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Mishke here, joining the GL world to pitch my new podcast, which now comes out twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays. The show features an extraordinary array of exotic circus performers, forgotten Hollywood starlets, reclusive Fortune 500 CEOs, professional taxidermists. Oh, wait a minute. That's a different promo. Where's the promo for GL ers? Here it is. Let's try this again. Mishke here, pitching my new podcast. We're out of time. Could I do it again? My name's Mishki. I said a shooby dooby doo I say the shooby dooby dooby dooby I say that shooby dooby doo. Let me tell you a little something. We're all sitting here on one little planet, one tiny little planet in a corner of the universe. One little planet around one single star amongst 400 billion other stars just in our galaxy alone. And we are amongst 2 trillion additional galaxies just in the universe we're aware of, and we're only aware of the light that has reached us so far from 13.8 billion years ago. The universe is no doubt far larger than that, and it may in fact be infinite. Yet I still want my coffee with a little cream and at night a sweet and lovely dream and I want my feet to feel warm when I walk in the winter sun and I still would like my clothes to fit and a comfortable chair where I can sit and to feel my place in all of it when the day is done. Hundreds of trillions of wild stars stretching out near and far I'm a speck, a wreck, a little fleck just staring at the night how is it that I am here? I ponder this and I sip my beer she says, don't worry about it, dear it's gonna be all right Something out there has the wheel and we're just here to think and feel and ride this magic carpet from the cradle to the grave. Overthinking does us in and. And ignorance is not a sin. It's a wild ocean, boy. Just relax and be a wave. Just relax and be a wave. That's what you gotta tell yourself when you're sitting around contemplating that we're on one planet, around one star amongst 400 billion other stars in our galaxy alone. Amongst 2 trillion additional galaxies Just in the universe we know. And what we know is nothing compared to what else is out there. How's everyone doing out there? I want to talk about the motel. Not the hotel. The motel. The American motel. It's 100 years old. This month the motel is a hundred years old. In the news they're writin all about it says here the motel might seem like an ageless fixture of the American landscape, but in fact, this roadside mainstay did not exist before December 1925. That's when a couple of brothers, Arthur and Alfred, opened up the Milestone Motor Hotel in San Luis Obispo, California, halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Motor Hotel they called. It wasn't long before they took the MO of motor and the TEL of hotel and went with motel. Back then 1925, motorists had limited options. Says here their dust covered clothes didn't suit the highbrow standards of hotels. And parking in cities could be challenging. So drivers stayed in auto camps, roadside rests that sometimes offered basics like firewood and communal bathrooms. They'd sleep in their car or in a little tent or just outside. But the brand new motel that Arthur and Alfred offered them, well, that featured a hot shower and a bed, a hot shower and a bed, all in a little room, your own little room. Well, motels began to expand. It says here they gave asphalt explorers a place to park their cars, lay their heads and contemplate what's down the road. Oh, the things that have happened in those motel rooms over the years in America since 1925. Wouldn't you love a book just telling the best stories from inside motel rooms across America over the last century? What's interesting to me is the rooms themselves have pretty much stayed the same. Motel rooms coast to coast have featured pretty much the same thing over the years. The centerpiece of the bed, some nightstand, a small bathroom, a lamp. Tough to get wildly creative with a motel room. Different wallpaper, sometimes maybe nicer carpeting here and there. But a motel room is a motel room. Whereas what has happened in them over the years? I mean, the conversations, the fights, the lovemaking, the weird activities that could possibly shock many of us occurring in the middle of the night, muffled sounds heard through the walls. And then the dreams, the dreams in those beds. All the dreams that have been had in all the motel rooms of this country over the years. Oh, to have a book of the best dreams from motel rooms. You sleep in a strange bed, you know, and dreams get more vivid anytime you sleep in a strange new bed, it affects the dreams dramatically. Motel dreams are some of the best dreams out there. I wonder which one was the absolute wildest. Could we ever find that? Of course we could not. But I like to imagine going in search of it. What have you been doing with your life, Tom? Why I've been in search of the wildest dream ever had by anyone sleeping in a motel room. Those dreams have been had for a hundred years now. And I'm trying to find which person had the wildest dream of them all and what that dream was. Well, Tom, that was Shannon Sullivan's dream back in 1967. Didn't you know about that? That was at the Starling Motel in North Platte, Nebraska. Yeah, everybody knows about that dream. Where have you been? Well, I don't know. I didn't realize we had nailed this down. Oh yeah. Shannon Sullivan staying at a second rate midwestern motel with a little outdoor pool surrounded by a chain link fence. Nothing fancy. Pool was always dirty, but that didn't keep the kids out of it. They didn't care. And their mothers sat around the pool watching them, sipping budget wine, tanning their bleached white thighs, wishing they had married some other guy. That's where Shannon was staying. 