The Story of St. Nicholas • Puppet History

[Music] welcome one and all to the first ever puppet history holiday special today we'll be taking an ever winding look at yet another chapter in the heavy humming book we call history while our guests merrily compete for the coveted title of history master i am obviously your beloved host of the professor thank you ryan bergara are you ready i would say merry christmas or happy holidays but seeing as how i'm here i'll just say it is a holiday oh sweet of you not sweet special guest and two-time defending champion kate peterman thank you for being here are you ready i'm so ready then let us crack it now before we begin and i know i usually save this for the end but i'm letting you peek at your christmas present early our musical guest today is friggin santa claus okay oh wow you booked him yeah it's hard he's gonna be tired i gotta be honest i'm a little nervous he's arguably the biggest guest we've ever had on the show i think i guess we had god but is it because you've been naughty mr professor oh no i usually get our guests a little thank you gift like a little scented candle or a fleece or some j beans i got so swept up in the holiday season that i forgot to get anything i'm kind of spiraling over here uh you guys got any ideas i get him pto it feels like he doesn't have a lot of time off yeah but then i worry that if he takes time off then next year the kids aren't gonna get the presents and then it's gonna be on me i hate to be braggy but i have the best gift and it's a friend i'm not a great friend though it's the thing you could give him you're first born jesus christ kate well as you've probably gathered in honor of our esteemed guest we're spending our lesson today getting up to speed on father christmas himself charlie old saint nick him and i are pen pals is that so old controversy over here but i like that guy gives me stuff and never asks for anything in return he asks you to be good yeah but he doesn't really care that's true as sometimes happens with these super famous a lot of legends surround saint nicholas many leading scholars are in a way like a lot of 12 year olds out there they're not sure st nicholas ever really existed at all as we move through the story remember that the line between history and myth gets a little blurry sometimes let's uh call it a new thing we'll call it mystery what oh smith yeah i see yes saint nicholas if he did exist was born in the 3rd century ce in the village of patara why do you keep saying if he was real by the way oh god the possibility all of us aren't real that's a good point wait what i've gotten a lot more into weed since the last time seems like it's a pretty green christmas out there for kate yes that rosy cheek light means it's time for our first bit of trivia where was patara a modern-day turkey b modern day germany or c modern day finland no idea all right what'd you put i'm gonna go b for big guy and kate i went with c mdf modern day finland unfortunately points to neither of you it was a honestly i probably would have gotten that wrong too i don't know much about turkey but when i think turkey i don't think santa i think gravy st nicholas was born along the southern coast of what is now turkey which was then part of the roman empire the son of well-off christian parents shocker nicholas was orphaned at a young age and so he dedicated his life to serving god due to his piety and enthusiasm for the priesthood nicholas was made bishop of myra at a relatively early age seems irresponsible it's worth noting so you aren't surprised when he shows up later that saint nick probably didn't look quite like you'd imagine he did have white hair and a white beard but that's probably where the similarities end in olive skinned five foot six nicholas is said to have had a severely broken nose perhaps the consequence of resisting christian persecution which was trendy at the time or perhaps the result of a fiery rebellious attitude when we say broken nose here we talking like owen wilson that's exactly what we're talking about my friend wow wow wow wow reindeer on the rooftop wow in 325 ce an alexandrian priest named arias sparked a theological debate within the church it was basically the ecclesiastical equivalent of arguing whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich and yet it threatened to completely destroy the church so to resolve the controversy over 300 bishops came together in nicaea to debate the matter as aryas argued his position nicholas allegedly started getting angrier and angrier growing hotter under the collar than chestnuts roasting on an open fire so what did nicholas do a he pretended to snore loudly b he yelled his own arguments over aryas for three hours straight or c he got up and smacked arya's right in his punk mouth ryan i'm gonna go see for he clapped him right in the kisser clapped a little kisser and kate i'm going with b that he talked over him for three hours because i think that's probably the right one i think yours is the right one man i think you picked really well i think you did a really good job oh thank you spirit of camaraderie shut