A Short & Spooky Christmas

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1:32That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Although it's like we talked about before, is that if you've ever gotten water in your mouth in any sort of ocean or lake, like technically there's a little bit of bone juice in there. Yeah, I've like accidentally drank bone juice, but I've never made the decision. Not going to do it on purpose. I mean, bone broth is a thing, Paige.

2:08You know what, fair. I'm Paige. And I'm Megan. And this is Spooky Science Sisters. Hello, you're listening to Spooky Science Sisters, a podcast where we present to you a science-based and probably very giggly discussion on all things strange and unusual. This is our annual holiday-themed episode, and we are sort of doing a Christmas slash holiday-themed short and spooky style episode. So we're going to talk about a couple new, creepy, Christmas-related or

2:39Christmas-adjacent traditions that are out there in the world. Yay. But before we start talking about Christmas, I was thinking, you know what would make the perfect last-minute holiday gift? I don't know, Paige. What would? Spooky Science. Dissecting the mysteries of ghosts, cryptids, aliens, and other oddities. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, well, we wrote a book. Surprise. Are we going to keep these going into 2026, or do you think this is the last book reminder

3:14for a while? Maybe we'll hold off until like the one-year anniversary after this. Three years from now, every episode, we're still going to be reminding you that we wrote a book. Listen, it's a big deal. Yeah, no, I just thought it was funny. And I was like, I wonder if we're just going to keep it rolling. So, yes, we're obviously very excited. But if you are reading the book or have read the book and have

3:48not reviewed it yet, please do. We want to hear what you guys think of it. And I think we told you last time that we have no more events planned right now, which, like, isn't entirely true, because Megan... Yes. Yeah, I'm going to the Committee for a Skeptical Inquiry conference in June in Buffalo, which is their 50th anniversary. And the Center for Inquiry is headquartered in Buffalo. So I'm going to get to meet a bunch of people who we've only talked to on the internet before.

4:26And I'm going to give a talk. And yeah, it'll be terrifying. But people should go, I guess, if they... Because there's a lot of cool stuff. It's like Bill and I is going to be there and a bunch of awesome people. So yeah, no more, I guess, like, book-specific events. But Megan does have a pretty cool thing coming up, so... I'm pretty awesome. Yeah. But if you still wanted to watch some of our book events that we have done

5:01previously, this is a reminder that you can go watch our Skeptical Inquirer Presents talk, which is on their website. So that's it. That's it for the book for now. You'll hear from us again in June. Or earlier than that. You never know. You know what would make a great Valentine's Day gift. Yeah, exactly. It would be super awesome for Easter baskets. Okay. Well, anyway, book aside, before we get to our Christmas holiday spookies, we have to do our something spooky.

5:36So Paige, has anything spooky happened to you recently? I don't think so. Wow. So exciting. No spookies. So exciting. It's fine. Mine is more general as well. I just wanted to point out that we are recording this today on the winter solstice. So it's the shortest day and the longest night of the year. So I felt like that was very appropriate considering so many of the spooky Christmas traditions are related to pagan

6:09beliefs about the darkest time of the year and worrying that you're going to make it through the winter and all that stuff. So good timing on our part. Yeah, we've literally nailed it this year between this and... The Edmund Fitzgerald episode. Yeah, on the night that it sank. Yeah. I know. So accidentally on purpose. Because these were all planned very last minute. Okay, so let's talk about spooky stuff. So I'm going to start and remind you that a couple of years

6:45ago we talked about St. Nicholas and in our 2023 Christmas episode and his necromancy skills from when he supposedly resurrected three boys who were murdered and pickled by an evil butcher which, as a reminder, is a possible source of the Christmas pickle ornament tradition which I think is just like delightfully unhinged. But St. Nicholas apparently gets even weirder though. So this year we're going to talk about that weirdness because we're

7:16going to talk about Santa's bone juice which is officially known as the manna of St. Nicholas. And this is something that I found a couple of weeks ago and I sent to Paige immediately and I was like, this is it. This is the Christmas episode. Because I think it's just listen, I don't want to be disrespectful. I get it. We've all got our traditions. We've all got things that are important to us but like it's

7:49something. It's a very interesting tradition. We'll put it that way. So St. Nicholas was a real guy who lived in the 4th century in what is now Turkey and he was a bishop of a city called Myra. He was known for his kindness and generosity and ability to, well, or supposedly ability to perform miracles for those in need. So he was the patron saint of like sort of a laundry list which I think is like how saints