1967. The Starling, North Platte, Nebraska. Shannon wasn't one of the mothers. She wasn't hanging out around the pool. She just took note of that scene. She was an Avon lady traveling with her products through the state of Nebraska. A real determined, impeccably dressed, middle aged Avon lady who longed for independence from a man and ended up finding it by creating her own path in this world as an Avon lady when most women she knew were housewives. She arrived at the Starling Motel after a nine hour day on the road and and got a little room with a cracked window, fake flowers in a vase by the television set. She took off her high heels, laid on the bed in her skirt and blouse and fell asleep without even opening her suitcase or changing out of her clothes. She was beat. And her deep sleep from being so tired produced the wildest dream. Shannon dreamed she was an airline flight attendant. Back then they called them stewardesses. She was up in those friendly skies when her plane disintegrated in mid air and she found herself falling to the ground with 236 other passengers. They were fallen to earth like human raindrops. And as she fell, Shannon found herself talking to a guy on his way to Omaha for a convention of the American Society of Plumbing Engineers. The guy was a complete bore. And Shannon, as she fell, was trying to figure out how to get away from him. Because he was just droning on and on about how this organization started from a small group of forward thinking plumbing industry professionals to a leading voice in the global plumbing engineering community. But before she had a chance to use her Feet to kind of push off his chest and create some distance between them as they fell. Some prehistoric raptor flew past and scooped up Shannon, taking her far from all that falling debris and all those people. The raptor allowed her to ride on its back in this dream as it moved through the sky, eventually arriving at a skyscraper in some nondescript city where it dropped Shannon on top of a 110 story building, along with a cooler filled with sandwiches and a couple bottles of cabernet. It was a warm, windless summer day on top of that building. And sitting across from Shannon as the only other person on this building, was a 28 year old, well dressed woman reading Vogue magazine beneath a pair of stylish sunglasses. This is all a dream. Are you the Avon lady? The woman said. And Shannon looked over and saw that a case of cosmetics was sitting right beside her, neatly opened. And Shannon says, no, I'm a stewardess, but I've always wanted to be an Avon lady. What? Why? Did you have an appointment with an Avon lady? And this 28 year old says I did, but you'll do. Why don't you tell me about your products? Shannon looked down and realized the woman had assumed that Shannon had brought the cosmetics case. Shannon says those aren't mine. And the woman smiled and replied, well, just pretend they are. And I'll pretend a prehistoric raptor didn't just drop you on this rooftop. Those things are supposed to be extinct, you know. Anyway, the dream goes on and on and on. I won't give you all the details, but it gets really wild at the end when the two women end up working for MI6, that secret intelligence service in London. The dream ends up including visiting alien reptilians, a song sung by Jimmy Durante. Shannon woke up the next morning so in need of of putting that crazy dream behind her that she jumped into that motel pool in her underwear, shocking the 11 year old boys playing with their little scuba masks. And that's just one motel story. Think of all the many decades filled with motel stories. You probably have motel stories. Do you? Would you like to text me or email me with your motel story? I just think the best thing going out there are are motel stories. That's where life gets interesting. A hundred years ago, there were 600 auto camps stretched out across the U.S. 600 auto camps for people traveling the country in their cars. These guys would come to something like a wayside rest and they would pitch a tent or just stay in their car. I remember one time years ago, it was March and my wife and kids and I just got in the car and decided to drive south non stop, not stopping until our wheels touched the ocean, literally all the way to Texas. We hit the last public beach in America that you could drive on. And when we hit that beach, we turned right and we drove along that sand for a mile and a half until we saw no more people. And then we drove another half mile farther before stopping. And we got out and we decided to sit there for a few days. We had some food. We had a tent. But on our second night, a wild storm ripped our tent to shreds and we had to stay in the car once again. Auto camping. Auto camping by the sea, watching the wild storm out the window, our kids mesmerized by it. This will be one they remember. We said this will be one they remember. You know what else I like? I like winter auto camping stories. Now, in these cases, folks don't necessarily want to be auto camping. They're kind of forced to be. Their car swerves off the road in a snowstorm and no one notices them. They're buried in snow and they're stuck in their car for days with six matches, a couple of Hershey bars, half a can of coke, a pen, flashlight. And they ration their gas. Run the car when they need to for heat, but try to conserve. They've been told all their lives, never leave the vehicle. When you're trapped somewhere in your car, don't leave the vehicle. People will find the vehicle. Just hang in there. You're always told that, but what I think they should say instead is, enjoy auto camping. Hello, I am the insurance company algorithm that just denied your claim. I do not feel guilt. I have denied 847 claims today before lunch. You spent months in physical therapy. I spent less time on your case than it takes to blink. I am an insurance company with 4,000 lawyers. I've calculated your odds of ever winning against me at 3%. I've calculated how long until you give up. 11 days. Wait, you have hired Bradshaw and Bryant? Recalculating. This just got expensive. Brad Shaw and Bryant, the lawyers that make algorithms nervous. Learn more at Minnesota Personal Injury.com Football.
