Something Rhymes with Purple - Jollification (Santa Claus)

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

NOTE: This episode is all about the LEGEND of Santa Claus. We advise you to not listen to this episode around young children. Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas Purple People! This week join Susie and Gyles as they discuss the legend of Santa Claus, and how this mystical figure has transformed through the decades. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our NEW email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Constellate: The gathering of people in a group. Emacity: A fondness of buying things. Erubescent: Red in the face, and a little bit flushed. Gyles' poem this week was the end of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' by Clement Clarke Moore ...  Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack. His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight— “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, Giles here. And knowing that we have a family audience, and the Purple people often include some very young people, just to say that today's episode does include some language that some people may find uncomfortable or offensive. Hello, you're listening to Something Rhymes with Purple with me, Susie Dent, and someone sitting opposite me in an incredibly, as you would expect, bright and tinsily jumper is Giles Brandreth. And we are about to, well, as you would expect, we're about to foray into the language of Christmas and also the beliefs of Christmas. Giles, how many Christmas jumpers do you actually have? Tis the season to be jolly. Yes, I've got a lot of Christmas jumpers. I've stopped counting how

many I have because at this time of year, the Christmas jumper has become a huge thing. And because I pop up on television wearing colourful knitwear anyway, anybody who thinks they've got an interesting Christmas jumper sends it to me. So I have every kind of Christmas jumper. Some of them are commercial. Some of them are from charities who've been in touch. Save the Children, which is a wonderful charity, they sensibly raise money every year and quite a few million pounds every year by getting people to wear jumpers on a particular day and donate. I think it's something very modest, a couple of pounds if you're a grown up, a pound if you're a young person to the cause and, you know,

take a picture of you in your jumper. So it's become a huge, huge thing, the Christmas jumper. And I've got lots, every kind you can imagine. I've got some with Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, and there's a three-dimensional red nose made like a pom-pom on the front. I've got, well, I mean, you just name it, Santa jumpers, snowperson jumpers. Actually, mine look very much like snowmen, but all of that. And I'm supposed to be a bit of an authority on Christmas because over the years, I've written a number of Christmas books. And the one I got out for today, I see, it was published first in 1975. It's called Brandless Christmas Book.

And I'll just read you the beginning, and then I will shut up, I promise you, Susie. It says, in the beginning, there's always been a Christmas. And then it goes on to say, actually, that's not quite true. There's almost always been a Christmas. Certainly, there was one long before Christ was born. Though, of course, it wasn't called Christmas then. The deep midwinter has been a time for jollification and celebration for thousands of years. And even if Adam and Eve didn't hang out stockings in the Garden of Eden, the countless Christmas traditions we now take for granted began to become established not so long after the fall. And then I begin to discuss the ancient Romans and Saturnalia and all that. Oh, well, we will learn some of this.

I only discovered very recently that Tolkien, the wonderful J.R.R. Tolkien, every December would write a letter which would arrive with a stamp from the North Pole for his children and inside would be a letter in this bit of spidery handwriting and beautiful colour drawings from Father Christmas and they would all tell these wonderful tales of life at the North Pole and I can't wait to read them actually because you can you can buy the collection of them and you know I was just reading one of them. There have been no adventures here and nothing funny has happened. And that is because Polar Bear has done hardly anything to help, as he calls it, this year. And then it says he ate

something that disagreed with him last November and was afraid he might have to go to hospital in Greenland. But after living on warm water for a fortnight, he suddenly threw the glass and jug out of the window and decided to get better. So I had no idea about these, but I do, there is a company, which is much more commercial, that can generate a letter to arrive as if it comes from the North Pole for a child. And you give them your child's details and their best friend's name. And actually what comes back is really gorgeous. Well, I love all this. I love the idea of Father Christmas. I don't know the Tolkien letters. I do know, of course, Raymond Briggs' Santa Claus, the beautifully illustrated cartoon version of his life and times. And there've been many movies featuring Santa Claus. And there have been many novels, including one by me, called Who is Nick Saint? Which is all about somebody who has a Father Christmas fixation,

who's called, by chance, Nicholas Saint. Nick Saint. What does it lead them to do, Craig? Well, indeed, you have to read the novel to find out. Okay. Can we get, given that here we are, the whole purpose of Something Rhymes with Purple is to explore words and language, can we get to the root of Father Christmas? I mean, because long before he was called Father Christmas, he's evolved into Father Christmas. Earlier than that, he was initially Santa Claus. I mean, unpack and unravel some of that for us. Well, yes, the figure of Santa is based on lots and lots of folklore traditions that have sort of carried him in various forms of evolution throughout the centuries.

