#541 Let me bore you to sleep

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com and my name is Jason Newland. This is Let Me Bore You to Sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

Thank you very very much for being a part of this experiment. This non-ending experiment. Yes, did I say only listen when you can safely close your eyes, I can't remember.

I think so. So I hope you're well, hope you're okay, ummm, ooooh, I've got a message, not a message, just read this on a bipolar group, support group. Can you be addicted to a person, I'm sure I am, is this to do with bipolar as I find my feelings are very intense.

And I just checked out her, just went to her profile, just to have a little look, you know. And I wish she was addicted to me, I'm in love, ba da ba bum, ba da ba bum, ba da ba bum, bum bum bum, bum bum bum, bum bum bum, bum bum bum, bum bum bum, this is Friday, you know what, okay, it's Friday the 13th, which is something that you don't really want to hear, isn't it? No one ever wants to hear it's Friday the 13th, and I know that I've just said it, but I'm saying it as a point, because I didn't know it was Friday the 13th until I turned the television on and the news was talking about how it's Friday the 13th, so why, why, why are you telling me this?

Now I'm not going out anyway, so it's not like, I don't know, it's probably going to make a huge difference to my life and it shouldn't anyway, but if people are all superstitious then, you know, a lot of people will perhaps act a little bit differently because of that superstition, but I'm not actually superstitious, however, however, having worked in a nightclub environment, there's a certain, in the past, not now, there's a few things that you learn, there's a few things, there's a few superstitions that seem to be true, for example, Friday the 13th seems to

be a weird night, so in nightclubs around the world, maybe this country anyway, I don't know, how superstitious people are in other countries regarding Friday the 13th, I know there's some, some hotels won't have a 13th floor, will they, or they won't have a room number 13, stuff like that, so I get a bit confused now, wouldn't I, if you're looking for the floor, oh no, the floors are disappearing, I'm on floor 15, but it's only on the 14th floor, oh spooky, so nightclubs, there's this whole kind of expectation from the staff, especially door staff,

the security, expecting weird behaviour, Friday the 13th is one of those, a full moon, again, but then the full moon almost has to have an effect on the planet, because of the effect the moon has on our oceans, on the water, and considering human beings are a high percentage water, then we're going to be affected by the closeness of the moon, just seems logical, that it's going to have an effect, and our brains, of course, we're full of water as well, so it just seems obvious that there'd be some kind of an effect, plus there's

the whole superstition around werewolves and things like that, that we've been sort of grown up with, less, less superstition, but more kind of movies and things, but in the old days it would have been almost a real story I guess.

Another weird night of the year is the last Friday before Christmas, this might sound like a weird thing, what do you mean a last Friday before Christmas, they call it Black Friday, now that was before Black Friday was a thing, in America where they'd sell stuff really cheap in supermarkets and superstores, and then England, like it always does, follows America and did it here as well, and they still do, Amazon does it, but they spread it out over about a week, Black Friday week, where you can get cheaper stuff, but before that, long before that,

it was classed as Black Friday, because people acted different on that Friday before Christmas, it's quite often the last Friday before Christmas, obviously, and it's quite often party time for companies, office parties, things like that, people going out, because Friday compared to Saturday night is more chance of people going to the pub, or going to nightclubs from work, or going to a comedy club from work, that's unlikely to happen on a Saturday night, but a Friday night, so you can get a lot more quite drunk people that have already been drinking since maybe half five

in pubs, and then go to a nightclub, or a comedy club at maybe seven or eight, so they might already be drunk before they even sort of get to the place, and then by midnight, one, two o'clock in the morning, they is frazzled, and I saw lots of people lose their jobs on those Christmas parties, and you may say, but Jay, how do you know they lost their jobs?

