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The Current Transcript for December 20, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Ladies and gentlemen of the Earth, we greet you in peace and friendship. We come from a planet far beyond this galaxy, a planet far more developed than Earth but we come as friends.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: A snippet from the original series The Twilight Zone. It can still evoke that suspense, tension, curiosity and desire for answers that's within the zeitgeist gazed about aliens and UFOs back in the 5s. The U.S. Pentagon was actively investigating odd sightings back then but now we know a hidden program into what it would later be called "Advanced Aerospace Threats" would be revived in this century, involve a powerful U.S. senator, his billionaire buddy and a lot more secrecy. The revelations this week raise a lot of questions about what the Pentagon thinks may be out there, what its pilots may have filmed and whether after decades of searching there is any proof of anything. We're all over that story in just a moment. Also today, if you tempted to joke that any UFO sightings at this time of year are from the North Pole, be warned Judith Flanders more burst that bubble with A Biography of Christmas that is not in sync with what you’re telling your young children.

SOUNDCLIP

The core of the Christmas message. It's not about religion to Dickens it's not about commercialism. It's about people opening their shut up heart.

AMT: The warm and fuzzy side and the myths that persist in an hour. Be warned. And speaking of myths you might be surprised at the number of stories around the origins of that quintessential Italian dessert 'Tiramisu'.

SOUNDCLIP

This is dessert of Italian family. Spaghetti brought Italy together from the south to the north but Tiramisu from the north to the south.

AMT: Far from claims that it is unified Italy to the belief that it was a sugary Viagra, to the story of romantic origins in the home of a humble soldier in China, we find an excuse to savour the tales around tiramisu in half an hour. I am Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Currents.

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What the Pentagon's secret UFO program reveals

Guests: Nick Pope, Seth Shostack, Mark Fenster

SOUNDCLIP

There's a whole fleet of them look on the SA.

My Gosh.

They are all going against the wind, the wind is 120 miles to the west.

Look at that thing, Dude.

AMT: Well that's difficult to make out what they're saying but it is from a video of two U.S. Navy pilots investigating a mysterious object hovering off the coast of San Diego in 2004. The video was released this week by the U.S. Defence Department and it came out of its secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification program. New revelations show the Pentagon ran the secret UFO program from 2007 until it was officially de-funded in 2012. The program's existence has never been officially acknowledged by the Department of Defence until now. It raises questions about the kind of information the US government has kept secret about encounters with unidentified flying objects. Here to answers some of these questions as Nick Pope. He was in charge of UFO investigations for the British government's Ministry of Defence from 1991 to 1994. Nick Pope is also the author of Open Skies Closed Minds and he joins us from Tucson, Arizona. Hello.

NICK POPE: Hey good morning.

AMT: So we just heard that audio released out of the Pentagon's secret UFO program. Tell us what's going on.

NICK POPE: Well essentially what's happening is that the jet fighters are chasing, for want of a better phrase, a UFO. And that is interesting on a couple of grounds. Firstly of course you know it's interesting that these things are in our airspace and even our own pilots don't know what they are. But the real story here is the political one in that decades now the U.S. government said "we are more interested in UFOs. We are not investigating them". Turns out they are, their pilots are chasing them and there is this secret classified research effort to try and get to the bottom of the mystery.

AMT: Do we know what they were actually chasing? What did they see?

NICK POPE: We really don't know. All we know is what we can see and hear in that clip where they're expressing their absolute astonishment that this thing, whatever it is, is doing a fair speed and it’s flying into the wind. So it’s not something drifting in the wind that the pilots are chasing. But you know just the fact that we have this gun camera footage - okay it’s not a smoking gun. None of this is going to prove that UFOs are extraterrestrial but it does prove that whatever we think we're dealing with, the US government and I'm sure governments all around the world do investigate these things and they do research the phenomenon to try and say "this something in our skies. We don't know what it is but we should find out".

AMT: So, just to be clear then, do these revelations bring us any closer to confirming that there are in fact aliens out there?

NICK POPE: They don't help us determine what these objects are. But I think what it does show is that people even within government are not prepared to rule out the possibility, even if its remote, of extraterrestrial visitation. But let's make no mistake about it. I mean of course these things might well turn out to be Russian or indeed our own that you know governments are deeply compartmentalised, it might be some secret prototype spy plane or drone that another part of the government has have come up with. So probably more Russian than Martian but never say never.

AMT: Okay so what do we know about what they called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification program?

NICK POPE: Well that's interesting. It seems to have been set up in 2007 and run for about five years. They put 22 million U.S. dollars into this. So this is not something that was likely done and I know that that's a drop in the ocean over the overall defense budget. But my goodness when I was doing this for the British government we did it on a shoestring. So this is a big deal. Two interesting things about this. Firstly, note that they dropped the phrase UFO. This Advanced Aviation Threat Identification program is just an interesting way that you can hide the program by avoiding that phrase. And the pop culture baggage that comes with it. We did a similar thing in the ministry of defence in the U.K. We dropped UFO and we replaced it with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, UAP. But the other interesting thing about this this Pentagon program is that after a while they drifted into the private sector and through various defence contracts it ended up with an aerospace corporation. And that's interesting because it makes congressional scrutiny more difficult and critically I think it takes it outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. So there are lots of questions about how this UFO program was effectively hidden not just from the public and the media but even perhaps from Congress.

AMT: Well in fact we know it began in 2007 at the request of Harry Reid who was the Senate majority leader, Democrat from Nevada and most of the money went to this aerospace research company that was run by his long-time friend Robert Bigelow.

NICK POPE: Yes. I suspect that those people that take an interest in government accounting will be asking some fairly hard questions about that. But I think that Harry Reid as the senator who set this up as you say will have done his due diligence. He will have made sure that the contract was properly led and indeed he said about this. He was proud of this. He's interested in space matters more generally. But I support this effort by the way and I think that he and others will say "look you know whatever you believe about extraterrestrials doesn't matter. If there are things in our air space, if our pilots see them, if we occasionally tracked them on radar then the government of the Air Force should be looking at this and taking them seriously" and really the only revelation this week is that they were taking them seriously. And this went against previous denials.

AMT: Well I want to bring two other people into this conversation. Seth Shostak is the senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI Institute. He joins us from Mountain View, California. And Mark Fenster is a law professor at the University of Florida. He is the author of the Transparency Fix. He's also written about conspiracy theories in American culture. He joins us from New York City. Hello to you both.

SETH SHOSTAK: Hello.

MARK FENSTER: Hello.

AMT: Seth Shostack, I'll start with you then. What do you make of this new revelation about this secret UFO program in the Pentagon?

