A Short & Spooky Christmas

Introduction to Hank's Pizza

0:00No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet, so Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs and help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the $1 slice work. Now Hank's has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at m365copilot.com slash work.

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Bone Juice Discussion

1:00Although 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. You know what, fair.

1:26I'm Paige. And I'm Megan. And this is Spooky Science Sisters.

1:35Hello, 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 Christmas-adjacent traditions

2:06that are out there in the world.

Spooky Science Sisters Introduction

2:09Yay.

Spooky Science Sisters Introduction

2:09But 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?

2:25Spooky 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 for a while?

2:45Maybe 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.

2:58Yeah, 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 not 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

3:29conference 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. And 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.

4:01But 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 previously, 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.

4:33You know what would make a great Valentine's Day gift. Yeah, exactly.

4:39It would be super awesome for Easter baskets.

4:44Okay. Well, anyway, book aside,

Christmas Traditions Discussion

4:47before we get to our Christmas holiday spookies, we have to do our something spooky. So 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

5:21are related to pagan beliefs 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.

5:53So I'm going to start and remind you that a couple of years ago 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.

6:26But St. Nicholas apparently gets even weirder though. So this year we're going to talk about that weirdness because we're going 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.

6:51Because 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 something. 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,

7:21well, or supposedly ability to perform miracles for those in need. So he was the patron saint of like sort of a laundry list

St. Nicholas's Bones

7:29which I think is like how saints normally go but sometimes it seems like how are these things are related? Like how did we get all these groups together?

7:38Because 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,

8:08so he reportedly had a habit of secretly distributing gifts to people 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,

8:39which is like already a bit of a spooky tradition. There are some pretty unusual churches in Europe that have like displayed skeletons or like open, 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.

9:10After 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 interred 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.

9:40I 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. And this liquid or substance became known as the manna of Saint Nicholas. And I'm going to tell you right now

10:11that 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.

10:28Yeah, 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 like 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,

10:58you know, persecuting people for pagan beliefs, all this stuff when it's like that's basically witchcraft, what you're doing right now.

11:09Yeah, which I mean, I guess like to be fair to the Puritans, which we don'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

11:40done 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

12:11around his bones and doing whatever they gotta do with it. But we're actually doing this. Like, 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

12:41drinking their blood or 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

13:12in like the 7th century, so these stories of 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

13:44during the Feast of the Translation. You know, there's a small amount of it, so it gets diluted with holy water and bottled 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

14:14for 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. Nicholas'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.

14:45This is the bone juice page.

14:50So, 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 a 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

15:20out 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 that. 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

15:51leaking 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 of 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

16:22because 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 and 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.

16:53So 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 I 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

17:24because you've got water collecting in the tomb.

Analysis of the Manna

17:28Well, 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 the 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

17:59situation happening. Yeah, I guess fair enough. Yeah, like if it was some sort of holy substance, like not water coming 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

18:29some miraculous substance that's like produced by the bones themselves, just the contact of the water with the relics is considered by a lot 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.

19:01I'm not drinking two-year-old bone juice. Well, yes, accurate.

19:09Although 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. You know what, fair.

19:35Properly cooked bone broth.

19:40Anyway, 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. Nicholas 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

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Honoring Ancestors on Christmas

21:10Anyway, 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

21:41Serbian tradition where on Christmas 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

22:11relative, would go chop down a young oak tree or a branch and that would serve as their yule log or their Bania. The 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

22:42that'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 did 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,

23:13and 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 they would do. I mean, I've got some nutty ancestors.

23:31I'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 on 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,

24:03but 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, possibly 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

24:33googled 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 part, while the straw and the nuts may still be, like, pretty common for people to place throughout their homes, I think people are, like,

25:04setting 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.