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Episode 170: It's a Holiday in the Multiverse
360 Plays2 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Today the hosts tackle the question of what do holidays look like across the multiverse? This takes both a whimsical look at the planes as well as some real wold discussion about the stress of the holidays.
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Transcript
Episode Introduction and Sponsor Shoutout
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of Gav and Lore podcast. This week, we are going to be having a special holiday episode. Start by some introductions. I'm Taya, she, her, or they, them. Taya transcends at Twitter. And let's introduce the rest of our cast, Hobbs. Hi, I'm Hobbskew, pronouns he, him. I can be found on Twitter at Hobbskew.
00:00:59
Speaker
And I'm Alex Newman. My pronouns are he him and I can be found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler.
00:01:05
Speaker
And as always, we want to shout out the Grinding Coffee Company. They're a minority-owned LGBTQ coffee company that keeps Hobbs running, I think. Basically, yeah. They have some really cool blends, too. The Gay Agenda is my favorite they've added in the last year, which was a partnership with other people. They even partner on their blends, which I think is just a really fun thing. But yes, it is also how I keep going.
Holidays in the Multiverse
00:01:36
Speaker
All right. So yeah. So what we want to talk about today is how holidays are celebrated across the multiverse. And we briefly hinted at this at the mini talk we did a couple of weeks ago. Last week we had some recording snafus, which are now resolved.
00:01:56
Speaker
Zen Castor decided to take just a night off when I did finally hear back from the people. Basically, like, their site got overwhelmed and they're like, huh, we need to have something to fix this in the future. So hopefully they are going to go about that, like, because it basically went down for I guess they've said only a couple of hours, but it meant that we weren't able to record, which was kind of a bummer. I hate missing weeks and especially with just getting started with Taya on the show. But we're all here now. That's right.
00:02:26
Speaker
We are all here and ready to talk about what it's like to celebrate holidays across the multiverse.
Favorite Holiday Planes
00:02:32
Speaker
Yes. Kind of the first thing to look at is there's not a whole lot of lore and knowledge around holidays in the multiverse. It's not something that comes up a lot in the game. But before we get to that, we should start with our topic of the day, our question of the day, which is, what plane would you want to visit for a holiday?
00:02:53
Speaker
I can go first and I would love to go to Kamagawa for a Japanese style street festival and have all the wonderful food boosts and everything and just have a great street festival style holiday.
00:03:12
Speaker
So I think for me, you know, kind of thinking I was trying to look at, you know, just like the planes that maybe are a bit less tied to specific cultures was my initial thought.
Eldraine's Unique Traditions
00:03:22
Speaker
But then it made me kind of try to I didn't spend a lot of time with Eldraine, but like Eldraine really had kind of the the English like type things, which is a lot of where my holiday traditions come from since my grandmother is from England. She met my grandfather when he was serving over there.
00:03:40
Speaker
So I actually think Eldraine would be kind of the place. Plus they have like, they have the food, right? Like they definitely have gingerbread people. I guess maybe I should feel bad about wanting to eat gingerbread on Eldraine. Cause like, I guess they're sentient, but like, I don't know. Well, I was thinking of gingerbrute, I guess would be the worst, right? Like that's the one I should be feel bad about. Still food. Yeah. You can still sack it for life.
00:04:09
Speaker
So yeah, I'm going with Eldraine. Yeah, I... Okay, I think I'm gonna just... I'm gonna go with... It's... I mean, it's the world I go to all the time and now my mind is totally blank because I was pulling something up and got myself distracted. Where's Gideon from?
00:04:34
Speaker
Theros? Theros, thank you. I'm sorry. It just, yeah, Theros is what I'm thinking. Because I don't know. And I guess a holiday break, for me, it's less doing holiday things. And that's just, I think we may or may not kind of touch on this when we start to get into some of the real world topic stuff. But like for me, generally, I don't do a lot of family things during holidays. I have some stuff. My parents, I tend to do stuff with my sister's family and things.
00:05:00
Speaker
not a lot and honestly not all the holidays. So for me, often it's more of a doing things by myself, kind of using that time to recharge and refresh and take a break myself. And this question will come up every so often, kind of where do you want
Theros vs. Chaotic Planes
00:05:17
Speaker
to go? What planes would you like to vacation on? And Theros is when I go to a lot because the scenery is something that's compelling to me. And it's like,
00:05:25
Speaker
It's a little bit different, but I grew up in Minnesota. I've been in Minnesota a long time. I love lakes, and the water is more seas, because that's more the Greek thing. But I think that there's still a lot of good connection there. There's some good resonance in some of that scenery in some of those places to just spend some time kind of by myself, kind of recharging to get back to whatever the business is once the holiday is done.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, just don't upset any gods while you're there and you should be fine.
The Dangers of Certain Planes
00:05:56
Speaker
Exactly. And that's, that's one of the reasons I think I tend to go to Theros a lot because lots of the planes have some really cool things. Like there's some really wonderful worlds here, but there's also a number that I would just never ever want to go to because I'm not sure I would ever be safe. Theros has its dangers. They all have their dangers. I mean, for various
00:06:16
Speaker
Narrative reasons and various, you know, that's just sort of how there's some verisimilitude there that the world's feel more real because there's some sort of danger and it fits with some of some real world things but in theros by and large the big stuff is if you piss off the gods and I would hope that if I go there for like a long weekend or maybe a week or something and just go kind of hang out on a coastline for you know reading a book that's not gonna piss off any any gods and
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think places you don't want to go for the holidays are Innistrad. Last year's holiday card featured two of our favorite necromancers from Innistrad, Giesen Gieralf. It was a card last minute chopping and the flavor text is, dear brother, I couldn't forget you if I tried and I have tried.