But they all pretty much do with St. Nicholas, who was the English figure of Father Christmas and his Dutch equivalent of Sinterklaas. Well, you say, can I interrupt you already? Yes, yes. Absolutely. I'm with you on St. Nicholas. But I don't know that the English element comes into it. In our family, we always felt that the Christmas season began on the 6th of December, which is the feast of St. Nicholas.

Yeah. Nobody, and I've looked this up everywhere, no one knows very much about the original St. Nicholas, except for the fact that he was the Bishop of Myra, which is in Lycia, which is in Asia Minor, some 1600 years ago. And the best known legend about him is he saved three young girls from assault by throwing three bags of gold as a dowry through their bedroom window one night. And he's the patron saint of all sorts of people, including these young women, pawnbrokers, sailors, children. And it's in this last capacity that he's associated with Christmas.

Yes, I only mentioned the English figure in terms of Father Christmas, that specific name. Ah, I'm so sorry. Yes. My apologies. So, yes, fine. And, of course, you're absolutely right. He's Sinterklaas in, is it a Dutch dialect? Sinterklaas, I think that might, yes, possibly dialect,

but definitely Dutch. And I suppose the image that we celebrate, the sort of portly, jolly, red-cheeked, white-bearded man, sometimes with spectacles, with a red coat and a white fur collar and cuffs, et cetera, That originated apparently in North America, that particular image, during the 19th century. And of course, you know, every single Christmas is entrenched in the imagination even more. There is, and I think this may be an urban myth, that the reason Santa Claus or Father Christmas is dressed in red, because he featured, he was usually dressed in green,

until he featured in this, this may be urban myth, an advertisement for Coca-Cola at the end of the 19th century, 1880s, 1890s. He appears in a red costume and that's where the red became established. For some reason, just what's popped into my head is the random fact that the name Pepsi, Coca-ola's rival comes from dyspepsia because it was thought to cure indigestion oh that is interesting yes i don't know it's popped into my head but that's what this podcast is all about do we know where coca-cola comes from uh from the coca plant i suppose so that also gives us cocaine well

absolutely yeah not that we're suggesting anything untoward about coca-cola which i'm sure we love and pepsi too other brands may be available yes um absolutely yeah so uh when it comes to saint nicholas as you say a patron saint of many people other stories you mentioned the one about the um rescuing three girls other stories involve him calming a storm at sea, saving three soldiers from execution, chopping down a tree possessed by a demon, and so on and so on. So, lots of wonderful tales. It reminds me of the story behind the sanctum, I suppose, sanctification of St. Martin of Tours, I suppose, sanctification of St. Martin of Tours, which we've covered before, which is attested to by many. Do you remember he was a Roman soldier at the time and he met a poor beggar in the street and it was freezing, freezing temperature, and he took off his cape or his cloak and he cut it in

half and gave one half to the beggar. And that half was then kept as a holy relic and it was kept in a shrine and that shrine was housing the capella, the little cape. And that shrine eventually became any place where something holy was revered and it gave us chapel as well as a capella, etc. All from that idea of a little cape. Sorry, as I say, I'm going off on these little excursions, but it's the way that my mind works. We like the way your mind works. But just to be clear for people who are trying to work this out, St. Nicholas is the original Santa Claus. Yes. Which is fine. We understand that. We understand he's this saint who was alive a long time ago and did good works and has become

associated with children. His feast day is the 6th of December. All that is clear. We understand that Santa Claus is a kind of version of St. Nicholas from Dutch, Sinti Claus, the same Santa Claus. How did they make the leap from that to the same sort of figure becoming Father Christmas? Because that's got no relationship. Father is a father. Christmas is the mass of Christ. They've got no relationship to Santa Claus. Why is it the same character? Well, I think they began to be conflated, but Father Christmas actually comes from a very different tradition in folklore that developed in the late Victorian period. Not the first personification of Christmas that has taken various forms over the centuries. But he was, until Victorian times, well, let's just say that Father Christmas himself seems to first appear in the mid-17th century, and as I say, to be really popularized during Victorian