Well, you can't punch your boss in the face and not lose your job, I mean, I don't think that's possible, it's pretty much a certainty that they lost their job, I've seen people get up and make a speech about how much they hate their boss, I've seen all weird kind of stuff, yeah, it's a lot of fun actually, to be fair, I miss it, I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it, and it was the hardest work ever at the same time at Christmas, it was kind of like a mixed blessing, it was very, it was a

lot, so hard work, because it was full on, but it was also quite a lot of fun as well, once the hard work was done, and that was the feeding them, once they were fed, once they had the food, because everyone had a Christmas dinner, the food was out, and then once all the food was back, and then there was a dessert, once the desserts were out, and they were back, then the rest of the night was smooth, smooth as far as less work to do, not so much work, but that's when the fun starts,

oh yeah, so those, you know, but then why does, I bet the newspapers have got Friday the 13th on them, and I'm sure radio shows are probably talking about it, and why, if no one mentioned it, if everyone kept quiet, and I've mentioned it myself, so I'm not, I can't be really exempt from that, but just, it's meaningless, it doesn't mean anything, you know, Friday the 13th was a movie, you know, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't, superstitions, or stupidstitions, as I like to call them, are just exactly that, they're just stupid, ridiculous, so

they're, I don't care what you think, I really think they're pointless, apart from the ones connected with health and safety, so walking under a ladder when someone's painting, or someone's, you know, washing a window, to me, all you've got to do is look under the ladder, and you can see paint on the pavement, you can see water on the pavement, where the, you know, you can see that the person is clearly splashing, and you're going to get that on you, there's a good chance, or you're going to slip on the water that's underneath the ladder,

you know, so to me, it makes sense not to walk under a ladder, from that angle, so unless you class that as instant bad luck, I just class it, you know, it's accidental, I mean, the main cause of death for people for under the age of, yeah, under the age of, I think, 36, is, or even 40, is accidental death, that's the main cause, from accidents, so I think it's good to be careful, genuinely, I've had a few accidents in the past, but luckily, I only sort of ended up with broken bones, and a damaged

ego, quite often, but superstitions, yeah, no, yeah, not like, completely pointless, but I'm not, I'm not really here to talk about that, I've already done, I've a recording called Stupidstitions, and I just, I just, the idea of teaching a child to be superstitious is, I've got a word for it, and people would be upset if I said that word, so I won't say it, but I just think it's just, it's almost cruel, really, it'd be fun to start with, you know, having the kid seeing a certain bird or magpie, and start standing up and saluting

at it, you know, something, getting them to do ridiculous behaviour, that can be fun to watch, it's funny, or not walking on cracks of the pavement, seeing them hopscotch their way to the, to the end of the road, it's funny, it's, you know, but as adults, when the person becomes an adult, and that belief is sunk in, it's no longer just a bit of fun, and they really feel, you know, it's almost have an OCD reaction, where they have to do it, or they, you know, in order to reduce the anxiety of not doing it,

of not saluting to something, or you know, the belief, and if they don't do these little activities, then harm will happen to them or others, that's OCD, that's, that's serious, that's a serious mental health condition, not something to teach kids to do, really, can't tell people though, really, can't tell people, can't sort of explain to them, because they get, it's just a bit of fun, okay, yeah, just a bit of fun, I mean, uh, yeah, not that it matters, I don't care, because it doesn't affect me, but this kid doesn't matter so much when I'm

doing this, but I did a sleep session earlier, you could hear that, what I was doing is readjusting my buttocks, very disturbing to the recording, and some messages, let's read some messages, Vanessa said, hello Andre, you are, great, people are now sending messages to Andre, hello Andre, you are such a cute and cuddly boy, aren't you?

Andre and you have such a wonderful daddy, oh, and you have such a wonderful daddy, that gives you hugs and snuggles, we hear, be, oh, you don't believe me, be a good boy, Andre, much love from Nova Scotia, Canada, good evening Jason, oh, oh, you remember me then, I am still enjoying you talking at night, you're a great company to listen to, but I wanted to ask, what was, what have you done differently with a microphone, it sounds like you are in a long tube, from Vanessa in Canada, okay, and I've got another one, hello

Jason, this is from Rachel, was this recorded while on a toilet, okay, the most recent recording, for the, let me bore you to sleep, which was the last one, number 540, and at the end of it, once I'd recorded it, and I was in the editing process, I heard that it was not clear, it wasn't, it was clear, but it was like I was in some kind of chamber or something, so the microphones were not set up correctly, should have been, but they weren't, I don't know, I just didn't check them before I started recording,

which I need to do now, and I have to do, every time I go to make a recording, I have to set up all the equipment, even though it's already set up, I have to reset it up, and get the headphones, record something, and then check that the microphones are connected, left and right, record something, and then listen back to it, to make sure that it sounds okay, which is annoying and tedious, especially when I've already got all the stuff set up, but now I know I have to do that every time, because that recording,