00:07:09
Speaker
I love the like wrapped arm in the art. Like there's a wrapped up arm and Giza is holding the the just like axe behind her back. Yeah, it's like I just got the yeah, it's like surprise. This is fresh. It's really fresh. You're probably going to want to open this one earlier rather than later. Yeah, I mean, I think Innistrad would probably be more well known for Halloween, but you know, I
00:07:38
Speaker
We did a skip for the sun lore going a while back where it was a PSA to not visit Innistrad on Halloween because so many people would think of going there and they're just sick and tired of planeswalkers coming and getting killed when they come visit for Halloween. Yeah, I was like trying to think of where I wouldn't do holidays. That is that is always also my favorite part of doing these questions like where would I like to go? But then where do I want to avoid?
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Dominaria seems to be a place to just avoid in general, because every time we're there, there's some kind of apocalypse going on. Right, yeah. Like, like, Dominaria is the place to avoid, just to avoid, right? Just in general. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe Tarkir. Well, definitely pre-changed timeline, Tarkir is a place you probably wouldn't want to go to. I don't think there's a lot of good, like, vacation spots.
00:08:27
Speaker
After maybe I don't know what's going on with the dragons. There's if you can kind of like convince them. I think there's a there's some pockets of order in some of the dragon groups that. And now I see the cons. There's there was some semblance of order, too. But I think I got the impression there was more active conflict between the clans at the time. Yeah, I don't think they have as much time to be fighting each other when their dragon overlords are constantly eating them.
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah. Especially if you're in a Tarka country. Yeah, you just avoid it. It's great. But you know, I hope that your holiday isn't planned for very long because you're not going to be there. Especially as goblins. We're going to just be shuffled into a dragon's mouth. Let's be honest. Long weekend might be too long to spend there.
00:09:21
Speaker
or my kid coach.
Magic: The Gathering Holiday Cards
00:09:23
Speaker
Just a weekend. Yeah. So, yeah. So, Taz, you were saying, like, we don't have a ton. You made some kind of jokes about already we do. We have, like, the holiday cards, which is actually kind of a cool thing if people have never seen them before. Yeah. Yeah. It's something I've been doing for, oh, dang, almost 20 years now at this point. They release a holiday card every holiday season.
00:09:49
Speaker
Usually has a little something to do with the plane that's been the center of attention like you mentioned You mentioned I'll drain and there's decorated night from that year Gifts given was 2007 and it's got a sort of Tommy on it. So it was around so 2006 was the first fruitcake elemental I was trying to figure out it says experiments to Experiment so I'm guessing we must been in Ravnica
00:10:20
Speaker
Yeah, it does sound about right for Ravnica, and it sounds like a very simic thing. Yeah, actually, this is a substance harder than dark steel. So this is... Oh! So yeah, the full flavor text there is, experiments intended to create the perfect holiday emissary resulted in a substance harder than dark steel, and a fraction is merry.
00:10:41
Speaker
So yeah, so like they've been 2006 was the first. They were they're silver bordered cards back when. Well, I guess there is no silver border or any. Now that every one is an eight score card that makes over border. These are silver bordered. But yeah, so like. Yeah. And some of them are rifts off of existing cards. Gifts given instead of gifts, ungiven.
00:11:10
Speaker
And some of them are simply like the fruitcake elemental I believe is is more just a like top down design for that. Yeah. And then you have things that are just takes on the general holiday season like seasons readings is just like, you know, being home with the family is even harder than the
00:11:32
Speaker
dealing with the battlefield sometimes. Yeah. Arriving home, he's suddenly long for the blood-soaked battlefield behind him. I have to say, goblins have very good representation. Yeah. Three? I think it goes a little to what you, you know, have kind of talked about a little bit, Hobbs. A lot of times, goblins kind of bring the whimsy. And so that fits, like, probably my favorite holiday card, and this is one that I actually own, is Goblin's Slay Ride. Yeah.
00:12:00
Speaker
What fun it is to ride and sing a slaying song tonight and slay being spelled S-L-A-Y, like killing things. And it's a goblin riding the back of some sort of- Tree folk, probably? Tree folk. Yeah. It's just like a little sleigh. Fun fact, there are artists' proofs of these because I have an artist's proof of goblin sleigh, right? Oh, no. Yeah, I have an artist's proof of last-minute shopping, so yeah. Yes.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, I have like I have the first 10 or 12 of these I got in a charity auction several years ago, and I need to fill in the holes for the ones that I don't have. This is just kind of a cool thing to collect. Sure. But like I said, we do like it's kind of like it ties it to the planes. I mean, giving us a little bit of a
00:12:51
Speaker
perhaps insight, because it's just not something that we really have a ton of lore tie in. I have to give a shout out to Mishira's toy workshop, which said even though Urza tried to apologize, Mishira continued to bear a garage and it's a bunch of stuffed bears on it. You could add 30 men into your pool to spend only on spells and abilities to put tokens and you have to use toys to represent your tokens.
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of the most broken cards of all time. Misha's Workshop, except you're limited to using toy tokens. Yeah, there's a very high pun quotient in these cards. Oh, absolutely. Like, Thopter Pi Network is the Kaladesh one. And, you know, just- Taut Deck the Halls is another. That was two years ago, which I really enjoy too. And you could have decorated cards.
00:13:46
Speaker
That's the only one that cares about snow too. Yes. So snow mercy is a snow enchantment. Yes. Which is one of my favorite because you tap, you have to tap, untap, tap, untap, tap it. Which is what you do with snow globe. Yeah. Yeah. And that one is one that's very clearly a reference, but some of these hint to actual potential holiday traditions sort of in the
00:14:16
Speaker
Within the world, right? Yeah, within the worlds. But outside of that, I think, you know, you mentioned Taya and the show notes, like Ravnica, they had like the signing of the Guild Pack, we actually see kind of like some sort of a celebration of the anniversary, right? Like, they're, it's very limited, what we get in story.