times. And it's said that he appeared in the aftermath of the English Civil War, when the Puritans had vowed to abolish Christmas because they thought it was papist, didn't like any of its customs. And so the royalist opponents, the pamphleteers, wanted to bring back all of these old traditions because it helped their cause. And they adopted Old Father Christmas as the symbol of the good old days. And it's said that that was when the real tradition came about. And then, as I say, in Victorian times, actually Father

Christmas was associated more with adult feasting and merrymaking, no particular association with children or chimneys or reindeer or anything. But it was as later Victorian Christmases became more family-centred that Father Christmas became a bringer of gifts. And it was when the idea of Santa Claus began to take hold in England in around the 1850s, I think, Father Christmas began to take on some of Santa's attributes, and that's when they became particularly closer together. And I think, am I right, that it's an American poet who gives us the reindeer and all of that? Okay. Yeah. It's one of those poems. It's not the one that begins,

it's the night before Christmas and all through the house, nothing was stirring, not even a mouse. It's another of those poems by Moore. It's going to come to me, where we get this idea of the sledge and the flying through the air and the Donner and Blitzen, because someone has to come up with all of this, don't they? Okay, I'm going to look it up now. You do. Yes, a visit. Actually, it is most commonly known as The Night Before Christmas. Ah, good. It's called A Visit from St. Nicholas, but it was most commonly known as What's the Night Before Christmas? Published anonymously

in 1823, but later attributed to 1823 but later attributed to clement clark moore oh yes clement clark moore this it's all coming back to me go on okay and it is saying here and i'm reading this from wikipedia the poem has been called arguably the best known verse is ever written by an american and large is largely responsible says wikipedia for some of the conceptions of Santa Claus from the mid-19th century to today. And do you remember what happens? No, tell me. So it's the night of Christmas Eve, family is settling down to sleep, a father hears noises outside on the lawn, looks out of the window, sees Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. He lands Father Christmas or Santa Claus

on the roof, comes down the chimney with a sack of toys. And the father is watching the visitor deliver presents and fill the stockings hanging by the fireplace. So perhaps arguably behind, I don't think ultimately behind Christmas stockings, but perhaps the idea of hanging them by the fireplace. And then the father and Santa Claus share this sort of conspiratorial moment before Santa goes away. And as he flies away, he calls out, happy Christmas to all and to all a good night. Charming. Lovely. Absolutely lovely. At what age did you realise that Father Christmas,

well, actually not realise because I like to think Father Christmas is alive and well, but at what age did you believe wholeheartedly in the idea of presents coming down the chimney? Well, I'm with you as well. It's quite a complicated thing, this, actually. I don't know whether we should discuss this, whether there was a trigger warning at the beginning of the episode to forewarn people that we would be actually talking about the truth about Father Christmas. You have to make a leap of faith. I don't know what the truth is. Well, faith. I don't know what the truth is.

Well, exactly. We don't know what the truth is. We hope that there is a traditional Father Christmas. That's what we hope. And I can't remember. What's interesting is I don't really remember. It was never a revelation to me when I suddenly thought, you know, I woke at two in the morning and saw a figure at the end of the bed.

In my case, we used, I mean, from an early age, I was so spoiled as a child. I very, I mean, I put out a stocking, but what came back were huge pillowcases, stuff full of things. I mean, I was, were you spoiled as a little girl? Yes, very much so. Yes, pillowcases and always traditionally holds an orange absolutely or is it a satsuma tangerine ours was also wrapped in silver paper rather curiously and a few nuts as well yes few walnuts i didn't i'm not sure if i really managed to open this oh and also we had i remember chocolate coins yes chocolate coins in some gold gold paper exactly and then yeah just oh it was so exciting.

