SPEAKER_14: Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at iXcel.com slash invisible. That's the letters iXcel dot com slash invisible. Squarespace is the all in one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell anything. Your products, content you create and even your time. You can easily display posts from your social profiles on your website or share new blogs or videos to social media. Automatically push website content to your favorite channels so your followers can share it too. Go to squarespace dot com slash invisible for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. A quick note. The following story acknowledges the existence of Santa Claus and explores his origin story. If you or someone in the car seat next to you are not ready to hear that, well, you might want to save this episode for another time. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Slovenia is a small country in central Europe, nestled between Italy, Austria, Croatia and Hungary. It's a land of snowy white peaks, green valleys and turquoise rivers. It's beautiful in all seasons, although especially at Christmas time.
SPEAKER_11: It snowed really early on during my first winter here, and it was just magical. It felt like I was walking through a Christmas card. That's reporter Will Aspinall. I moved here from the UK with my wife and young family back in 2018 because we were enchanted with Slovenia's landscape and wanted a new life for the kids. And in that first year, we were really curious what Christmas was going to be like in this snow globe of a country. We love Christmas, and I thought we did it pretty well back in Britain. But let's just say what Slovenia gets up to every December kind of blew us away.
SPEAKER_14: Like children in the US or the UK, Slovenian kids are visited by Santa Claus every Christmas Eve. They call him Božiček.
SPEAKER_05: My name is Božiček. These are the voices of kids that I recorded at my daughter Marni's elementary school.
SPEAKER_11: Karparniše, bumbone, paegrače.
SPEAKER_04: I like Santa because he brings me sweeties and pretices. And that's Marni translating.
SPEAKER_11: But kids in Slovenia don't have to settle for just one Santa. They also have a more traditional option available. A Catholic saint called Miklauš, who dishes out the gifts on the night of December 5th. My name is Miklauš.
SPEAKER_04: She likes Miklauš because when you go to the show, he throws down sweeties and also brings presents.
SPEAKER_14: And if you're a kid in Slovenia thinking, geez, two Santas just really doesn't feel like enough. Well, don't worry. There is yet another option.
SPEAKER_11: He's a festive figure who comes down from the country's highest mountain every New Year's day to shower the children of Slovenia with good wishes and yet more presents.
SPEAKER_03: My name is Múše de de Kumaš.
SPEAKER_11: His name, if you didn't catch it, is Dedek Maras, Grandpa Frost.
SPEAKER_04: He's got a big beard and she's got a stick. It was good with Dedek Maras because we took a picture with him and had a fun time.
SPEAKER_11: If you're doing your sums, that means that this nation of just over two million people is visited by not one, not two, but three different Santas every festive season. As far as I know, they have the highest Santa to citizen ratio of any country in the world.
SPEAKER_11: When I found out about Slovenia's three Santas, I had so many questions. Why was one Santa not enough for these people? Where on earth did they all come from and how do they manage to coexist? It turns out that each Santa has had his moment in the spotlight,
SPEAKER_14: each in a different period of Slovenia's complicated history.
SPEAKER_11: Today, if you want a Christmas season that reflects that history and speaks to all Slovenians, you need all three magical men.
SPEAKER_14: The people of Slovenia have long been protective of their customs and language, and you can understand why. For hundreds of years, they were ruled by the Habsburg Empire, one of the most powerful dynasties in Europe. Their language superficially was German because they were part of the empire.
SPEAKER_10: That's art historian and self-described anglophone cheerleader of Slovenia, Noah Charny.
SPEAKER_11: But anyone living at home and going about their daily activities would have spoken Slovenian,
SPEAKER_10: and so that preservation of the language has helped keep them a relatively homogenous, solid group, despite all of the issues that plagued Europe over the past centuries.
SPEAKER_11: The Slovenes were a distinct group of people with their own language, but they did share the same religion with almost all other subjects of the Habsburg Empire, Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholics loved their saints, and around Christmas time, there was only one saint that mattered. Enter Slovenia's first magical Christmas man, Saint Nicholas.