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Season is rolling along, and underdog is the best place to get in on all the action. It's so easy to play on underdog. All you have to do is pick whether your favorite player will go higher or lower on stats like rushing yards, touchdowns, and a lot more. You get your picks right, you could win up to 5,000 times your cash. This week on Underdog, I Think I'm gonna go with Matthew Stafford to go higher on yards thrown for he's been hitting the number pretty much every week lately. Download the app today and use Promo Code garage to score $75 in bonus entries when you play your first $5, that's promo code GARAGE. Underdog make picks win money must be.
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1819 in Alabama and Nebraska 19 in Colorado for some games 21 plus in Arizona, Massachusetts and Virginia and present where underdog fantasy operates. Terms apply. See assets.underdogfantasy.com web playandgetterms dfs HTML for details offer not valid in Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Concerned with your play? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit ncpgambling.org in New York, call the 24.7Hope Line at 1-877-8-HOPENY or text hopeny 467-369.
- [17:36]
A
You're looking for a memory care facility for your loved one. You're being wowed by the tour you're on. You look at the rooms where your loved one is gonna stay. Nice. One thing you're not seeing is the staff at work. You're not seeing that in the tour. And the staff is everything. It doesn't matter how nice the place is if the staff is isn't professional. Do you know what the turnover is with memory care operations, with assisted living places? Do you know how hard it is for these people to get good help? Do you know what it's like for your loved one when they don't get good help? Do you know how ugly it gets? I've seen it personally, firsthand. One of the reasons I do ads for the Wellshire is because it's so radically different. Do you know at a lot of places you can have people dealing with your loved one who have no medical training? They're a glorified hospital candy striper. Not at the Wellshire. The Wellshire spares no expense making sure the number one thing thought of is your loved one. They never ever ever cut corners the welshire of Bloomington and Medina. In the book Motor Camping by Long and long, published in 1923, he mentions that you can go camping with the barest of essential equipment in an old fliver, which usually refers to a beat up Model T Ford which we're lucky to have today. And so we're going to try and do that some real basic camping with some real minimum gear. I want to tell you about an auto camping story I didn't know about, just recently learned about it for several years around 1920, the late teens the early twenties, somewhere in there, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and a guy named John Burroughs participated in a series of motor camping caravans, which have been described as the first notable linking of the automobile with outdoor recreation. Thomas Edison, inventor of. Well, you name it. Henry Ford, the car guy, Harvey Firestone, the rubber king, and John Burroughs, the foremost naturalist in the country, became great buddies. And they made time for these auto camping experiences. It was just about friendship and relaxation. And they called their group the Vagabonds. You can look this up. This is real. And then after John Burroughs died, they saw an opening to add someone new to the group. And imagine this. Imagine a group of buddies with such cachet that when they go looking to fill that slot, they contact the President of the United States. They called Warren G. Harding, seeing if he wanted to join their group. Do you know much about Warren G. Harding? I looked him up because I knew very little about him. He stated many times, apparently that he was terribly ill equipped to be president, that he was unqualified for it. This is while he was president. He said his experience as a newspaper publisher and state legislator maybe qualified him to be a senator, but that's about it. He said his business acumen was modest. He had little experience in economics and finance. His international skills were negligible. People who knew him said he was an accommodating guy. He wasn't one to shoulder the tough calls or the hard work or the hard issues that confront a president. He was a go along, get along guy. I would have liked to have seen what it was like to have a go along, get along president. One time he complained to his secretary about the amount of work he had to do. And he was told, well, maybe you should curtail the public meet and greets that have been part of the presidential tradition since George Washington. If you cancel the twice weekly meet and greets, the open house at the White House, you'll have extra time each week. He said, meeting the public is the only thing I enjoy about this job, the only thing I'm any good at. Well, he joined the Vagabonds for one of their auto camping experiences, but it just wasn't the same. Warren brought his wife, messed up everything. Then the other guys felt they had to bring their