Eartha Kitt made the song “Santa Baby” famous in 1953, and it’s still a Christmas classic today. But if you take a closer look at the lyrics, the weird mixture of children’s traditions and the sexualization of Santa is more unsettling than charming.

Darkest Christmas: December 1942 and a World at War Darkest Christmas: December 1942 and a World at War

There’s a reason the NHS invested in Microsoft office. It works. Even if you’re not an excel whizz, & you only scratch the surface of pivot tables, someone who is can send you their work, and you can open it, and embed it in Word, forward it via Outlook and discuss over Teams.Gryla is a giant ogre who lives in a cave. During Christmas she emerges to hunt for children, which she kidnaps, takes to her cave, and cooks in a vat of stew. We kept the card and a carbon paper copy (younger readers ask grandad) went to the GP, and we gave a copy to the patient.

Top 5 Darkest Christmas Songs - Holidappy Top 5 Darkest Christmas Songs - Holidappy

Gingerbread has been a Christmas tradition for centuries, but the building of gingerbread houses started becoming popular right around the time that the Brothers Grimm published the story of Hansel and Gretel. People would build gingerbread houses just like the house in the story. Except that house belonged to a witch that ate little children. Not so appetizing. An annual tradition, this year’s Joe McDonald Christmas column looks at Christmas past, present and future with regards to digital health and NHS IT and the issues and pressures facing the NHS. Probably the newest tradition on this list, Elf on the Shelf is based on a children’s book published in 2005. This small elf doll appears in different places in the house, spying on events and making sure children are good. The elf never moves if children are watching it, and if it’s ever touched, its magic will disappear forever. For many, this is a fun new Christmas delight, but you can’t deny there’s something creepy about the elf’s motionless eyes staring at you from all over the house. Christmas 1986, the snow fell silently in the ambulance reception area of the Ingham Infirmary, South Shields. I was half an hour in from the end of my day shift when the Ambulance Service hotline rang and we were told to expect a road traffic accident (RTA). I was six months into my stint as an Accident and Emergency senior house officer. Twelve-hour shifts, no set meal breaks, a week on nights, a week on days, constant stream of patients.In Portugal, the Christmas morning feast is called Consoda. It’s much like Christmas meals elsewhere in the world, but there’s one key difference: the Portuguese set places for alminhas a penar, or “the souls of the dead.” That’s right, they eat their Christmas meal with ghosts. SantaCon’s reputation might not be sparkling, but it was enough to inspire people in Philadelphia to start their own annual Santa pub crawl: The Running of the Santas. And just like SantaCon, it involves thousands of Santas getting together, getting drunk and wreaking havoc across the city. On the bright side, the Running of the Santas raises money for several local charities. Now this Christmas, I know thousands of NHS staff are feeling burnt out. Record numbers are leaving. 12 years of Tory government has left the NHS where they generally leave it, where it was for me in ‘86. Ever since he was featured in the TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Abominable Snowman has been tied to the Christmas season. It’s based on the legend of the Yeti, a monstrous half-man-half-bear creature from the Himalayas, that many people still believe is out there today.

seven most terrifying Christmas traditions around the world The seven most terrifying Christmas traditions around the world

Christmas has always been a religious holiday, but they take it one step further in Guatemala. Every December 7, Guatemalans take part in La quema del diablo, or burning the devil. Families gather outside their houses and burn flaming effigies of the devil as a way to cleanse their home of evil. The book’s appeal, he says, lies in the combination of “classic English Christmas fantasy” – carol singers, food markets with plum puddings, cathedral choirs – with “the long shadows of pagan tradition” that still haunt our midwinter feast.There are some positives in contrast to 1986; my recent blood results from the DGH were available on screen to my GP and not held up by the postal strike, my CT scan appointment at the cancer centre was confirmed by text and again the results will be on my care record in near real time. Beneath some of the great Christmas classics runs a current of darker, older beliefs underlying the cosy festivities In Greenland, there’s a special Christmas delicacy called Kiviak. It’s the body of a seal, stuffed with the carcasses of around 400 auks (small, very cute birds), that has then been left out for 3 to 18 months. The air is squeezed out of the seal, and then the body is coated with seal grease to prevent the whole thing from rotting. The auks ferment in that time, so that when the seal is finally opened around Christmas time, they can be eaten raw. What a… lovely surprise.

Dark Christmas Movies to Watch Over the Holidays | Time

But for bad children, she slits open their bellies, takes out their organs and replaces them with pebbles and straw. As if kids don’t have enough trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve!The author Piers Torday had been similarly obsessed with the story as a child. He wanted to stage an adaptation while at university with two friends who shared his passion for it, but the rights were not available, and the project was forgotten. Twenty-five years on, the stars aligned: the same friends were now a theatre executive and a producer, and Torday’s new adaptation of The Box of Delights has just opened at Wilton’s Music Hall in east London. And much like the werewolf superstition, children born on Christmas Day are thought to be a risk of turning into a Kallikantzaroi themselves!