SPEAKER_11: Saint Nicholas, or Sveti Maclauch in Slovene, was a bishop born in the third century CE. There are a lot of stories that surround Saint Nicholas, some of them very gory and un-Christmassy, but the one that matters for our purposes is about a poor old man who got so desperate he was about to sell his daughters into prostitution. Saint Nicholas intervened by delivering bags of gold coins to the man's house in the middle of the night.
SPEAKER_14: Saint Nick coming in with an extremely intense origin story.
SPEAKER_11: And his saint day on December 6 is when Slovenian children traditionally received presents while they were sleeping, just like those bags of gold one and a half millennia ago. But the action really happened the night before, during Maclauch-a-Vanje, Saint Nicholas Eve. In the capital, Ljubljana, there was a church-sponsored parade, with Maclauch at the center, dressed like a Catholic bishop with that iconic pointed hat, golden slippers, and a curling bishop's staff.
SPEAKER_10: Saint Nicholas, in the Slovenian tradition, is kindly, but he's accompanied by a group of little demons called partleni. And their role is essentially as a tool to be used by parents to frighten children into being obedient. And these partleni, these demons, are supposed to carry around clanking chains that they drag you off with.
SPEAKER_14: That is intensely spooky for a Christmas story.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, Maclauch-a-Vanje really knocks Halloween into a cocked hat. Some of the people I spoke to were genuinely traumatized by it, because in rural areas, people would actually dress up as these demons and take the opportunity to torment local children. Maclauch was Slovenia's only Santa for generations, until the 1940s, when the country traded one empire for another and swapped Santas in the process.
SPEAKER_11: When the Austro-Hungarian Empire crumbled after World War I, the Slovene peoples decided to join a collection of six nations who identified themselves ethnically as Southern, or Yugoslavs. Yugoslavia was born.
SPEAKER_14: At first, Yugoslavia was a monarchy, but after World War II, it became a communist country, led by a charismatic strongman named Josip Braš, better known as Tito. Under Tito, Catholicism was suppressed, and Saint Nicholas, aka Maclauch, was banned.
SPEAKER_11: So after World War II, the new Yugoslav communist authorities wanted to banish religious customs from public life,
SPEAKER_15: and they wanted to replace them with the new, let's say, socialist holidays. That's Nina Židó, a curator at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum, who has researched this period.
SPEAKER_11: And I must say that I even met one man. He was playing the role of Saint Nicholas, and then the police came,
SPEAKER_15: and he told me that he was in the prison for two days because of playing the role of Saint Nicholas.
SPEAKER_11: Banning dressing up as a Catholic saint was one thing, but taking away presents for children during the darkest month of the year would have been unforgivable. Tito knew that, and so he needed something, or rather someone, to take Maclauch's place. Exit Maclauch, enter our next magical Christmas man.
SPEAKER_11: At this point, Yugoslavia relied on the Soviet Union for economic assistance, and Tito decided to borrow from its culture, too. Since the 1930s, the Soviet Union had deployed a communist Santa to hand out the gifts.
SPEAKER_10: And that figure is called in Russian, dead moroz, or Grandfather Frost. In Slovenia, he's called Dedik Meras. Dedik Meras looked like an enormous bearded man from the Russian countryside.
SPEAKER_10: He would appear in factories, and if we're being pragmatic, he was probably someone from the factory team dressed up. The children would come to the factory, and then they would have this positive association with going to the factory, and the parents would feel that the factory was the one giving the gifts to their children. And it's this good communist alternative to Catholic Saint Nicholas or capitalist Santa Claus. But a political crisis threatened to end Dedik Meras before he had even had a chance to spread the holiday cheer.
SPEAKER_11: Joseph Stalin wanted Yugoslavia to become a puppet state for the Soviet Union, but Tito was having none of it. And Stalin didn't take kindly to Tito's independence streak.
SPEAKER_14: There is clear evidence that Stalin tried to have him assassinated on at least 20 different occasions,
SPEAKER_10: including with such James Bond-like gadgetry as a music box that released nerve gas.
SPEAKER_14: Tito eventually outlawed all Soviet influence in Yugoslavia, but he wanted to keep Dedik Meras. Just not dressed like a Russian. He wanted to, you know, Yugoslav him up a bit. But Tito's initial attempts were a little haphazard.