up professor shut the up professor hell okay here's a sketch i'll see you guys later jesus christ it's me arias that guy yo yeah do you remember uh real quick arias what was the point you were making like what are you arguing with you know so jesus was pretty new at this time right he's like fresh fresh on the scene a debutant one of the arguments was like well is jesus as important as god and some people were like no and other people were like hell yeah yes timeout you said it was the that day equivalent of is a hot dog a sandwich yeah it kind of is that's a fair assessment we're just talking in circles man therefore i say how can a man be equal to a god and furthermore oh jesus christ who the hell was that santa the name's nicholas and don't make me check you twice oh fantastic boys the beef boy nice good for you good i almost called you dad good for you dude [Laughter] i meant to say dude for his naughty behavior the other bishops stripped nicholas of his bishop clothes and tossed him in the clink according to legend jesus and mary those two famous people from the bible appeared to him in the night and their force ghosts gave him new vestments and the book of gospels as thanks for standing up for them when emperor constantine learned about this miracle nicholas was freed no way i mean allegedly sorry no such thing as ghosts i'm not gonna let you get under my skin okay this is a holiday and i'm gonna be happy you know what bonus jelly bean for your good spirit what yeah oh wow how about that rv with an extra jb the spirit of the season a bonus being for the beast pretty good suck it kate okay that's a rotten jelly bean for the beef boy ah well how about that jesus and his mom giving santa the joint gift of something to read and some clothes oh christmas crumbs i still need to get something for saint nicholas i know what you could give him who was that it's me yeah that's right it's me that old pile of diamonds yes happy holidays how you guys been i've been frickin not great and it's really nice to see you it's great to see you too uh anyway i've got some uh gift ideas for you it's gonna be a song well i don't know that it's gonna be a song but get out of the way this christmas one again something sweet and sentimental under precious sounds so thoughtful oh so very nice let me just do this steady worthless maybe take the hit and dip into those savings for a little something pricey gucci rolex tiffany a rare illegal foreign cheats i'll buy you don't make you scream make your real life feel like a holiday dream you want a yacht okay why not a taxidermied ocelot armani prada antio anything you want ram it up let's go this christmas he wasted my time trying to read your mind and make you something myself [Music] i could have done without that uh climactic finish of notes are you i could have done with so many more of them i think that ending is what you call a fail setto take a jelly bean away from him whoa i heard that funny funny pun and you get a pun point for that one thank you thank you this is unbelievable i am trailing i'm sure you'll make it up i gotta start sucking up oh my god that hat looks so nice on you professor go rotten jelly bean cake nice yes incredibly transparent you know what that pile of diamonds is on to something riches probably do make the best present but that does seem a tad impersonal still i think the takeaway here is that my gift needs to be valuable you did strike me as kind of like the gift i strike you with what like i'm gonna put a fiver in a box and give it to someone like you're gonna buy an amazon gift card print it out and then just call it a day if anything it wouldn't be an amazon gift card it would be like a subway gift card there you go that's always good a week's worth of free footlongs a footlong lasts me about two weeks that's good what is going on here why are we getting along okay so two celebrity ghosts gave some free merch to nick while he was chilling in jail and while that certainly must have been something to behold no one becomes a saint without performing some miracles of their own and as legend would have it nicholas was miracling left and right he said you have freed some innocent men from death moments before their ordered executions by basically saying hey hold on a sec another time he drove away some demons that were terrorizing a village by waving an axe around i wonder what the demons actually were like just a couple of birds just like what's this guy doing or they were just some women sure the deeper we get into this story the more you might be saying is this even history at all or is this just a series of makeups and to that i say yeah you're right mostly seems like but it's a holiday special what are we gonna do talk about those guys who played football during world war one here's that story they played football the end now moving even deeper into crazy town some stories really push the bounds of what anyone could be expected to believe one day nicholas was strolling past a butcher's shop when he popped in his saint senses were a tingling and baby he wasn't smelling no funky salami something was amiss what was wrong with