8:24normally go but sometimes it seems like how are these things are related? Like how did we get all these groups together? Because he is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, toy makers, unmarried people and students. So that's a real hodgepodge. Most people. Right. I feel like most people have been that. I mean, obviously all people have been children at some point. That's a very broad swath of the population. Anyway, so he reportedly had a habit of secretly distributing gifts to

9:02people which is obviously what gave rise to Santa Claus and, you know, folklore about Saint Nick and all that. But anyway, we're going to talk about what happened after the real Saint Nicholas died. So after his death, his remains became sacred relics that continue to be venerated today, which is like already a bit of a spooky tradition. There are some pretty unusual churches in Europe that have like displayed skeletons or like

9:34open, like you can see the body inside of them of saints or pieces of their bodies, things like that. Like it's a little bit of a creepy tradition as it stands alone. But things are taken a step farther with Saint Nicholas. Saint Nicholas dies. After that, his bones were moved around a couple of times and like pieces of him were spread out, which again like is sort of odd. But sometime within like 200 years of his death, he was

10:09interred at the Saint Nicholas Church in Myra where he was a bishop and it was a church that was like built over the site of where his original church when he was preaching there. Preaching there? I don't know. Whatever. I don't know enough about Catholicism to know. Is it preaching? Is it something else? We don't know. So while his bones were in Myra, it was claimed that they produced a sweet-smelling substance that had healing qualities.

10:43And this liquid or substance became known as the manna of Saint Nicholas. And I'm going to tell you right now that yes, the belief that it had healing qualities absolutely meant that people were extracting it and putting it on their bodies or drinking it. So hence the bone juice of Santa. Yeah, because you know, who doesn't want to drink liquid that's like come from somebody's tomb? But also like as an aside with some of these, like the whole relic thing and this

11:20like taking liquid that's coming out of somebody's tomb and drinking it or putting it on your body or whatever. Listen, like it is a little funny to me that the Catholic Church spent all this time accusing people of witchcraft and like being, you know, persecuting people for pagan beliefs, all this stuff when it's like that's basically witchcraft, what you're doing right now. Yeah, which I mean, I guess like to be fair to the Puritans, which we

11:54don't do super often, but like they part of the reason that they split off, like they thought that a lot of what the Catholics were doing was like more like witchcraft. So, you know, it's been a thing for a while, but it's just, it's very funny that some of these traditions just feel very witchy and that's a little bit ironic considering, you know, all the stuff that they have

12:25done in the past in the name of persecuting witches. Yeah, I'm confused by what's happening here. So, what? I was like, we aren't actually extracting the bone juice, though. I mean, so they're taking out, like they're opening up his tomb or there's like some sort of drain from it, I don't know, but they're like draining out liquid that collects in his tomb around his bones and doing whatever they gotta do with it. But we're actually doing this.

13:00Like, this isn't like a situation where we're bringing a liquid in and saying that's what it is. No, no, no, this is like actually what is happening. We're gonna get to that right now. Because I was gonna say, like, it's not that different than like Catholic communion. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Which, like, you know, I've seen a lot of memes where they point out that sort of like the whole communion thing, like pretending that you're, you know, eating somebody's body and drinking their blood

13:36or whatever is like a little bit witchy as well. But no, this is like they're literally taking out the liquid that's collecting in his tomb. Okay, I was trying to read through to find that before I asked, but I wasn't entirely sure, so I just wanted to make sure. No, cool. That's, that's what's happening, Paige. That's why I was like, this can't actually. This can't really be what they're doing. Yes, it is. Okay, so like the church in Mayra is established in like the 7th century, so these stories

14:12of his bones producing this liquid are very old at this point, and I think it was around 1000 CE that his remains were moved to the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari, Italy, and they have continued to produce this like so-called manna or myrrh, which is still to this day collected every year on May 9th during the Feast of the Translation. You know, there's a small amount of it, so it gets diluted with holy water and

14:44bottled and then sold to believers to have or use or drink or do what they want to do with it. So, it's a thing. It's a really spooky thing that they are doing and like, you know, I get it. I know that I'm not a believer in this, so it's like for me, it seems a little odd, but it is what it is. People have their traditions. This just happens to be a particularly spooky one. So, obviously, I read about this and was skeptical that St.