SETH SHOSTAK: Well obviously interesting and Nick has pointed out why it's interesting. On the other hand if the question here is not secret politics. If the question is 'are we being visited by aliens from another world?' then I think it actually is good news and bad news. The good news being of course that those who claim [unintelligible] the government really knows something, have been proven that they are right to the extent that there has been an investigation. I think the bad news is that they themselves seemed to have shut down the investigation saying 'well, we had better things to spend money on'. That certainly would not be the case if any of the evidence was compelling.

AMT: And how do you think this news that this program has shaped the way people are talking about UFOs, Seth?

SETH SHOSTAK: Well one third of the public has consistently said that they believe there is something to the UFO story. In other words it was a good chance that we were having some aliens sailing the skies in their salsa shaped craft, okay. So I think that they find this interesting to hear that once again the government has kept something from them. I don't find it terribly surprising. I think back to the millions of dollars spent by the Central Intelligence Agency, not terribly long ago, to investigate ESP, Extra Sensory Perception. Now to begin with the whole idea that if we were being visited only the government would have good evidence is bizarre. That would be like the Europeans visiting North America in the 1500s and the only people that could prove there would be the Indian chiefs. I mean that evidence was available to everybody. So in some sense I don't think this as the argument that we are being vetted.

AMT: Seth, can I just ask why do we seem to think that if there is another life form that it has to travel around like we would?

SETH SHOSTAK: Yes I think that's kind of wrong too. It's interesting that this has been going on for more than 60 years now. And these aliens are really great, if they are here, because they don't do anything. They don't improve the traffic situation. They don't solve the climate change problem. They don't kill anybody. They don't do anything except fly around the sky and puzzle some pilots.

AMT: Mark Fester, what's behind the secretive nature of this UFO program do you think?

MARK FENSTER: Well it could be some degree of shame, insofar as this was secret and it was fairly small. It could be some degree of an individual legislator power legislator having a particular interest in something. So in that regard is kind of akin to building a road or building a post-office or some other public building in your district and hoping for some kind for acclaim for it. Of course it is secret but in this sense since we know that Harry Reid has had a particular personal interest in it, as did a couple of other very senior senators who signed off on it. So you know it's an unfortunate aspect of scientific exploration and investigation that something like this has to be done on such a small potatoes and done so secretly.

AMT: Nick Pope, what do you think of that and given the fact that you were running a similar problem in the UK? Is there a stigma around it?

NICK POPE: There certainly is. Yes. Even with my colleagues. You know we were regarded as the X Files unit and people made all sorts of jokes. That's one reason why we dropped the term UFO as I mentioned. I think the other point is, going back to the money on this, as you know the funding was cut. But what's interesting is that one of the people who's been responsible for getting this story out, the guy who actually ran this program for a while, Luis Elizondo has said that although the funding was cut in 2012, the program did continue on a sort of unofficial basis. And so in a way it's gone secret again because I bet it's changed its name and it may even have moved to a different agency. It doesn't surprise me. You can investigate UFOs without spending huge amounts of money because of all the things you need to do like analyse radar tapes. Your radar systems exist, use space tracking radar exists, your imagery analysists exist. So I suspect that these phenomena, that this strange sightings are being looked at still somewhere in government. But they're just hiding yet again.

AMT: Do you think most governments are doing this, Nick?

NICK POPE: Yes they do. I have no doubt that there isn't an air force or government on the planet that isn't going to be interested and concerned with something in its airspace that looks structured and can do the sorts of speeds and maneuvers that we've seen for example in these gun camera footage, doesn't mean it's extraterrestrial of course. I go back to that point. UFO simply means something that you can't identify. It might turn out to be Russian but you know as long as there's a non-zero probability of these things being from somewhere else then why not look at them. Questions like 'are we alone or not in the universe?' and 'are we being visited?' are some of the biggest and most profound questions we can ask ourselves. Why wouldn't we want to get an answer?

AMT: So Mark Fenster, where does the fact that if everybody is dying and nobody's talking about it, where does the conspiracy theory wrinkle come in.

MARK FENSTER: Well interestingly enough this was placed in the Pentagon. It Didn't have to be. It could have been with NASA, it could have been with no other national oceanic and atmospheric administration agency. So the framing of this becomes military and not simply scientific investigation. And of course it's within the Pentagon's [unintelligible]. So it becomes shrouded in the secrecy and the conspiracy theories that are related to, not only aliens, but also to military and military applications in alien technology and the like.

AMT: Seth Shostak you talked about UFOs all the time. What's different about the way the SETI Institute approaches this question?

SETH SHOSTAK: Well we use a different approach altogether. Of course we are not looking for aliens nearby. I think if they were nearby, everybody has their cell phone and with all the satellites that we are making continuous reconnaissance of the [unintelligible] non-deliberately, I think we would know, you know, after six decades or whatever. But we're using began antennas to try and eavesdrop on signals that might be broadcast either deliberately or non-deliberately to other intelligent civilizations. When I say intelligent that just means technological. So that is difference one, is in the approach. The second difference of course is that we don't claim that we found a thing. Not yet. So that is actually a big difference in the UFO community because many in fact claim that they are here. They are definitely here. It's just being covered up. That's a different claim that they say 'we are looking but we haven't found anything so far'.

AMT: Now there have been like there are many like thousands I guess of unexplained things in the sky. How has the ability to look at that changed over time, Seth?

SETH SHOSTAK: Well obviously the biggest thing is that we have satellites. I mean there are thousands of satellites that provide the weather. But there are also military reconnaissance satellites and you can see that being kept secret. But there are plenty of scientists that are busy using satellite data all the time. You know if you went on Google Earth and you saw a saucer over Toronto, you might say 'well that's kind of interesting and we should investigate it'. It should be clear. I agree with Nick that we should look at these things. Of course we should. But you noticed that even though there are probably a few million scientists around the world, very few of them are looking at it. And there attitude is not 'Well, I am not interested,' or 'It couldn't be important.' Their attitude is 'The evidence is very poor.' I heard one scientist say to me if he thought there was percent chance that these UFOs were actually alien crafts, he would spend all his time looking at.