although it was, you could hear me, it was a very strange kind of recording, it was very distant, like, almost like I was sort of sitting in some kind of tunnel, but you know, I'd recorded it, I'd spent an hour recording that, I thought well, I'll upload it, I don't want to, don't want to lose an hour of stuff, I mean it wasn't terrible sound, but then I've made recordings where I've had the similar thing, where the sound is almost sounds like it's, I'd want to actually just upload it anyway, because it was a good

recording, but there was static sound in the background, and again, I guess because I didn't set it up properly, because I assumed it was fine, and most of the time it is fine, I don't need to touch it, well now I know I need to touch it every time, I need to check it every single time, and test it every single time before recording, which is fine, now I know I've got to do that, then that's what I'm going to do, only takes five minutes, so it's okay, but slightly annoying, slightly, slightly, slightly, slightly annoying,

so Rachel and Vanessa, that's what happened, that's why the recording was like it was, because I, I guess I didn't do my job properly, I suppose really, it's my, I don't like to, I don't like to put fault on anyone, especially me, but if it was anyone's fault, it was yours, it was yours, it wasn't mine, I never make mistakes, I said that to someone once in an office, I said I never make mistakes, and on that one occasion I had made a mistake, and it was about something that I really felt confident in, and

generally I've never made a mistake before, you know, or never sort of found out that I had, this one occasion that I was bragging that I don't make mistakes, I've made a mistake, so I learnt then and there to make sure I never said that to her again, make sure the next person I say I never make mistakes to is someone else that doesn't know about the previous mistake, very important, let's see if I've got any other messages, say hello to April, and Ben as well, hi Ben, Ben says, Ben says, saw this and thought

of you, picture of donkey's willy, cheers, thanks Ben, now it's a Tyson versus Jones boxing, November 28th, are you gonna, you gonna be watching, it says to me, yes is the answer to that, no boxing fan really could not watch it, even though it's unimportant, it's Mike Tyson, Roy Jones Jr, two of the most famous boxers of all time really, well our generation, this generation, which spans the last 30 years, so the last 30 years Roy Jones Jr and Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson arguably the most famous heavyweight in history after Muhammad Ali, there's no one

else more famous than Muhammad Ali, in I would say sport itself, no one eclipsed Muhammad Ali in fame, I think that's, we could just use, say that as fact, nobody in any sport is as famous as Muhammad Ali, he's the most famous sportsman, I've already said that, I don't know why I keep saying it, but he is or he was and still will be the most famous, he's basically Elvis Presley, the most famous singer of all time, you could say Elvis Presley, the most famous martial artist, Bruce Lee, even though Bruce had a short life,

and loads of other people have come along, Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, they're all like big stars in the martial arts world, and in movies, they've done a lot more movies than Bruce Lee did, and some would say he'd done much better movies than Bruce Lee did, but he's still the most famous martial artist, let's have a look, snooker, that's it, I'm not a snooker fan, but I would say that Ronnie O'Sullivan is definitely the most famous snooker player of my generation, even more than Stephen Hendry, or all the others that were great, he just seemed

to eclipse them, but then you've got Hurricane Higgins who was hugely famous, dance players, I don't know, I don't know about dance players, rugby players, don't know, golf, Tiger Woods, I guess, has been the most famous, he might have been the best, some people class him as the best ever, there's been loads, Jacklyn, Tony Jacklyn, wasn't it, who was pretty much the king of golf, so I don't know, but most famous, Tiger Woods, people that don't even don't know anything about golf would have heard of Tiger Woods, racing car drivers, like the Formula One, the

Schumacher, would that be the most famous like of that sport in the history of the sport, I don't know, that's all the sports isn't it, any other sports, swimming, so for me Sharon Davis was the most famous swimmer ever, and it's because I had a picture of her on my wall when I was a child, she had a swimming costume on, she was a swimmer, it made sense didn't it, I mean she was wearing a cowboy hat, sitting on a horse, I was gonna say sitting on a chair, sitting on a horse, that wouldn't make

sense, although she may really love sitting on horses, wearing cowboy hats, I don't know, but she had a swimming costume because that was her sport, she was Olympic gold medalist in the 80s, I suppose, I mean a super, the biggest star in athleticism or even running would be, what's his name, he sounds like a superhero anyway, not Flash, Zoom, not Zoom, Zoom, Thunder, fast runner, he's a fast runner, I'll tell you who the most famous track runner is, I can't even remember his name, how can he be the most famous, but he is, I mean

