New Delhi: It's Christmas, and Google has posted a second doodle in its "Happy Holidy" series. The new Happy Holidays doodle features a brightly-lit street with an Xmas tree across the street and the letters of Google written underneath. Second in the series, the doodle has design elements similar to the doodle posted on Christmas Day Eve.
The doodle posted on December 24 featured a one-horse open sleigh dashing through the snow. Google has been wishing its users with a pre-Christmas doodle for over 10 years now. In 2012 Happy Holidays doodle on the Google homepage had a parade of toys, some of whom were playing different musical instruments. The grand master leading the parade was welcoming the festive season, and the letters of the word Google were seen in the backdrop.
In 2011, Google happy holidays doodle was made up of lit up holiday symbols - snowflake, Santa Claus, bell, snowman, candle and a gift box - on a dark background, symbolising the night sky. The Google logo appeared as a faint outline behind the holiday icons.
In 2010, Google had put up a doodle of interactive portraits of holiday scenes from around the world. Before 2010, Google used multiple doodles for the holiday season.
In popular culture, eight flying reindeer pull Santa's sleigh as he delivers presents to children around the world on Christmas Eve. That scenario was first described in the 1820s by American poet Clement Clarke Moore. More than 100 years later, American writer Robert L. May added Rudolph with his red nose leading the way.
Some of the story is rooted in reality, as migrating reindeer herds are usually led by a single animal.
But there's debate on the origins of the flying reindeer, and some have traced it to reindeer eating hallucinogenic mushrooms. Ancient Sami shamans, the theory goes, would then drink filtered reindeer urine and get high themselves, then think they were seeing their reindeer "flying."
"Mushrooms have been used to a certain extent in shamanic ceremonies," says Arja Jomppanen, a researcher at Sida, the National Museum of the Finnish Sami in Inari. "But drinking urine has not been mentioned in accounts of Sami traditions."
Hakan Rydving, an expert in Sami religion at Norway's University of Bergen, firmly rejected the theory as a myth.
"There is no such information at all from the Sami world, neither about drinking the urine of reindeer, nor of seeing flying reindeer in their dreams," he said.
Comments
0 comment