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, it would be interesting to see more of it. You see little bits in here of types of celebrations you might have on the plane, but it gets a game that resolves around battle, so a lot of what you see is things that revolve around battle, like we have a plane-wide celebration for more of the Spark.
00:14:56
Speaker
You know, and that's we did get a little peek in the Pride secret lair this year of the floats. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The parade floats with Chandra and Nissa on them.
00:15:11
Speaker
But like these are these are limited in. I think this is an interesting thing. So this came up when I interviewed Hunter Pence and we talked about like the lack of sports in in magic.
Sports and Traditions in Magic Lore
00:15:23
Speaker
Right. Like and it was the same sort of idea because we're normally dropping in in battle or we're dropping in during periods of strife.
00:15:30
Speaker
So that like the mundane doesn't come through and holidays, sports, these are the things that are very important to us on our day to day lives. But we're talking about sports, Gavin, please, please give us another battle on set. And that's what we said. Yeah. Battle bond was the one. So, you know, yes, Gavin, we know you're listening. So please battle bond. But yeah, I mean, holiday sports, it's interesting to see kind of these analogues for how they show up or how we think they may, you know, we get to do a lot of speculation here.
00:16:03
Speaker
It's a thing, and it's fun. We have seen a lot more than in the past. It's starting to, well, it's starting to show up. This is an area that there isn't as much. The sports, we're getting a little bit, but I really, I love that in the last, I don't know, five to 10-ish years, especially, is we've had more representation of not combat. So this is a thing that hopefully we start to get more of as we go forward and we get more story, we get more things that are centered around
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and it's, you know.
00:16:31
Speaker
building the worlds and the characters and the cultures and not just the fighting. And holidays in particular kind of are a cultural touchpoint that are really important in cultures, but are not as important for any of the things that magic is normally trying to do with its story is establishing these characters, establishing conflicts that then feed into new sets and new stories. So
00:16:58
Speaker
I just had a laugh when you kind of mentioned it like holidays and then like the periods of not fights or battles. And I was like, hmm, that depends on who your family is, I guess. Yeah, there's there's that goes back to seasons feedings. Yep. So let's do some speculation. We know we kind of mentioned you mentioned Halloween on Innistrad. Let's let's look at some other ideas.
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah, so like what plane would you think would have like a Santa Claus tradition if there is one? Oh, the first thing in my head was would be Eldraine. Yeah, okay. Okay, so yeah, I could just paint on more of the Europe. See, I was thinking Ravnica. Ravnica is also what came to mind for me. Okay.
00:17:47
Speaker
definitely seems like this could be an is it operation going on here. Ravnica could have kind of the Futurama sort of Santa Claus, the is it made of Santa Claus and went wrong a little bit. It's an is it Demir crossover project where they're doing
00:18:11
Speaker
They're infiltrating all these houses to collect information and then dropping off presents to distract the people. That are most likely going to explode. I mean, Ramdika is where we're most likely to get, like, Jack from Nightmare Before Christmas. Just, like, hijacking the holiday fully, right? Like, replacing gifts with just really creepy things. I mean, I'm here for it. Yeah, I mean, that's what happened the one year they let the Golgari handle the holiday.
00:18:41
Speaker
I was leaving some really wonderful arms and organs for people like come on. This is a great heart that you could use to as a building block. Why are you terrified? See, now that's the Golgari Simic combination. Yeah, that's fair. See, and I'm thinking, Eldraine, I would think Santa Claus might be a little bit
00:19:02
Speaker
Well, like most of these, you know, when you have cultural things, it's not going to be the same, exactly analogous. But I think that might be something associated with the wilds a little bit. And so there might be a little more gray. I mean, if there's a play with Krampus, it's definitely Eldraine. Yeah. I like your second half of this question is, why is Santa a goblin?
Santa: Goblin or Myth?
00:19:26
Speaker
Obviously, they're good at getting into places and they leave behind things. Yeah, they like trinkets like goblins. Well, I mean, like, I always almost think of like the elves that would be in Santa's workshop as being a lot closer to goblins than elves, really. Yeah. You know, I mean, they're they're trading trinkets for food. Yeah. It's a very good thing to do. Oh, yep. Yup. A sort of like
00:19:56
Speaker
Barter type economy. Yeah. Is Santa less exploitative in this model than like, just like slave labor, like labor? Are we, is that what we're going for? You're going to bring it into bartering. More community focused. Well, I'm just saying, that's how he gets paid. Community focused. I like that, that spin. Santa's also central red, just like goblins. I think it's pretty clear.
00:20:28
Speaker
be splashing to white a little bit, splashing to green. That's Santa, that's goblins, the overlap is perfect. Yeah, I was like, you're going just based off of like physical colors and like very little color pie right now. I'm using that as one building block of evidence. I mean, if you're doing physical colors, you're going, you're just straight up Mardu at that point.
00:20:51
Speaker
The black being the coal that he's dropping. Like a bell. Okay, fair. Yeah. I don't know. I could see, I could see Santa being Mardu. That's the naughty or nice thing. Yeah. Nice. You get the white naughty, you know. Okay. How do planes walker keep their calendars in sync across the multiverse? Cause right.
00:21:20
Speaker
I'm assuming if we're going to be celebrating holidays with planeswalkers, they need to know whose holiday it is.
Planeswalker Holiday Management
00:21:26
Speaker
Yeah. And you don't know when it's time to go home. Chandra has to make it back for all the fabulous holidays on Kaladesh. Go celebrate with her mom. And all the monk holidays that they celebrate on, oh, not a grotha.