AMT: I should tell you that the Canadian Department of National Defence declined our request for an interview on this subject because we wanted to know what Canada is up to on this front. And they did send us a statement and the statement that DND sent us is superimposed on the image of a UFO flying over a field that looks like a 50s shot. And I have to tell you I have never seen the Department of National Defence in Canada tell us send us an illustrated 'no comment' but this is what they said to us and I'm quoting: " While we understand your interest in the subject of UFO shows, we are not able to provide an interview as you request is outside the scope of our operations. The Canadian Armed Forces focuses on credible threats. We do not comment or facilitate interviews on speculative matters such as this." And again it is superimposed over a picture. We have posted on our Web site, by the way. The Canadian Space Agency also declined our request to talk about any Canadian UFO program saying: "The CSA does not have such a program nor is involved in this issue." What do you think Mark Fenster? [Laughs]

MARK FENSTER: Well, as ever I am impressed by the Canadians' ability to make fun of things [laughs]. The U.S. would not - No U.S. agency, particularly a military agency would lead a little bit of sardonic humour. So of course there is denial. How could there not be a denial. I mean it would be interesting to hear what the Pentagon has to say about the disclosure her. Clearly Luis Alizondo is not being prosecuted at least as of yet for this authorised disclosure of the program that he was part of. And that in itself is potentially telling of how the Pentagon [unintelligible] this.

AMT: Seth Shostack, how confident are you that we will one day make contact with aliens?

SETH SHOSTAK: Oh I'm very confident that we will find evidence that they exist indeed. In fact I think I bet everyone a cup of coffee that that will happen within a couple of decades. That's predicated on the fact that the technology being used to search is improving very rapidly. So yes. I think we'll find something. I mean we're in a galaxy with a trillion planets and we can see two trillion other galaxies. Now you know that those numbers are so enormous to think that this is the only place where there is anything interesting going on is remarkable. But having visitors is a different thing altogether. If we find evidence for aliens I don't think we're going to find it in our skies. We're going to find it in the day that they would come out of for example our telescopes.

AMT: Nick Pope what do you think?

NICK POPE : Well I agree that it's important to continue and actually ramp up the search that Seth is involved with using radio astronomy. I think though that the Pentagon and others will continue to investigate UFOs. I support that. I mean in a sense yes it is a different search strategy, Seth is looking for life out there. I guess the Pentagon and others were looking at some of the things down here. If you can have to search strategies as opposed to one that's very interesting and I support it. I love the Canadian denial by the way. That's quite extraordinary and it's an example of just how difficult this question is for governments. There's the embarrassment factor, there's the giggle factor. Somebody is clearly had a laugh with that press statement. But there is a serious question there and I don't doubt that somewhere in Canada - maybe it's out of government and in the private sector - but somebody will be researching and investigating UFOs. Even if you don't call them UFOs, even if you call them advanced aviation threats.

AMT: Well we have to leave it there. Thank you, gentlemen.

GUESTS: Thank you.

AMT: Nick Pope is the author of Open Skies Closed Minds. He was in charge of UFO investigations for the British military defence in the early 90s. He is an Arizona. Seth Shostack is senior astronomer at SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute and he's in Mountain View, California. Mark Fenster a law professor at the University of Florida author of The Transparency Fix. Stay with us. This is The Current.

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Italy hosts first-ever Tiramisu World Cup

Guest: Megan Williams

AMT: Hello I'm Anna-Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come it's that time of year again.

SOUNDCLIP

The Grinch bottoms something he hasn't before, maybe Christmas - he thought - doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas perhaps, means little bit more.

AMT: Whether you're a Grinch or a regular Kris Kringle you won't want to miss my revealing chat with historian and bestselling author Judith Flanders. She's written a biography of the holiday, myths, fabrications and all, what you don't know about Christmas may surprise you. Here are her in half an hour. But first, bon appetito.

SOUNDCLIP

[Italian speech]

[Applause]

AMT: And with that announcement the first tiramisu World Cup was under way. On a rainy weekend last month contestants travelled from near and far to the northern Italian city of Treviso, for the culinary showdown, all vying to have their tiramisu crowned 'the winner'. It's made with coffee and cocoa and that's where they get the name it translates to 'pick me up'. Tiramisu is a simple but delicious dessert and for many Italians paying tribute to that tradition is an important part of their national identity. Rome based journalist and this week's Friday host of The Current, Megan Williams knows a thing or two about Italians and food. She has been living in Italy for almost two decades and she got the invitation of a lifetime for foodies; to be a judge at the first ever Tiramisu World Championship. Megan joins me in studio to tell us about the sweat and the sweet of the tiramisu showdown. Hi.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Hello Anna Maria.

AMT: What a tough gig. You poor thing.

[Laughter]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: It was awful, it was dangerous too I had to dodge sugar ballots and leap away from carb bombs [laughter] but I made it through a weekend of tasting tiramisu and it was exciting. I mean listen to this crowd.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Loud chatter.

AMT: That is a buzz of activity where are we?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: So were in Treviso. It's a lovely little town in northern Italy picture medieval walls, little canals, cobblestone streets. It's charming but it is overlooked, essentially because it's a stone's throw from Venice and that's where all the tourist go. So you can imagine having 700 contestants pouring from all over Italy for the event was a huge deal for Treviso. Now the crowd we're hearing is in a hotel on the outskirts of town where one of the four groups semi-finalists are gathering. The contestants are crammed into the lobby holding bowls and moulds and special ingredients waiting for their turn at the table.

AMT: Only in Italy, eh? Why a tiramisu competition?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well honestly I think it was inevitable for a couple of reasons. One is there is no excuse too small to celebrate food in Italy as you know being Italian yourself.

AMT: And these are my people, yes.

[Laughter]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: This is actually is like the fourth or fifth food competition that as a journalist I've been asked to judge. I've done pasta. I've done Gelatto. I've done cous-cous I've done wine.

AMT: I had no idea that was such a big gig, keep going.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: It's fantastic.

AMT: I thought you were busy doing you know hard news stories and you're judging all this great food which is better news stories.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Yes it's the compensation for all the other rough work I do. The other reason for the competition is that tiramisu really is the most popular Italian dessert in the world. According to experts, and there are experts on tiramisu, it is the third most popular Italian dish. But like numbers 1 and 2 - which as you can guess is?

AMT: Pizza.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: And?

AMT: Spaghetti.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: That's right - Was invented much more recently in the 1970s.

AMT: I did not realise that. What is the connection to Treviso?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well supposedly that's where the dessert originated but like a lot of inventions, there's some debate about who got there first. But let's hear all about its origins from the person who the most informed in the world about tiramisu. He's called Gigi Padovani and he's written a whole slew of Italian food history books with his wife Clara Vada, including one of the more recent ones called Tiramisu: History, Curiosities and Interpretations of the most beloved Italian Dessert. Here's Gigi on where tiramisu was first made.