But I did, I used to be quite scared of Father Christmas. So I was slightly scared of falling asleep. But I think a lot of children would be sort of wanting to stay awake so they could actually meet him. I was just like, no, I don't want to meet him. I just want to hide under the covers. But it's such a lovely idea. And do you, does Michelle still give you a stocking? Or your grandchildren, do they give you stockings?

Yes, all that still goes on. Lovely. It's a funny old world, isn't it, where we still do all that sort of thing. But I remember, Giles, quite early on in our podcasting days, and possibly we discussed this when we first did a Christmas episode, I remember you saying to me, firstly, that Christmas Day is one of the few days when you stop working. And you hate that. You hate stopping working. So we've already talked about how you feel defined by your work, as a lot of people do. And the second thing was that you and Michelle would sit down at a table and have something like beans on toast.

Well, both of those are true. In fact, I have often worked on Christmas Day and occasionally to keep the family happy, I've engaged my wife to work with me. I mean, 50 years ago, there's a radio station in Britain called LBC. And it was then just a London radio station, I think, 50 years ago. And my wife and I, we were among the first presenters. And we did the Christmas Day show in the early years, the first couple of years of this radio station. And I loved that. And then in the 1980s, when I was working for TVAM, which was the first ITV, the first commercial television station, we did live shows on Christmas Day. And again, I loved that. And I think I do know people

who quite like being, I mean, there are surgeons who traditionally will go to the hospital because they're the surgeons. They're the ones invited to, you know, use their skills with the knife to carve the turkey. And my sisters were all, or two of them, were nurses in their day. And they used to say, it's actually quite fun to work on Christmas Day, to feel you're doing something useful, particularly if you're, you know, like a nurse, you're actually really doing something useful. And part 15, yeah. Yeah. And because I'm so much in the habit of work and my work is mostly fun, I do feel a bit restless. Yes. But we have tried non-Christmas, we have had baked beans on toast. We've also done the microwave Christmas, which I'm sure I've told

you about, which was not a big success because it didn't last very long. We all had a microwave, us and the three children, we all had the microwave meal. We popped into the microwave at one o'clock. By ten past one, everything was over. Oh, there's no washing up. There's none of the ritual. No washing up. We just threw it away. We ate it out of the thing. We had plastic cutlery. Not a good idea. Why? Was it just expedient? Well, who does the work? Nobody really wanted to do the work. Okay. And that's why we now let somebody else do the work and we

go to the local pub. That's right. You said, yeah. We will be at the Red Lion on Christmas Day. Where will you be on Christmas Day? I will, I'm not sure. I may be here or I may be with family in Wiltshire and it's leaving it a little bit late to decide, but I've covered all bases in terms of food, et cetera, because being a vegetarian, I'm very easy to cook for. I just have a delicious nut roast or make a nut roast or something, but I love all the trimmings. You say easy to cook for, only if the other people are vegetarians too. Do you take your own nut roast? Well roast well i can't i have done in the past but the rest of family goes go for the turkey so i've got that as well so um i'm all i think all sorted and i think in our previous christmas episode actually i gave a lot of my absolute favorite words around

around christmas and they're not always full of joy and cheer if you remember but that just talking about the food made me think of belly cheer, which is the food that makes you very happy. And that's what a lot of Christmas is about, isn't it? Well, let's get on to some alternative words for Christmas and Christmassy things. Did we discuss last time Yule? Why is it called Yule, the Christmas season? Yule was the name of a pagan festival which preceded the Christian festival of Christmas.

name of a pagan festival which preceded the christian festival of christmas it's a viking word and it may be a sibling of jolly which would be very nice uh you will and if you if you take the y make it a j jolly so yeah so that was a pagan festival before but we still talk about yule logs there's actually a lovely a yule's Hard, a Yule Shard, which is somebody who leaves the office on Christmas Eve without having accomplished the work that they were supposed to. There's, obviously, we have the Yule Logs. We have the Yule Hole, if you remember. The Yule Hole? Remember the Yule Hole? Tell me about the Yule Hole.

