It’s always interesting interacting with new people.

You spend time weighing personalities and sort of testing people out in conversation. You also tend to come across things you’ve never heard of, like the Christmas Pickle.

I like to think I know a lot about Christmas. After all, I am gearing up for my 26th yuletide season and 26 times is usually enough to understand just about anything. But at a Saturday night shindig, I was made aware of the Christmas Pickle tradition, one that sounded quite made-up.

It helped the “that’s not real” case that the other four people within earshot of the Christmas Pickle tale had never heard of it either. It took walking to the other side of the room and soliciting more opinions before the tale was confirmed.

Today at lunch I asked my companions, and they further cemented its legitimacy. Apparently it involves hiding a pickle ornament somewhere on the tree apparatus with a prize going to whomever finds it first. Some said they thought it had German roots, but during my Internet research I came across this article that says the Germans have no idea what they are talking about.

You have to be somewhat skeptical of anything these days that doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page. I mean, global warming has an extensive Wiki entry and lots of people don’t think it exists.

I think if you have a tradition that involves prizes, there should be a set of rules involved. So far, none of the Christmas Picklers have been able to explain contingencies for simultaneous findings. There also seems to be little concern about a prize-involved search involving kids, Christmas excitement and a tree full of ornaments. Seems to me that somewhere along the line there would be some sort of tree-toppling disaster.

Then again, the tradition did lead to the creation of this wonderful piece of stop motion animation.

Merry Pickle to all, and to all a good night.