00:21:45
Speaker
Well, yeah, that was where the the monk fire monk was, right? Fire monk temple that she spent was on old girl. No, old girl. Oh, yeah. The old girl is wrong. No, not old girl. It's it's homelands care. Talking to my lower check here. Wasn't it regatha? But it was I mean, wasn't it office the plane? Yeah. Yeah. And then it's the
00:22:16
Speaker
Carol keep is where the ice. Yep. Avid. I was just looking at Avid of Carol. Right. Like I was like, I did a quick search and I was like, okay, that's right. Okay. It's like, cause I, but I hope it was like, well, Jaya was there, wasn't it? It's not Dominaria though. I forget that Jaya actually gets around. I'm sorry. I just, yeah. So yeah. Start your own.
00:22:38
Speaker
fire call and you know sometimes you have to go back and check on it. I wonder if anybody's broken the news to them yet it would be. What kind of holidays do you think a fire cult founded by Jaya celebrates or observes perhaps might be better term. I bet they have a hell of a solstice party. Oh yes they do. Absolutely. You know the biggest bonfire. They have like a bonfire competition. Yeah.
00:23:09
Speaker
I always think of wicker men, just like the burning of them. So they probably have a pretty good rave. Yeah, I'm sure they do. That is definitely one place you go if you want just the biggest Burning Man style festival because they will literally handle the fire.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's a, it is interesting. It's just like, how, how do people, and this is just a bigger question in general is how do you keep track of things across time, across the multiverse? And yeah, I made the joke about the Ixalan timeline in our short episode when I came up with the idea for this episode. And, you know, we, we see that timelines don't always even mesh in story that we're given and just try to think of, if you're,
00:24:09
Speaker
planeswalker trying to deal with this sort of thing. When do you take your break from dealing with the Phyrexians to just go have your holiday visit with your family? Yeah, and maybe this is a thing I don't expect magic to ever talk about because it's too complicated and there's not any upside for it, but it fascinates me. There's a whole thing with
00:24:39
Speaker
Worlds rotate around their suns at different paces. There's all sorts of factors about this. So your years are different. Your days are different. Your seasons are different. There's all sorts of factors that sort of play into the day length that we have on Earth, the year length, the seasons that we have. And different worlds would have those in different ways.
00:25:03
Speaker
And that makes this just way more complicated if, you know, Dominaria has a 400-day calendar and Ixalan has a 300-day calendar or something. Yeah. It's like dealing with cross-planar language. It's just something they sweep under the rug so you don't have to figure it out. From a narrative standpoint, they don't really gain too much to try to engage with this and they lose a whole lot trying to explain it. But it's something that fascinates me.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like, like, you're not going to make an answer that's going to be you're better to just not talk about it. Right. But I mean, it's funny that you you're mentioning like the different lengths and days and I was just thinking about that. But the the the cross language thing I was like, magic just needs to end. Like if we're going to do your versus beyond, we need like a hitchhiker's guide and they just enter like the Babel fish like enters. Right. Everybody we find out actually like every planeswalker when you planeswalk for the first time has something that's like
00:25:58
Speaker
activated inside your inner ear that we're about to get a Dr. Who set. So we have the TARDIS technology. We have the technology. Now we just need to Yeah. So yeah, but sinking calendars, I find that you mentioned that Alex, I just yeah, didn't even think about like, length of days and years. So I don't know. The best I could come up with for an answer to this is that Jace probably offloads most of it to the brains of the people who are around him, kind of like distributed computing.
00:26:28
Speaker
Yeah, except he's like doing crypto mining on other people's computers. Except he's using their brains because it's Chase. Yeah, his whole moral thing with not reading other people's minds did not last very long. It lasted about half of a Zendikar rising story and that was about it.
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah. So now I'm just thinking it would be rough going to Ravnica and anytime your attention wandered, you just have to think, did Chase just borrow a little bit of my brain computing power to figure something out? God, I'm depressed. Thanks Alex. All right. Sorry. So two tangents, two unrelated, sort of tangentially related, but not actually related to our topic things later. Yes. So yeah, I think.
00:27:18
Speaker
I don't know, this would just be a challenge. And, but now also in my head, I kind of have like, there was the whole arc with Gideon where he was like going back and forth between Zendikar fighting the Eldrazi and then Ravnica fighting like street criminals and, you know, Grenzo's gang and all of this. And he's going back and forth. And now I'm just picturing like him trying to do the same thing only with like family holidays.
00:27:41
Speaker
just like stressing himself out where he's jumping from like you know one feast day to the next you know solstice celebration to the next you know festival yeah i could definitely see shandra as being the type that would just jump around from one party to another
00:27:58
Speaker
And I think she probably would too, though, I think she probably wouldn't burn herself out the same way that Gideon is. And that might have a nice tie in for the whole family stress thing that we might talk about later for Gideon, for people who are trying to balance multiple families, different traditions, if you're, you know,
00:28:19
Speaker
especially in the West, you know, in Christian, there's a lot of things for Christmases like this where Christmas and Christmas Eve, different families will celebrate at different times on one day or the other or both and trying to balance multiple families traditions as you're going from, you know, one household to another. Same thing with Thanksgiving here too.
00:28:37
Speaker
It's interesting that you mentioned, because the fact that you went with Gideon with that, it also brings in the almost idea of obligation versus celebration. Gideon feeling that he has to go to each of these events and the need for that versus Chandra going to a ton of events because she wants to. She wants to. She wants to celebrate with people. Before I drag that too far away, if we're still talking about story stuff, because I think there may be more story stuff to talk about,
00:29:07
Speaker
And then do we want to like revisit come back to? Yeah, I think we'll come back to that concept because I think it's gonna hit on kind of our natural connection when we talk about stress that comes with family.