it was the old, it was the other ones wasn't it, in America, well in England, Linford Christie was a superstar when he had gold, I think two twice in a row, I think, I think and yeah, I'm pretty sure because he came second to a cheat, so he ended up, the gold medalist got took off and he ended up getting gold and then he won gold himself, you know, came first or it might be the other way around, but anyway Linford Christie was very famous, but a thing in this country is always going on about

his lunchbox, which I couldn't understand because, I mean they have catering, don't they, at these Olympic villages, they've got catering, why would he need a lunchbox, Buzz, not Buzz Lightyear, Storm, not Storm, that'd be quite good, yeah, I'll have to look his name up, I think he actually held the fastest runner, fastest runner, Usain Bolt, Bolt, Bolt, Usain Bolt, so he, who's the fastest runners in the world, he did the 200, no, the 100 meters in 9.

58 seconds, so I think he holds the world record, but he's not the fastest runner this year because he's retired, but the person who holds the record for the fastest, I don't know, I'm bored of that already, but yeah, Usain Bolt, not Usain, Usain Bolt, some would say, well, surely the most famous boxer is Mayweather, which you could say, well, yeah, he's, I think in the record books and in the future, there probably will be classed as one of the most famous, and I reckon in boxing terms, he will be talked about for a long time in the history of boxing, but he didn't, he was undefeated and he won multiple titles, but what Roy Jones Jr.

did was he won titles, middleweight, super middleweight, I think light heavyweight and heavyweight, which is something no one else had ever done before, and he was also a phenomena, you know, he was just in his heyday, in his peak, he was, you know, pound for pound, one of the greatest boxers, well, he was pound for pound the greatest boxer classed as at his peak, and so yeah, anyway, I know no one wants to hear about boxing, boxing, stop talking about boxing, so I, I didn't go out at all yesterday, I haven't been out, no, I

did, I took Andre out for a little walk in the evening, got into the park and then he wanted to leave, so I left, you know, I just followed him and he's happy just to go out, have a little sniff, have a little rub around in in the grass and then he comes home, that seems to do him, so I don't know if that's just because he's, maybe he's got less energy, maybe it's this time of year he sleeps more and he wants to sleep more and it's just natural, he'll sleep over 20 hours a

day now, he'll get up every now and then during that time, go to the toilet, have a little wander around, you know, check the rooms, make sure that everything's how it should be, maybe come and have a cuddle, then go back to sleep, get up, have something to eat, have a drink, go back to sleep, you know, so he's, he's not doing much when he actually is awake, he probably has an hour or so, a couple of times a day, he'll have like an hour or so where he's playing or when he's doing something, so

he's really not that active at the moment, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, but that's natural, that's just what he does, it's the winter, it's, well, it's not yet, is it, it's still autumn, don't you mean fall, no, autumn, no, fall, no, it's autumn, wonder which was first, fall or autumn, doesn't matter, does it, I'll tell you something, I quite like the idea of, you know, England not copying America or anyone else, I quite like the idea of originality, to do something that, you know, sort of ourselves, have our own traditions, which we do, but we

are very much, very, I know that originally America was England, you know, it's England that kind of, England and other Europeans that sort of were the first inhabitants after Columbus, not the first inhabitants, you know, all together, but you know, the first of the aliens that went there after Columbus introduced America to Europe, basically, so I, you know, I suppose a lot of the traditions really are from here, or it's from the people that went there from here, or from, you know, different parts of Europe, anyway, one tradition I'd quite like, I think it'd be

quite nice to have here, and that's Thanksgiving, I think that'd be a really nice thing to do, because it'd definitely break up the Christmas, it, oh, just dropping my glasses, did I tell you I got my glasses fixed the other day, got an eye test in December, I don't want to call it an eye test, it should be eyes test, shouldn't it, I'm just having one eye tested, semantics, Andre, and I, so I've got my eyes tested, can I get them tested, I'm probably going to get my hearing tested as well, let's get my ears

tested, but there's two options for that, I can have a basic ear test, or hearing test, or I can have the full hearing test, which means I'm going private, and I'm paying for that myself, and if I need hearing aids, I will get, I'll have to pay for the hearing aids myself, the basic hearing test is to see whether or not I need the full hearing test, so what it does, it shows that there's a deficiency in my hearing ability, which they said to me, I could have that, I think it's free, the actual hearing

