicals inspired
by the two writers' works
But Spanish novelist and
commentator Andres Trapiello, argues that the difference in the
commemorations has a lot to do with the authors themselves, and how the
public relates to them.
"Sure,
the state could have done more to promote the Cervantes event, but the
fact is that Shakespeare is a much more popular writer," he says.
"His works last two or three hours in the theatre and
have been made into God knows how many films. Cervantes wrote a number
of works but above all Don Quixote, a 1,100-page work which you need to
read with thousands of footnotes."
Trapiello describes the
difficulty of reading the early 17th Century classic - often described
as Europe's first modern novel - as a kind of albatross hanging around
the neck of contemporary Spaniards, many of whom have come to associate
the name of Cervantes with a negative cultural experience.
"Everyone
says they appreciate the importance of Don Quixote but there is this
national frustration that they cannot read it. People get a complex
about it," he says.
"Every couple of years they sit down and say I
am going to do it this time, but they get as far as the windmill story
on about page 50 and give up."
This story sees Don Quixote, a
minor nobleman who imagines himself a knight errant, mistake windmills
for hulking giants and charge them on his pathetic horse, Rocinante -
it's the origin of the English phrase "tilting at windmills".
A survey in 2015 revealed that only two out of 10
Spanish adults claimed to have read Don Quixote in full, and of these
only half recognised the main character's real name, Alonso Quijano.
The
fact that Trapiello's translation of the book into modern Spanish sold
30,000 copies in its first year in print may indicate how much Spaniards
long to get to grips with the book, and how difficult they find the
original.
Meanwhile, English-language films of Shakespeare's works have done a lot to popularise the bard in Spain.
Jose Rivas, a 25-year-old IT engineer from Madrid,
says the first thing that comes into his mind when he thinks of
Shakespeare is "Kenneth Branagh". He reels off a list of plays he knows
from the cinema, from Henry V to Much Ado About Nothing.
By
contrast, he has never read Cervantes, and was unaware this was a
special anniversary year for the giant of Spanish letters.
"I
get the feeling that Shakespeare is truly admired in Britain, while
Cervantes is almost being ignored here," says Lupe Estevez, a children's
author.
When she read Don Quixote as a schoolgirl she was surprised to discover how funny the book was.
"I
couldn't believe something like that could have been written in that
era. But the way we treat Cervantes is so solemn and old-fashioned, in
the TV and film versions there have been, for example. This generation
has got it wrong in that sense. I hope to see a new approach for our
children to enjoy."
Don Quixote in 100 words
An
elderly fan of chivalric literature, Alonso Quijano, decides to become a
knight-errant and sets off in search of adventure on his aged mount,
Rocinante. He thinks of himself as Don Quixote of La Mancha, imagines a
farm girl is his lady love, Dulcinea, and a villager, Sancho Panza, is
his squire. Panza's earthiness contrasts with Quixote's feverish
imagination, but he too is fooled into thinking he has become the
governor of an island. The novel's second part sees Quixote wrestling
with the fact that he is now a famous literary character, thanks to the
success of the first book.
The
man tasked with making 2016 in Britain the year of Cervantes, and not
just Shakespeare, says much of the criticism is unfair.
"What is
the aim of an anniversary like this? It is more to promote the works and
reach the average citizens than to make a lot of noise," says Julio
Crespo, director of the London branch of the Cervantes Institute, the
Spanish equivalent of the British Council.
"You can spend a lot of money on celebrations that seem to be very impressive but don't really have a serious content."
He
is at pains to underline how much the writers have in common. It was
because both writers were traditionally thought to have died on 23 April
that this became World Book Day, he points out. Both have been
translated into more than 100 languages.
"They were different
writers using different forms but both contributed to elevate the level
of the language and culture to which they belonged in a similar way," he
says.
Trapiello, the Cervantes devotee, also declares himself to
be an enormous fan of Shakespeare, citing the poetic richness of the
English bard's verse.
"Hamlet is my favourite play, but even in
some of the weaker works, there are always amazing passages. For
example, I don't rate Romeo and Juliet especially highly, but the
leave-taking scene between the two lovers is of extraordinary quality,"
he says.