SPEAKER_11: Over the next few Christmases, Grandpa Frost appeared dressed up as a soldier, a miner, a sailor, even a striking worker, basically socialist archetypes of Yugoslav proletarian heroes. Yeah, at the beginning it was quite political, like Dedik Meras was bringing the greetings from Tito.
SPEAKER_15: But neither the original recipe Russian Dedik Meras or the Yugoslavian cosplay version really caught on in Slovenia.
SPEAKER_11: The people just didn't buy it. It felt phony. And so Tito decided to allow each of the six Yugoslav nations, including Slovenia, to design their own bespoke version of Grandpa Frost.
SPEAKER_14: And Slovenia, this country that had long been a part of a bigger empire, took the opportunity to redesign Dedik Meras and turn him into something distinctly Slovenian.
SPEAKER_11: A 69-year-old painter called Maxime Gasparri was brought in to handle the design. This was a genius decision because although Gasparri was a classically trained artist, he was first and foremost a commercial illustrator with a broad fan base. I think of him as a Slovenian Norman Rockwell. And when it came to Christmas, Gasparri knew what would appeal to as many Slovenes as possible. He tends to be known to the general public because he did this series of paintings that were made into postcards and collectibles of folk scenes related to the Christmas holiday.
SPEAKER_10: They're very twee now, but this was the Christmas aesthetic that people would be used to in Slovenia. In 1952, Gasparri created three postcards of his new, updated, Slovenian version of Dedik Meras.
SPEAKER_14: He's smoking an old-fashioned decorated pipe that is associated with this one small town in the mountains. He's got a long sheepskin coat with these ancient Slovenian flower motifs on the coattails. And he's got a hat made out of Dormouse fur.
SPEAKER_11: Dormouse were one of the few sources of protein available to the rural poor and it takes a lot of Dormouse to make a hat.
SPEAKER_10: And Dedik Meras is like that. He is a trapper who hunts Dormouse. He is not wealthy, but what wealth he has, he shares by bringing gifts to children. Slovenian fairy tales are full of modest and humble heroes who rise to the challenge when needed.
SPEAKER_14: Mountain men ready to answer the call. So Gasparri was making sure that his Dedik Meras spoke directly to the character of the people.
SPEAKER_11: A voluntary organization called the Association of Friends of Youth was in charge of the Dedik Meras rollout. They made 10 identical costumes from Gasparri's designs and in 1952, the new Dedik Meras made appearances in and around the capital. This was followed by a booklet called Dedik Meras pri haja, Dedik Meras is Coming, in 1957. The booklet had one main instruction. Dedik Meras was a fairy tale figure designed only for kids.
SPEAKER_14: He wasn't a piece of state propaganda the way Stalin or Tito had treated him. He was fun.
SPEAKER_11: Translated into English, the booklet said, Dedik Meras is not a didactic figure, but a lively, cheerful, witty, fairy tale figure that sinks into the child's world so the child comes to life with it. And it seems to have worked.
SPEAKER_08: I believe Dedik Meras was real when I was young.
SPEAKER_11: This is my friend Jasna. She was a child of the Slovenian 70s and 80s and grew up with the distinctly Slovenian Dedik Meras. You know, because you really saw him because he came to kindergarten.
SPEAKER_08: He was not a fictional character, you know, that you see it only on TV or just hear stories about him or, you know, he will come during night and no, he came in during day. He came to you. He gave you his hand. He hugged you. So it was a real person. And it gets better because they also hired one of the greatest writers of children's songs in Slovenia, Janes Vytense, to give Dedik Meras his own catchy theme song.
SPEAKER_14: Siva kučma bela brada.
SPEAKER_08: I don't remember the words. Just a second.
SPEAKER_08: Here it is.
SPEAKER_07: Siva kučma bela brada. Topo kučma južvar kankož. Jože prýše uyemed naž. Stari do brý dedik meras. Grey hat, white beard, warm coat, full basket. Oh, he's already come among us. Good old Dedik Meras.
SPEAKER_11: Red balls, books, notebooks, dolls, sleds and more. Oh, he's already come among us. Good old Dedik Meras.
SPEAKER_07: Jože prýše uyemed naž. Stari do brý dedik meras.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, maybe say sort of hello to listeners in America. I'm Dedik Meras. In English or in Slovenian? No, in Slovenian. Why not?