15:20Nicholas's bones are producing some sort of like, magic liquid that has healing properties. So, what is really going on here? Well, I was apparently skeptical that they were even... Yeah, you thought it was just like a communion situation. No, no, no. This is the bone juice page. So, it was once believed that the bones were extruding some sort of oil which like, not to be too gross, but like, maybe when he was fresher, like, it was

15:51a little oilier because there was some residual body fat situation going on, but like, you know, we don't need to talk about that for too long. But, in 1925, scientists from the University of Barrie analyzed some of the manna of St. Nicholas and found out that it's just water, which is sort of unsurprising. Like, my first thought about this was like, well, it's just got to be some like, condensation or something like

16:21that. So, the thought is that it's likely just condensation that formed inside of the tomb around the bones, given that both Myra and Barrie are port cities on the Mediterranean Sea with high humidity. The tomb in Barrie, where he is now, is actually below sea level, so people think there could also be seawater leaking in through groundwater. We know that the small pieces of him, good lord, like finger bones and teeth that have been sort of more widely distributed to other locations that are not Barrie, do not secrete any sort

16:59of substance, so like, it's got to be just something about those specific tombs. It was noted that the bones were removed from the tomb in Barrie in the 1950s because they needed to do repairs for a short time and that they continued to perspire and produce some sort of liquid, but they also said that they were found to be immersed in about an inch of water when the tomb was open

Analysis of the Manna

17:28and they were totally waterlogged, so even if they're bringing them up and displaying them outside of the tomb for a time and they're continuing to perspire, these are waterlogged bones in probably some sort of sealed container. So again, it's probably just condensation forming on the inside of it. And a television crew for a documentary called The Real Face of Santa stuck a camera in there in 2004 and found that the bones were still sitting in water, but also that they had significantly degraded, which was what

18:03I was sort of wondering about. I was like, man, these have been waterlogged for a really long time, so I'm surprised they haven't just like completely disappeared, but yeah, it sounds like they might not be around for much longer because you've got water collecting in the tomb. Well, that's what I was going to ask, is how are we still getting liquid? Well, because I think after the repairs in the 50s, they put his bones back into

18:35the tomb, and it's like whatever is still happening in there, like whether it's humidity or it's seawater leaking in, like it's still just happening and things are condensing inside of his tomb. Yeah, I guess I just meant like if it weren't just water, like how are we still getting like bone juice this much later? Oh, yeah, well in that case, like that would actually be some sort of like miraculous situation happening. Yeah, I guess fair enough. Yeah, like if it was some sort of holy substance, like not water

19:12coming out of there, like who knows, that's some, that is some miraculous situation, but yeah, it's probably just water, or it is just water. That said, finding out that it's water, and like the analysis that these University of Barrie scientists did hasn't deterred people from still viewing it as holy, because even if it's not some miraculous substance that's like produced by the bones themselves, just the contact of the water with the relics is considered by a

19:43lot of people enough to imbue them with holiness. So like still the whole extracting it and distributing it is a big deal. So yeah, I'm not drinking any 1700-year-old bone juice. No. No thank you. I'm not drinking two-year-old bone juice. Well, yes, accurate. Although it's like we talked about before, is that if you've ever gotten water in your mouth in any sort of ocean or lake, like technically there's a little bit of bone juice in there.

20:15Yeah, I've like accidentally drank bone juice, but I've never made the decision. Not going to do it on purpose. I mean, bone broth is a thing, Paige. You know what, fair. Properly cooked bone broth. Anyway, like I said though I'm 100% not trying to make fun here because like I know that these things are important and that they have a lot of religious significance, but like the pickling thing and the resurrecting necromancy thing, everything I learned about St.

20:47Nicholas is just, it's just another layer of sort of weird spookiness and I kind of love that. So, yeah. That's my favorite. I'm Livvy Dunn, All-American gymnast and Viore athlete. When you travel and train as much as I do, you find happiness where you are. On the mat or on the sand, movement and comfort are essential. That's why I live in Performance Joggers by Viore. Made from DreamNet fabric that's made of 89% recycled materials.