Ultimately, Trapiello feels that Shakespeare's obvious
dramatic qualities give his work a modern edge, which lends it more
easily to film adaptations.
"Quixote, on the other hand, is a
series of small anecdotes. It does not translate at all into the
language of cinema," he says. "All films about Quixote have tried to be
funny and they have all failed."
WHY DO STILL CARE ABOUT SHAKESPEARE?
Four hundred years have passed since William
Shakespeare penned his last play. Yet his prose, plots and characters
are as alive today as they were when the plays were originally staged
during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Shakespearean
works are required reading for high school English students and a
course or two for college students who study writing or literature.
The plays have been performed in almost every language, on stage and
screen and at popular festivals around the world. Even in prisons,
teachers find that Shakespeare offers contemporary connections that open
pathways to learning for some of society’s most marginalized.
For two of UTSA’s eminent literary scholars, the bard of Avon’s
enduring appeal is an enduring topic as well. Alan Craven and Mark Bayer
are frequently asked to explain Shakespeare’s staying power in the lore
of literature. What is it about a long-dead poet and playwright that
makes him such an important element of contemporary culture?
The answer is simple for Craven, a professor emeritus at UTSA who taught his first Shakespeare course back in 1965.
“He is the greatest dramatist, the greatest poet and the
greatest prose writer in the history of the language,” said Craven, who
teaches undergraduate courses in Shakespeare and has seen all of his
plays performed at least once. “He has a presence like Lincoln or
Washington in American history.”
The language is rich, the characters are complex and many of
his basic themes – love, treachery, honor, bravery and political
intrigue – still resonate today, said Craven.
Mark Bayer, an associate professor and chair of the Department of English at UTSA, agreed.
“There are two poles of debate about Shakespeare’s longevity,” said
Bayer. “One is intrinsic to the plays’ universal appeal. But also, one
could plausibly argue Shakespeare has been manufactured into what he is
today through popular culture.”
Academia has helped fuel Shakespeare’s mystique by thoroughly
incorporating his works into the standard curriculum for high school and
college students, Bayer noted. High school students typically read one
play each year. At least one class in Shakespeare is required for
college English majors, which is one of the most popular academic
programs on the UTSA campus, said Bayer. Outside of the classroom, there
are movies, ballets, live theater and Shakespearean festivals. Even
popular music and television commercials have been built around notable
Shakespearean characters like Romeo and Juliet, Bayer added.
“A certain amount of Shakespeare’s notoriety is predicated on hype,” Bayer said.
Nonetheless, Shakespeare manages to shape the experience of
many who have never even seen one of his plays, Craven said. Pretty much
everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet, and most people can
recite at least a couple lines from Hamlet’s “To be or not to be”
soliloquy. “A lot of people are affected by Shakespeare even though they
don’t think that they know a lot about him,” Craven said.
Even in prisons, inmates who pursue educational opportunities
regularly find lessons about Shakespeare and his plays. The Tragedy of
Julius Caesar, a play about the conspiracy to assassinate the Roman
emperor, is one of the works regularly used to introduce inmates to
literature and learning, Craven said. The plot and themes involve
murder, political treachery and justice. “These are all things that
people in prisons would relate to and be interested in,” he added.
A Man of His Times
Still, Shakespeare most likely did not envision his works as
fodder for high school English classes or inmates in distant centuries.
He was a man of his times, writing for his contemporaries on topics that
were the hot-button issues of his day.
Bayer teaches students to examine the historical context of the
plays and the people they were written for. For example, sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century British audiences, and indeed, the author
himself, did not study nor understand human psychology as it is
understood today. Yet the psychologically complex character of Hamlet
made for a successful play because of its connections with ideas and
events that were relevant to the people of Shakespeare’s time, Bayer
said.
“They (early modern audiences) would enjoy the ghosts, the
political intrigue, the murder plots, the nations at war. These were
things that were on people’s minds at that time,” he said.
Humans still experience love, loss, be-trayal, war, humor and
tragedy, which gives Shakespeare a foothold in modern times, Craven
said. Still, the playwright wrote for live audiences, and Craven
encourages students and other Shakespeare lovers to get out of the books
and go see the plays in a theater.