00:29:17
Speaker
or just and holidays not just family but with with holidays and I wanted to bring up what we're talking about different planes is the meditation realm aka the prison realm right now where we literally have and I just like this is my favorite it's because we have bolus and ugin who have no choice but to celebrate the holidays together I mean like
00:29:40
Speaker
I guess absolutely, you know, the set up for a holiday movie where they can't stand to be together. Yeah. And by the end, they're supposed to have learned the meaning of the spirit of the holidays and are getting along just fine, except that never happens with these two. Well, you know, like the thing is like timeline wise, right? Like they're elder dragons. Like it's just it doesn't happen on a time frame that that makes for a good Hallmark movie. It's not happening over a week.
00:30:07
Speaker
We're like, we're like, Bolas remembers something from their childhood and creates a nice little gift for Ugin. And then Ugin's just like, remember that time when you killed me? Yeah, you know? It turns out you were trying to do it for the greater good. Yeah, like,
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. See now I'm now I'm picturing the Hallmark trying to make a movie like that, but it has to take place over 1000 years of like, every, every year, like one of them try something, the other try something, they both just hate each other. Both of them try something, but it's wrong and just like back and forth, back and forth. And then in the end, the only person who learned a lesson was the person who tried to make that movie.
00:30:51
Speaker
But I mean, I just I really love the imagery of like, I mean, I love my brain, obviously, always manages to return to bolus and ugin and the fact that they're just sitting in a realm while like, fire x's rising stuff's going on, like stuff's going on. And they're chilling in a realm because like,
00:31:10
Speaker
Bolas is in a planeswalker, but you can't leave him. I don't know. I have no clue what's going on. Sitting around and doing nothing is Ugin's M.O. Yeah, that's right. So it's like for Ugin, it's fine. But it's just like, you know, it's like you're going to do anything about that. I could have done something about that.
00:31:30
Speaker
got up full list. It's like, it's like the family conversations are really awkward. Like they have all these siblings that we just don't care about it. Every that time you kill their brother, which one cuts to the next year because Oh, man, I want to see him reminiscing about mom and dad.
00:31:53
Speaker
See, but this is the thing, this is where I'm thinking about this idea of being trapped together in a holiday, which unfortunately is what it ends up, it can be. I mean, I think of this idea of like, this is the concept of family versus found family. And I know that we're kind of starting to move into more of a little bit of our natural connection. But I mean, there is the societal pressures, there is the pressures that come with
00:32:19
Speaker
with holidays, which is why I think, you know, you all did your little like the mini episode with the hit on it so well to me is just these are stressful times. Like no matter what your situation is, I feel like we're talking just stress and Bolus and Ugin to me like embody that.
Holiday Stress and Obligations
00:32:39
Speaker
I just think they do because of the idea that like they're going to be stuck together. And and I know that for a lot of people it
00:32:47
Speaker
Even if you're not physically trapped in the same realm because you can't leave, there is a lot of that that goes in with obligation and kind of like bringing it back to Alex and talking about Gideon. This is where I do think it starts becoming this relevant for a real world connection. Yeah. And there's a lot that I do think the.
00:33:08
Speaker
point of obligation is a very good point. There's definitely, especially this time of year, a lot of holiday traditions that I have celebrated mostly out of obligation to family and because it's always been like that, even though I don't necessarily follow the same beliefs as the rest of my family. And I think there's a lot of pressure this time of year especially to do those sort of things.
00:33:39
Speaker
And it sounds like, to me, it's like the balance, right? I think that this is – so I can speak for me that my immediate family, my family growing up is very religious. Well, I mean, I guess. I mean, not evangelical, but they are –
00:33:58
Speaker
there is a belief that we got to remember that Christmas is happening for Jesus. And it's become a lot less of that for me because I don't practice any. And my wife and her family are also practicing. And so I go to church. It's like one of the jokes about growing up about a Christmas and Easter Christian. And it's
00:34:25
Speaker
Like I don't mind what's the word I'm looking for. I don't mind tradition. I actually love like music. I love some of the stuff that can come along from a religious community, but it's not for me, but I am going, right? Like I'm going to be there every year.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah. And some of it in obligation and talking about the obligation is not necessarily framing it as a negative thing necessarily. It can become a negative thing. But it's also a thing that sometimes that's what you do with your family. And that is okay. That's part of your balance is you're like, well, this is important to you. It isn't to me, but I can do this for you, with you.
00:35:09
Speaker
And that is a good thing if there's that balance, if that's causing too much stress, if that's causing other issues, then that is something that might need to be worked out. But just because there is some of that, that's talking about for my family what we're planning to do.
00:35:27
Speaker
Again, like I mentioned earlier about the Christmas Eve and the Christmas celebrations, we have some stuff to do with parts of my family. There's other parts of my family we don't do anything with, but so it's just kind of, okay, I think this year we're probably going and doing some stuff on Christmas Eve for the first time in the last few years. And that's something that
00:35:48
Speaker
is not really something I would rather do with my time, generally speaking, but I want to spend some time with this part of my family and it's something that can be important to them. So it's a thing that I could do and use that time to do something with them.
Adapting Traditions for Family
00:36:04
Speaker
but then trying to balance that for myself. I think this year, actually this week, just was talking to my parents about our Christmas plans because they're coming back down into town, and they're talking about when they're coming down, when they're leaving, and then what we're doing with the extended family, what we're doing with my sister.
00:36:27
Speaker
I think, I think it'll be good and I should have plenty of time myself to sort of recharge and do my own thing while also doing stuff with, with other parts of my family. So I think I've been a good spot for that myself, but every year that some, that's just a conversation that just has to kind of, we have to go through and I have to think about myself. What, what do I have to give? What am I willing to give? What time and what energy?