test, the basic one, and then I could take that information to my doctor's surgery, they would then send me, possibly back to Specsavers, I don't know, to get the full hearing test, and then it would be covered on the NHS, and then, like my glasses are, so then if I wanted to have, not wanted, but if I needed a hearing aid, then that would be covered, because I think they're quite expensive, that would be covered by the NHS, now I don't get, I get a free eye test, and I get vouchers towards the glasses, the

frames, but that's for basic frames, if I want nice ones, then I have to add the money on, so let's say the basic frame, I get a price of £25 towards the frame, and the basic one, I could get a basic one for £25, but if I want nice ones, and if I want, I need to have active light, active light, active light, you know when it goes, when the lens goes dark in the sunshine, then I need that for my eyes, because I've got, like a degenerative thing going on, so I need to sort

of keep that at bay by keeping as much sunlight away from my eyes as possible, direct sunlight, and just being outside, so I've got my sunglasses, it's only sunglasses, but not really, and also having, you know, the anti-glare stuff as well, so to have that stuff adds another like £30 or £40 on top, which is optional, but the NHS doesn't pay for that, you know they, that's something that I have to sort of pay for, and if I want a decent, like a nice frame, it might cost me another £50, £60, maybe it could be

£100 even, so it's, you know, it's not, I'm not really sure how much it's going to cost, however, because I have two types, I have two glasses, one for reading, one for looking through, well I look through the reading ones as well, but you know, one for seeing things, you don't see things when you read, you know what I mean, day-to-day seeing stuff, watching telly, seeing people's faces and stuff, those are the ones where I need a new frame, because I've broken these frames, the frame I'm wearing, they've fixed them, but they're still broke, if

you know what I mean, the lens is in, but it's still not in properly, but it'll be fine for a while, I'm always going to sit on them again, but the glasses, the frames for my glasses, I'm going to keep, so I'll just get them to put in the, whatever the new prescription is, will be put into the old frames, because I like that, I like those glasses better than I like these actually, the frames, I like them better, I don't know why, I just do, unless I end up getting multiple lenses, which I have

had before, all in one, I had bifocal back in 2013, I think it was, and so I had, the top was for seeing distance, the middle was for looking at computer screens, and the bottom was for reading, but they all melted into one, there weren't no lines across, it wasn't like three different lenses that you could see were different, this was actually, I don't know what the correct terminology for it was, but kind of melted together, so you couldn't see that they were bifocals, very strange to get used to them, really, it's like okay, so

I've had to keep tilting my head in order to see distance, and the middle bit was the computer screen, which the middle bit would be the one that I would normally look through, because it's the kind of area I'd look through, didn't need to, unless I was looking at a computer screen, but at that time, I was spending all day looking at computer screens, so it's important, and then the disc for the reading was the lower, you know, the lower part of the lenses, it's really weird, because wearing them, I felt taller, I did, because

the bottom part of the lens was focused on close work, which meant everything was further away, you know, it was almost, not blurry, but the ground just seemed further away, and I felt like I was sort of trying to avoid holes, it was like, I felt I was going to just fall into a hole, like I've got to be careful there, it's like my first time with a woman, it was just like, I don't know what I'm doing, and eventually I got used to it, but I quite liked feeling tall, I mean, the only time

I've ever really felt tall was when I visited my friend's daughter, I was with my friend, we went to my friend's daughter's, I think it's like an open evening, and I went along, and she was in junior or infant school, so she was probably about five, and going in to this classroom, I felt like a giant, the chairs were tiny, the tables were tiny, everything was tiny, I needed to use a toilet, it was tiny, it was like near the floor, the urinal was near the floor, I mean, come on, it was just, you couldn't

make it up, I really felt huge, I did try and sit on one of the chairs though, and I was surprised, considering they're used by schools, they do break quite easy, I mean, even just walking through the hallway, the whole school shook, they're not built well, you know, I've gone off topic a bit, I don't know what my original conversation was about, but it's Friday the 13th, sorry to mention it again, and the only weird thing about that is, we're two days off being halfway through the month, already, Sunday, we're halfway through November, and you