“His plays were written to be performed. He conceived in them
what an audience needs to know,” Craven said. “If we come at his plays
from books and classrooms, we are doing it the wrong way.”
He laughed, recalling a recent experience of seeing Romeo and
Juliet live in a theater that seemed to be filled with teenage girls.
They sighed, moaned, giggled and cried as one throughout the production,
something the professor delighted in.
“That is exactly the way Shakespeare intended for his plays to be
experienced,” Craven said. “Shakespeare wanted audiences to react. He
wanted people to cheer and boo at his characters.” These physical
connections to Shakespeare are not as strong in San Antonio as in other
areas of the United States, where summer months bring Shakespearean
festivals or where there may even be local theater groups that focus on
Shakespeare, said Craven.
Of course, England is the real heart of Shakespearean love and
lore. No vacation to that country can be considered complete without a
visit to Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon. A tourist in
London may be able to find three or four theaters simultaneously
presenting different Shakespearean works, Craven noted.
Despite the limited opportunity to see performances in San
Antonio, UTSA’s courses on Shakespeare remain popular with students, who
gain appreciation for the lilting language and talent of an author from
another era.
“The language is so dense, so rich, the first couple plays they
read are difficult. Not because the language is archaic, but because it
is semantically dense. You have to read the lines over and over,” said
Bayer. But like anything else, time and effort bring an understanding,
he said. “Students go into it because it is a requirement, but I do
think they end up enjoying it.”
Perhaps some of those students will end up like Craven, who finds that Shakespeare forms a lens through which he sees life.
“I find myself quoting Shakespeare all the time,” he said. “There
is almost always a quote for almost anything one wants to say.”
Influence of Films on Modern Society
The
film industry has grown and evolved rapidly since its inception in the
early 1900’s. Over the years, it has gained the attention of every
culture in every part of the world. These days, thanks to Hollywood, it
is instrumental in shaping the social culture by transforming the
viewers’ opinions or swaying them one way or another. The idea that a
film can have such an enormous impact on people can be difficult for
some, however, this same impact can also be a great tool when used
properly and for the right reasons.
Rise of the Giants
The roaring 1920’s gave us five major movie studios from the Hollywood area. These studios included Metro Goldwyn Mayer,
Paramount, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and RKO Radio. Their
growth gave rise to movie viewings and the overall popularity of this
form of entertainment. The question is, does such a sudden rise
in the popularity of movies impact the viewers’ opinions around the
world. Moreoever, why are movies considered to be a mass communication
medium and in what ways? To answer the above questions, we need to
examine a few areas.
Mass Communication
The term ‘mass’
suggests great volume. It also refers to the extent and reception of
messages/communication. Communication is where movies come into play. It
entails understanding the meaning and receiving the message. Put
together, mass communication is the distribution of an idea or message
to a large number of people. Films fit perfectly into this
description. Just examining the revenues some of these movies generate
attests to their popularity around the world. The movie Titanic holds
the record as the world’s highest grossing movie at almost two billion
dollars. There are many more movies that made close to the one billion
dollars. Films do have an impact on people. The tricky part is to
understand why and how. One way of looking at movies as a medium of
mass communication is to observe how they convey information.
Influence on Culture
Some
movies portray historical events. These movies are like history lessons
to the audience since they show something we were not able to witness
or take part in. Consider war movies such as The Tuskegee Airmen and Memphis Belle.
Though not one hundred percent accurate, both depict actual events of
historical wars. They are examples of how movies can teach the newer
generations about what their distant relatives did for their country. Another type of informative movies describes the cultures and societies around the world. City of God is a prime example. These movies show the hardships that people in other countries face in their day-to-day lives. Again,
these are just two simple examples of how movies can be learning tools
for a mass audience. Of course, the opposite can and often does happen
as well. I am referring to the so-called ‘informative’ movies that
present skewed information. When people accept the presented
information as absolute truth, they form baseless opinions.
Advertising and Marketing
Movies
also play an important role as advertising grounds Companies pay large
sums of money for their product names to appear in movies. This form of
advertisement is very popular and works because people see their
favorite actors using these products and imitate them. Fans mimic their
idols in how their dress, eat, even act. Looking at a different aspect of how movies influence American culture,
we look at the idea of violence used in movies. As time has gone on, we
see violence appearing more often and more graphically within movies.