00:36:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think you know that what do you have to get what you're willing to give a really important like normally one of our traditions has always been to send out a holiday card with an updated family photo in it, because none of us have relatives that live nearby our families across the country so we don't see them on a regular basis and
00:37:13
Speaker
that has been a tradition for us. And then this year, you know, my husband and I were just too exhausted to spend the time getting that together and, you know, addressing these and doing it. So we just decided this year wasn't worth that. Even if it meant breaking tradition, it wasn't worth that added stress. I think being so
00:37:36
Speaker
What's kind of funny and I think that I don't know if this is something that came from it's it's helpful that both my wife and I have had this is a so I grew up with My father who works in the oil fields my mom's dad worked in the oil fields So these are you know places that don't shut down right like they they run and
00:37:57
Speaker
365 days out of the year, you know, there's somebody that is working. And so there would be years that somebody was on call. So like plans had to be flexible. And my wife is her grandfather, who they celebrated with a lot, is a physician. Her mom was a nurse at a hospital, same sort of thing. My wife is on call some years for Christmas.
00:38:20
Speaker
So we might have a year that we celebrate Christmas a week early or a week late. And I think that that was something that was hard for like my grandmother. I can think of like on my mom's side that like is very kind of rigid in some ways about wanting things to be on that date. And then like when I moved and I can't come home necessarily on
00:38:41
Speaker
the day of Christmas, like being able to be flexible about, it's, I think could have, I was thinking, Taya, with your example, we've done that where we've ended up sending out a card and it's been like, we still have some Christmas theme on it, or we do a holiday theme to it, and it comes out like January or February, right? Like, it's, to me, I, learning to be able to be flexible with these things has been something that's been,
00:39:07
Speaker
beneficial for me. I think the flexibility helps a lot. And this might have been one area where I have clashed with family members before because to them they didn't want to show that flexibility when to me doing something on a specific date doesn't matter as much as you know what you're doing. Yeah.
00:39:27
Speaker
And for us, it was a really small thing, but I remember a number of years ago, especially my parents moved up to Grand Marais about a decade ago, which is a good five, six hours out of the cities now. It's a nice place up there, but it's a long trip. And especially because we're in Minnesota, sometimes the weather gets nasty. It's not always possible for them to get down. It's not usually a problem, but if we have a big storm hit around the time,
00:39:57
Speaker
planning to come down, it can be tough. But one of the things that we started to be flexible about was time of when we did stuff, because forever, forever, we would do like a big dinner, not always at Christmas night, not always at night, but it was usually later in the day. And the first year that we had to do like breakfast, because my parents had to work the next day,
00:40:25
Speaker
and they needed to get home and spend five hours in the car. So we did breakfast, we met up at like nine, we opened presents, we ate breakfast and then home by 10 or 11. And it's like, that felt weird, but it was something that was necessary for us to all kind of be able to do this and all be able to move, do the rest of our lives as necessary. And so we adapted.
00:40:51
Speaker
started, it was still fun. It was still great. It still had a good time with my family and my dad's amazing cooking. We just had different type of cooking rather than the dinner, normal dinner things. He did some other stuff and it's been great, but that was a weird transition for us trying to make that work.
00:41:11
Speaker
I'm curious for kind of both of you, what are some of the things that you think of that what are the activities around holidays? And I mean, I know we're kind of talking at this point, we are kind of in winter holiday kind of, I guess, predominantly what we've been discussing. I mean, they're the ones that I think tend to be the most prevalent in the sense of at least in the US, because there's so many kind of like back to back, this is like the season where there's more that are associated with
00:41:35
Speaker
with families or with cultural elements. I'm kind of curious for you all, what are some of the activities that caused stress?
Managing Holiday Expectations
00:41:45
Speaker
For me, it's just trying to keep up with expectations a lot of times. We haven't put up a tree the last few years. My son's kind of outgrown it at this point.
00:41:59
Speaker
know, still have pressure from like the in-laws, like why didn't you put up a tree and why are you not doing this? And it's, you know, that's our decision to make. It's kind of, you know, these are the things that kind of deal with stress is dealing with family like this because we are so far away from our family that usually this is the only time we get like any kind of feedback or anything from them is
00:42:22
Speaker
far as, you know, what are you doing for the holidays? What's going on? And just trying to, you know, break those expectations that, you know, it's we're older and our son's older and everything. It doesn't mean we have to do all these things that we've done before just because we've always done them at that point. Yeah. I think it's I'm hearing a lot of it to me, it's like the managing expectations.
00:42:52
Speaker
Um, exactly. Expectations are, you know, they're hard to manage all the time, but I think there's a lot of expectations that come around with the holidays, especially in relation to family. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot. I think there, especially with holidays, there tends to be a lot of.
00:43:10
Speaker
people putting expectations externally, but also like, because this is the way we do this thing, and this is how this is supposed to be, this is how it works, like the tradition stuff. But it's like that, if it's, you know, this is the holiday that means a lot, they want it to be the way that it fits for them to mean the most. And that creates expectations that can cause issues with other people, and that starts to become problematic. But
00:43:38
Speaker
I don't have quite as much of that because frankly, I don't do a lot with most of my family. But for me, one of my biggest challenges is just being in other spaces and not always as comfortable. Even in some of my families, when I was growing up, we'd go to my grandma's place and that was a place that we
00:44:00
Speaker
kind of felt established as this is this is where we go for christmas but a number six seven years ago she passed and then since then there hasn't really been that space one of my aunts it's moved around a little bit to a couple different aunts homes and that's been okay and
00:44:20
Speaker
But there still isn't really a space I feel comfortable in. And then we do Christmas at my sister's. And I love my sister and I love her family, but she has four kids. And it's just kind of a chaotic place to be. I mean, my own home is not chaotic, but it's my chaos. And so it fits. But when I'm in a home with four young kids, I think the oldest is six.