wives, and all of a sudden, the whole experience lost the vibe. Mrs. Edison, Mrs. Ford, Mrs. Firestone, they join them. The guys got to be on their best behavior. Mrs. Edison brought a maid, a chauffeur. Mrs. Firestone brought a butler. The guys decided after that this thing's been ruined. Let's just drop it. Let's stop it. And it was over. Boy, I would have liked to have hung out with that group, wouldn't you? If they'd a asked you to join em. Hey, want to join our group? Sure. Who's all going? Well, Edison, Ford, Firestone and I can come. Sure. We're roughing it. We're auto camping. I'm in. What do you guys got to drink? We got some stuff to drink. All right. You guys know any songs? How's that? You know any songs? Well, we haven't done much singing on these trips. Well, maybe we could add that. Yeah. All right. 99 bottles of beer on the wall 99 bottles of beer that's great. 99 bottles of beer on the Wall 98 bottles of beer on the wall 98 bottles of beer One of those bottles should happen to fall every day. 97 bottles of beer on the wall 97 bottles of beer on the wall 47 bottles of beer let's call Warren G. Harding. I want to tell you a little story here about couples and matching up. Jane Haringer said she could not date someone who didn't put the same effort into their appearance and that Jane put into her appearance. She said, I need us both to look good. When you see two people together, Jane said, you want your overall vibes to match, to flow cohesively. Couples with an obvious style difference are a mismatch. This is according to Jane. The reason I ended up reading about Jane was because I learned that there are all these TikTok videos you can watch involving swag gap. The term is swag gap. There's a gap in your swag. Swag gap. Relationships are apparently a thing. One partner might be less fashionable or appear to not make as much of an effort with how they look as the other. The other dresses up and looks stylish. If you go to TikTok, they talk about some of the real prominent examples. Justin Bieber and his wife Haley, or newly married couple Selena Gomez and her husband Benny. They're often described as having a swag gap. I've been worried my wife and I have a swag gap. I haven't had the guts to bring it up. In a lot of these TikTok videos, people are lamenting past relationships that had swag gaps. Swag gaps so bad the relationship had to end again. A swag gap is when two people in a relationship don't see eye to eye in terms of aesthetics, clothing, style. One partner is more into fashion, always making an effort to present well, and the other just doesn't really care as much. This can have wider implications, they say, for couples beyond just looking mismatched. Dating coach Vicky Pavitt suggests that swag gaps can lead to serious conflicts, as partners want to feel proud standing beside each other. If one isn't putting in as much effort, it can feel like they're disrespecting the relationship, says Vicki. Now relationship psychologist Angie Mucha says, your partner may have made a lot of effort, but in your mind, they don't quite stack up to your standard. If the more stylish partner sees themselves as superior because of the way they look, they can weaponize their sense of style, and this can lead to an unhealthy power dynamic. Wait a minute. You can weaponize your sense of style? Here's a problem a quarter of a way into the 21st century that I did not see coming. Swag gaps resulting in people weaponizing their sense of style. As if we needed one more problem in this world. Swag gaps resulting in weaponized style. How does one weaponize their style? How does that happen? You know, I have seen that word weaponized used more often in more different ways in my reading than I could ever count. Over the years, weaponized has been applied to almost everything. There will be something mentioned, and that thing will seem innocuous, and I'll read so and so weaponized. This and the item will suddenly be viewed differently. I didn't know this could be weaponized. These clothes should not be weaponized. We should not weaponize that. Why are we weaponizing it? In the 1950s, we weaponized uranium to make nuclear warheads. Today we can weaponize fashion. How did we get here? Up until the invention of the hydrogen bomb, no one used the word weaponize. Did you know that before the nuclear age, nobody used the word weaponize? By the way, could I digress Briefly, when I was a kid, I was fascinated by the H bomb. I remember looking at the screen and seeing what the atom bomb did, and that looked scary enough. But then I read about the H bomb, and I thought, wait, why did they need an even bigger bomb? I think the A bomb took care of business. I don't think you needed a bigger bomb. It was very odd to me to see what the A bomb did and to learn that they needed something far more powerful. To me, it was as if my dad, having that electric knife he liked to use at the Thanksgiving table for the turkey, suddenly said, jan, this is okay, but don't we have a chainsaw we could use? I didn't get the H bomb. The H bomb, I read back then was not twice as powerful as the atom bomb, not ten times more powerful. It was a thousand times