The end of year celebrations often feel familiar and "known". But there are still some holiday stories out there that have the ability to leave us scratching our heads.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. For some children in the Midwestern United States, Christmas morning begins with a scavenger hunt. They jump out of bed, rush to the tree, and start digging through its branches. Hidden amongst the pine needles, one lucky kid finds a treasure, a green glass ornament shape like a gurkin. It's the coveted Christmas pickle. The first child to grab it either receives a special gift or gets to open their presence first, but more importantly, they enjoy bragging rights for the rest of the year. It's one of many weird and wonderful holiday traditions in America. But what makes the Christmas pickle especially strange is that nobody really knows where it came from. Now, if you ask an average Midwesterner, they'll probably say that it's a German thing passed down through the generations, which does seem to make sense. The Midwest was once a popular destination for German immigrants, including my ancestors, and pickles are common in that nation's cuisine. But if you ask actual German people, they probably won't have any idea what you're talking about. According to The New York Times, a twenty sixteen poll found that ninety one percent of Germans had never heard of the Christmas pickle, even though it was being widely attributed to their culture. So how did this curious practice really begin. Well, there are a few different legends about that. According to one story, there was a German American soldier who fought in the Civil War. At one point, he was taken captive and the prison guard refused to feed him. He starved for weeks. Finally, on Christmas Eve, the soldier felt his body beginning to shut down. Certain that he would die, he begged his capture to let him have one final meal, a single pickle. Miraculously, this measley snack gave the soldier the strength he needed to survive. When he made it home after the war, he spread the tale of the relish that saved his life. Thus, the Christmas pickle was born at least that's one version of the story. Another one goes like this. Two Spanish boys were heading home from boarding school for the holidays. They were making the long trek on foot, and they moved slowly. They realized that they wouldn't be home by December twenty fifth, so on Christmas Eve, they decided to stop and rest overnight at an inn. For whatever reason, the innkeeper did not like these boys. They grabbed the children and locked them inside a barrel of pickles. The boys banged on the sides of the container, but no one heard their screams. That is not until Saint Nicholas made a stop at the end. He heard the children yelling for help and freed them from their pickoly prison. The boys eventually made it home, where they shared this story of their incredible escape. This inspired people to hang pickles on their Christmas trees in remembrance of the kids' survival and Chris Kringle's good deed. Now, if these tails sound a bit far fetched to you, I'm inclined to agree. They're fun for sure, but they're probably not factual. In all likelihood, the origin of the Christmas pickle is less about magic and more about capitalism. You see. Beginning around the eighteen forties, German glass blowers were producing all kinds of unique food shaped holiday ornaments, fruits, nuts, vegetables. You could put an entire glass garden in your tree if you really wanted to. They were fairly popular in Europe, for sure, but the FW. Woolworth Company wanted to capture the American market too. Fast forward to the eighteen hundreds, when that same business began importing German made glass to the United States. To convince people to buy their weird products, the FW. Woolworth Company spun a tail about the pickle ornament. In particular, they claimed that hiding a glass girkin in the Christmas tree was a long standing German tradition, even though it actually wasn't. Nevertheless, if this story is true, it seems like their marketing ploy paid off. The ornaments became an integral part of some family's holiday traditions, especially in the Midwest, and even now, nearly one hundred and fifty years later, the Christmas pickle is still a pretty big dill. On the night of March second of nineteen seventy eight, two men tiptoed into a small cemetery the graveyard was located in the hills above Lake Geneva in Switzerland. It was beautiful and quiet, save for the sound of the men creeping through the grass. Eventually they reached the tombstone they were looking for. It was marked with a birth date April eighteenth of eighteen eighty nine, and below that was a date of death, Christmas Day of nineteen seventy seven, belong to Charlie Chaplin, one of the most famous actors who ever lived. Beginning his show business career at just eight years old, Chaplin rose to fame as a physical comedian during the silent film era. He went on to work as an actor, writer, producer, and director, gaining numerous awards and international acclaim. He's widely considered one of the most important figures in the history of cinema. Now, when Chaplin died, he was married to a woman named Una O'Neill. She was the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. On their wedding day, she was eighteen years old and Chaplin was fifty three. And now all of this had been in the news, so the men in the cemetery knew about Chaplain's career and his personal life. But and here's the reason I'm telling you all of this. The men were not there to pay respects, nor did they want to spit on Chaplin's grave. No, they wanted to rob it. The men pulled out their shovels and started digging. They cracked open the actor's caskets and came face to face with his corpse, which had been sitting in the ground for over two months. It couldn't have been a pretty sight, but the men weren't deterred. They lifted Charlie Chaplin from his grave, closed the casket, and shoved the dirt back in to cover their tracks, and then they carried the actress body to a nearby cornfield, where they reburied it. The following morning, Chaplain's widow, Una received a call at her home in Switzerland. Two men told her that they had stolen her late husband's body and that the only way to get it back was to pay them six hundred thousand dollars. If she didn't comply, they threatened the lives of her and Chaplain's eight children. Unbeknownst to the thieving duo, though Una was not a woman who could be easily shaken, she basically laughed at them. She later gave an interview about the situation, saying, and I quote Charlie would have thought it rather ridiculous. Una had no intention of paying the ransom. She didn't really believe the men's threats either, but she did believe that they would try to call her again, so she contacted the local police, who tapped her phone line and began monitoring every phone booth in the area. Five weeks later, they caught the grave robbers. Their names were Roman Wardis and Gansho Ganev. Although we don't have a lot of information about them, we know they both worked as auto mechanics and they'd come to Switzerland as political refugees from Eastern Europe. They told police they were down on their luck financially and that they had only committed the crime for money. Now that they were caught, though, Roman and Gancho led authorities to the cornfield where they had hidden Chaplain's body, he was once again unearthed and returned to the cemetery from whence he came, and then his family opted to have his grave covered in a slab of cement to deter future thieves. Roman, who was apparently the mastermind behind the operation, was sentenced to four years of hard labor. Gnho received a lesser punishment of eighteen months, but that was not the end of the story. One of the men's wives was so embarrassed by their behavior that she sent a letter to Una apologizing for the whole debacle. As unshakable as ever and shockingly generous given the circumstances, Una responded, all is forgiven. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.