I’m really excited about my special Christmas podcast episode, The Creation of Christmas. I knew I had to do this episode after I found out when and why Santa Claus was invented! It’s a fascinating story that goes back 150 years. And there’s more…
Many of the traditions that we love—gift-giving, Santa Claus, kissing under the mistletoe—were invented and re-invented across the generations. This special holiday episode tells the creation story of the secular, non-religious traditions that we celebrate at Christmas. The collective creation of these Christmas traditions is what I call social innovation, a kind of collective creativity where everyone plays a role. Five hundred years ago, Christmas was a wild party, where young men got drunk and roamed in packs around town. Children didn’t start getting gifts until about 200 years ago. In the late 1800s, the Santa Claus myth was invented, along with the elves and the sleigh and the workshop at the North Pole. It all started two thousand years ago, in Ancient Rome, it picked up steam in the 1800s, and we’re still creating new Christmas traditions today.
You can find the podcast on all platforms and at www.sawyerpodcast.com. This newsletter and the podcast are free with no ads.
Explaining Creativity
A new creativity study is published almost every day. While writing my 2024 book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, with Danah Henriksen, we read every research study we could find that had been done since my previous edition of the book was published in 2012. We scanned hundreds of the latest books and we read the abstracts of every scientific journal about creativity. The book is 579 pages and there are 94 pages just for the references! It took a couple of years, but we got it done. The book was published last January, but creativity research always moves forward, and it’s my job to keep up with new scientific journal issues and to check out interesting new books on creativity. In this newsletter, I’ll share the most interesting of these studies and books.
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Thanks Todd! The book's content is exhaustive, that's the word! it's both a pro and a con. That's why it's called "the creativity bible" but it also means it's heavy and it's expensive, so the Kindle version will be better for most people I think
Oh man, that book title, book cover, and content sounds righteous. Looking forward to more Keith.