know, once you get to the end of November, it's December, but it's sort of Christmas month, or the holidays, for those who don't celebrate Christmas, so it's kind of, I mean, I don't celebrate, I haven't celebrated Christmas, not really, since I was a kid, and I think I was spoilt a bit when I was a kid, regardless of what it was like the rest of the year, and it was a little bit difficult, but then that was probably just more to do with, well, lots of different things, just four boys all living in the house

together, it was never gonna be easy sailing, really, and Christmas was the best time of the year, like the best, yeah, Christmas Eve, the days leading up to Christmas, the whole Christmas period, really, the week, including, you know, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, it was good, the whole thing was good, and it was, I don't think my parents could have done a better job, really, I've got to really give them all the credit for that, it was amazing, amazing Christmases, so many presents, and it was, I guess they both, well, I know my dad,

I've not spoken to her since I was 16, but my dad still absolutely loves Christmas, it's his favourite time of year, it's his favourite day of the year, apart from his birthday, and Christmas is just, it's not something I really celebrate anymore, I've celebrated it, but it's not, I don't sort of celebrate internally, if that makes sense, I'd rather just keep away, I like the build-up, I do, I like the Christmas movies, and the Christmas adverts, well, I don't like the Christmas adverts, but I like the, yeah, I quite like the atmosphere of the build-up,

and I find that people are a bit more friendlier at Christmas, it's, you know, just, I don't know, it just is a, I think it's an important, we talk about superstition and, you know, things like that, it's an important tradition in this country, as well as others, of course, but it's the biggest one, it's the biggest holiday of the year, Easter doesn't really have much of a thing anymore, used to, used to be, well, for me, it used to be a big thing, I used to get Easter eggs from everybody, and maybe some people still

do, maybe I'm just out of the loop for that one, Halloween, it's not big anymore, it used to be, it used to be fairly popular when I was a kid, and England have tried to embrace, tried to get where America is, where it's a big deal, and a lot of fun, as well, I imagine, in America, I imagine it's a great, you know, the whole, you know, spending ages preparing for one day, and in some ways seems probably a little bit silly and pointless, but it gives you, it gives lots of fun and happiness and

laughs and, you know, brings people together, then it's a, it's a great thing, really, but in this country, we've not really embraced it the way that America does, and I would say the closest thing to anyone really embracing that kind of thing would be Mexican, Mexico's Day of the Dead, is it Day of the Dead, or Night of the Dead, or where they celebrate the dead, people have died, and that's huge, a massive festival, we don't have anything here like that, not really, we have, we have some bank holiday Mondays, we have St George's Day,

it's the only English holiday, St George's Day, I don't know, do we have a holiday on that, but it's, but we don't do anything, we don't sort of celebrate it, but we have some bank holidays along the way, but we don't, I don't know, I don't think it's because lack of interesting things have happened in history in this country, because I don't think anyone can say that about any country really, the history of every country is pretty phenomenal, and it's full of horrible and amazing, weird, and just unbelievable stuff that's happened in every country, but

Bonfire Night is probably the only thing that we celebrate that has to do with the history of this country, Bonfire Night celebrating a failed terrorist attack on the House of Parliament by Guy Fawkes, and that's on the 5th of November every year, so outside of that, you know, because you have fireworks, bonfires, and no other country would celebrate that, because it's not relevant to any other country, yet every other country has fireworks, so I, yeah, of course we celebrate, you know, Christmas, but Christmas isn't really about, it's more about Father Christmas or Santa Claus than

it is about religion these days, and that's what Christmas was, Christmas had nothing to do with Jesus, Christmas was a festival created by, what's his name, wasn't he a policeman, wasn't he, I'll have a look, because Jesus wasn't born in December, when did Christmas start, it's okay, when was Christmas started, it didn't become a major Christian festival until the 9th of century, many Christmas traditions such as devoting trees started in Germany, later spread to other parts of the world, notably England and the United States, wow, it says Christmas originated from, oh, okay, who invented Christmas,

it's been going for years, what is the true message of Christmas, right, December 25th is a day the Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the day itself and several of the customs we've come to associate with Christmas actually evolved from pagan traditions celebrating the winter solstice, in ancient Rome there was a feast called Saturnalia that celebrates the solstice, so who was the person that gave presents, let me have a look, yeah, okay, Saint Nicholas, so the legend of Santa Claus can be traced back hundreds of years to a monk named Saint Nicholas, it is