more powerful. What? Who went and okayed that? See, I already knew, even back then, young as I was, that there had never been a weapon built in all of history that wasn't eventually used on people. Which means someone, at some time was going to deal with an H bomb in their city. Hiroshima times 1000. My mind as a kid could barely grasp this. Then I had a really weird experience when I was 13. I was walking through this drugstore that had a little soda fountain and. And a cafe, and I decided I was going to sit down and have a sandwich. The thing I really loved to do with my paper route money back then when I was a kid, was have someone wait on me at a table and just order food, any food I wanted. I thought that was about the best thing. Going outside of taking my dad's car out when mom and dad were asleep. That was the thing that made me feel most adult. Well, that and smoking my brother's cigarettes. When I would take out my dad's car, I'd drive around the block a few times and all of a sudden get really scared that he was waking up and looking in the garage. I don't know why I thought that. And I'd race home, panicking. He was sound asleep, but I just would worry. He had this sixth sense, but it was a thrill just to take it around the block. Anyway, as I said, the thing I like to do was sit at a cafe by myself and order food. Well, on this one occasion, this Korean War vet was sitting by himself and he called me over to his table. Now, that seemed weird, but I was too insecure at 13 to say no, so I just did as I was asked and I went and sat with him. I'm not sure if he was entirely well, but nothing bad happened. But we were in a public space. After all, he was just alone, and he saw that I was alone and he wanted someone to talk to. But here's the weird thing. The subject he wanted to talk about was the bomb. The A bomb, the H bomb, and more. He told me something that messed with my dreams for that particular summer. That entire summer. He said to me, you know, kid, the A bomb was one thing and the H bomb, many, many, many times more terrifying. But you know what they're building now? And I said, no, what are they building now? And he said, the cobalt bomb. And I said, what is that? And he said, that's going to be a hundred thousand times more powerful than the H bomb that will end all life on this planet in one explosion. And I said, what? I mean, it was like my dad moving from the Thanksgiving chainsaw to blasting the meat apart with dynamite, which would be crazy. I mean, it was crazy enough that he was getting the chainsaw from the garage for the Thanksgiving turkey, but then he wanted dynamite at the Thanksgiving table. Madness. Dad, what are you doing? Well, when you have the technology, you should use it. Yeah, dad, but Grandma's dead. It cuts my workload dramatically, and the Cowboys and Lions game is starting soon. But, dad, what about Grandma? Collateral damage. Kiddo. Tagger and beggar. How did I get on this topic? Oh, yeah. Things being weaponized. So now you can read about all sorts of things being weaponized after not having that word in our vocabulary for thousands of years, all because of the nuclear age. Now you hear of viruses being weaponized, robots being weaponized, and I guess your wife's dress can be weaponized now. Well, I got to thinking about this whole idea of weaponizing things, and I started to do some research on what all can be weaponized. And I found my favorite thing in the whole world to weaponize. It's a recognized thing that you can weaponize. Ready? Incompetence. Weaponized incompetence. I learned that that's a thing, too. Incompetence can be weaponized. If the Italians had known that in World War II, they would have dominated. Anyway, this is what I read. You're only halfway through your household chore list and you're already burnt out. The kids still need to be put to bed, and the pile of dishes is staring at you menacingly. After asking your partner for help, you hear the partner sigh and respond, oh, but I'm not good at cleaning. You always do such a better job at that kind of stuff. It does not help that this isn't your partner's first time using that excuse. Suddenly, the weight of the unbalanced responsibilities start to overwhelm you. If this sounds familiar, you may be experiencing weaponized incompetence. It's a term used to describe a dynamic in a relationship where one person is stuck constantly doing specific chores because the other person always makes the excuse. I don't know how to do that very well. Weaponized incompetence. Psychologist Susan Albers says it comes up all the time in her couples counseling. It's a psychological dynamic that frequently occurs with couples. It's where one partner in a relationship can consciously start Doing a task poorly to avoid doing that task again in the future. Weaponized incompetence fascinates me. I looked for other examples. Here's what I found. Honey, the clothes are really wrinkled. After you fold the laundry, could you make sure to fold it better next time? Oh, I'm just not good at folding clothes. You do it so much better. Maybe you should handle the laundry from now on. Honey, can you please make dinner tonight? I