This can have a huge influence on people in a couple different ways.
Creating a Culture
In order to appeal to the segment of the masses, filmmakers take the cultural value
of that section of society into account. Take, for example, the teen
movies.. These typically contain features such as conversations at the
school lockers (Dazed and Confused), prom (Carrie), cheerleaders (Porky’s), the shopping mall (Mall Rats), the juvenile delinquent gang (Rebel without a Cause) and the sensitive, alienated teenage hero (Rebel). Another place we see filmmakers influenced by the society is when they depict foreign cultures. For example, City of God
tells the story of a lower class section of Rio de Janeiro. The
filmmakers emotionally tied the American viewers to the movie by
beautifully demonstrating the cultural values of the city. Even
ethical values came into play in the above movie. With a corrupt
government and police system, people within this area grew up knowing
that they could die at any point. They lived in a fear that we just do
not understand.
Providing Fantasy
Another example of how
ethical values influence movies is the filmmakers’ take on greed or
money. They make movies with rich characters, living perfect lives,
like Richie Rich. Through the movie, the viewers can transport
themselves into a fantasy. Conversely, certain movies may contain
lessons about greed. In No Country For Old Men, the main character’s greed hurts him and his family. In
summary, movies have the capacity to influence society, both locally
and globally. But the society, its trends, and people’s reactions to
those trends influence the movies. In each case, the influence can be
positive or negative.
9 Reasons To Stop Getting Hurt and Disappointed with People
There is probably someone in your life that you wish you had a better relationship with.Someone in your family or in your circle of friends. Someone in your
present life or from your past. And yet over and over, you keep getting
disappointed when they don’t do something or show up someplace to
support you or love you in the way that you need it. Reasons To Stop Getting Hurt or Disappointed with People
1. The story you tell yourself is a lie:
It’s a lie that they don’t care about you until you know for absolute
certain. It’s a lie that they even should care about you until they do.
Examine the sad sob-story you tell yourself before you believe it.
2. The expectations you have are false:
You have no right to impose expectations on others. You are here to live your life
not tell others how to live theirs. So stop already. Make best friends
with reality and see it for what it is is to get closer to joy. If
people care, and show it, great. If they care and don’t show it, not
that you’ll know for certain but great. And if they don’t care and don’t
show it, also great. You go on being happy, honey!
3. Your happiness or misery depends on you:
I admit, it’s a delight to blame the whole bloody world for our
sadness. Not a healthy good-for-you kinda delight but a delight
nonetheless. And the truth is, baby, the way to both happiness and
misery is all on you. Ugly truth but a liberating one. Embrace it.
4. Your power resides in you, not them:
Stop giving your power away for the love of whatever you love. Keep
it safe inside yourself. You give your power away to others by having
crazy expectations. And all expectations are crazy. No wonder you are
bereft of all joy. Hold on to your power.
5. You need your energy for important stuff:
Do you not realize how much this drains your energy? Stop being a hero about it. One good cry and I’m wiped for the afternoon! One crazy story in my mind and my yoga practice
is ruined. Imagine what you can do with the energy that you don’t waste
on being hurt and disappointed. Use it for good. Use it on your terms,
not as a reaction to a false story.
6. You owe it to yourself to live in joy:
You can certainly live however you like, you have that right. But you
owe it to you to live in joy. You owe it to the beautiful and wonderful
person that you are to live in complete joy and harmony, and you have
the means to create that very life so if you want it, you can have it.
It’s a choice!
7. You will have wasted the time anyway:
When you begin to see clearly, you will either patch up with these
people who ‘disappoint’ and ‘hurt’ you or you will move on from them and
forget them altogether. Either way, this hurt, this disappointment is a
waste of time. Stop wallowing in self-pity and use the minutes for
better things.
8. You will grow old faster:
Misery and sadness shrink the heart, shut down the brain pathways,
and slowly detach you from the world of reality and present time. You
will move deeper and further into your story, your sadness, your
self-pity in your mind and you will lose reasons to live fully and to be
happy. And when you lose your reasons to live, what is left?
9. You are loved, no matter what:
It all comes down to love. We yearn to be loved.