the butcher shop a the butcher was trapped under a 500 pound cow carcass in the back b the butcher had buried a statue of a false god under the floor or c the butcher had been murdering and pickling children god damn if it's not sea which i don't think it is whoever came up with that possible answer is a maniac that being said i'm going to go with c apocalypse proof children's c okay and k i'm going with a trapped under big cow yeah well let's see my god i'm wrong that's a pickle vat hello it's me nicholas is uh anybody home uh yeah i'm standing right in front of you welcome to my butcher shop something smells good what's that in the picklin barrel fair butcher oh boy um normal meat i spit upon your lies you've the bodies of three boys in there don't you jesus christ oh that's dark arise lost insulted youth oh what the we are the ones murdered pickled boys pickled but raised from the dead by their santa claus thank you santa claus that's not my name yet but you are welcome did he talk to their ghosts he allegedly raised them from the dead so he's a necromancer um you know what guys i think this might be a bit of a tall tale point to beef man nice so there's several versions of this story each more impossible than the last but the gist of it is that the butcher had murdered three kids years before nicholas's visit and put their chopped up bodies in a pickling barrel when nicholas finally swung by to confront the butcher he brought the pickle boys back to life now this reputation for resurrecting pickled kiddos caused nicholas to become the patron saint of children but as to why he's expected to leave them gifts every year well that might be informed by a story of nick's neighborly kindness early in nicholas's life before he was even a bishop nicholas heard about a man who had fallen on some hard times what misfortune had befallen the poor man a he had leprosy and was no longer able to work b the same curse that eventually befalls all of god's creatures an evil genie was pursuing him through time and space to steal something the genie itself had made magical or c he had three daughters are we locked in yeah i'm struggling oh that's okay ron go ahead i'm gonna go see he had three daughters because it's ridiculous but i can't think of a reason why it would be included unless it was true okay okay i'm going with b i'm gonna give you a jelly bean for being the first guest to go with one of the genie answers oh fantastic here's where you make up your lead point orion what a roller coaster of a christmas day here now it wasn't exactly the daughters that were the problem but the fact that their father didn't have money for their dowries because society at the time was dumb and weird this meant that the guy would be unable to get his daughters good and married which apparently was a huge problem so upon hearing of this man's flight nicholas took some of the money he'd inherited from his parents and under the cover of darkness tossed a bag of gold into the family's home where some say it landed in a shoe now able to pay for someone to accept her hand the eldest daughter soon was married nicholas repeated his deed twice more saving all three daughters this legend led to the tradition of children leaving their shoes out on december 6th saint nick's day in the hopes of receiving some gifts this became just one part of the gift-giving season of christmas which eventually coalesced largely to you guessed it december 25th ah yeah dowry's for three unmarriable young women what a splendid gift oh cranberries i still don't have a gift for old saint nick oh no oh no i know what you could give him oh no please not another song it's our old friend the ore that wasn't used to murder a man in cold blood by famed samurai miyamoto musashi speak freely passionate paddle what should i get st nicholas for a gift i think you should take him on a trip oh okay this piece please clear the stage i need the space okay got it [Music] i used to spend my holidays alone an anthropomorphic pretty bowl sitting inside of his home but then you met me and i suggested we go on a little holiday trip really and spent a day in breaking the hot dogs they were crazy every trip you take is a gift when you love the living hell out of the one that you wish we've been to bangalore head on and rings in omaha [Music] oh yeah that'd be good such a wonderful [Applause] ride to london where the t that's good bye fantastic it's fantastic huh okay great idea from those oars trips are special gifts but we're talking about a guy who already travels the entire world every year as part of his job still the intent behind their idea is a good one my gift needs to be memorable a tattoo can't forget it like a lower back tap i mean depends on how nasty santa is tis the season for season you know what i'm talking about seasons greetings it's believed the good bishop nicholas died on december 6th 343 ce he was entombed in the city of his bishop ship myra modern-day dem ray turkey this final resting place however would turn out to be anything but restful why a he was resurrected by a bishop pickle boy style b his tomb now sits beneath southern turkey's