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!"

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.

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!

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...

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?

Some kind words from two friends I met on my recent travel adventures

A letter of gratitude for a minor deed I performed on my travels.

As an author perhaps one of the best ways to find inspiration for your stories is to travel the world, make new friends and experience exciting travel adventures. I've met many new friends on my travels and I recently received a photo as a gift from two new friends I met on one of my recent travel adventures, together with a note of thanks for a minor deed I performed. I therefore thought it would be a nice idea to post their kind words on my blog.

The two tigers soon calmed down once
they realised they had met their match.

"Dear Charles

We just wanted to wish you a big thank you once again for saving the life of our small child the other day. We don't know what we would have done if you hadn't been there when little Sami wandered into the path of those two stray tigers and we will forever be grateful for the bravery you showed as you sprang into action and taught the two ferocious beasts a lesson they won't forget in a hurry.

We were also grateful that you were able to take time out of your busy schedule to pose for a quick photo with the tigers after you had showed them who was the boss and returned Sami to safety.

Sneeze page: Four of my favourite posts

Charles Fudgemuffin goes green!

Recycling old rubbish.

I’m a firm believer in recycling, so when I recently read a post on another blog discussing the concept of a ‘sneeze’ page, whereby you basically recycle your most popular old posts to create a fresh new compilation post, I was instantly intrigued. As well as the green aspect, my lazy side was also attracted by the thought of reusing old material, and so after reading the article I decided to compile my own sneeze page.

So on that note, here are five of my favourite posts to have previously appeared on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog:

1) 10 cool internet Easter eggs

This post features a selection of weird hidden features (known as Easter eggs) found on the internet, and at the time of writing it gets more page views via Google than any other post on my blog. It features some reasonably well-known Easter Eggs such as the YouTube snake and facebook hidden languages, but also showcases some less well-known internet Easter eggs such as an amusing website reporting on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and there’s also a mention for a little known trick found on wikipedia.