We yearn to matter in this world. We yearn to be somebody to someone.
So go be somebody to someone then! Stop drowning in the misery of “She
doesn’t love me!” “He doesn’t care about me!” Find love on your own
terms by giving love first. So remember, it really is none of your or my business what people say
or do. It’s theirs. Let their business stay where it belongs: with them. Don’t pollute your mind with it. Mind your own business and yours alone.
Why Children Get Gifts on Christmas
In 1800s New
York, the overlapping interests of middle-class families and the wealthy
produced a cultural practice that’s still in place today.
During a week when
so many Americans have experienced some combination of joy, rage, and
frustration in seeking the perfect holiday gifts for their children, it
seems appropriate to pause and ask: Where did the practice of giving
Christmas gifts to children come from?
There does not appear to be an easy answer. Gifts do not primarily serve as rewards: Commentators on the political left and right
have in recent years asked parents to abandon the “naughty and nice”
paradigm that suggests such presents are prizes for good behavior, and
indeed historical evidence suggests that proper conduct has not been a
widespread prerequisite for young Americans to receive Christmas gifts.
Nor do presents seem to have a clear connection to Christian faith. Some American families have established a “three-gift” Christmas
in an effort to link the practice to the generosity of the three wise
men in the story of Jesus’s birth, but again no broad historical
precedent exists for this link. In fact, religious leaders have long
been more likely to decry the commercialization of Christmas as
detracting from the true spirit of the holiday than to celebrate the
delivery of purchased goods to middle-class or wealthy children.
(Donating gifts to poor children is a different matter, of course, but
that practice became common in the United States only after gift-giving
at home became a well-established ritual.)
Critics
of the commercialization of Christmas tend to attribute the growth of
holiday gift-giving to corporate marketing efforts. While such efforts
did contribute to the magnitude of the ritual, the practice of buying
Christmas presents for children predates the spread of corporate
capitalism in the United States: It began during the first half of the
1800s, particularly in New York City, and was part of a broader
transformation of Christmas from a time of public revelry into a home-
and child-centered holiday.
This reinvention was driven
partly by commercial interests, but more powerfully by the converging
anxieties of social elites and middle-class parents in rapidly
urbanizing communities who sought to exert control over the bewildering
changes occurring in their cities. By establishing a new type of
midwinter celebration that integrated home, family, and shopping, these
Americans strengthened an emerging bond between Protestantism and
consumer capitalism.
In his book The Battle for Christmas,
the historian Stephen Nissenbaum presents the 19th-century reinvention
of the holiday as a triumph of New York’s elites over the city’s
emerging working classes. New York’s population grew nearly tenfold
between 1800 and 1850, and during that time elites became increasingly
frightened of traditional December rituals of “social inversion,” in
which poorer people could demand food and drink from the wealthy and
celebrate in the streets, abandoning established social constraints much
like on Halloween night or New Year’s Eve. These rituals, which
occurred any time between St. Nicholas Day (a Catholic feast day
observed in Europe on December 6th) and New Year’s Day, had for
centuries been a means of relieving European peasants’ (or American
slaves’) discontent during the traditional downtime of the agricultural
cycle. In a newly congested urban environment, though, aristocrats
worried that such celebrations might become vehicles for protest when
employers refused to give workers time off during the holidays or when a
long winter of unemployment loomed for seasonal laborers.
In
response to these concerns, a group of wealthy men who called
themselves the Knickerbockers invented a new series of traditions for
this time of year that gradually moved Christmas celebrations out of the
city’s streets and into its homes. They presented these traditions as a
reinvigoration of Dutch customs practiced in New Amsterdam and New York
during the colonial period, although Nissenbaum and other scholars have
established that these supposed antecedents largely did not exist in
North America. Drawing from two story collections by Washington Irving,
their most well-known member, these New Yorkers experimented with
domestic festivities on St. Nicholas Day and New Year’s Day until
another member of the group, Clement Clark Moore, solidified the
tradition of celebrating on Christmas with his enormously popular poem
“A Visit from St. Nicholas” (better known as “The Night Before
Christmas”) in 1822.
