The poem beginning, “Twas the night before Christmas…,” is titled A Visit from St. Nicholas, and was written in 1823 by Clement Clarke Moore.  This poem largely standardized St. Nicholas as a fat man who flew around with reindeer. 

It is quite remarkable that this caught on.  It almost seems like Clement Clarke Moore combined all of the weirdest things he could possible imagine and created an image of Santa.

It appears one night of aggressive moonshine binging gave us the endearing image we celebrate today!

I always see pairs of shoes hanging from powerlines.  I have also heard a bunch of conflicting theories as to why they are there.  I looked it up on the World Wide Web, and I am still pretty unsure.  I hear that it’s to recognize a fallen friend, or to tell people that a crack house is on the street, or that someone graduated high school, or to mark gang territory.  I don’t really buy any of them.  I think it signifies that a drunk teenager threw his friend’s shoes onto a telephone wire.   But I suppose my sources on the internet could be correct.  Maybe a crackhead graduated from high school and wanted his friends to come to his grad party at the crack house.  But not all of his friends, only the ones in his gang who are still alive.  It’s like balloons tied to a mailbox, but for crackhead gang members.

Synesthesia (in Greek, the joining of the senses) is a phenomenon in which activation of one sensory reaction involuntarily causes another.  I actually have this.  In my case, when I hear music, I often perceive a color as well.  I have iTunes playlists categorized by color.  There are various types of synesthesia, such as seeing letters or numbers as colors, some people can even taste sounds or colors. I also remember when I was a kid that certain street signs affected my mood.  But it could also be possible that my mom was dosing my juice boxes with LSD.