Sounds rude. The Yule Hole is the notch or hole on your belt that is the furthest along we have to resort to after Christmas. I do remember that. Yes, and that's centuries old. I love the fact that we needed it, even in the 18th century. The 22nd of December, anyway, is the winter solstice, isn't it? When the sun is farthest from the equator. And I think we go back for Yule to the old norse people don't we vikings yeah vikings and they were lighting giant fires to to the grim god odin yeah and thor yeah and that's

where the festival of yule it's a kind of it's a kind of midwinter romp for the darkest day to give it a little bit of light it It's a lovely, lovely thought. The Druids, I think, had a festival called the Festival of Nola, N-O-L-A-G-H. Okay. And the Greeks, they had the birthday of Ceres and Hercules and Bacchus all around this time of year. The Egyptians apparently claimed this as the feast day of Horus, the son of Isis. So people have been celebrating basically midwinter. And probably

the Christians chose this time of year because nobody actually knows, do they? I mean, it's marking the birth of Jesus, but nobody actually knows that he was, amazing coincidence, that he was born on what turns out to be Christmas Day. But nobody knows that it was actually the 25th of December, do they? No, I don't suppose they do. In fact, I can give you the serious answer to that. I think it's Pope Julius I who actually decided around the year 350 that the birthday shouldn't be. There were various other days before then when Christ's birth was celebrated, 1st of January, 29th of March, 29th of September. But Pope Julius I, he declared 25th of December is the day,

and they've stuck to it ever since. Unlike Easter, which of course is a movable feast, but Christmas isn't. Though people celebrate Christmas at different times. I mean, there's some cultures where they celebrate it on the 6th of December, others where they do it either Christmas Eve or just after Christmas. There are a variety of days. When do you give out a present on Christmas Eve? I know some families give out all presents on Christmas Eve. I think the royal family give out their presents on Christmas Eve. And my mother, who loved buying Christmas presents and giving Christmas presents,

there were so many in our family that we used to get a present a day, literally, from the Feast of St. Nicholas to Twelfth Night. That's from the 6th of December till the 6th of January. One a day is a, from the Feast of St. Nicholas to Twelfth Night. That's from the 6th of December till the 6th of January. One a day is a lovely idea, actually. Well, it's quite good because you appreciate it more. I have a grandchild, my grandson Kit, who has a birthday on the 24th of December, which is quite challenging. And his parents are very keen that that is kept as his birthday. And he has, you know, distinctive presents on that day.

And then Christmas Day, a whole new set. So he goes wild with it. But when do you give out the presents? One on Christmas Eve that is usually traditionally something like a Christmas onesie or lovely socks or something that will make Christmas Eve a little bit more snuggly. But then most of them are after breakfast on Christmas morning. Very good. Look, we haven't taken a break yet, and I want to know about Chris Kingle. I mean, Chris as though he's a person. Chris Dingle. Chris Kringle. Am I right? Does it ring any bells with you?

Yes, absolutely. Let's return to that. Let's return to that. And also, oh, I've got some riddles ready for you. Yes, pull a cracker if you want to. Ho, ho, ho. We're taking a break. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners On Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars, like Ed O'Neill, who had limited prospects outside of acting. The only thing that I had that I could have done was organize crime. And Sofia Vergara, my very glamorous stepmom. Well, I didn't want to be comfortable.

Or Julie Bowen, who had very special talents. I used to be the crier. Or my TV daughter, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, who did her fair share of child stunts. They made me do it over and over and over. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts.

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every friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on crunchyroll or the crunchyroll youtube channel hello welcome back to something rhymes with purple where giles brandris and i are chatting about the lexicon of christmas and the traditions that go with it and giles before the break you mentioned well i call him chris kindle or chris tingle we have as well don't we but lots of different versions of this beloved figure in the christmas tradition in countries, but began with Germany where there was supposedly an elderly man called Christkind who brought presents to children on December the 24th. And there are lovely services for children, aren't there, where they have Christingle masses where they put a candle in an orange studded with. Is it cloves or various things that they bring along? It is.

