Cool Thing: Tsaatan Reindeer Riders!

Theme: Run Run Rudolph - Chuck Berry

POV: you just said hApPy HoLiDaYs in a Merry Christmas neighbourhood.

The Tsaatan are a nomadic Tuvan people found in best country, Mongolia. While most people ride horses or the bus, the Tsaatan ride reindeers, which is more cool. So central are their lil Christmassy bros to their lifestyle that Tsaatan means "the people with reindeer", and they move their ortzes (tents) around the oft-frozen taiga with their herds, milking them, trading their antlers (doan't worry; they grow back), and sometimes ritually merking one to drink its blood to give them warrior strength, which seems somewhat pointless because there are only 200 of them in the entire world, they live in the harshest wilderness imaginable, and absolutely noone cares to trek out there in -40ºC temperatures to pick a fight with them, unless perhaps cable hasbara tells boomers they're building a reindeer-powered nuke.

The Tsaatan speak Dukhan and practice an ancient shamanic religion requiring them to pick a sacred reindeer from among the herd whose antlers are never amputated. To ensure this reindeer brings good fortune, they place a bowl of milk on its back and walk it around an ortz three times. If the bowl falls off to land facing upright toward the sky, it's an auspicious choice of reindeer. If this just keeps never happening, IDK what they do; you don't have a lot of options in this tough environment, and milk doesn't grow on trees. Incidentally, milk is extremely important throughout Mongolia, with airag, the fermented milk of mares, being the country's signature beverage. All Mongolians are lactose intolerant, but they just drink it constantly anyway, because they're also Chads. Don't let your whiny kid tell you xir lactose intolerance means xe can't possibly deign to stomach a normal diet; if it's good enough for men of the Altan Urag, it's good enough for xim.

In summary: the Tsaatan are cool, Mongolia is cool, I'm a Mongolboo, there hasn't been a good movie released this decade, listen to Hanggai and the Hu, practice khoomei and sygyt, and I'll see you next time with another Cool Thing or B-movie writeup or something; IDK.