SPEAKER_12: Hey, posdraljani drobiš. Ný sę več prą urnič nog. Toda kaj kocakameciukupo trok. Posdraljani uži mai, poslu šaži wabu. This jolly fellow is Robert Valtel. He started playing Dedik Meras at the main parade in Ljubljana in 1987.
SPEAKER_11: Robert is quite a character in his own right. We talked for hours in his apartment alongside the love of his life, his dog Umbra.
SPEAKER_13: Umbra, mirde, prýsim. What breed is Umbra? Lagozzo Romagnolo, Italian water dog.
SPEAKER_13: Fancy. Yeah, fancy, fancy.
SPEAKER_14: When Robert started performing as Dedik Meras, Tito had been dead for seven years and Yugoslavia was on a downward spiral to complete disintegration. But Slovenia was actually doing well economically and felt that the other republics were dragging her down. So in 1991, Slovenians took their chances and declared independence from Yugoslavia.
SPEAKER_11: And it was fantastic. It was really fantastic because it was like almost everyone for the independence.
SPEAKER_13: Jasna remembers this period feeling almost too good to be true.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, it was scary a little bit because we knew that they wouldn't let us go that easy.
SPEAKER_08: So it was exciting. And also, you know, you didn't know what will happen. And then when it happened, it was like everything at once.
SPEAKER_11: On June the 24th, Robert and a group of actor friends were performing all over the capital. He still vividly remembers how happy everyone was in the hours leading up to Slovenia's formal declaration of independence. It was beautiful in Ljubljana, everywhere, you know, happy people.
SPEAKER_13: So and then we went to sleep, I don't know, four or five morning and then start the alarm for the bombs. So that was really shock.
SPEAKER_02: The Yugoslav Air Force dropped bombs and rockets in cannon at Slovenian militia targets throughout the day.
SPEAKER_14: But the war only lasted 10 days. Slovenia escaped the horror that befell many of the other former Yugoslav nations throughout the 1990s.
SPEAKER_13: What's happened in Croatia first and Bosnia, it's horrible. It's really horrible. So but for Slovenia was, we were lucky.
SPEAKER_11: After centuries of being part of monarchies, empires and failed six part nation states, Slovenia had achieved independence in under two weeks. But this victory led to a battle over Slovenian culture, one that almost spelled the end for Dedek Mraz.
SPEAKER_13: We were afraid that Dedek Mraz can disappear because some people, they want, you know, to kill him. Many Slovenes saw this moment as an opportunity to move into the modern world and reject everything from the past.
SPEAKER_11: And despite his fun Slovenian rebrand, some people still associated Dedek Mraz with the Soviet Union. But what was really funny, they want to replace him with Santa Claus.
SPEAKER_14: Enter Slovenia's third magical Christmas man, Santa Claus, the red suit wearing reindeer having rosy cheek jolly fellow that you probably are picturing right now, thanks in part to the Coca-Cola Company. Their Christmas character was designed to be used in coca starting in 1931. And like the beverage itself, their Santa image went nearly everywhere in the capitalist world. And suddenly Slovenia was a democratic, capitalist, friendly country and looking to America and looking to Western Europe and hoping for a brighter, more independent economic future.
SPEAKER_10: Well, if you're interested in economic futures and capitalism, then you want your Santa wearing red pajamas and bringing as many gifts as possible. Many Slovenians embraced Santa Claus, but this time the new Santa didn't push the old one off the stage.
SPEAKER_14: In the end, Dedek Mraz survived the transition from socialist Yugoslavia to democratic Slovenia. It's hard to say exactly why, but I can't help wonder if it's because he was so well designed.
SPEAKER_11: Even though he was a relatively new creation, Dedek Mraz was crafted to feel like he'd always been there, like he was an ancient artifact of Slovenian culture, and people like Jasna weren't going to let him go without a fight. It's still a part of our history. Why kill it? I grew up with it. You know, I didn't grow up with Santa Claus.
SPEAKER_08: Dedek Mraz is a part of us. So, no way. Totally. No way. Dedek Mraz and Santa Claus were side by side, sharing the Christmas spotlight. And that would have been enough for most countries.
