Sasha Sagan
speaker
98 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Sasha Sagan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Those are the only two options.
It's co-opted from the winter solstice Roman stuff.
Yes, that's right. Yes. I mean, my ancestors, when I do a DNA test, it's like 100. I think they can only say like 99.9%. But it's like Ashkenazi Jew. And I'm like, I know.
I do everything. So we do Hanukkah as a kind of like historical reenactment. You know, like we do it in this way to say to our children, like, this is what your ancestors were doing for thousands of years. And see this thematic through line about the light and the darkness. The days are short in the Northern Hemisphere. And so we do this.
And then my husband's family, my husband's also secular, but his family is historically Christian. And, you know... And my mother-in-law does a lot of fun Christmas stuff. And we do that stuff too. And again, in the context of like, this is a way to honor our ancestors. And, you know, also because Christmas is so... I mean, it's so ubiquitous.
It's like, you have to really make a choice to not celebrate it, you know?
Well, they have to deal with... And then it makes it more attractive.
Yeah. Totally. And I mean, it's not like I mean, it wouldn't be fair just because, you know, my husband did grow up with Christmas. So it's like if I'm allowed to do my secular Hanukkah thing, we got to do that, too. And then the other thing that we do is the winter solstice. And it's not in like a witchy way, although I have a lot of, you know, no shade about that, but in a way of saying, OK.
Tomorrow, no matter what, the days are going to start getting longer again. And right now it gets dark very early and that is unpleasant. But because of the axial tilt of the earth and the way it goes around the sun, tomorrow, I promise you, little by little, we will have more sunlight and eventually return to summer. And we do like, you know, a dinner and we celebrate that too.
And I just think all the cultural stuff I love, you know, but I think getting to the part that is irrefutable and real and good that like the days are going to start getting longer and that's amazing is worth celebrating.
No, we do not do any Santa, I should say. We do gifts on Christmas, usually, with my husband's family.
Santa drives me crazy. No middleman.
You can do that anytime. No, I feel, so on Strange Customs, we did an episode about Santa and it's called The Conspiracy and it's with Nicole Richie, actually, and it's really funny. And, you know, this idea that like, it is like, I mean, don't, that maybe also sets children up to believe in conspiracies because it is a, I mean, the idea that NORAD is like in on this lie is incredible.
dollars are spent i mean it's amazing how much effort we all collectively put in and it's like almost this like one of the most taboo things is to like blow that up for children and like don't worry i don't go around being like you know that's bullshit like when i pick my daughter up from second grade um don't worry
She's going to have to start taking the bus home if you insist on showing up at pick up.
No, I say that everyone eventually finds out. I'm not going to ever lie to you, but it's not for us to tell other children because their parents have a plan for when they're going to find out. And you know, what's funny though, is there's another fictional character who I did kind of, I mean, luckily my daughter's really skeptical. So it's now like this running joke, open secret, but
I don't feel as strongly about like the tooth fairy as I do about Santa. Why is that?
It's interesting because it's like so the scholar that we interviewed about this on my podcast was saying that one of the big differences is everybody can picture Santa. But the tooth fairy is like very open to interpretation. And it's like not like a singular creature that like everybody agrees on. So it's sort of more it doesn't feel like this lie.
It just feels like this, like amorphous, like joke. And it's also not like the magic is ruined when you find out that your mother put two dollars under your pillow. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yes. And it's the I mean, if you want to talk about strange customs, it is the weirdest thing ever. I mean, imagine if it was not like if we hadn't all grown up with it and you were reading in like an anthropology textbook about some distant place.
Showing 21–40 of 98 · page 2 of 5
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