Comments on: Comments on 12640

Post number 12640

mathowie — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 16:16:58 -0800

The day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year in America. False. This and many other popular xmas legends debunked at snopes (also notable: Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer created by the Montgomery Ward store chain).

By: th3ph17

th3ph17 — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 16:51:57 -0800

oh man. here i am with all this work to do and you send me off to snopes......ah well. i can finish stuff tomorrow. snopes always breaks my heart. all the strange stories about sex i heard in grade school, military lore, "history"...my life is just lies.

By: Shadowkeeper

Shadowkeeper — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 16:57:03 -0800

Snopes is the reason the Internet was invented. Need proof?

By: Voyageman

Voyageman — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 17:08:06 -0800

Hoaxbusters if you cant find it on Snopes.

By: machaus

machaus — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 17:21:46 -0800

Snopes gets five golden rings, but four lashings for embedded wav files. Here's an idea, why doesn't snopes offer an email filter plug-in that rids your email inbox of $100 cookie recipe and good times virus crap.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 17:41:52 -0800

I've had the pleasure of knowing Snopes (and the more active of the pair, Mrs. Snopes) online for a number of years, back in alt.folklore.urban, whose faq (TAFKAC/the Archive Formerly Known as Cathouse) used to be the first place to look. Recently their star has risen, and the site is regularly cited in news stories, even by the CDC (!) as an authority; and they were interviewed on network news a month or so ago. (Okay, it was World News Now, and I wasn't wearing pants.) I've tried to give them some interface advice but they like the place to have a home-made feel. (Jeez, I just wish they'd go with the ordinary What's New instead of the baffling Additions .... paging Jakob Nielsen ...). And I wish they could make the thing work economically without pop-ups.

By: nathan_teske

nathan_teske — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 17:44:54 -0800

Shadowkeeper --- ever been to any part of Minnesota outside the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro? The pants exchanging brothers being from Minnesota explains a great, great many things....

By: theora55

theora55 — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 18:18:35 -0800

Every one of the approximately 9,000 times I heard broadcasters refer to Friday, Nov. 23rd as the most important, most $, busiest, blah blah, day of the year, I got annoyed. I spent 10 years in retail, and it was never the busiest or most $$.
The lion's share of our cashflow and profits was from mid-October to December 24. From January to May, here in balmy New England, we pretty much only opened the store to air it out.
Bonus of working retail: I never had to travel for the holidays. "Sorry, I can't visit the hometown to participate in this year's dysfunctional revels, I have to work." It was almost worth the crummy hours. I'm gettin' all nostalgic.

By: yarf

yarf — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 18:22:16 -0800

The character 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' was created for the Montgomery Ward group of department stores. True. This is not one of the legends debunked at snopes, but confirmed (which wasn't exactly clear from the original posting).

By: signal

signal — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 19:08:00 -0800

Man, I'd kind of figured Santa wasn't on the level, but Rudolph???? Sigh, another chunk of my childhood innocence flush away down the radioactive material chute.

By: solistrato

solistrato — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 20:19:05 -0800

That pants story might be one of the uber-narratives of our modern age.

By: louie

louie — Tue, 27 Nov 2001 00:18:18 -0800

When I grow up I want to write an uber-narrative. :)