Atlas Obscura: Holiday Obscura

Obscura Society SF presents

ATLAS OBSCURA: HOLIDAY OBSCURA

7pm.

21+ with ID.

$12.

RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/445315425591266/

http://www.atlasobscura.com/events/obscura-society-sf-salon-holiday-obscura/

Join us for an evening dedicated to stories of holiday mayhem and mid-winter-inspired weirdness.

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For our last salon of the year, we are looking to the world's oddest traditions for holiday inspiration. The confluence of the darkest days of the year with religious high holidays, ancient festivals melding into modern celebrations, and the world's many odd ways of marking the coming of a new year have led to some truly strange mid-winter traditions, and ate least one giant, flaming goat.

Join us for heart warming holiday stories of those enormous flaming Yule goats, the healing power (and poisonous past) of the oozing bones of Saint Nicholas, and the antics everyone's favorite goat-headed supplier of coal to naughty children.

We'll also look at some of the most interesting and odd traditions of Midwinter festivals the world over, from the flames of Hogmany to the molten-tin reading fortunes of Finland, the buttered doorknobs of the Beiwe festival to the spirit-chasing porridge of the Dongzhi Festival in Korea, and how the saint with gouged-out eyes became the inspiration of for a lovely Scandinavian tradition involving young women in white gowns and blood red sashes.

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