00:44:48
Speaker
and a dog and the cats pretty cool. He's not terribly disruptive. But it's just that I'm sitting for the whole time. And again, I love them all. But the whole time we're there, I'm just a little bit on edge. I'm not able to relax while I'm in that space. So I was thinking, you know, there's a couple things for me. I am somebody who really likes to
00:45:14
Speaker
do the whole getting gifts for people. I really like to see people open things. I really like to take that. But with two kids, the time for all of these pieces and the thought that I want to put into things gets really eaten up. And so I know that something that we've kind of done in the last couple of years is my wife and I, I mean, we were older when we got married, we were older when we had kids, so we had already had time
00:45:43
Speaker
together where that was the important thing, where each other was the important thing and the thing we focused on. And we've shifted some of that to, well, what are we doing to make sure we're at least giving that thought for the children or for the kids? So that's still something that's hard for me to let go of. There's certain elements of things I just like to do. But it's also just, it is like the stress is,
00:46:10
Speaker
just time. I think as much as I can be flexible and want to be flexible, there still are just things that we kind of do with my wife's family, my family's in California. So trying to plan those schedules, especially as somebody who's long distance for, you know, and misses my family, given that I didn't move here until I was in my 30s. Jesus. Yeah. And so, you know, like I had a lot of years of just like me as an only child with my parents. And now
00:46:40
Speaker
My wife's got one sibling, but her family is much larger than mine ever was. And I think that you're kind of saying, Alex, being in those places, I'm used to being kind of like the person or being like very small gatherings. And I also think that that meant that I maybe didn't have to do as well at setting boundaries. And a lot of what I kind of feel like comes up with holidays, especially
00:47:03
Speaker
I was bringing up the family versus found family and the shift that I've really seen in society that I think is important is it's okay to have boundaries even with family and that might mean that there are family that I don't I'm not going to care if I don't get to see them at Christmas or for a holiday or that I don't really
00:47:24
Speaker
work on making sure that I maintain relationships that I used to. But I have a lot more other people that it's important to me to connect with on those days now. And it's that intentionality and that choice. So it's learning about boundary setting and where that's appropriate, kind of similar to managing expectations.
Self-care for Holiday Stress
00:47:42
Speaker
But yeah, I think they're very interrelated with each other as you need to set expectations and establish those boundaries together.
00:47:52
Speaker
So what do people do to kind of take care of themselves? I mean, I guess this show is always focused on self-care. I mean, it's a topic that we beat to death like a...
00:48:05
Speaker
dead animal on Ravnica. I don't know, I was going to go for a magic related thing and just didn't have an image. Several times we've referenced the card, Seasons Beatings, in this episode. Yeah, I mean for me it's just choosing what I do and don't do. If something isn't
00:48:27
Speaker
bringing value or bringing joy, then choosing not to do it. It would be nice to have the whole house decorated for the holidays, but that hasn't been
00:48:41
Speaker
You know, it hasn't felt like it's worth the effort for the last few years and dealing with body pain and other issues has kind of lowered the level or the threshold that that kind of qualifies for is whether I'm going to do it or not. And that's the kind of self-care I practice is just really, is it worth doing what it is, even if it's something I might want to do versus things that I have to do?
00:49:10
Speaker
Yeah, that that's a that's a good one. And that's, I mean, so this year, I didn't do anything for Thanksgiving. I kind of was talking to my parents and I, you know, they came down to town, they were gonna do something with my sister. And I just mentioned like, I don't
00:49:25
Speaker
I just don't have a lot of energy right now to go do this. And I knew like Christmas is coming up. I'll do Christmas and we'll do that and that'll be fine. But like, I'm just going to not do that. And then some things shifted anyway and ended up, they ended up not going. I just spent Thanksgiving hanging out with my parents, which was great. But it's like, I just couldn't do that. And for me, some of it, it's just watching my own.
00:49:51
Speaker
The last few years, starting to build some tools of introspection for myself, I kind of watch my own energy levels and my own capabilities and really say, you know, to go back to what I mentioned earlier, what can I give and what am I willing to give?
00:50:06
Speaker
in this time, especially knowing the whole totality. If this was something more disconnected, if there was more of a gap between the two holidays, I might have considered going or I may have changed my plans. But especially knowing this whole season, all of the things that are going to be coming up, that was just the choice that I made.
00:50:29
Speaker
I think that for me, it kind of piggybacks a little bit on what Teo was saying in terms of similar in the managing expectations or if things happen versus don't. For me, I think in part that's kind of prioritizing. There are certain traditions that I really want to have almost every year that are important to me and are things that I know that I want and that I know don't feel like the holidays, even with the introspection I've had that still don't feel like the holidays if I don't do them.
00:50:58
Speaker
So I think the biggest is then also working on communication. Uh, I think especially with my, with, with, with Jen is that I'm very clear about like, okay, like, yes, I know we, we have all this going on. Is there a way that we can do these things? Uh, you know, and then also conversely, like which things are important for, for us to be doing for her family or for her traditions and kind of then a prioritizing to say like, okay, what are the ones that we know that we want to do?
00:51:26
Speaker
Here's the ones that if we don't get to them, I think the holiday card. We haven't even talked about it this year. It's not happening. It's just not something that we've even cared about. Last year, we had a child a month before the holiday. So that's so much lower on our priority list. We love doing it. We love the ones that we've done in the past, but that's not as important as say... For me, I always say the big one is I like having a life tree.