most famous discotheque or c italian sailors plundered his bones are we locked in i am i'm locked in b for the basement of the discotheque uh kate what do you got hey hey resurrected no no he wasn't jesus was resurrected no but those little boys he did resurrect we have to be here for this argument you're happy with yourself you guys take a quick 45 me and myself have to work this one out out loud well points to neither of you oh it was the bones wasn't it in the 11th century fearing christian pilgrims wouldn't be able to reach the bones in the then-arab-controlled region italian sailors stole the remains of saint nicholas and took them to barri on the southeast coast of italy there they constructed the enormous basilica di san nicola to house the saints mortal vessel the basilica however isn't the only place that claims to have some pieces of the kringle corpse the thieving sailors are said to have left some bone fragments behind in myra which were scooped up later and taken to venice his teeth and finger bones are rumored to be scattered amongst over a dozen churches around the globe in fact a shard of saint nicholas's pelvic bone is even said to reside in saint martha of bethany church in the chicago suburb of morton grove illinois an okay suburb that is entirely inferior to schaumburg illinois uh this is weird right no i kind of like that well put it into perspective if someone went to your grave kp and then uh ripped your skeleton apart and was like let's ship this one to the loo hell yeah you're going to the louvre yeah sprinkle me everywhere there's something kind of sweet to having bits of your body all over the world if you're going to take my corpse out just take the whole skeleton but only to prop it up permanently in one of the boats from pirates of the caribbean you want to be at disney all right dude that's right now while the bones of all saints are considered relics and therefore venerated by the catholic church saint nicholas's bones go the extra miracle mile what special property do santa's bones reportedly have a they secrete a healing liquid b they're radioactive or c they're still growing what the i don't know oh i'm gonna go for it yeah i'm gonna go for a uh santa's bone squirts out magic juice double a's points to both of you i went to a restaurant once where they had bone marrow on the menu i gotta say that bone was juicy as hell i sucked the hell out of that bone ah merry christmas when saint nicholas's remains were still in turkey they reportedly oozed an oily healing substance called up to 50 milliliters of the bishop's leg dog is collected by priests every may 9th as part of a festival celebrating the anniversary of the remains arriving in bari in this way saint nick's bones really are the gift that keep on giving speaking of which suffering slave bells what am i gonna give say nick hunk i know what you could give him huh oh why it's our old friend ostrich hot chip suits mummified goose out with it fed and foul what should i give saint nicholas for a gift and i'm gonna guess you're gonna sing a song so take it away well the winter shows have fallen in you know your friends are all expected to get so so unique but if you want to get them something cool and if a noobs give their ass a mama fight give the rest a momma fight give the rest of bubble fight it goes can you imagine all the clumping through the chair whether rapping in the eyes on an ancient dusty bird some olive oils are very unique some mental in their home of violent security impressively preserved so listen to this holiday i'm not sure what else i can see but if you really want to throw for a loop you've got to get got punched in the face by that song okay well i don't think i'm gonna get st nicholas a mummified goose uh but i think i'm picking up what that goose is laying down my gift needs to be one of a kind with the protestant reformation in 16th century europe nicholas went the way of many saints and was largely forgotten except in the netherlands the dear old dutch were the only ones to never abandon saint nicholas who they called sinterklaas and still expected him to show up with treats on december 6th they brought this tradition along with them to their colonies in america specifically new amsterdam now new york anyway there sinterklaas morphed to santa claus the image of an old bishop walking around filling kids shoes merged with a whole slew of creepy german and nordic folk tales about magical figures who punished naughty children while rewarding the good at the beginning of the 19th century poets and writers began re-imagining the physical image of saint nicholas and in doing so created the jolly fella we're all familiar with today released in 1809 washington irving's knickerbocker's history of new york introduced america to a saint nick who smoked a pipe and captained a flying wagon for efficient gift distribution in 1821 the poem the children's friend added a reindeer to the wagon and a fur coat to santa's back the next year clement clarke moore wrote the night before christmas for his children which expanded the team pulling the sled to eight reindeer and expanded saint