The 25 Strangest days of Christmas Day 24 - Silent Night, Haunted Night: Norway’s Christmas Ghost Beliefs

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Strange History Podcast and

0:03 Speaker 1: day twenty four of our Victorian Christmas countdown the twenty

0:07 Speaker 1: five Strangest Days of Christmas? Can you believe there is

0:10 Speaker 1: only one day left? Today we travel to Norway. In Norway,

0:15 Speaker 1: it's believed the dead return home on Christmas Eve, families

0:19 Speaker 1: light candles on graves, tidy their homes, and sometimes leave

0:22 Speaker 1: out food for ancestral visitors. This custom dates to the

0:27 Speaker 1: Viking Age, when Yule was a time of honoring the

0:31 Speaker 1: protective female spirits of the household. In some Norwegian villages,

0:36 Speaker 1: churchyards still glow with thousands of candles on Christmas Eve,

0:39 Speaker 1: a site so beautiful it looks like the stars have

0:42 Speaker 1: fallen to earth. It's sweet, touching, and also a bit

0:46 Speaker 1: unsettling if Grandma actually shows up for dessert.

0:50 Speaker 2: Eternal light grave candles for the relatives who never RSVP

0:55 Speaker 2: now and we mourned you for the appropriate time frame, scent,

0:58 Speaker 2: and we didn't mean to fight over your last earthly

1:01 Speaker 2: possessions and cause a one hundred year family feud, But

1:05 Speaker 2: it was cousin Debbie's false scent.

1:07 Speaker 1: Tomorrow is Christmas. Today is Christmas Eve. Today, my family

1:12 Speaker 1: and I recognize the tradition of the Feast of the

1:14 Speaker 1: Seven Fishes is an Italian American Christmas Eve tradition featuring

1:19 Speaker 1: a large dinner with various seafood dishes, stemming from the

1:22 Speaker 1: Italian custom of abstaining from meat on Christmas Eve. It

1:26 Speaker 1: is also known as La Vigilia the vigil While there

1:31 Speaker 1: is no single set menu, common preparations include baked or

1:35 Speaker 1: fried cod, baccalaw, fried calamari, shrimp, scampy, seafood salad, and

1:42 Speaker 1: pasta with seafood. The number seven is symbolic, though its

1:46 Speaker 1: exact meaning is debated, with some suggesting it represents the

1:50 Speaker 1: seven Sacraments or the seven Hills of Rome. We will

1:54 Speaker 1: be doing shrimp, scallops, calamari, cod, clams, lobster, and conk.

2:02 Speaker 1: Let us know your traditions. We would love to hear them.

2:05 Speaker 1: You can email Strangehistorypod at gmail dot com and don't

2:09 Speaker 1: forget to subscribe. Rudolph would approve