A Crappy Christmas Tradition: The Caganer

Traditional Caganer

Hey, it's Christmastime, so I'm just going to go ahead and introduce you to one bizarre, yet funny and less horrible than most things on this blog, holiday tradition. Perhaps we will make our own tradition out of posting this type of article around Christmas. Perhaps we will just get a chuckle out of it this year and then move on. Either way, I found the so-called caganers to be utterly hilarious and hope you do too.

Before we jump into the how, where and exactly what of this Christmas tradition, let's just translate the name for you know whats and giggles. Caganers stands for "the crapper" or a less decorous term, if you can imagine. "The Crapper" is a character in the traditional Catalan nativity scene," which involves the entirety of Bethlehem. For at least the past few hundred years, a crapping peasant can be found among these nativities. Yes, we are talking a figurine with its pants around its knees and poop behind him. No one is quite sure why or how this tradition came about, but there you have it.

Because the nativity scenes in Catalan tradition involve so much more than just the manger, caganers are not the only figures added that Westerners would not typically see. Nonetheless, this little guy remains the most controversial or funny, depending on your view of the thing. Remember, you may have to look for him if you come across a Catalan nativity, as some families like to hide "the crapper" for the kids to find.

The Roden Crater Observatory

We may have not delved into this area of things that are bizarre, but it is possible for something to be so extraordinary as to be bizarre and also be beautiful, amazing and brilliant. Such is the case with the subject of this blog post. One man is so dedicated to that which has inspired him that he has gone ahead and purchased an entire cinder cone crater in order to make his vision come true. That vision - an artistic naked eye observatory in the middle of the San Francisco Volcano Field at 5,400 feet. It is in the Roden Crater, to be precise.

The crater itself is something to behold. If you get the chance, find a shot of it from the sky. The red and black of the cinder cone are rather pretty in the context. Artist James Turrell stands at this location and wants people to have "a sense of standing on the planet" by integrating a structure at the location with the sky. If this sounds a lot like ancient structures like Stonehenge, that is because Turrell used ancient observatories and other monumental construction as inspiration for his project.

The Roden Crater naked eye observatory is not complete. Turrell, his investors and his team have put a lot of work into preparing the site. Nonetheless, there is still a lot to do and Turrell purchased the cinder cone in 1977! If time and effort are any indication of result, visiting this observatory is going to be a must-do. If you want to see visual representations and photos or donate to the project, go to http://rodencrater.com/about.

The Disappearances of the Corte-Real Brothers

Statue of Gaspar Corte-Real
in Newfoundland 

The story of the Corte-Real brothers is strange, not because they disappeared, but because they both did the exact same thing to end up that way. One could argue that it was the fault of an intense pioneering spirit and the love of family that urged these two men to their assumed doom, but you can also argue that it was a bit of silliness too. Then again, most disappearance stories involving the Northwest Passage do have an element of "I could have told you that would happen." to them.

In 1501, Gaspar Corte-Real went on his second mission to try to find the Northwest Passage. The first time he made it as far as possibly Greenland. This second time around, he made it to what we now think was Canada and then sent two of the three Portuguese sailing ships that went with him on this mission home. One of them carried his brother Miguel Corte-Real. The ship with Gaspar and the man himself were never seen again. The two that were sent home made it there safely.

In an attempt to find his brother, Miguel Corte-Real headed to the Northwest Passage in 1502. He too brought three caravels with him. He too sent two of the three sailing ships home. He too was never seen again. Like his brother's expedition, the two ships that went home made it there just fine. In spite of receding ice and much safer travels in the north these days, no evidence of either of their ships has been found.

Sawney Bean or "The Bizarre Cannibal Patriarch"

Hey, if you're into being freaked out, cannibalism works. Of course, if you're the one getting your bits chewed on by a family of freaky cave dwellers, the coolness factor rapidly drops to zero. Stories, which may be largely fiction, say that Sawney Bean and his family of inbred 14th or 15th century Class A freak shows killed and ate about 1,000 people. Why they didn't bother just growing some carrots or stealing a cow is anyone's guess, but it seems the story starts with dear old dad/granddad.

Sawney Bean, whose name was actually Alexander Bean, was born into a family of simple laborers. If you want to know the meaning behind the Sawney moniker, you will have to look farther than me. Maybe it's Old Scottish for "Eats People." Good old Sawney "Eats People" Bean felt that the life of a 14th or 15th century laborer was not for him and it is hard to blame him. The problem is, what was him was running off with a psycho of the female variety and starting a family in a deep cave.

The Sawney legend says that Bean and his wife had kids, who also had kids together, all in a cave where they went unnoticed due to its depth. It is unclear just who had babies with who, but the story definitely indicates inbreeding, as there some 40 Beans by the time their appetites caught up with them. They lived by robbing, killing and eating travelers on the roads nearby at night. They never left the cave during the day so no one even knew they were there. Apparently, they killed so often that they even had leftovers that went to waste in icky piles outside of their cave. No one noticed that, either, I guess. (Remember, historians think this story is, at the very least, hyperbole.)