00:51:54
Speaker
like cutting down a tree, I like the smell of one. And like, I always make sure that there is like we have a plan for that at the very least. A lot of my ornaments came from like at this point, like my grandparents or have been passed down. And so like, that's my way of connecting with with that element. So that's a priority. So I think it's communicating those and just being explicit about what's going on or if I'm stressed, like being explicit with my
00:52:23
Speaker
partner, obviously, like the one who's the most important for me to communicate that to. Yeah, I love the call out of priorities to and triage it because then you have if you know what your priorities are and the priorities of the people and you know, your partner, your kids or whatever, you know, whomever it is important to to have in that sphere, then you can prioritize them, you can make sure that those get the the emphasis those get the
00:52:48
Speaker
If there's limited resources to go around, you put them in the place that is the most important, the most impactful. Yeah. You know, I don't want to sound like I'm at work all the time, but there are some things that are just below the cut line and I am not going to get to them this year. I am sorry. Yeah.
00:53:07
Speaker
That's the thing I had to learn the last few years. Well, not learn. It's a skill I had to sharpen in the last few years at work for a similar thing. We've had struggles and issues with various things. One of the important skills was triaging. These are the things that have to be done. These are the things that
00:53:24
Speaker
Need to be done but don't need to be done today and here are things that we aren't gonna do for two years like there's some of those I got to clean up in the last six months which felt good but it was like we're just not gonna touch this until we have everything else taken care of and we have open time.
Fun Holiday Planes Debate
00:53:41
Speaker
So yeah holidays across the multiverse you know we.
00:53:45
Speaker
Yeah, we would love to see I'd love to see some more of it, right? You know, like we're getting you know, get glitters a wrap up. Like I think we've kind of hit the message on the take home. But it was fun topic. Like I really glad y'all came up with this because like, if you two don't mind, sorry, I kind of want to know normally we talked to the store, we talked about the real world and we kind of wrap it up there. But I think, well, it was important stuff. I don't think it was a down bit was more heavier stuff. And there was like light,
00:54:10
Speaker
What do you think about wrapping around one of these story things that we didn't hit? The most fun holiday in the multiverse? What do you think that would be?
00:54:23
Speaker
And of course I start this, Hobbs, do you have something? Cause I don't. Absolutely not. Like I expect that if you're going to bring it in, you either found a way to answer it or you found a way to answer a different question. Yes. So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to vamp just a little bit and talk about Ravnica, which I think could be a lot of fun during a holiday season. I don't, maybe not the most fun and maybe not a specific holiday, but I was thinking about this earlier where before we were kind of
00:54:50
Speaker
getting ready for this episode and Ravnica in particular with all the guilds and the different things like a lot of these planes have different cultures but Ravnica being a city plane you're kind of smashing them all in closer proximity than most of these other planes go to and I think that would be
00:55:07
Speaker
would be a lot of fun to kind of engage with. Maybe not the most particular single thing that would be the funnest event to go to, but maybe something super interesting and super fun to engage in varying holidays that maybe are different holidays. Maybe the Golgari have different holidays than the Demir and the Boros and the Azorius. But I think those sort of overlapping traditions and different things kind of going on, possibly at literally the same time, could be really, really cool and fun.
00:55:38
Speaker
I want to be there for the World Cup on Kylan. Yeah, I want the dual World Cup version. Nice. Yes. Okay. Yes, the battle bond version of the World Cup. Oh, which is basically a holiday. That's I mean, that's a little bit of a cheat, but that's a holiday. So yep, that's, that's awesome. I've been structuring my work around it a little bit. So that's fair. That's feels holiday like to me. You know,
00:56:06
Speaker
I feel like I want to see a celebration of a holiday on Dominaria, but kind of almost for the opposite, like for the reason that we talked about earlier, that everything seems to be such like a downer. And like, wherever we go there, it's like, it's like it is like the stakes are like, quote unquote, like the highest they've ever been. But I mean, it's like, they're always apocalyptic type. So I am kind of curious, just like I think about
00:56:28
Speaker
Squee wanting to throw a party when they went like, you know a day without somebody dying. A week without injury or somebody dying. A week without injury or somebody dying. Alex you still don't know that story but yeah. I almost spit out some water while I was drinking there. This literally he like was gonna throw a party for everybody if they basically could go this length of time. Yeah, they had to go a week without a death. A week without a death.
00:56:54
Speaker
like they were right there and then somebody died but then came to life back in front of them which is how they discovered the
00:57:01
Speaker
That was how the fire accident got brought into Squee's story. So, but I like, I love that idea of like, Squee just like having a random holiday party. So that's not only where, but who I want to spend that holiday with. That's good. Cause you answered the question that I was going to ask you when you talk about Dominaria, cause I was like, I'm trying to think like, who do you think would have a good cause it's like, I bet you Benalia has a bunch of holidays, but
00:57:26
Speaker
I don't know if I would enjoy them as much. They're probably pretty stuffy. Exactly. And like, they're probably great for them. And that's wonderful. But it's not kind of my thing. But it's like, you know, squee the goblins. That's perfect. Yeah, I feel like that. Yeah, like, well, yes. We're just feeling like a goblin party anytime. I think on any plane, you know, they're going to be the most fun. You know, now that I got goblin festival, what are we celebrating anyway? Oh, God, that's perfect. Does it matter? No, just going to have a good time.
00:57:57
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find both of the hosts on Twitter. Hobbs can be found at Hobbs Q and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to goblin lore pod on Twitter or email us at goblin lore podcast at gmail.com. If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobslugs to our link tree on our Twitter account,
00:58:23
Speaker
and listed in our show notes. This has everything from our discounts for The Grinding Coffee Company to our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Vindergotten, who can be found at Vindergotten at BadCamp.com. The art was done by Stephen Raphael, who can be found at Steve Raffel on Twitter.
00:58:43
Speaker
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content. Check them out on Twitter at hipstersmpg or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening. And remember, goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.