SOUNDCLIP

GIGI PADOVANI: We started here in Treviso because people know that the first recipe was in 1970s pastry chef from restaurant[unintelligible] a year. But we discovered that there are another dessert called tiramisu in Friuli Venezia Giulia, another land near Veneto in the east of Italy. And we have also found the recipe we're using now and the Bill of 1959 with tiramisu. So this 'la prova' [speaks in Italian].

MEGAN WILLIAMS: The proof.

GIGI PADOVANI: The proof that tiramisu was born in Tolmezzo, near Friuli Venezia Giullia, near Austria.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: So Anna Maria, Treviso insists that they are the true originators of the version of tiramisu that's made its way around the world and we'll talk shortly about what that version is. But there is that restaurant bill from 1959, from a town in another nearby region, a couple of hours away, but we really don't know if it was the same tiramisu or a slightly different recipe. And we probably never will now because we just have the bill. We don't have the recipe from 1959. So it's up for debate.

AMT: At least they put the origins of tiramisu in the northeast corner of Italy. Now what makes a classic tiramisu?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Okay so what's known as the original recipe consists of mascarpone cheese. You have coffee you have lady Finger Cookies which Italians call 'savoiardi', sugar, eggs and of course the cocoa that is sprinkled on top. Now later there came the addition of Marsala wine which was from Sicily. It's kind of interesting the role that edition played in making tiramisu a fully elegant dessert. Here's Gigi Padovani again.

SOUNDCLIP

GIGI PADOVANI: Spaghetti brought Italy together from the south to the north, but tiramisu form the north to the south. Lady fingers from Piedmont. Coffee arrived in Italy from Venice. Mascarpone cheese in Lombardia near Milan. And Marsala is in Sicily and so you have all Italian cuisine together and this is our proud heritage together.

AMT: And this is obviously adored by Italian families and tourists alike.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: It is, but as with pretty much every popular food item there is the documented history and then there is the myth. And with pasta for instance the myth is that Marco Polo brought it from China. Not true. With tiramisu, there is also a myth which some locals I spoke to insisted was true and it actually involves a brothel. Here's contest organiser Francesco Redi explaining to me the myths as we stood standing in front of the place where the brothel once stood in Treviso.

SOUNDCLIP

FRANSESCO REDI: They say it was used in a brothel, the [unintelligible] but you know it was used before the customer you know for giving more energy when there are in being an evening in the brothel. It Was something like a marketing message 'Okay come here because we also give you the tiramisu and you can extend your performance okay. By eating the tiramisu can also have more energy and last longer'.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Like Viagra.

FRANSESCO REDI: It may be an ancient Viagra.

AMT: [Laughs] An ancient Viagra. That is the best myth yet I've heard for the origin of any food, okay.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: It's not the only presence Viagran myths in Italy. But anyway.

AMT: OK so we have to focus now. Let's get back to the competition. What are the judges looking for? And I'm guessing they weren't looking for Viagra in the tiramisu.

[Laughter]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: We were given a sheet of paper with five criteria: Technical execution i.e. you are sloppy or not. Aesthetic presentation that was like the shape and sprinklings and whatever. Taste intensity. Dish equilibrium. Flavour and harmony which I did not really understand how that was different from dish equilibrium but equilibrium seemed to be a word that judges said a lot, including Francesco Redi.

SOUNDCLIP

FRANSESCO REDI: The champion of the competition must create a tiramisu with a great equilibrium. Equilibrium from a physical point of view; the finger is good the don't have to feel. Equilibrium are in the teens. If you taste too much cork or too much coffee or too much creamer it is not good. In my opinion, the traditional recipe is the best because it gives you a great equilibrium and the taste is really incredible.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: So we heard 'equilibrium' is really key. [Laughter] Now you heard him mention the classic version. At this competition they had two categories. One was the classic which is the original recipe that I just mentioned and the other was creative, and now it was a category that allowed people to do you know a sort of personal dash of creativity that Italians are famed for. And among those who did there was someone who happens to be Canadian. Her name is Alexandra Mason and shes from Hamilton, Ontario but now lives in Italy not far from Treviso.

SOUNDCLIP

ALEXANDRA MASON: So in the ball is the cream that I used and I put a little something special in int, just to be creative and change it up a bit. Cardamom. I thought it would go well because of the facts

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Are you being judged.

ALEXANDRA MASON: I am. Simple and good. That was so far the one comment I had.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Simple but good goes far in Italy.

ALEXANDRA MASON: Exactly you know I was actually hesitating even changing things at all because in Italy people tend to be very fixed on tradition in terms of recipes. So they'll get really offended almost if you do a carbonara, adding cream for example to a carbonara is absolutely ludicrous. But at the end of the day this is for fun and I'm trying something different, so.

AMT: Cardamom tiramisu for fun. That sounds...I'm going to try that. That one's unique. Nice to see Canada represented here.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Oh it was great. Alex's was actually really good.

AMT: So tell us about some of the other creative takes.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: There was a lot of experimentation. I tasted tiramisus with pistachios, Amaretto cookie's persimmons. One guy developed and After Eight theme which felt like a bit of a blast from the 70s and it was way too sweet. That was not one of my favourites. I think the most out there addition though was caramelised onions which were a little slimy but they actually weren't bad. They were sweet. But you know honestly I think tiramisu works 'as is'. So, I appreciated the experimentation but I think really less is more.

AMT: Other that you Megan who had the enviable task of judging all this tiramisu.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well there were a bunch of us. I mean some people were food writers, chefs, there were fellow journalists from different parts of the world, some of the judges were just people who really liked tiramisu and they signed up really and expressed a lot of enthusiasm and got to be a judge. And here's one of those people. Her name is Valentina Daroit.

SOUNDCLIP

VALENTINA DAROIT: I am a buongustaio.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Which means?

VALENTINA DAROIT: I like it. [Laughter] That's my qualification that. I don't like to read truly so normally but tiramisu is one of the.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Exceptions.

VALENTINA DAROIT: Yeah yeah yeah. I think that because it's not so sweet. It doesn't have to be so sweet. And tiramisu it is different from the other sweet things.

AMT: She's a 'buongustaio'. I like that word.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Oh! Good pronunciation, Anna Maria.

AMT: You say there were journalists from different parts of the world. What did they think of all of this?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well that was actually really interesting. There was a Chinese journalist who I got to know named Lee J. And I was curious what she thought of all the culinary craziness that we were part of. And kind of to my amazement, she said that tiramisu is really big in China, I think especially among young urban Chinese. The unbelievable thing is they've actually constructed their own tiramisu myth. So I grabbed Lee Jay outside in the rain just to get away from all the noise and she told me the myth.

