Santa Claus w/ Emily VanDerWerff
Spirits
Multitude
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2021
⏱️ 54 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When you think of Santa Claus, what do you picture? The big guy in red is this malleable, larger than life figure that has origins that might surprise you. Luckily, we have Emily VanDerWerff to guide us through the labyrinth of who Santa is.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of illness, racism, religious persecution, violence, child death, cannibalism, family dysfunction, economic anxiety, and sex.
Guest
Emily VanDerWerff is Critic at Large for Vox and co-creator of the podcast Arden. Follow her on Twitter @Emilyvdw.
Housekeeping
- MERCH! Get the Mothman Crewneck at spiritspodcast.com/merch!
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Have you heard about the MultiCrew?! This is our membership program that lets you help us invest in Multitude as we try weird new stuff. Plus, you get a members-only weekly podcast: Head Heart Gut, our weekly friendly debate show. Join for as little as $5 a month at multicrew.club and get access to Head Heart Gut!
Sponsors
- Doordash is a fast, convenient food delivery app. Get 25% off and zero delivery fees on your first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter code creepycool.
- Skillshare is an online learning community where you can learn—and teach—just about anything. Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com/spirits and get a free trial of Premium Membership. This week Julia recommends “Unlocking Your Potential: 5 Exercises to Build Creative Confidence” by Emma Gannon.
- Brooklinen delivers luxury bed sheets, pillows, comforters, & blankets straight to your door. Go to Brooklinen.com right now and use promo code “spirits” to get $25 off when you spend $100 or more, PLUS free shipping.
Find Us Online
If you like Spirits, help us grow by spreading the word! Follow us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads. You can support us on Patreon (http://patreon.com/spiritspodcast) to unlock bonus Your Urban Legends episodes, director’s commentaries, custom recipe cards, and so much more. We also have lists of our book recommendations and previous guests’ books at http://spiritspodcast.com/books.
Transcripts are available at http://spiritspodcast.com/episodes. To buy merch, hear us on other podcasts, contact us, find our mailing address, or download our press kit, head on over to http://spiritspodcast.com.
About Us
Spirits was created by Julia Schifini, Amanda McLoughlin and Eric Schneider. We are founding members of Multitude, an independent podcast collective and production studio. Our music is "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Spears podcast, a boozy dime into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda. And I'm Julia. In this episode 262, the Spirit of Santa Claus, with, it turns out our December guest, one of our faves, someone I've been reading on the internet for more than a decade, Emily Vanderworth. Listen, we did say in her last episode that we were going to invite her back on in December, |
| 0:24.5 | and we did it. |
| 0:25.2 | We did that thing. |
| 0:26.2 | We did it. |
| 0:26.9 | I sent a reminder for myself for 11 months from the day we recorded that episode. |
| 0:30.8 | And hey, guys, time marches on. |
| 0:32.9 | And here we are, and I'm very excited about it. |
| 0:34.9 | Sure does. |
| 0:35.6 | I'm very excited about it. Sure does. I'm stoked. We asked Emily like, hey, Lita, what would |
| 0:38.4 | you be interested in talking about? And she's like, can I just like really like dig into the myth of |
| 0:42.2 | the American Santa Claus? And we're like, yes, yes, Emily, you can. Anytime, Emily, anytime. This will |
| 0:47.6 | give you some escapism from the holiday. These are not the kinds of conversations that you can have at home. If this is not a holiday you know a lot about, but you're just like aware in the world and with America, which is overtly |
| 0:58.8 | a Christian country, then you can at least have some talking points and things to just |
| 1:02.6 | laugh about, get excited about, learn about. That's what we strive to do for you here on spirits. |
| 1:06.2 | You don't have to keep recycling those same points that you bring up with your family. Like, Jesus wasn't even born in December, Mom. Exactly. New stuff for you. And do you know what else is new |
| 1:15.4 | today, Julia? Our new patrons. Our new patrons, Ys Siri and Betsy, tropes to live by. I wanted to |
| 1:22.1 | include Betsy's full title because it's adorable and I like that a lot. I love that. Thank you as always to our |
| 1:27.6 | supporting producer level patrons. Alicia Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jessica Kinser, Jessica Stewart, |
| 1:32.3 | Nieselkins, Megan Moon, Phil Fresh, Captain Jonathan Malachi, Cosmos, Sarah Scott and Zazi, |
| 1:36.5 | and those legend level patrons, legends more important and significant than Santa in this household |
| 1:41.5 | at least. Audra, Bex, Clara, Drew, J. Bay Bay, Lexus, Mary, Morgan, |
| 1:45.6 | Mother of Vikings, Sarah, Taylor, and BMEY of Scotty. You know what, Amanda? I hope that one day |
... |
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