And lots of legends attached to Chris Kindle, which is Christ's child. And I can see your shoulders shaking there. Are you giving me a ho-ho-ho? I am. Ho-ho-ho. Why does he do that? Ridiculous thing to do. I don't think that enhances the reputation of Father Christmas at all. Ho-ho-ho. Well, it's a deep, hearty laugh of jolliness, isn't it? But you know what? In Dickens' time, the person going ho, ho, ho was not Father Christmas, but actually mischievous elf or goblin. So, in the Pickwick papers, you will find a story within a story in which a man called Gabriel Grubb encounters a creature. Ho, ho, ho, laughed Gabriel Grubb as he sat himself down on

a flat tombstone, which was a favourite resting place of his, and drew forth his wicker bottle. A coffin at Christmas, a Christmas box. Ho, ho, ho. And then he hears that repeated behind him, which is a little bit spooky. Well, we owe a lot to Charles Dickens in terms of Christmas, the feeling of Christmas. I mean, Christmas isn't Christmas without somebody doing a version of A Christmas Carol, which was such a huge success in Dickens's day and has become almost synonymous with Christmas. So, I mean, those Victorians, and I think I'm right in saying the Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, brought quite a few of Christmas traditions over from Germany.

You know, the Christmas tree popularised. I know they existed before. And the Christmas card is a Victorian tradition, I think, as well. I mean, do you send them any longer? I'm afraid. I wish I could say. I send them to people for whom it really matters to get something, but to most of my friends who are my age, no, I don't.

How about you? I'm afraid exactly like you. It's become, you know, I used to send literally, you know, thousands, well, lots and lots and lots. But now I don't. And when I was a child, we used to have a competition with the Christmas cards that we'd gather all the Christmas cards together and there'd, and my father would judge this or organize it. There'd be the best card with a religious theme, the best card with a pagan theme, the wittiest card, the most vulgar card, the card with the

best inscription, the card with the worst inscription. And we'd go through all the cards, usually after Christmas, possibly on New Year's Eve, but occasionally on Boxing Day, if we were a bit desperate, we would go through all the cards and then chuck them on the fire yeah exactly well some of our lovely lovely purple people who may or may not be celebrating Christmas of course have been in touch

should we have a look at some of their emails yes and if anybody has sent us a Christmas card yes thank you thank you it hasn't reached us yet I mean I do love a Christmas card but I'm sure you've sent us one in your minds. Do you know who Henry Cole was?

No, remind me. He worked, I think he worked at, eventually, what became the Victorian Albert Museum. But he was the person who was credited with really popularising the Christmas card in the 1840s. He conceived the idea and got an artist called John Calcutt Horsley to create a Christmas card in the 1840s. He conceived the idea and got an artist called John Calcutt Horsley to create a Christmas card, which is generally regarded as the first Christmas card printed by jobbins of Warwick Court and Hoban. And it was then hand-colored by a professional colorer. And it was published, I think, in 1843 by a friend of Henry Cole's. Anyway, they printed, I think, no more than a thousand of them. And each of the cards sold for a shilling, which is a lot of money in Victorian times.

But since then, I mean, imagine if you are a Christmas card manufacturer, how business has been affected in recent years. Well, absolutely. Absolutely. Anyway, we haven't had Christmas cards, but we have had correspondence. Who has been in touch? Yes, and we may have had Christmas cards. We just haven't had Christmas cards, but we have had correspondence. Who has been in touch? Yes, and we may have had Christmas cards. We just haven't had a chance to have a look at them yet.

We may have had hampers. Thank you if you sent us a hamper. I'll be surprised, but very grateful. Oh, I love Christmas hampers. Okay, so this one is from Vashti from a very sunny northern Cyprus. Vashti, we are, I'm sure, all very envious. Hi, Susie and Giles. As always, thank you to you both for the fabulous podcast that keeps me laughing and learning, though generally forgetting, in equal measures. I was wondering how the word

caravan used for a train of camels has travelled to become a thing we go on holiday in. I get that there must be something to do with travel, but I'm not sure how it goes from a train of animals to a single vehicle not in procession. As a side question, here the language is Turkish and we have a local beach area called Kevansaray, named because it was a stopping place for the travelling caravans. What would a stopping point have been called in English? Once again, thank you to you both. You're great.