SOUNDCLIP

LEE J: Story is like this. Long long ago, like a young couple and husband was set to be a soldier in a war. And before he leave the wife use all the materials they have at home. Just simple materials like cheese, eggs, sugar, coffee, things like this very simple very dearly and they make dessert like this. So Italian it is said tiramisu. In Chinese they translate it like 'take me with you.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: So it's a link to a love story.

LEE J: Yes it is. Now I have to say now in big cities in China it's becoming more and more ordinary for daily dessert.

AMT: They have out-romanticised the Italians on the origins of tiramisu that's fantastic.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I know it was wild.

AMT: Fascinating so it's everywhere. Did you talk to any contestant in the classic category?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Yeah there was. There was one woman who's a business consultant by day and a tiramisu fanatic in her spare time named Elisa Benetti. And I caught up with her just after contestants were told to put down their spatulas.

SOUNDCLIP

MEGAN WILLIAMS: So how did it go?

ELISA BENETTI: Yes, I think fine. It is a bit warm here. So that's why the cream it's a bit going around the plate, but.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Oh you have the tiramisu in the shape of a trophy.

ELISA BENETTI: Exactly. Exactly.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Wishful thinking?

ELISA BENETTI: Yes yes.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: And how many tiramisu do you make a year do you think?

ELISA BENETTI: Two a month so 24.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Two a month and you're slim.

ELISA BENETTI: Yes, because I'm not eating it. I have two brothers younger than me they are eating everything.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: So you make them for your brothers.

ELISA BENETTI: Yes. I can tell you something about when I was in London I met some Korean friends who started to say "oh you know Elisa, we should make a business plan for your tiramisu to open n some tiramisu-eria in Korea, because it is so good."

MEGAN WILLIAMS: All right. Good Luck.

AMT: I'm still stuck on the tiramisu-eria. We need one of those in Canada. We need one of those down the street.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I am sure there's going to be one before we know it.

AMT: I love this idea, and her lucky brothers you know 'make me a tiramisu please, agian.'

[Laughter]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I mean I love my brothers. But talk about going the extra mile. But it really speaks to the absolute central role that food plays in bringing people, families together in Italy. You know the way Italians take such pleasure in sharing recipe which I know that happens everywhere. But what I find different say from Canada - between Canada and Italy is the way people in Italy take such pleasure in talking about food as they're eating the food. So you know it's before, during and afterwards. And just like tiramisu, these aren't usually complicated dishes. I mean you grew up in an Italian household so you know. It's simple ingredients. It's Fresh ingredients. It's Simple presentation and those are all things that came out at the tiramisu competition.

AMT: We've heard that your main qualification is that you like the stuff. How was it to actually judge so many different versions?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: It wasn't easy because yes as you say was not really qualified. So it was actually helpful for me to check in with the other judges before I began judging and to get a sense of what they were looking for. So that I could you know try and discern those same qualities. Here I am chatting with Valentina and a chef who was also a judge name Ricardo.

SOUNDCLIP

MEGAN WILLIAMS: So how how's the judging going?

VALENTINA: Two women over there where really really really good making it.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: What made them especially good?

VALENTINA: The balance of the ingredients.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Can I see your point. Okay so what are you going to give it for technical?

VALENTINA: A five because five for technical execution. It is from 1 to 10. Because the table is not clean.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Her table is not clean. Hr table cloth is smirched.

RICARDO: 56.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I tried that it was a really good. Light. Good balance. Tell me why you think 56 is the best.

RICARDO: Because of the presentation and all the taste inside the mouth. The sapidity was fantastic.

[Laughter]

AMT: The 'sapidity' was fantastic.is he saying that it was flavourful? What is he saying there?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well sort of. Sapidity also means salty in Italian but that could be a mis-translation but he liked it.

AMT: I like the fact that table cloth is smirched and that is a problem. It's so interesting though; the harmony, the balance... It is like I am with. I am floating off into tiramisu heaven.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I know. I just kept hearing those words. It's that certain restraint that you always find in Italian cuisine. It’s funny because you know Italians are renowned for being exuberant and they are, but they are also in the kitchen restraint. They are a people of moderation. They know how to do simplicity and restraint really well.

AMT: We want to know how did our contestants do.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Chatter and applause]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Okay that's the winners of the creative category being announced and Alexandra from Canada she was a runner up, which she was pretty happy with. So they boiled it down - like all of these 700 contestants they boiled down to four people for the finals and two who were from the classic category and two who were from the creative category. Can you guess which version won?

AMT: Just let me think. Okay it's got to be the classic.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Yeah exactly.

AMT: Sorry onions. No onions.

[Laughter]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Exactly. It was completely unsurprising to me that the classic version won. And it was a really lovely guy named Andrea Cicollello. He works in a glasses frame factory in a northern Italian town called Feltre. I had a brief chat with him as he got his prize with tears in his eyes. It was very moving.

SOUNDCLIP

[Conversation in Italian]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: He was just so thrilled to have won then. He says he made it to me every day over the past month or so, perfecting the density of cream and the aesthetic presentation.

AMT: Oh that is dedication.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Yes. He really was dedicated. So there is just one other person that I think we should hear from and that is the man who put Treviso on their tiramisu map. He is the one who claims to have invented or I shouldn't say invented. He claims to have come up with the version that we eat all around the world today.

AMT: So he's still around. He's still alive?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: He is close to 80 and retired now from the restaurant business but he and his wife owned Alle Beccheria in Treviso back in the 1970s when he says he first made the desert. So here's Roberto Linguanotto.

SOUNDCLIP

[Italian speech]

MEGAN WILLIAMS: So he's careful to say that tiramisu was not invented. He said that these are things that come out of pastry kitchen, experiments of combining different ingredients that sometimes work and sometimes don't. But he said it was a success and it's gotten more and more popular over the years.

AMT: Was it an overnight success?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Well Mr. Linguanotto says it took about a year for it to catch on. At first the restaurant made a couple of big ones a day. He said like after the first year and then it sort of jumped to seven and people would start picking up the dessert to take home. Of course he is devoted to the original recipe and shudders at the version he's heard with pineapples for instance.

[Laughter]

AMT: Wow I bet they got a problem with pineapple on the pizza, too.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Yes. Again that's what I found so interesting about this dessert and Italian cuisine in general is you know it's that delicate balance between tradition and creativity, where you want to take a little risk. You want to have space for that personal experimentation but you never want to slide towards what Italians consider absurd.

AMT: We of course have our own perfectionist when it comes to Italian cooking and it's not me.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Her she is. Here she is.

AMT: It is Lara O'Brien the producer here at The Current. One of our producers.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Oh! Wow.

AMT: And Laura has made us a tiramisu.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Points for aesthetic presentation, Lara.