nicholas's belly to the round bowl full of jelly when political cartoonist thomas nast started depicting the great gift giver as a rotund manned in a flamboyant suit during the american civil war our modern image of santa had finally arrived if i could chalk up me putting on an extra couple pounds over the years just to an artist's choice i like that it is an artist's choice your body is your canvas every time i eat another cookie i'm like this is the artist's choice i am the michelangelo of snacks um wait there's some commotion back there hang on a sec oh holy santa's here uh okay this is the part of the show where i usually tally up the history points and award the coveted cup but you know why the spirit of the season i got you guys little presents instead that's right very convenient that we would uh abandon the trophy this episode is all about abandoning the trophy it's just it's the spirit of giving and i've gotten you guys little gifts oh my god let's take them one at a time kate why don't you open yours first it's so sweet 2k from the professor the tiny bow and everything oh my god i got william shakespeare's famous last words yeah it's a little book of shakespeare quotes this is honest to god the sweetest present and uh oh i haven't cried properly in a minute you know i thought you'd enjoy it oh oh my god and it's an ornament yeah you can hang that on your little tree well thank you for setting the stage kate cause now when i open my present i'm gonna look like a ungrateful little well just fake it ryan uh to ryan from the professor a little green bow on there that's pretty cute looks like a tiny 100 bill but it's a oh how thoughtful ryan said he you were a gift card guy and you literally gave him money they spent it on like one night at taco bell for you [Music] oh god oh god he's here seasons greetings child it is i the gushing bones of saint nicholas thank you for taking the time to visit us i know you're uh incredibly busy yes i am take it away take what away our guests usually sing a little sing what do i have to sing for i am an absolutely sopping wet pile of birds my life is perpetual soaking misery [Laughter] this is kind of awkward i don't know what to do what if you sang him a song professor me sing a song for him yeah what greater gift is there than the gift of song okay well here goes nothing oh christmas 2020 this year [Music] this christmas my wish list isn't so much about the getting but the hope that i can give saint nicholas a gift then lets them know how much we love him if in fact he ever [Applause] [Music] himself to death maybe himself get up we didn't cover it because it was kind of tangential but he allegedly himself to death here's here's a drawing [Music] so here's a song from me to you santa claus say nicholas you you look like you want to sing do you want to sing oh okay thanks professor for that sweet sweet song i was a real grinch but now i see that i was wrong the holiday season's not the time for holding grudges it's time for giving gifts and eating cheese and photos a mood say nick and i'm here to say i used to be a bishop on bones today every year i bring joys and toys to kids but frankly there's lots of other things that i did hmm like what oh hmm one thing comes to mind saying nicholas save the pickled wait did you kill the butcher any who ladies and gentlemen recently barreled by a psychotic butcher but resurrected by the clown prince of christmas aka eels truly put your hands together [Music] no they don't are they okay maybe i shouldn't have meddled and brought them back to life said nicholas killed the pickle boys i mean save the pickleballs oh yeah are you just gonna keep singing about the pickle boys yes i'm just very proud of what i did with the pickle boys all right well i think that about does it for this one uh ryan kate merry christmas you too everybody thanks for watching we'll see you next the boards year you heard i say they fit for boys sons of certain far fetched but you're sure we should convert the same nicholas save the pickle boys

Channel: Watcher

Views: 1,220,773

Rating: 4.978662 out of 5

Keywords: History, Puppet history, shane madej, ryan bergara, shane and ryan, the professor, funny, trivia, saint nicholas, educational, st nick, santa claus, christmas, christmas special, holiday, holiday special, musical, kate peterman, watcher, buzzfeed unsolved, ruining history, buzzfeed, musical history, weird history, christmas history, game show, puppets, puppetry, quiz, quiz show, santa, bizarre history, funny history

Id: FQBZrPVQUyM

Length: 30min 34sec (1834 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Deathwing_Dragonlord]

This was an incredible Christmas gift, thank you guys.

Kate's excitement whenever the songs began was my mood throughout the entire video.

[u/blueberryclouds-]

The music was absolutely phenomenal!! Definitely made my Christmas.

[u/flopsymopsycottntail]

Omg this literally just made my Christmas!! Thanks Crampus!

[u/Prize_Celery]

Kate getting so emotional over the present was my favorite part. I loved the creepy Santa too. Best show ever!

[u/ViralLola]

The Oars are relationship goals.