Finally, someone fought off a group of the Beans and that led to the whole batch being discovered in their cave. All of them were taken and bled, burned, quartered or hanged to death. None of these deaths has been discovered in records and the same goes for the 1,000 victims of the Beans, but it sure does make the skin crawl. People's ideas of story telling have not changed much in 600 years.

Bizarre Sponge or Bizarre People: The Eltanin Antenna

Eltanin Antenna (1964)
Courtesy of the U.S. Government (Public Domain)

Sometimes, it is not so much a thing that is bizarre, but rather how people react to it, as we have seen often on this blog. Such is the case with the so-called Eltanin Antenna. This object photographed at a depth of 3,904 meters gets its name from the USS Eltanin, which photographed it in 1964. This relatively famous photograph shows a distinctly antenna-like object coming up out of the floor of the ocean. The seemingly unnatural angles of the thing led some to believe it did not belong there.

It is here that we get to the bizarre thing about the Eltanin Antenna. In spite of scientific views doing anything but leaning this way, numerous individuals took the object as alien in origin. Thing with sharp angles at the bottom of the ocean? Aliens. To this day, UFOlogists and other hokey-pokey hobbyists think this device is either extraterrestrial or part of some conspiracy. Too bad reality is nowhere near as interesting.

As few as 7 years before the picture of the Eltanin Antenna was taken (possibly fewer), it was identified as a type of carnivorous sponge by the name of Cladorhiza concrescens. Sure, it is carnivorous, oddly shaped and living in a pretty unforgiving environment, but it is certainly terrestrial as much as anything else that exists on Earth is. Of course, the identification is called into question by die hards, but if you look at the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Volume 15, you will see that Fig. 541 looks very much like the Eltanin Antenna and this figure was published in 1888.

The Hinterkaifeck Murders: Killer Feeds the Livestock

Hinterkaifeck Murders Memorial

Murder, even a group murder, is not bizarre. It is sad, really, but too common to be considered out of the ordinary. However, there are some cases that have strange features, as with the Hinterkaifeck murders. These are six murders that occurred on March 31, 1922 and are unsolved.

Hinterkaifeck is actually the name of a farmstead in Germany. Sixty-three-year-old Andreas Gruber lived at a farmhouse there with his 72-year-old wife Cazilia, their daughter Viktoria and Viktoria's two children, 7-year-old Cazilia and 2-year-old Josef. A few hours before the murders took place, the family had taken on a new maid by the name of Maria Baumgartner. Maria's predecessor allegedly claimed the house was haunted and that is why she left.

Within days before the murders took place, Andreas Gruber noticed footprints in the snow around his house and remarked on it to his neighbors. The keys to the farmhouse were also recently missing. Whether either had anything to do with what happened on March 31 is anyone's guess. The murder being unsolved makes it hard to say if the family was being stalked or if the crimes were premeditated.

Judging by where the bodies were found, it is assumed that the killer or killers coaxed Andreas, his wife, his daughter and his granddaughter into the barn, where they were all slaughtered with a mattock, which is essentially a digging tool with an ax blade. Sadly, young Cazilia lay alive tearing at herself in distress, until she perished hours later. Josef and Maria were murdered inside of the house, he in his bed and she in her room.

The above is horrific, but, again, in no way bizarre. It is what happened after the murders that is strange. Reports say the lights were on in the home for days. The chimney puffed smoke on at least one occasion. Moreover, police found evidence that someone had been eating at the farmhouse after all of its residents died. Even stranger is that the cattle were fed at some point or points between the murders and the discovery of the body roughly four days later.

Were the Grubers victims of a wanderer who wanted a warm place to stay? Could someone they knew have killed them and stayed around to care for the cattle out of some perverted wish to stay in their home? One theory is that Viktoria's husband, who was presumed dead in the war but never found, came home and killed his wife, her family and their children. There is no way of knowing. All we do know is that someone murdered them all, ate their food and tended their animals.

Bizarre Products: Darkie Toothpaste

Darkie, darky or darkey are all spelling variations of a term used to disparage people with dark skin color. The term was originally used in the United States, but apparently picked up international usage, as evidenced by a brand of toothpaste that came out in Shanghai, China in 1933. This toothpaste was originally sold as Darkie toothpaste. Just in case anyone thought the meaning was ambiguous, the manufacturers put a big picture of a literally black (think the Crayola color, not the skin tone) man on the packaging with a huge smile, a bow tie and a top hat.

What this caricature of a dark-skinned male and the name of the toothpaste were meant to signify is a mystery. It's obvious the company had no problem making use of racist terms, but what does skin tone have to do with toothpaste? Moreover, why is this man dressed like a backwards butler? Do all black butlers have nice teeth? If so, why use this as a marketing gimmick, but pile a disparaging phrase on top of it? I suppose it is just a lesson in the absurdity of racism.

The company that made Darkie toothpaste was eventually purchased by a large, reputable company that did not market the name. However, it took until 1990 to change the name to Darlie. It is the most shocking thing of all that such a product still existed up until about two decades ago. The box still features a black man, but at least he does not look like a racist caricature from the Civil War.