AMT: No besmirching the tablecloth, Lara.

LARA O'BRIEN: You should see the work station at home.

AMT: Cause it has onions?

[Laughter]

LARA O'BRIEN: No onions, and unfortunately I had no Marsala. So I had to use Brandy.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Oh well so creative category.

LARA O'BRIEN: Thank you. Somewhere a freshman is happy. I am sure.

AMT: I'm willing to forgive that.

LARA O'BRIEN: And if you like my lady fingers.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Oh my god that looks delicious. I am sorry you lost points.

LARA O'BRIEN: Oh I have besmirched it.

AMT: She's besmirched the microphone area.

[Laughter]

LARA O'BRIEN: Bon appetito.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Flavor and harmony good. I think I'd give it 9.

AMT: Okay. I'm learning how to judge because maybe I could be a judge next year. Just saying. Just saying.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Dish equilibrium.

AMT: What is that?

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I think it is the way the savoiardi, the lady fingers, float.

AMT: Oh okay well they seem to be doing well. She's in our headphones now and she's saying they're over soaked. No I think they're actually...

MEGAN WILLIAMS: No they are good.

AMT: I am letting you do all the talking because I'm doing all the eating.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: I love the brandy.

AMT: Okay so now we have another business partner for our tiramisu-eria that we are planning to open and advertise on The Current. Meghan Williams we are almost out of time so we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you for sharing your judging abilities with us.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: My complete and utter pleasure.

AMT: And let's split the rest of this house as we move on to something new. Thank you.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Thank you.

AMT: Megan Williams is our Rome based journalist. She is also this week's Friday host of The Current. And we have a link to a classic tiramisu recipe on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent if you are making one send us a picture cbc.ca/thecurrent. Coming up from a stable in Bethleham to Santa's workshop.The symbols and stories of Christmas maybe familiar but how much do we really know about the history and meaning of this holiday? Historian Judith Flanders joins me with the biography of Christmas in our next half hour. She is burst some myths. She is going to do a fact check. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti this is The Current.

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Christmas banned? The unknown, forgotten and surprising history of this holiday tradition

Guest: Judith Flanders

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current group.

SOUNDCLIP

Lights, please.

And they were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field keeping watch over their flock by night.

And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not for, behold, I bring you good findings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day, in the city of David a saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.

That is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

AMT: A classic scene from Merry Christmas Charlie Brown, an answer to Charlie Brown's question about what Christmas really means, Linus quotes the scripture. And since that movie's debut in 1965 watching Charlie Brown and the gang has become part of what Christmas means to many. It's a holiday that's ever changing with an evolving personality of its own. So much so that when historian Judith Flanders set out to write about it she called her book Christmas: A Biography. The bestselling author is joining me to talk about what she discovered. And just a word to parents out there. This will be a grown up discussion about the holidays and its myths and that really may not be appropriate for younger listeners. So seriously if you're pushing a certain narrative to your little darlings and you're not wearing headphones in your years, leave us now. Judith Flanders is in London, England. Hello.

JUDITH FLANDERS: Hi. Nice to be here.

AMT: well. Nice to have you with us. Take me back some 2017 years ago. What was going on in Bethlehem on December 25^th?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Well we didn't know. And Christmas as such was certainly not going on. There are many uncertainties about the Bible story. I'm not a Biblical historian. So I can only tell you very roughly what those problems are. But biblical scholars point out there are many - not even discrepancies - but there are many elements of the story that simply don’t fit. First of all of course the gospels`, the two gospels that mention the birth of Christ, weren't actually written until nearly 100 years after the supposed event. Christmas itself, the Feast of the Nativity as laid down by the Catholic Church, is not established until the fourth century.

AMT: And who establishes itÉ?

JUDITH FLANDERS: The bishop of Rome.

AMT: Why?

JUDITH FLANDERS: I didn't ask him.

[Laughter]

JUDITH FLANDERS: They decided the Nativity should be marked as part of the church calendar and the 25th of December it is chosen. Why they chose the 25th of December is uncertain. Biblical scholars today suggest that there are other dates that would be far more likely to be the date of the Nativity, including I understand a date in April, a date in May, a date in September. Certainly very many things that you don't have to be a biblical scholar to understand are a little odd about the story. For instance, were told the shepherds are watching their flocks by night. So you have the animals out grazing at night which we know does not happen in winter. In winter animals are brought into the village where it's warm. So Christmas and the Nativity should not be confused.

AMT: So when did Christmas start when did Christians start celebrating and over eating and over drinking on Christmas?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Well that to me was the totally fascinating part because as I said the Bishop of Rome named the 25th of December, which was then the solstice, the shortest day of the year, as Christmas in the fourth century. Within three decades we know that an archbishop of Constantinople was mourning his flock against what he called excessive feasting and also he said dancing on the day. Now we know that nobody warns people about things that aren't happening. Nobody says to children don't put beans up your nose because children don't on the whole put beans up their nose. Equally, nobody warns you against excessive feasting if no one is feasting excessively.

AMT: Was giving presence always part of Christmas?

JUDITH FLANDERS: No presents were a thing in the Roman Empire on New Year. And for a long time - My idea is that Christmas has always been about consumption but what that consumption is has changed over the centuries. In the early days it was about food and especially about drink. Later on it became about presents but really that is a thing of the industrial age, when mass production makes presence more available to more people.

AMT: So give us the years we are talking...

JUDITH FLANDERS: Really the 19th century is when we start to shift Christmas from being about adults, about being about food and being about large quantities of alcohol, to being about children and being about presents and large quantities of alcohol.

AMT: Okay so that's a bit of a reality check. You look at the fact that Fox News has a long history of saying there is a war on Christmas going on in the United States and not to mention the fact that President Trump has vowed to defeat that war. Was there ever really a time then when celebrating Christmas in a Christian country was banned?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Absolutely and as I like to point out the only war on Christmas that we know of has been waged by the Christian church. There has been a war on Christmas in the 17th century when the what we now call retrospectively the Puritan elements of the Christian church decided that, since there is no mention of Christmas in the Bible, there is no scriptural reference to Christmas, therefore it wasn't a real thing. And celebrating Christmas was, according to Puritan belief, anti-Christian. And so in both the Puritan North America and in England under the Commonwealth - so that's 20 years basically in the 17th century - Christmas is banned. Officially Christmas does not exist.

AMT: And what's the backlash like?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Well what happens of course is it makes Christmas ever more secular. Those religious people who had observed Christmas by going to church said "Okay well we'll go to the pub instead. We'll go to the tavern. We'll do excessive feasting and dancing," and so Christmas becomes even more secular than it had always been, and it was always secular.