believed that Nicholas was born sometime around 280 AD in Patara near Myra in northern modern-day Turkey, over the course of many years Nicholas's popularity spread and he became known as the protector of children and sailors, this is a legendary character, he said to bring gifts to homes, I thought he was a real person though, Nicholas Nickleby, you know, see when I was a kid we were brought up to call Santa Claus Father Christmas, Santa Claus was what American, so Santa American, in other countries would call him, we would call it Father Christmas, now the kids

call him Santa, Father Christmas is something that isn't really used I don't think so much, and there's stuff like that that does cause, it divides people, it does, little things like that, by teaching children to say Santa Claus instead of Father Christmas, so then the parents or the grandparents that use terms like Father Christmas, they're, it's, there's a separate, there's a divide, like a forced divide which doesn't need to happen, and you know grandparents say Father Christmas and the granddaughter says no Santa Claus, and no one likes to be told that they're wrong or to

be corrected, and then let me just see, I remember this from years ago, history of how Saint Nicholas became Santa Claus, okay here we go, here we go, Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nick, no matter the name everyone knows the story of this plump jolly bringer of gifts, or do they, I do, historical journeys even longer, the progenitor of the modern American Santa was born in the modern Mediterranean during the Roman Empire, his legend evolved across northern Europe, and he finally assumed his now familiar form on the shores of the New World, who is this

ancestor of Santa, and how did he change over time, that's one of those stupid pages where you have to keep pressing to continue to read, and it takes you for years, Saint Nicholas, every, every December 6th the faithful celebrate Saint Nicholas Day in cities all over the world, with the largest ones taking place in Europe, images of Saint Nicholas vary considerably, but none of them look much like the red-cheeked, white-bearded old man seen everywhere today, one of the most competent views of the real Saint Nick who lived in the 3rd and 4th centuries was created

not by ancient artists but by using modern forensic facial recognition, scholarly debate over where the remains of the Greek bishop rest continues to this day, but traditionally it was believed that the bones of Saint Nicholas were stolen by Italian sailors during the 11th century and taken to the crypt of the Basilica di San Nicola on the southern coast of Italy, when the crypt was repaired in the 1950s the saint's skull and bones were documented with x-ray photos and thousands of detailed measurements, but though theories on other possible resting places of Saint Nicholas read could the

remains of Santa Claus be in this Turkish church, Caroline Wilkinson, a facial anthropologist at the University of Manchester, England, used these data and modern software simulations to create a modern reconstruction of the long-dead man.

Wilkinson put a fuming face on Santa's original namesake, one with a badly broken nose, possibly suffering during the persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire. Much of her work is necessarily... Okay, so how did Saint Nicholas turn into the northern pole dwelling bringer of Christmas gifts? Well, the original saint was a Greek born in the late 3rd century, around 280 AD. He became Bishop of Myra, a small Roman town in modern Turkey.

Nicholas was neither fat nor jolly, but developed a reputation as a fiery, wiry and defiant defender of church doctrine during the Great Persecution in 303. When Bibles were burned and priests made to renounce Christianity or face execution, Nicholas defied these edicts and spent years in prison before the Roman Emperor Constantine ended Christian persecution in 313 with the Edict of Milan. Nicholas' fame lived longer after his death on December 6th in the mid-4th century, around 446 AD, because he was associated with many miracles and reverence for him continues to this day.

Independence of his Christmas connection. He is the protector of many types of people from orphans to sailors to prisoners. Um, yeah, can't go through the rest of it.

Isn't it weird? Who'd have thought it? I thought I'd be really up for that, but I'm just... Nah, I'm really not. Wow. I have a recollection that, uh, what's his name? St. Christopher, was it St. Christopher? Anyway, whoever it was, uh, the original Santa Claus, or Father Christmas, used to give presents to children around Christmas time.

That was my memory, but that's, that's from, that, that, that's from school. Wow, I can't believe I actually remember something from school. Hmm, well, well that's kind of the end of this recording.

Action packed, jam packed, marmalade packed, it's just been packed, isn't it? Proper impactful packed stuff. Wonderful, wonderful. So, thank you for listening.

Remember to be kind to yourself, kind to yourself, because you deserve, you deserve to be happy, happy. Lots of love. Bye.