From Vashti in a very sunny northern Cyprus. I would have pronounced that word caravanserai, which I feel has almost become an English word. That is the English, but I think the local beach area is not spelt that way. It's spelt differently. It's spelt caravanserai. So very similar, but you're right. Let's answer that question first. We borrowed the word caravanseray from Persian, and originally it meant an inn that was built around a central courtyard, and it provided accommodation for travellers along the network of trade routes that crossed Asia and North Africa. So it was a stopping place. And clearly the Turkish word that Vashti gives us is a sibling of that. So that's what we call it in

English as well, one of our many borrowings from another language. But for the first question, how did the word caravan travel from that sense of a procession of camels to, you know, to the thing that we see struggling up a hill on our roads? Well, let's start with the kind of original, really. It was, I suppose, non-human travellers, as Vashti says, such a train of a pack of animals. And then it became a company of travellers on a journey through a desert, for example, or another pretty difficult terrain. And from that idea of a group of animals or a company of travellers, we also then got the idea of a group of vehicles that travel together as in a file. Now, this much I think Vashti knows because he talks about the procession. But from the idea of any large number of people travelling together,

it then came to mean a large covered carriage for conveying those people, not necessarily with animals at all. Often this was in the late 17th century. And in modern British years, from the 1930s, it became the recreational vehicle that we know it as today. But the stepping stone that Vashti is wondering about was the fact that you have a lot of people travelling together and they would be housed or transported in a large covered carriage, a single carriage for conveying passengers. And that's how we get to the single sense we have today. Comprehensive answer. Thank you very much indeed. This next question I think is trickier. It says, it's from Dan Forth. I don't know if it's two words,

he's Dan Forth, the offspring of Mr. and Mrs. Forth, or if Dan Forth is his full name. Hello team. I've noticed the phrase mellow yellow appears in James Joyce's letters. Did he coin it? Did it pre-exist? Thank you. Love the show. Danforth. Now, I wonder what mellow yellow means.

Is it just a description of yellow? Yes. So not so much letters, actually. It's in Ulysses that this is from. And okay, so let's just start with the mellow yellow that we know it as primarily today uh which is banana peel which is yellow dried for smoking as a narcotic oh i didn't know that i didn't realize there was a i mean this is the first time i've heard of mellow yellow yes well don't you remember the um the song uh from donovan no uh was you not

okay i'm gonna see if i can play it for you afterwards. Oh, well, can you sing it to me now? Because you've got a sweet voice and we need a Christmas song. They call me, I said, they call me mellow yellow. So it goes on. That was rubbish. Electrical banana is going to be a sudden craze. Electrical banana is bound to be the very next phase. going to be a sudden craze. Electrical banana is bound to be the very next phase. And I'm just mad about 14. 14's mad about me. I'm just mad about a 14. Ash is just mad about me. Yes, it sounds like Donovan was on a bit of Mellow Yellow, to be honest, looking at the lyrics. But that was how we know it. Our listeners this week may feel that we have been on the Mellow Yellow, if not the mince pies and the rum pun. So what is your answer?

So that sense, the intoxicating sense of mellow yellow is first recorded in the OED from 1966, indeed from that song by Donovan. So you might think then that Danforth is saying, well, hang on a second, it's in James Joyce's Ulysses. Has he found what we call an anti-dating that can be then submitted to the Oxford English Dictionary, whereby somebody excitingly has found an earlier record than the one that's been discovered so far by the OED team. But if you look at Ulysses and you find the mention of Mellow Yellow, you will see that it's a typical example of Joyce's linguistic exuberance in a sentence or a description that doesn't make masses of

sense but which sounds absolutely brilliant and is which is linguistically incredibly masterful so here we go kissed the plump mellow yellow smello melons of her rump on each plump melanous hemisphere in their mellow yellow furrow was obscure prolonged provocative melon smelliness osculation so obviously, obviously, very physical. That's not what I expected, virtually on Christmas Eve. Oh, goodness. So, yellow smelly melons is her rump. And osculation obviously means kissing. So, yeah, so that's the classic Joycean, do we say Joycean? Excursion and nothing to do with the mellow yellow that we might be thinking of today. And that is indeed something that has been of note.

But the Oxfam's dictionary reference is to the drug. And that is 1966 at the moment. I should have persisted with finishing Ulysses. I didn't get very far into it. I certainly didn't get to that bit. How wonderful. Kissing her rump. Oscillatory.