AMT: And so eventually they un-ban Christmas but Scotland forgets, does it not?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Scotland is a sort of sneaky little exception. The Scottish Kirk, the church didn't approve of Christmas. And so they managed to re-ban it in 1690 and then somehow 'oops' they forgot to un-ban it and it stayed banned until 1958. So as far as I know Scotland is the only place on earth where for a quarter of a millennium Christmas was banned.

AMT: When does Santa Claus make his appearance?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Sanders a real interesting question because ultimately we have to say we you really don't know. The core of Santa comes at the beginning of the 19th century in 1808-1809 when Washington Irving the short story writer from New York and his friends start to weave together the story of St. Nicholas and this new character called Santa Claus. Washington Irving wrote amongst other things something called the Knickerbocker History of New York in which he told of the old days of New York when it was New Amsterdam, and in this he claimed that St. Nicholas was the patron saint of New York. Now actually it wasn't a history. It was satire and St. Nicholas was not the patron saint of New York. He made it up. But very swiftly people forgot that this was satire and they read it as history. And so that's where a lot of the confusion comes from about the merger of St. Nicholas and Santa Claus. We have however two very puzzling mentions from 1773 and 1774 which is a decade before Washington Irving is born. And in a New York newspaper it mentions that there will be a meeting at which Santa Claus will attend. Now we have no idea how this occurs, what it means, where it comes from. It's just a mystery.

AMT: Because it doesn't continue until again around 1808-09.

JUDITH FLANDERS: Exactly it's 40 years where there's no further mention. Now my suggestion - and it's very much a suggestion I have no evidence and no proof - is that rather than this being a Dutch story which, in my mind, Washington Irving and his friends almost entirely make up is what might be the case is in me eighteenth century, there had been a large emigration from amongst other places Switzerland. And in Schweitzerdeutsch, in the German Swiss language, there were depending on where you came from, two names for St. Nicholas. One was Sante Claus and one was Sami Claus and to me those sound an awful lot more like St. Nicholas than St. Nikolaus, the Dutch name. So my wondering is whether those early newspaper references are to events held by Swiss German immigrants.

AMT: And then evolves from there.

JUDITH FLANDERS: Yes.

AMT: Okay so I've got something I want you to hear. This is a bit from a Christmas classic. It is Kris Kringle speaking with wannabe Santa Claus Alfred in the 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Imagine making a child take something it doesn't want just because he bought too many at the wrong toys. That's what I have been fighting against for years. The way they commercialize Christmas.

VOICE 2: Yes there is a lot of [unintelligible] floating around as well. But one of the worst is commercialism. Make a buck, make a buck. Even in Brooklyn it is the same. Don't care what Christmas stands for. Just make a buck. Make a buck.

AMT: Judith Flanders it's interesting that Kris Kringle, otherwise known as Santa Claus, is condemning commercialism when in fact Santa Claus has been the face of commercialism for decades, hasn't he?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Santa Claus has been the commercial leader virtually since he was invented. From the 1880s there are shops that have Santa Claus advertising. From the 1890s named Santa Claus appears in toy stores. Santa Claus sells. That's his job.

AMT: Do we know when people went from homemade Christmas ornaments to mass market ornaments?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Oh absolutely. The Christmas tree in arrived in German speaking lands in the 17th and 18th century but it was then primarily decorated with candles. Christmas decorations are slower to evolve. And as the tree spreads particularly in the English speaking world, to England in the 19th century and to America at the same time, you have the increase in decoration. And originally, what Christmas decorations there were, were virtually gifts themselves. They were fruit. They were nuts. They were cookies that were tied on, decorated and painted. So the tree itself was in effect the display of the gifts.

AMT: And when does that change?

JUDITH FLANDERS: As the 19th century progresses the decorations change. And one of the things that happen is you get decorations which stop being the presents themselves and become holders for the presents. So there are little baskets or there little paper cones which hold the fruit and nuts and the other small presents. But by 1848 there's a very famous engraving of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with their tree. And by 1848 there are presents for the children under the tree.

AMT: Are there any angels on top of that tree at this point?

JUDITH FLANDERS: There are. The German tradition of having an angel on the tree, a golden angel, travels pretty well immediately with the tree. And we have a reference in the 1850s. Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin describes that her mother made what she calls their no longer an angel but a fairy that goes on top of the tree. This is absolutely traditional really from the 19th century onwards.

AMT: Another iconic part of Christmas of course is the Charles Dickens book A Christmas Carol. How did that book change the way people thought about Christmas?

JUDITH FLANDERS: I think it didn't change the way people thought about Christmas. I think what it did was it reinforced it. It showed that you didn't have to think of Christmas as an old fashioned pastime, something that you know the Squire did with the happy merry peasants in the countryside. But that Christmas now was every bit as much an urban and commercial holiday and could be celebrated by people in cities every bit as much as in the countryside, which was of course the older tradition.

AMT: We have a bit from another holiday a classic. This is Alastair Sims as Scrooge in the 1951 movie A Christmas Carol.

SOUNDCLIP

Step this way Mr. [unintelligible], please.

Itis only once a year, Sir. It won't be repeated.

I was making rather merry yesterday, Sir.

I'm sure you were. Well, we won't beat about the bush, my friend. I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer, which leaves me no alternative but to raise your salary.

[Laughter]

AMT: Okay so there you go Alastair, isn't that wonderful. 1951 A Christmas Carol. So Scrooge wakes up after being visited by the spirits of Christmas past, Christmas present, Christmas future. He's a reformed man but what is the message of his Christmas rehabilitation?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Well the message is told by Dickens. Actually it's not Scrooge who gives the message in the book. It's Scrooge's nephew Fred who says 'I believe that Christmas is a good time a kind forgiving charitable pleasant time. The only time I know of in the long calendar of the year when men and women seem by one concerned to open their shared parts freely and to think of people below them as if they were really fellow passengers to the grave and not in another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket I believe that it has done me good and will do me good. And I say God bless it.' And that's the core of the Christmas message. It's not about religion to Dickens and it's not about commercialism. It's about people opening their shut up hearts. It's about sharing. And whether it is sharing with a family or sharing with a community, it's part of the reason that we always believe Christmas was better before. 'Oh it's too commercial now. It's to this now. It used to be better.' It's because we can imagine a perfect Christmas.

AMT: So it was Charles Dickens who spelled out what a perfect Christmas was.

JUDITH FLANDERS: I think so.

AMT: But interesting enough, his main character actually sees it as a moment to spend.

