Sunday, 30 December 2012

Christmas memes

I'm feeling in a festive mood, so here are a few memes based on a Christmas theme.

1) Talking rubbish


The first meme is two bins discussing whether Santa Claus is real or not, and it features a cheesy punchline.


Bin 1: "Santa Claus isn't real."
Bin 2: "You're talking rubbish!"

For the benefit of any American readers, that translates as:

Bin 1: "Santa Claus isn't real."
Bin 2: "You're talking garbage!"

Sunday, 23 December 2012

Santa Claus arrives on the roof on Christmas Eve

Bringing the magic of Santa to life for kids with a free Santa mp3.


Santa Claus arriving on the roof on Christmas Eve.
A couple of weeks ago a mate of mine mentioned a cool idea he had for Christmas Eve. His plan was to record and mix a soundtrack of Santa Claus arriving on the roof and delivering his presents. Then on Christmas Eve he would place some speakers in the loft above his kid's bedroom, and just as his kid was about to go to sleep he would play the Santa soundtrack so that it sounds as if Santa is landing on the roof and delivering his presents.

It sounded quite ambitious but also a really cool idea, and I can imagine how exciting it would be for a young child to hear Santa arriving on the roof on Christmas Eve. Anyway, we recorded the soundtrack and I have to say we were both really pleased with the finished results.

Thursday, 20 December 2012

Searching for Santa on Google

The curious nature of kids when using Google to investigate Santa.


Santa taking a well deserved break
from his present delivering duties.
In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that as well as the Google search engine, Google also have a service known as the Google Keyword Tool which allows you to analyse how many searches a particular search term gets on Google every month.

Some of the search terms I discussed were the search term, ‘Is Santa real?’, which gets 301,000 searches every month from quizzical and possibly sceptical kids, and also, ‘What is Santa’s real phone number?’, which gets 320 searches per month.

As it’s only a few days until Christmas I therefore thought this would be an appropriate time to feature another post on Santa related searches on Google.

The most popular Santa themed Google search I could find was the massively popular, ‘Where is Santa at?’, which gets an incredible 83,100,000 searches every month. By comparison the search term, ‘What’s the true meaning of Christmas?’, gets a paltry 170 searches per month, so it’s nice to know that modern kids seem to have their priorities straight!

Friday, 14 December 2012

A Christmas message from Charles Fudgemuffin

A short but heart-warming Christmas video message from Charles Fudgemuffin to everyone who has visited his blog this year.


Charles Fudgemuffin getting into the festive spirit.
Like many people, I always get completely carried away and sometimes even over-emotional at Christmas with the whole warmth and joy of this wonderful time of year. So to express my feelings I thought it would be a nice idea to create a short but touching Christmas video message which hopefully captures the uplifting and heart-warming spirit of Christmas.

As I say, I can sometimes get a little over-emotional with the whole Christmas spirit, so apologies in advance if my emotions get the better of me and it all gets a bit mushy...

Saturday, 8 December 2012

True or false: Six Santa themed 'facts' for Christmas

Naughty kids, green Santa suits and fermented ant droppings.


With Christmas quickly approaching, this week I've compiled a list of six Santa themed ‘facts’ to test people on how sharp they are at spotting a bluff and how astute they are at recognising the truth. Just to clarify, some of these Santa ‘facts’ are true but others are entirely made up.

Santa Claus pictured with a strange child-sized object in his sack.
Anyway, these are the Santa related ‘facts’ so have a read and see if you can guess which ones are true and which are made up, then check the answers at the bottom of the page to see how well you did.

Fact 1 - Swiss Santa's helper kidnaps naughty kids in his sack.


In the UK and many other countries parents often scare their kids into behaving in the run-up to Christmas by telling them that if they’re naughty then Santa won’t bring them any presents. While you could say this was a slightly cruel lie to tell kids, in Switzerland they take things one step further by telling kids that if they are naughty, Santa's helper 'Schmutzli' will kidnap them by putting them into his sack and then carrying them off into the woods.

True or false?