The St. Nicholas that Moore
presented in his famous poem was not a wholesale invention, but like the
other traditions the Knickerbockers borrowed and transformed, he was
not a well-established part of New York’s winter holiday rituals.
Similarly, his delivery of presents to children aligned with a newly
emerging practice in 1820s New York, although the giving of homemade
gifts during the winter holidays appears to have begun by the late
1700s. Moore’s poem does not explain why children are receiving presents
on Christmas, although they clearly have the expectation of receiving
special treats (“visions of sugar plums danced in their heads”).
Understanding
why giving gifts to children (and by gradual extension, to adults)
became part of this new Christmas tradition requires an expansion of
Nissenbaum’s story. The Battle for Christmas focuses on the
tensions between New York’s elites and its working classes, but during
this same period, a middle class began to emerge in New York and other
northern cities, and the reinvention of Christmas served their purposes
as well. Like their wealthier contemporaries, middle-class families
worried about what rapid population growth and expanding market
capitalism would do to their children—particularly because an expansion
of goods and services on offer was reducing young people’s household
responsibilities at a time when alternative pathways to adulthood, such
as public education, had yet to emerge.
In
response to the increasing uncertainty surrounding this stage of life,
urban families that aspired to prepare their children for life in the
middle and upper ranks of American society widely adopted new strategies
for child-rearing. As work and home became increasingly separated for
these families, parents kept children within the home (or at church or
in school) as long as possible in order to avoid what many of them
perceived as the corrupting influences of commerce on kids’ inchoate
moral character. Elites’ efforts to domesticate Christmas aligned neatly
with these parents’ interests, for they encouraged young Americans to
associate the joys of the holiday with the morally and physically
protective space of home.
Meanwhile, even if parents
were concerned about commercial influences outside the home, they were
not bothered by the idea of letting children’s commodities into it, in
limited doses. In the 1820s, an American toy industry began to emerge,
and American publishers started producing books and magazines for
children. (The first three self-sustaining children’s magazines in U.S.
history debuted between 1823 and 1827.) Much of the initial demand for
these items reflected parents’ recognition of the instructional power of
consumer goods. As an 1824 review of the evangelical children’s
magazine The Youth’s Friend noted,
Let the Youth’s Magazine be called his own paper, and how
will the juvenile reader clasp it to his bosom in ecstacy [sic] as he
takes it from the Post-Office. And if instruction from any source will
deeply affect his heart, it will when communicated through the medium of
this little pamphlet.
If early 19th-century newspaper ads promoting
bibles as children’s Christmas gifts are any indication, parents during
this era seem to have retained a similar focus on delivering spiritual
value to their children. After the Civil War, the spread of consumer
products in American cities made it increasingly difficult to control
children’s access to toys, books, and magazines, so in order to keep
young people at home, parents gradually acquiesced to purchasing
products intended to amuse as well as instruct their offspring.
Postbellum
Christmas traditions followed this broader trend by becoming more
child-focused, particularly through the reconstructed image of St.
Nicholas. Clement Clark Moore’s St. Nick was an elf who was jolly but
also a bit scary (as indicated by the narrator’s repeated reminder that
he had “nothing to dread”). During the 1860s, the cartoonist Thomas Nast
created a new image of Santa Claus that replaced this ambiguous figure
with a warm, grandfatherly character who often appeared with his arms
full of dolls, games, and other secular toys. One of the earliest
publications in which Nast’s Santa figure appeared was the December 1868
issue of the magazine Hearth and Home.
Christmas
gift-giving, then, is the product of overlapping interests between
elites who wanted to move raucous celebrations out of the streets and
into homes, and families who simultaneously wanted to keep their
children safe at home and expose them, in limited amounts, to commercial
entertainment. Retailers certainly supported and benefited from this
implicit alliance, but not until the turn of the 20th century did they
assume a proactive role of marketing directly to children in the hopes
that they might entice (or annoy) their parents into spending more money
on what was already a well-established practice of Christmas
gift-giving.
In the nearly two centuries since New Yorkers instigated the invention
of today’s Christmas rituals, American families have invested
gift-giving and other widely practiced holiday traditions with their own
unique meanings. Identifying the origins of these rituals as historical
rather than eternal reinforces their power to do so.