Why is osculation? I know osculation is kissing. Yeah, it comes from the Latin OS meaning mouth os meaning

mouth yes it's like obviously mouth to mouth contact well there we are we'd like to thank

everybody who has written to us this year I mean thank you so much because you take us down the most extraordinary

byways this episode should have had trigger warning after trigger warning at the beginning we'd be having James Joyce

kissing people's rumps as well as actually saying things about Father Christmas that perhaps shouldn't be said in public. Because I genuinely considered it and then thought, not, this is a Christmas episode. I almost asked you whether Prince Albert really did have a Prince Albert. But let's save that for another one. I think we should. And indeed, if you have something that you'd like to ask that you would dare, Susie, to try and explore for you. Or something for Charles in this case.

Prince Albert's Prince Albert or whatever else. Do get in touch because for our 250th episode, which is coming up soon, we're going to devote it entirely to you and the most interesting, challenging, amusing questions, queries that you might have for us. So, you know, have a big, small, unusual, just get in touch. Our address nowadays is purplepeople, that's one word, purplepeople at somethingrhymes.com. And obviously, we'll try to answer as many as we can in what will, we hope, be a very special episode. This episode, I feel the pair of us have been on tipsy cake from start to finish, and we've almost got to the finish, which is your trio. Tell me, what three words have you got for us this week? Well, I have a very simple verb,

which describes the gathering of people together in a group, which is, of course, what happens at Christmas time for the lucky ones amongst us. And we're all familiar with a constellation, which is a gathering, but there is a verb that you can derive from that, which is to constellate, which I think is quite a nice idea. It's to gather together in a group, to constellate. Another word that you would associate with Christmas, to go together with abliguration, which is a horrible word, but it means excessive spending on food and drink, haven't we all? This goes together with this and it's emacity and it means a fondness for buying things so most of us will feel the results of that i suspect in january and when it comes to the results of

christmas actions um here's another one for you perhaps if you've indulged a little bit too much in the punch that jiles was talking about you might end up being irubescent irubes, which means simply red in the face and a little bit flushed. Which is what Santa, I think, is at times, don't you? Well, absolutely, yes. And he does enjoy all the sherry that we leave out for him. Do you have a Christmasy poem? I do have a Christmas poem. And of course, in fact, you led me to it because we were talking earlier about the poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, that I knew somewhere was in my head. And you then said it's by Clement Clarke Moore.

And that rang so many bells. And of course it did, because it's actually in my book, Brandreth's Christmas Book, which I'm not plugging because it hasn't been in print for nearly half a century. But I can't read you the whole poem because it's quite long. But I'll read you the end of the poem, because at the end of the poem, St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, because at the end of the poem, St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, is described. And see if you can recognize him here. Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot,

and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot. A bundle of toys he'd flung on his back, and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes, how they twinkled, his dimples, how merry, his cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard of his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself. A wink of his

eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk, and laying his finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. He sprang to his sleigh, to his team, gave a whistle, and away they all flew, like the down of a thistle. But I heard him explain, and he drove out of sight, happy Christmas to all and to all a good night. Beautiful. That's really got me in the mood. It's a good one. And I think it's worth it. I'm sure it's available anywhere.

You can look it up and visit from St. Nicholas. It'd be a fun one at Christmas for word lovers to get around and get all the family, maybe to take it in turns doing a couplet each. Go round, do the poem, old and young, get in a circle and print copies of the poem and do two lines each and go round and round until it's finished. Lovely. It's a good tradition. Lovely.

Well, we hope you found it lovely as well. It's always a joy for us to share our witterings and hopefully some wordy wonders with you um please keep following us and subscribe to us recommend us to friends and family if you can we would absolutely love that and of course you can find us on social media but more importantly you can um email us just can you remember the email address i certainly can it's very very simple it's purple people at somethingrhymes.com. Perfect. Well, Something Rhymes with Purple is a Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Naya Dio, Hannah Newton, Harriet Wells, Chris Skinner, Poppy Thompson. And he's

back with us again, which is a complete joy. And don't you think he looks like the young Santa Claus would have looked? He's got the big bushy beard, hasn't turned white yet, but I think he is a little bit of a Santa. It's our very own Father Gully.