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21:52Anyway, what are you going to tell us about Paige? So Megan already sort of alluded to or talked about the sort of all these spooky traditions kind of being rooted in pagan beliefs. So I'm going to talk just about a couple of those and specifically I'm going to talk about some Christmas Eve traditions that are, I guess, rooted in honoring our ancestors. Maybe that's the right way to say it. Yeah. And the first of those is a Serbian tradition where on

22:25Christmas Eve day or Bania Dan is the, which is the last fasting day of a 40 day fast. They've got a Christmas one and presumably also an Easter one, huh? Yeah, I would believe so. But during that day, the old Serbian tradition was to have the meal preparations going for that evening celebration feast while the head of the family, typically the father or another male relative, would go chop down a young oak tree or a branch and that would serve as their yule log or their Bania.

23:01The evening of Christmas Eve or the Bania Viče? Viče? Veče? I don't know. Viče? Veče? Veče? We don't speak Serbian. We don't know. The Bania or the yule log was brought into the house and typically placed in the fireplace where it would burn until Christmas day and that's, I mean, pretty standard for the yule log. Yeah, which as a reminder, which like, man, this goes way back to one of our earliest episodes that we

23:32did with Holly Walters, but a lot of that kind of stuff is rooted in sort of like the whole pagan, like, the home is holy and hearth magic kind of thing. So, yeah. So, once the fireplace is burning, the floor would then be covered in straw, nuts and berries were placed on the floor, and a nut would be placed in each corner of the room in honor of the dead. I'll be honest, I looked, I'm not entirely sure why, like, why that nut represented ancestors, but that's what

24:08they would do. I mean, I've got some nutty ancestors. I'm sorry, I had to. Then a tablecloth would be placed on the straw where the dinner feast would be served, and so a family would sit on the floor to eat that dinner, and this came from an ancient tradition when dinner was served for both the living and the dead. And I think you made a note about this, but like, I believe the thought here was that by sitting

24:41on the floor, you were brought closer to those who have passed. Yeah, and I think from, like, a Christian perspective, it was supposed to be sort of a humbling thing, but I also wondered if, by closer to the dead, that it originated from the tradition for early civilizations to actually bury their dead under the floors of their homes. Oh, yeah. Like, sort of the idea that, like, on that night, you know, spiritually you'd be close to them, but, like,

25:14possibly also, like, physically you would be close to them because, like, they would be underneath your floors. That would make sense. I don't know if that's accurate. I, like, briefly googled kind of Serbia and if there's evidence of that in, like, older populations, and it looked like there was some, like, archaeological stuff related to that, but I don't know. Anyway, that's my thought. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. Yeah. So, some families still practice versions, I guess, of these traditions today, though it sounds like, for the most

25:48part, while the straw and the nuts may still be, like, pretty common for people to place throughout their homes, I think people are, like, setting their tables up in those areas instead of, like, sitting on the floor. So, it's not so much about, like, the honoring of the dead so much as it used to be. Gotcha. Or at least not from the floor. Oh, yeah. Right. Listen, I'm too old to be sitting on the floor. It's fine. I get it. And so, obviously, Serbia is not the only place where we see examples of Christmas

26:24traditions rooted in honoring ancestors or honoring the deceased. Another good example of this is in Poland, where some families leave or would leave an extra place setting at the table during Christmas Eve dinner, where food and drinks were often served to unseen guests. And this tradition likely came from an old Slavic ritual, obiet, which was a feast served in honor of the ancestors and recently and recently deceased. At the end of this feast, so during the feast, they would put a place setting at an empty chair,

26:58and they would serve food and drink there. At the end of the feast, extra time would then be given, so everybody else would kind of leave, extra time would be given so that spirits could enjoy their own ceremony and enjoy their own feast, which I think is very sweet. Yeah, that's a nice one. Yeah, and so this tradition scholars believe was adopted after Poln's conversion to Catholicism. However, that empty chair, instead of being a way to invite spirits in to eat a meal with them, became

27:31a way to commemorate those who they had lost during the year. So I sort of picture this as like people who have like a special table or something at a wedding for people that they had recently lost. I think it's the same kind of idea. Mm-hmm, that makes sense. Nowadays, families still leave that empty chair in a lot of households, maybe not necessarily to commemorate those who they've lost or to welcome spirits in, but it is now seen as a sign of Polish

28:03hospitality where families will prepare an extra setting and plate in case they have an unexpected visitor who needs food or shelter, which I also think is very sweet. And I was reading through these thinking like, I don't remember what we did two years ago for our holiday episode. Mm-hmm. But last year's was like very dark. Did we do one last year? Yeah, last year's was the like holiday like food safety one. Oh, yep. Yeah, this one's a lot more wholesome. Yeah, we've also I think done like a disasters one where