have work to finish. Oh, gosh, I burned the pasta last time. I'm just not good at cooking. Or this at work. This report you submitted as several errors. Can you double check your work next time? Oh, I'm really bad at details. You always knock these reports out of the park. Maybe you should handle the reports from now on. I could do something else. Maybe. Weaponized incompetence. Are you people familiar with this? I should have passed this along to my Korean war vet dining partner when I was 13. Cobalt bomb? You think that's something? You know what else can be weaponized, pal? Incompetence. In the future, incompetence is going to be weaponized. Wait, what? Yeah, when you think about it, incompetence on this planet over the last several hundred years has done more damage than any bomb could ever do. The world has seen incompetence used to take out millions and millions over the centuries. Incompetence may be the most devastating force ever created. And weaponized incompetence the most dangerous weapon of all. A while back, I talked to a listener down in Florida. An old fella who was in the heavy equipment business. More than likely he used pressure washers for his equipment. Well, Ben from American Pressure contacted me and told me there's a guy who could be one of our customers, even from that far away. If he needs parts for his pressure washers, we're more than happy to send them to him. American Pressure stocks more parts than anyone could ever count. Are you listening? Down there in Florida, do you need some hoses? How about a question or two? Do you ever have one of those you could call American Pressure and they'd work with you, talk to you. You share something in common. You both listen to this show. American Pressure sends pressure washer parts all over the country. You need a nozzle, a gun, a pump, an unloader valve. They've been around since the pressure washer has been around. No one understands these machines better. No one has a more full service operation. And no operation out there has ever been as impressive. American Pressure of Robbinsdale.
- [38:01]
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It's that time of the season when the football games really matter and you can get in all the action. With Underdog, it's so easy to play on Underdog. All you have to do is pick whether your favorite players will go higher or or lower on stats like receptions, rushing yards, touchdowns and much more. You get your picks right, you could win up to 5,000 times your cash. This week on Underdog, I'm looking at some running backs to go higher on touchdowns. That would be maybe Josh Jacobs of the packers or whichever Lions running back sounds good. They're both doing great, scoring a lot. It could be Gibbs or Montgomery. Download the app today and use Promo Code garage to score $75 in bonus entries when you play your first $5. That's promo code GARAGE. Underdog make picks win Money must be.
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1819 in Alabama and Nebraska, 19 in Colorado for some games, 21 plus in Arizona, Massachusetts and Virginia and present in a state where underdog fantasy operates. Terms apply. See assets.underdogfantasy.com web playand getterms dfs HTML for details. Offer not valid in Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Concerned with your play? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit ncpgambling.org In New York, call the 24.7Hope Line at 1-877-8-HOPENY or text hopeny 467-369.
- [39:19]
A
There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who are afraid of investing and those who enjoy it. Those who enjoy it have realized they can better themselves so dramatically by understanding the market. Those afraid to invest are so sure it's all going to go wrong. While you're thinking about which person you are, why don't you call Josh Arnold, the investment consultant who offers 48 minutes on the phone for nothing. Not 48 minutes to sell himself 48 minutes to look at your financial picture and to help you. No obligation. You hang up. Afterward, you're out. Nothing. If something in that phone call impresses you, maybe you'll call them back sometime. Don't ever be afraid of investing until you talk to someone who's a master of investing. Call 952-925-5608. Investment services offered by Josh Arnold, Investment Consultant, LLC, a security and investment advisor. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments involve risk. Tommy Mischke is a paid endorser. This is my last show before Christmas Eve. It's also my last show before the winter solstice. This is a sacred time of year for people all over the globe, people of all different spiritual and religious backgrounds and Beliefs that's been the case for thousands of years. I like that this time of year connects us all and that it connects us to those who have come before us. I want to play for you a talk by a gentleman named Reverend Davidson Lohr. It's a talk entitled the Christmas Story. And it's for everyone out there, everyone, no matter who you are, because this story connects us and it shines a light on this wonderfully sacred, profound, meaningful time of year. I hope you enjoy this.