SPEAKER_11: But there was a sleeping giant in this story, our first magical Christmas man who had never really gone away. Sveti McClausch, the original Catholic Saint Nick. While the government had banned public religious celebrations in the Yugoslav era, Catholic families still held festivities in private. Yeah, so after the independence, all these customs connected with the religion, they were again introduced in the public life.
SPEAKER_15: So, Saint Nicholas came back. And Robert Valtel, Ljubljana's go-to Dedek Mraz, actually played a key role in McClausch's return.
SPEAKER_11: He believed that if Slovenia was to move on, it had to reconcile its past as a faithful Catholic nation. When you show that they can be together, Saint Nicholas and Grandpa Frost, Dedek Mraz,
SPEAKER_13: and that they can both say something nice and do something nice, it's beautiful. And so in 1991, Robert, already the capital's go-to Dedek Mraz, decided to organise a parade for McClausch.
SPEAKER_11: It was the first one since the Second World War, the saint's grand return to public life. Never shying away from a challenge, Robert decided to play the central role of McClausch himself. You know, for me this is theatre. And when I work theatre, I want to do perfection.
SPEAKER_13: To get into character, only the most authentic costume for Sveti McClausch would do.
SPEAKER_11: I asked the bishop of Ljubljana to rent me original, old, you know, Catholic bishop stuff, and I was really beautiful.
SPEAKER_13: Even with the golden shoes.
SPEAKER_14: And ever since that moment, when McClausch returned to the streets of the capital, Slovenia has had all three Santas at Christmas time.
SPEAKER_11: And Slovenes have not only completely accepted all the three good men, Trit Dobri-Možię, they've been packaged together in a month of non-stop festivities called Meri or Veseli December. Veseli December. It's the whole month, you know. It's like the month of the parties and the happy stuff.
SPEAKER_08: And that's why we have all three men, because it's the whole month of good and merry stuff. Each Santa gets its own specific time slot to perform their own brand of Christmas magic.
SPEAKER_11: First on the calendar is McClausch. He appears at churches across the country and parades in the big cities on the evening of December 5th. I took my family to this parade in 2018. My daughter loved McClausch, but she didn't react too well when his demon helpers first appeared. I'm not that scared! It's OK! Maybe it's OK!
SPEAKER_11: There are crying children, including my own.
SPEAKER_14: That's a lot of screaming and terror for a Santa parade.
SPEAKER_11: Then comes Santa Claus or Božiček. Christmas Eve is obviously his allotted night, but he tends to hang around the shops and malls.
SPEAKER_14: And finally, there's Dedek Moras. He actually makes appearances in kindergartens and schools throughout December, but post-Christmas time, he's the only Santa left on the scene. His parade happens around New Year's.
SPEAKER_12: You are the best of the best. And I love you! You are the best! I love you, the whole world.
SPEAKER_11: Over the course of reporting this story, I met performers of all three Santas, including Robert, and they take their jobs extremely seriously. This is not carnival. This is something very important for children.
SPEAKER_13: Helping children is fundamental to Robert's role in the Slovenian Christmas, but it's not always easy.
SPEAKER_14: So the children, they're not all happy. They're not living all in happy families.
SPEAKER_13: And when they see they have the opportunity to speak with Dedek Moras, they can say a lot of sad things from their lives. Kids ask you for help, like, my father beat my mother. He's an alcoholic. Please, Dedek Moras, can I stay with you? I don't want to go home. That's really difficult. That's really difficult. Normally, I'm not a social worker. I cannot really help them. Yeah, it's a lot of frustrations also behind this, because how to really help? Robert's response really moved me.
SPEAKER_11: I always thought dressing up as a Santa would be an almost entirely wonderful experience, but it's clear that there's also this feeling of a real responsibility. All of the Santas are supposed to provide comfort to the kids of Slovenia, but according to Robert, it's Dedek Moras they turn to most, the Santa designed for the Slovenian people by the Slovenian people. Today, almost no one thinks Dedek Moras came from Soviet Union,
SPEAKER_13: because we make a completely new story. Slovenia has survived empires and a socialist autocracy to emerge as a proud independent state.