JUDITH FLANDERS: Well the interesting thing of course about Scrooge's repentance I think is that what he does with his reform. He goes out and he buys food for the Cratchits where he sends somebody to buy food for the Cratchit family. He increases Cratchits wages. It's as though Dickens can't actually think of any way of expressing this warmth except through money.

AMT: Which again brings us around to the idea of that of Christmas being commercial.

JUDITH FLANDERS: Of course and as I said from the beginning it's always been about consumption. And even a genius like Dickens, who disguises it very well, can't make it about anything else.

AMT: So every year around this time people watch classic Christmas movies or at least they are offered them on every station, that are filled with nostalgia for past Christmases. What is the connection between longing for the past and Christmas?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Christmas has always been about longing for the past. As far as I could track back. I found a reference dated from 1616. A Play by Ben Johnson where one of the characters basically says 'Oh Christmas used to be so much better. Today it's nothing compared to what it used to be.' So it's not that we have nostalgia about Christmas. Christmas is about nostalgia. Christmas is about believing in a better time. Whether it was the better, simpler, happier times of our own childhood or the better, simpler, happier times that we imagine some other date. The Victorians in the 19th century looks back to the Tudors in the 16th century and said 'Oh Christmas was better then.' We today look back at Norman Rockwell pictures of the 1950s and say 'oh it was better then.' That is the core of Christmas believing in a past happy time.

AMT: And that sometimes in manifesting people who try to- they want to make a pact like a happy time to I guess cover the fact that past times weren't happy.

JUDITH FLANDERS: Of course. I mean do we want to go back to the 1950s? Not particularly. I mean imagine apart from anything else, the dentistry.

AMT: So that gets right in line back with the spending. You can spend your way back to that nostalgia.

JUDITH FLANDERS: Yes, yes. We buy a happier time.

AMT: So let's talk about Christmas trees. You write that the public use of Christmas trees often has political purposes. Can you give us examples of that?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Well the most obvious one living in London is the enormous Christmas tree that is erected in Trafalgar Square every year which has been going up since the 1940s. And it is sent to the City of London by the city of Oslo in Norway, in - it says always - thanks for the British help for the Norwegians in World War II. So apolitical thinks for a political event is expressed - has been expressed now - for half a century and more with a Christmas tree.

AMT: Are there others?

JUDITH FLANDERS: The other trees which may not have started as political events become political events. For example the tree at Rockefeller Center in New York which was a private event it was erected originally - the very first tree was erected simply by the workmen who were building Rockefeller Center. After that the owners of Rockefeller Center have been putting it up. One year after Hurricane Katrina children who were displaced from New Orleans were brought to be part of that ceremony. After 9/11 there were elements that were expressly designed - the people who were part of the ceremony were there to be there as solidarity for those who had been lost in 9/11. And nobody thinks twice about it. It's very interesting that it is so much part of our existence that we think 'that would be a sensible thing to do.' But why would a Christmas tree be political and yet it is.

AMT: That was the case that's very famous, Nova Scotia sends a Christmas tree as a thank you every year to Boston for the help that it got from Bostonians for the Halifax Explosion in 1917.

JUDITH FLANDERS: That is right. So a century later it's still happening.

AMT: There are other ways that Christmas trees are political, though. How have the Nazis used Christmas trees?

JUDITH FLANDERS: Well the Nazi Christmas tree thing is very interesting because what they did was they used the Christmas tree and other Christmas elements to try and build up an image of a pre-Christian ritual, claiming that these were pagan traditions that went back to pre-Christian era. They were they claimed - Arian. Now as we know Arian doesn't actually mean very much and these rituals are certainly not pre-Christian. They took their oath of allegiance, the essay, the paramilitary unit took their oath of allegiance under Christmas trees. It became a symbol they called it 'the symbol of national unity'. And each district took turns to send a tree to the Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin. Similarly it worked the other way. In Washington after Pearl Harbor, which was of course December 7tt, a blackout had been imposed after Pearl Harbor. But the Christmas lighting ceremony outside the White House was considered politically important enough that it went ahead despite their supposedly being a blackout.

AMT: You studied how Christmas has changed over the centuries. What's the most important thing that continues to sustain the holiday?

JUDITH FLANDERS: I truly think it's nostalgia. It's the feeling of community that is given by this constant sense of renewal and looking backwards. It sounds contradictory but I think that really it pulls people together.

AMT: Okay and I guess the whole idea that we are somehow succumbing to commercialization isn't true that that's part of a tradition that's being upheld.

JUDITH FLANDERS: Exactly.

AMT: Okay. Well happy shopping Judith Flanders.

JUDITH FLANDERS: Happy holidays. Bye bye.

AMT: Historian Judith Flanders. Her book is called Christmas: A Biography. And she joined us from London, England. That's our program for today. Stay with Radio 1 for Q. Tom Powers speaking to the screen writers behind one of the most anticipated movies of the year, The Post, about the publishing of the Pentagon Papers. After our conversation about the iconic Italian dessert tiramisu, we thought we'd leave you with another Italian icon Sophia Loren. This is Sophia Loren in 1999 teaching talk show host David Letterman how to make tiramisu with limited success. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID LETTERMAN: Junior cookbook is that right.

SOPHIA LOREN: Yes. Of course.

DAVID LETTERMAN: Tiramisu. A lot of times when people talk on the show we get a little crazy and we never actually complete anything.

SOPHIA LOREN: And you know if you are in a bad mood, and if you are a kind of low, this kind really perks you up and it lightens your spirit, if not your body.

DAVID LETTERMAN: All right. Fine. I will be right here if you need me and you take folks through this.

SOPHIA LOREN: I have to do everything for you?

DAVID LETTERMAN: Well it is your cookbook.

SOPHIA LOREN: As a usual husband. Like every husband. Every husband

[Cheers and applause]

DAVID LETTERMAN: She thinks of me as a husband.

[Cheers and applause]

SOPHIA LOREN: Shall we start?

DAVID LETTERMAN: All right. I will help you. You tell me what to do I'll just be right here if you need me.

SOPHIA LOREN: The yolks. The yolks you put it here

DAVID LETTERMAN: Separate the eggs.

SOPHIA LOREN: Yes. And the white here.

DAVID LETTERMAN: Oh damn.

[Laughter]

SOPHIA LOREN: You can't do that. Impossible. You beat the eggs up. You put sugar in it. It is going to be a messy tiramisu. I must tell u.

DAVID LETTERMAN: It is going to be beautiful. It is a 'pick me up' Italiano. Get over here. Taste it. Taste the tiramisu. Look at how beautiful it is. Look at that. There is the finished product right there.

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Wednesday December 20, 2017 Full Episode Transcript

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