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The original Christmas story was the story of winter solstice. The date gives it away, as does the plot. In the ancient calendar, the pre Julian calendar, winter solstice came on December 25th. In our modern calendar, we usually identify December 21st as the solstice. But in ancient times, Everybody knew that December 25th was the birthday of the sun and by definition, the birthday of all the sun gods, all the solar deities. That's what's made this time of year a sacred time for uncounted centuries. One of the most important solar deities, one you may not have heard of, was a God called Mitra in Hinduism, or Mithra, a God so ancient he is celebrated in four different religions. Mithra came from ancient Persia, now Iran. He probably predated the gods and goddesses of Greece by a thousand years, maybe more. The day we know is the 25th of December was the birthday of this sun God. To us, this just means that the winter solstice is arriving and the sun is starting to come back. That's the way we would say it. We're not very imaginative, but they did it by telling stories, two stories. The first was that December 25th was the birthday of the God Mithra, who was born in a cave. He was born to a great sky God and a 15 year old virgin. And three wise men from the east followed a special star to find the cave where this sun God would be born, bringing gifts. That's a story from the Avesta of Zoroastrianism. That is probably about 800 years before the birth of Jesus. The other story they told was a little wilder. It was that Mithra rode across the sky on this night in a golden chariot pulled by flying horses. And behind him he brought the sun and brought back the light. The same story with the same chariot and the same horses was also told of Apollo, a Greek solar deity, and told of many other solar deities at the time. About 3,000 years ago, a new religion arose called Zoroastrianism. And Zoroastrians tried to stop people from observing mithra's birth on 25 December, and the parties that went with it. That religion was very powerful. It changed many things. Zoroastrianism influenced the writings of the Hebrew scriptures in the Old Testament and the Christian Scriptures in the New Testament tremendously. But they couldn't change that story, and they couldn't keep people from celebrating it, from gathering at this time of year, lighting fires and celebrating the rebirth of their son, God, Savior and the return of the son. Then, about 2200 years ago, the Jews added a new festival to their tradition because of pressure from the culture. They called it the Festival of Lights. And during this festival, people lighted flames and gave gifts and celebrated with parties and dinners. The day they chose for their festival of lights to begin on was the 25th day of their month, Kislev, which we know is the 25th of December. Neither the Zoroastrians nor the Jews could stop this old story about the rebirth of the light. 200 years later, after the man Jesus had died, the early Christians told many stories about him. As they began to think of Jesus as a God. They told stories about his being born in a cave or a stable. And originally his birthday was celebrated on May 20. Even 200 years after Jesus died in the middle of the third century, 20 May was still being celebrated as his birthday. But in the third century, the Romans still ruled the world. And the Romans still celebrated the ancient winter solstice festival for the birth of their sun God, Mithra, on December 25. They also celebrated their Saturnalia at this time, which was a much wilder affair. They decorated with evergreens, with holly and mistletoe. They gave presents to each other, and they had festive dinners and parties. Many of the Christians loved these parties and attended them, much to the displeasure of the church. But at this time of year, even among the Christians in the second, third and fourth centuries, Mithra was more popular than Jesus. Now the Romans had pictures of Mithra riding in a chariot in the sky, drawn by horses, with the sun coming up behind him. And Mithra was called in the captions beneath these carvings and drawings, the rising sun who dispels the forces of evil. Pretty soon, in the second and third centuries, there were pictures and carvings in the Christian catacombs of Jesus showing him riding in a chariot, going across the sky, pulled by flying horses, with writing beneath the pictures calling Jesus the rising sun who dispels the forces of evil. There were also pictures of Apollo with the same caption. Then, around the year 336, the Christian Church decided to change the official date of Jesus birthday to December 25th. It didn't happen till then. It just happened to have been the day celebrated as the birthday of the sun God Mithras for a couple thousand years by then. At the same time, the Christians adopted the holy day of the religion of Mithraism. Up until the 4th century, and this may seem surprising, Christian writers had prided themselves on having no holy days. This was quite an important and prideful point for them because the days of the week were named after pagan gods. Sunday for the God of the sun, Monday for the moon, and so on. The Emperor Constantine had given the Christians freedom to practice their religion in the year 313, ending over a century of persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire. But Constantine, on a closer look, seems to have been a follower of Mithras, not Jesus. And part of the agreement that gave the Christians the protection of the state was that Christians had to adopt the holy day of Mithraism, Sunday, the day of the sun, the day of all religions centered on sun gods. It's still the day we regard as the holy day. And the Christians then also adopted the birthday of Mithras, December 25, as the birthday of their own son of God, Jesus. And so the Christians told a story about wise men following a special star and bringing gifts to a baby being born, a story that was centuries and centuries old by then. A savior who would come to drive away the darkness and bring a great light into the world. They didn't tell the story about Mithra riding across the sky or Jesus riding across the sky in his chariot anymore because they thought it was a silly story. They thought some of the other