SPEAKER_14: Instead of repressing the past, it has embraced the Santas that once defined it,
SPEAKER_11: coordinating a festive season that has a time and a place for all of them. One last question. How long are you going to be Dedek Moras, and who will you hand it on to?
SPEAKER_13: How long I will be Dedek Moras? Who knows? I will try my best, but it depends on my health, so I already have some of my colleagues, they can replace me. And this will continue, for sure. Yeah, Dedek Moras will live forever. Sí va kuch ma vila brada, topeu kos jus ver kakos, jos je príše o jemednas,
SPEAKER_06: sali dobri de de kras, jojje príše o jemednas, sali dobri de de kras.
SPEAKER_09: Coming up after the break, we find out which of Slovenia's three Santas is the most popular of all.
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SPEAKER_11: Yeah, you can see that these three Santas do represent three tribes, if you like. McClouch goes with the Catholic faithful, Dedic Maras with old school socialists and Santa Claus with the new coming aspirational consumers. But it's not quite as simple as that. You know, many parents with young children will opt for all three. Some will opt for one or two. I mean, my friend Jasna, when I asked her this question, she explained to me how each of the three Santas functioned in her life. Now she comes from a coastal town called Copa, near Italy.
SPEAKER_08: The coast was more communist, red area, let's say, and we have only Dedic Maras. Although we knew Santa Claus because of Italy, because of the border, because they had Santa Claus.
SPEAKER_11: So after independence in 1991, she moved north to the mountains, close to the border with Austria, and then she married and had two kids. And as a parent, she welcomes all three Santas as a way of celebrating Merry December with both sides of the family. And usually we went for Christmas in Copa, and for the New Year we were here.
SPEAKER_08: So in Copa came Santa Claus, and here came Dedic Maras. And okay, McLeosh, it was only for fruit and sweets, no toys. So we had also this. We have all three.
SPEAKER_14: So McLeosh is stuck with fruits and sweets, no toys. So how are you raising your kids? Like, are all three Santas in their lives? I'm afraid it's totally unavoidable.
SPEAKER_11: It was Michel Jovanié last night, so this morning they received their stockings from McLeosh. And that's a new thing for them, which they're very happy with indeed. They got a stuffed toy, they got a tangerine, chocolate shaped like the devils and McLeosh, and a new book. But we also have Father Christmas as we call him in the UK, Santa Claus Christmas Eve, he's coming up. Dedic Maras, actually we haven't been in the country for New Year's Eve, so we need to give that a go this year. Oh, so is Dedic Maras coming to your house or to the kindergarten?
SPEAKER_14: It's still a bit of wait and see with the pandemic this year.
SPEAKER_11: But actually I tracked down the guy who is the Dedic Maras in our area. He's a wonderful man called Gregor Antolin.
SPEAKER_02: All three Santas will survive because they are superheroes and we need superheroes.
SPEAKER_11: Before the pandemic, he would make his living doing live performances in Geddon Gardens all over December. He had other jobs during the rest of the year. But obviously with the pandemic in 2020, with the lockdown that we had, he had to think fast.
SPEAKER_02: Before Corona, we made in December live performances and now we must do something new because we were at home. His genius plan was that he would do an online videogram service for Slovenian kids.
SPEAKER_11: It was inspired by a US Santagram video messaging service that he saw. And yeah, he decided to bring it to Slovenia.
SPEAKER_14: So Santagram is like a video message from Santa to kids. And you said he plays Dedic Maras in these.
SPEAKER_11: Not just Dedic Maras. This is Slovenia, so he has to do all three. And that requires quite a little bit of financial outplay and planning because he needs not just three costumes, which are pretty expensive because I've seen them and they are the real deal. I mean, this Dedic Maras one was almost $2,000. Wow. Custom made. He then has to do three different sets and then he records a different video with each of the most common children's names in Slovenia.
SPEAKER_02: We recorded 150 names of boys and 150 names from girls. This was the most common names in past two years.
SPEAKER_11: Okay, so 150 girls' names, 150 boys' names, that's 300 names for each Santa. So 300 times three is 900 names that he has to record and it has to work first time. So imagine retakes. Wow. That's really a lot of work. And then I should say that the parents can choose their Santa and they can choose the name and then they can choose the message. And cleaning teeth is a very high priority for Slovenian parents.