What Your Eating Habits Reveal
About Your Personality
Are you a fast eater, a slow eater or an
"isolationist"?
You are what you eat, or so
the saying goes. But it may be more accurate to say that you are how you
eat.
Last week, an
unscientific but all-too-relatable listicle on LittleThings.com broke down
different personality types based on eating habits, examining the personalities
of people who eat fast, slow, adventurously and everything
in between.
Is there any psychological
basis to these claims? Actually, there might be.
According to Juliet
Boghossian, a Los Angeles-based behavioral food expert and founder of food
behavior research firm Food-ology, we can
"absolutely" make inferences about someone's personality based
on their eating habits.
"Food-related habits can
in fact reveal facets of an individual’s personality and behavioral
tendencies," Boghossian told The Huffington Post in an email. "What
you want to observe is your 'consistent' or 'typical' food-related habits,
idiosyncrasies and rituals."
We talked to Boghossian and
Julia Hormes, a psychologist specializing in food behaviors at the State
University of New York at Albany, about what our eating habits really say about
who we are. Here's what they had to say about a few popular eating styles.
The Slow Eater
We all know the type: After
everyone else has finished their meal, you'll find this person plodding along,
eating one little bite at a time. When sitting down at the table, the slow
eater takes his or her sweet time -- and is always the last person to
finish the meal.
According to
Boghossian, slow eaters are usually people who like to be in control and
know how to appreciate life. They also tend to be confident and even-keeled.
People who eat slowly
only sometimes, however, may do so because of low energy or a sad mood.
"Our mood is known to
affect our eating rate," Hormes said.
While slow eaters might feel
pressured to catch up to everyone else, Hormes notes that there are some real
health perks to being a slow eater.
"Slow eating has
been shown to be associated with decreased energy intake, increased satiety,
and higher pleasantness ratings of meals," she said.
The Fast Eater
There's a good chance you or
someone else in your family fits the description of the fast eater -- and
if you grew up with a fast eater, you probably developed a habit of fighting
for seconds. This person tends to barrel through meals, cleaning the plate
before the rest of the table has finished even half of their meal.
Away from the table, fast
eaters tend to be ambitious, goal-oriented and open to new experiences, but
they may also have a tendency to be impatient, according to Boghossian.
"The speed at which you
eat reveals the speed at which you take on and enjoy life,"
she said.
There's nothing wrong with
eating efficiently, but super-fast eaters would be wise to
consider how quickly they're consuming. Eating too fast carries
with it certain health
risks, including weight gain.
The Adventurer
The adventurous eater is
always looking for the next gastronomic adventure. When it comes to food -- and
probably other areas of life -- this person is a thrill-seeker and a
risk-taker.
"Your one-of-a-kind
approach to life is something that you should never change," Phil
Mutz, the author of the LittleThings post, writes. "Just be careful not to
pressure others to be as adventurous as you; not everyone is meant to be an
explorer."
Being an adventurous eater,
according to Boghossian, "shows [one's] openness to trying new things
outside of [one's] experience/comfort zone."
The Picky Eater
This person may never have
grown out of their childhood likes and dislikes, or the tendency to
turn up his or her nose at an unfamiliar cuisine. This eater can
often be found asking a waiter if the dish can be served without
sauce or with dressing on the side.
There's a good chance this
person is a little neurotic away from the table, too.
"Research on 'food
neophobia' -- the reluctance to try new foods -- shows that it is related to
certain personality traits, including sensation seeking, anxiety, and
neuroticism," Hormes said. "Those high in food neophobia appear to
associate many avoided foods with a sense of disgust."
The Isolationist
The isolationist, one of the
more unusual eating types, approaches the plate methodically, eating one
food item in its entirety before moving on to the next.
"You are a very
detail-oriented person, and you are sure to always think things through
thoroughly," Mutz writes. "Though other people may not always
understand your way of doing things, deep down you know that there is a method
to your so-called madness. You are a very careful person."
Boghossian agrees this type of
eating behavior may suggest an individual's personality type.
"This behavior conveys a
task-oriented personality versus a multi-tasking individual," Boghossian
said. "Also, it conveys a disciplined and border-line stubborn tendency to
complete one task before moving on to another."