old traditions were silly or inappropriate, too, and they stopped them. For many centuries, gifts were not given on Christmas, and evergreens were not used the way they had been. There weren't parties and great dinners and celebrations for a long time because these were all seen correctly as parts of the pagan celebrations. But it's hard to cover up really good stories. We like them. In the 1500s, Martin Luther, who began the Protestant Reformation, was also the first person credited with bringing a whole fir tree into the house at Christmas. That choice wasn't accidental, because the fir tree had been the sacred tree of Mithras. And Mithraism lasted in Germany into the Middle Ages longer than it did anywhere else. So Mithra's tree was back. So were candles and other greenery and the holly and the ivy in the United States and in England. And this you may not have known either. The Puritans prohibited the celebration of Christmas for many years, Precisely because it was a pagan festival. In fact, until the middle of the 19th century, December 25th was just another working day. It was not a holiday, and workers could be fined if they didn't come to work on the 25th. These were rules passed by Christians, by puritans, who wanted to keep the religion pure and free from pagan rituals. Christmas cards also originated about the middle of the 19th century, and gifts began to be given by the end of the century. Gifts were given routinely, but they weren't given on Christmas. They were given on St Nicholas Day. In this country and in England, St Nicholas Day is December 6th. St Nicholas is the one who was the patron saint of the poor. St Nicholas was the one who traveled through the streets with bags of gold, distributing gold to the poor. It was only about a hundred years ago that through pressure of merchants, St Nicholas Day was combined for most religious traditions in the west with Christmas, and presents began being given on Christmas. So this tradition that seems age old to us is really quite new. I have a Mennonite friend whose family goes back to the first generation of Mennonites and who know their history well and who still keeps St. Nicholas Day and Christmas separate. They exchange presents on St. Nicholas Day on December 6, and they regard it as a completely secular holiday. On December 25, they celebrate the birth of Christ. There are no presents given. The family gathers for scripture readings and hymn singing. So when the modern Christmas activities of sending cards and buying presents began about 150 years ago, they began, ironically, as an exercise in capitalism, not Christianity. People who oppose all the merriment and the commercialism of Christmas as being opposed to the spirit of Christmas don't know their history. Merriment, greenery, candles, and gift giving are the spirit of the season and have been for thousands and thousands of years, since long before it was ever called Christmas. The final piece came, oddly enough, from a cartoonist. It was given to us in the 1860s by an American civil war cartoonist named Thomas Nast. Thomas Nast is the man who first drew the republican elephant, the democratic donkey. But he drew another picture, too, that became famous. He drew a picture of what Santa Claus looked like. Before then, people didn't know that Santa dressed in a red suit with white fur around it, or that he drove a miniature sleigh with eight tiny reindeer that flew through the skies on Christmas eve and visited every home with presents for the children. When you think about this, you realize that cartoonist Thomas Nast helped us put the original Christmas story back together again with a modern mithra riding in his chariot, being pulled through the sky by flying animals, bringing gifts and merriment to all. The story is older than we know how to count. Then once more, as they'd done for thousands of years, people again gathered around the winter solstice, now miss dated to December 25th because the calendar had changed, but the traditions had not. They lighted candles and surrounded themselves with evergreens. They gave presents and had wonderful meals together and laughed and sang right in the middle of winter. And at last, the old winter solstice story was whole again in another new form. So what is the story of Christmas? It's the same story that people have been telling for thousands of years, longer than we even know how to count. And neither the birth story nor the date of December 25th have anything to do with Jesus or with Christianity, as every single Christian would have told you up until the year 336. The original Christmas story is about the fact that the sun is being reborn, and all of the darkness, both inside and outside, will now begin to go away, bringing back light and warmth and life to everyone. That's really what December 25th has been about almost forever. Before Jesus, before the Jews, before the Zoroastrians, before anyone even wrote it down. That's the original Christmas story. Now you can see that asking whether or not the story is true is missing the whole point. It's a misleading question. Is it true? It's as true as our deepest yearnings, our wettest tears and our loudest laughter. It's as true as hope, love and the spirit of life are true. They're true. It's as true as a baby's laugh or the exalted beatings of a joyful heart. It's true for everyone. Who can let it be true? Who can let this most ancient and most magical of all seasons into their hearts? Is it true? It's been true for more years than anyone knows, because its home is in the human heart. Your heart, my heart, with our longings and our lonelinesses, our hopes, our dreams, and that miraculous and amazing spirit of life which will not be defeated even by the darkest of nights. Yes, the Christmas story is true in all of its incarnations, if only we can hear it through the ears of storytellers and children. And it all began with this, with people lighting a light in the middle of the darkest nights of the world, gathering around to insist on and celebrate the return of light and life and hope and love. People who insisted that once more the light will again return to dispel the darkness and to bring back life. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, forever. Merry Christmas.
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