SPEAKER_14: So this is the message that Santa or Maclauch or Dedic Maras has to say is to be a good child this year and clean your teeth and then I'll bring you presents. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_11: Classic. I really wish I really wish I could have seen it in person. I did pester him, but it was a close set.
SPEAKER_14: You've got to keep these things secret. I mean, this is magical stuff we're talking about here.
SPEAKER_11: He did very kindly send me some sneak peeks of his performance. So would you like to hear some? Oh, absolutely. Let's hear them. Okay. First up, Santa Claus.
SPEAKER_16: Ho ho ho! I'm so happy to see you again. You are such a great, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. You've got some energy.
SPEAKER_11: Oh, oh yeah. Oh yeah. And then, okay, so next up we'll have Maclauch.
SPEAKER_16: He's kind of like the previous one, but like a little bit more edge in his voice.
SPEAKER_11: Exactly. And you know, I'm afraid I've been here three years and I can pick out one or two words. I heard Palkelny, I heard the demons mentioned, but yeah, a little bit more serious maybe. So let's hear Dedekh Mraz.
SPEAKER_14: Wow, he does that 900 times. That must be exhausting.
SPEAKER_14: I really, I like this guy. He's dedicated to his craft. That's fantastic. Did he mention that he had like a preference of which one he liked to perform the most? He is a big fan of Dedekh Mraz.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can kind of tell. I mean, they're all excellent, but like, there's like, I mean, you mentioned that he spent $2,000 on the costume alone.
SPEAKER_14: That Dedekh Mraz is really like, that's a great one. It's a great one. And it's, you know, it's the Slovene icon, isn't it? And I think he really embodies it.
SPEAKER_11: But after the first year of data gathering from the Christmas 2020, he actually has this very unique data set of who is Slovenia's favorite digital Santa. Oh, because people order these custom videos and so therefore he knows how many people want Santa versus McClausch versus Dedekh Mraz.
SPEAKER_14: Oh, this is fascinating. Okay. So what was the result?
SPEAKER_02: The 80% ordered Santa Claus video, 15% was Dedekh Mraz and only 5% was McClausch.
SPEAKER_14: Wow. I mean, like Santa Claus is great. You'll never get me dissing Santa Claus. But I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed that Dedekh Mraz isn't like really the most favorite in Slovenia, just because, you know, it's unique to Slovenia. That's what makes it so special.
SPEAKER_11: Yeah, you kind of want Dedekh Mraz to be number one, don't you? But you do. But the way I see it is that Santa Claus has got everything. You know, as Gregor says, you know, he's got the TV, he's got the songs, most of the songs. He's got the merch, he's got the advertising. You know, he's the king of the screens and Slovenia, like any country, is as outward facing as it is inward. So I think to have 20% of Slovene parents choosing alternative is actually pretty incredible. Yeah, yeah. That's a good point. That's a good point.
SPEAKER_14: Well, I'm totally fascinated by these three Santas and how much they mean to the country and how much they sort of map onto the history of Slovenia. I just can't thank you enough for bringing the story to us. I just had a joy, you know, watching you make it and bring it to us. It's been fascinating.
SPEAKER_11: Thank you, Roman. It's been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_09: 99% Invisible was produced this week by Will Aspinall, edited by Emmett Fitzgerald and Joe Rosenberg.
SPEAKER_14: Mix in tech production by Jim Briggs. Fact checking by Graham Hacia. Music by our director of sound, Swan Riau. Delaney Hall is the executive producer. Kirk Colsted is the digital director. The rest of the team is Vivian Lay, Lasha Madon, Christopher Johnson, Chris Berube, Sofia Klatsker and me, Roman Mars. Special thanks this week to Robert Kuznick. We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family. Now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99pi.org, on Instagram and Reddit too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love, as well as photos of Dedek Mraz in action in Slovenia at our website. It's 99pi.org. For all those who celebrate, I wish you a Merry Stitchmas and a seriously XM New Year. To stay cool to the touch cover, the Serta Perfect Sleeper means more restful nights and more rested days. Find your comfort at Serta.com.
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