28:38we talked about like fires and trees catching on fire and turkeys catching on fire and all that. So this year we were like, let's be a little less crazy. Yeah, this one feels a little nicer, a little more wholesome. Yeah, still wholesome in like a spooky way though because I feel like a lot of these and the reason that I sort of had talked to you about, you know, some of these traditions of like traditional meals that sort of leave space for the dead or whatever is like that was sort of part of the pagan part

29:16of this time of year was that it was like another time when sort of like the veil between worlds was thin and, you know, things were really spooky and dark and I think we had talked at one point about how like even like trick-or-treating has potentially came out of like winter solstice sort of like caroling, wassling traditions. So, yeah. It's all connected. Don't you like a little bit wish that we could go back to some of this though? Like, I don't know that I would like fully buy into like some spirit of a deceased person

29:51is coming to my house and eating a meal with me. Like, I don't know that I would buy into that fully. But I at least love the idea of holidays and these traditions being centered around like honoring the people we love and the people we've lost instead of like just give me more presents. Which is sort of what it's turned into for a lot of people. Yeah, I mean like even not from a religious perspective like leaving the space for the, yeah, for like deceased

30:22family members or people you've lost is really nice because for a lot of people, like not to get heavy about it, but for a lot of people it's like the holidays are really difficult especially if they've lost somebody because they're like still feeling like they're grieving so this is like a way to acknowledge it. So, yeah. Anyway, this is a much friendlier Christmas episode for us, so I'm really proud of this. I do. It was like a little bit and by a little bit I mean like really last minute.

30:55We did it. Yeah. What's the last thing, Paige? Yeah, so the last thing I'll just mention, not going to talk about it a lot, but just another example of this is the Ukrainian tradition of the Diduk, I think is how you pronounce it, which is a traditional Christmas decoration that is made of bundles of wheat or rye and I read that it's considered like the autumn sacrifice and it's placed in the home often on Christmas Eve and believed that is where like the spirits of their ancestors reside within during the holiday season, so.

31:29Yeah, also very nice. Very nice. So, that's all. Yeah. Bone juice and honoring the dead. Mine was sort of gross. I mean, in like sort of an, like I said, unhinged way that I sort of love that everything I find out about St. Nicholas is like, this is the weirdest thing I've ever heard in my life, but I love it. Yeah. And then like very sweet traditions about honoring people that you've lost. So, yeah, we should all do more of that. Christmas is for everyone.

32:00Exactly. When I die, I don't want it to be over. You know? But I talk about how like the relic thing is sort of, seems very odd to me because, you know, I don't see the religious significance in it, but then I 100% have talked about before how like I would love if there was a burial option for me that wasn't really burial, but like they turn my bones into a Halloween decoration that gets passed down to my family. Can we make that happen? Listen, it is illegal, but like unfortunately so, I think.

32:34This should be a thing. Maybe I should arrange. Okay, we're planning this out now. You're going to remember because I'm older than you. I'm probably going to die first. This is where it gets dark, people. No, this is nice. This is going to be nice. Maybe what I should say is that I want a plaster or like some sort of cast made of my skeleton. So like it is my skeleton, a replica of it, and then that's what gets passed down. Oh, I like that. I can try to make that happen for you.

33:08Great. I'm really excited about it. I'm ready. You're ready for me to die. I'm ready for you to die. All right. Well, with that, everybody, happy holidays. We'll see you in the new year. Well, that wraps up our spooky Christmas episode. Join us next year when we kick 2026 off with our 100th episode. If you like this episode, hit subscribe and share with a friend. Check the show notes for links to all of our social media accounts, our Discord server, and Patreon. If you have any questions about previous topics or ideas for future episodes, email us at thesisters at spookysciencesisters.com.

33:45As always, thank you for listening, stay spooky, and happy holidays. Spooky Science Sisters is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network. For more information or to check out other shows, please visit evergreenpodcasts.com. How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, new vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. Meet the new iSIMS, the single talent acquisition platform that's fully future-ready. It works wherever and however you hire, with insights no one else offers. One solution that fits seamlessly into your existing tech stack, which is why IT and HR leaders trust it. With the best of enterprise-grade software and AI, iSIMS helps you identify and secure the right talent faster. iSIMS, powering exceptional hiring. Learn more at iSIMS.com. iSIMS.com.