Excuse me while I get mauled by a polar bear to get in the Christmas spirit.
The penguins we know today are not actual penguins. They are named after the real penguins which were prevalent in the northern hemisphere but which humans drove to extinction.
Edit: the Great Auk
I don’t know if the page looks the same to others, but the bird that’s pictured under that fact is not a great auk, they really do look like penguins.
For the lazy:

If you’re referring to this little guy, he’s what I have to pay whenever I get new sneakers: my shoebill

Yeah, not sure why Encyclopedia Britannica would not just omit the correct picture but also put in a link to another article for a completely different bird with a picture!
What an appropriate username for a discussion of animals. Awesome.
beautiful plumage
Penguins are a Christmas animal because they’re all catholic.

Aww, momma used to beat us the same way
What’s the clip from? Looks hilarious, curious to see more.
If you’ve not seen the Blues Brothers go watch it right now. Order the DVD if you have to. Its absolutely worthwhile. Its an SNL spinoff film with a Legendary soundtrack featuring the biggest names in the Blues and Jazz scene. Great soundtrack, brilliant gags, incredible car chases and just a ton of rediculous chaos.
Blues Brothers. Legendary movie.
They’re on a mission from Gad.
Aww, cute penguin feeding her young
“We’re on a mission from god”
Puffin
Cormorant
Arctic tern
Common eider
King eider
White-tailed eagle
Kittiwake
Fulmar
Snow bunting
Northern gannet
Sanderling
Black guillemot
Brünnich’s guillemot
Little auk
Arctic skua
Long-tailed skua
Ptarmigan
Great northern diver
Red-throated diver
Glaucous gull
Lesser black-backed gull
Great black-backed gull
Ivory gull
Red phalarope (grey phalarope)
Pink-footed goose
Barnacle goose
Brant goose
Razorbill
Turnstone
https://oceanwide-expeditions.com/blog/22-enchanting-arctic-birds-and-their-most-fascinating-facts
The website has pictures.
I see the ongoing slide into labelling anything mildy analytical as autistic is in full swing.
Disability as a subculture or identity is just really cringe. Especially the deaf/blind organisations lobbying against curing childrens deafness/blindness.
I’d say subculture is fine. A subculture doesn’t have to be bad or annoying. Identifying with autism is also totally fine. Recognizing kinship isn’t bad.
Where it goes wrong is using it as an identity outright. “Sorry, I’m autistic” is just fucking more annoying after someone does something annoyingly autistic. Being autistic doesn’t mean you literally cannot learn good social behavior. By the time that is true, there is definitely something more serious than autism involved.
Not arguing here. But just want to point out that disability subculture usually arises as a survival response in the face of discrimination and segregation. Everyone has a need for community and a sense of belonging. When broad hegemonic culture rejects you and your presence, belonging is found in the one distinctive feature that is the cause for the rejection and the source of cohesion with your peers. See also gay subculture as a response to homophobia, US black culture as a response to racism, feminist sorority subculture in response to misogyny, etc. So it is not rare to see disability subculture as a response to ableism. These communities are very important for security and preservation of individuals. Just as everywhere else, security is always a trade-off with something else.
Support community? Great. Using it as an excuse or identity like many autistic people do? Cringe.
You don’t see black people going around talking jive, and then going, “oh sorry, you see I’m black” when they catch a confused look…
None of that changes the fact that lobbying against curing a child’s deafness/blindness when it can be cured is fucked up.
Interesting how you chose to just not engage with that point.
I told you, I’m not arguing. I actually agree on that point.
Obviously autism can vary between people, but it’s not something that’s wrong with me, and I wouldn’t want to cure it. I’m different than what’s widely considered normal, but in a way that I think is fine. It’s like having red hair or being transgender.
High functioning autism is a fine character trait to identify with. Though I seriously doubt someone who’s basically mute takes pride in their autism.
Autism still isn’t a disease though, you can’t “cure” it, it’s something we are. Even with the most disabled we should start with accepting them and offering the help they need, not just immediately label them as defected and try to erase who they are. Sure, let’s figure out ways to lessen the worst symptoms, but how about if we’d just stop discriminating first and see where that leads
Nowhere did I ever defend discrimination. I merely said some people do not have a form they’d likely be proud of.
Nonverbal people are free to make up their own mind how they feel about it, but calling it “cringe” when people choose to come together over a shared identity and experience is extremely insulting.
Nowhere did I ever call making a community cringe.
We wouldn’t need a subculture if we weren’t oppressed and excluded from normal culture.
Quick question, are you disabled yourself?
Context is important. In this case, it wasn’t the place for that kind of analysis.
Although ironically it matches the meta-context perfectly (displaying signs of autism in an exam to detect autistism).
I blame finance bros.
Yes, but

Not sure I wanna know what comes out when you finally… um… … reach your peak.
According to any documentary about avian species, predigested fish for their young.
The dinosaur answer to mammalian milk.
Other way around.
“How do we give nutrition to our offspring without vomiting?” - mammals
Core dumps.
Not exactly north pole.
To be fair, neither are reindeer IRL.
Santa’s sleigh should be pulled by 8 murderous polar bears.
🎵Rudolph with his nose so red, better run now or you’ll soon be dead🎶
Murderous flying polar bears.
It’s a ton better, you’re not going to get many that are literally at the North Pole.

Exactly. Ain’t nothin alive up there besides scientists running from student loan debt.
What limits their migration further north in western Eurasia?
Real estate prices.
But santa lives in Finland…
…And commutes to the North Pole workshop M W F and works from home on Tue and Thu. Try and keep up, OK?
Wasn’t that what the witch from Narnia did?
And Santa is a much more powerful demon. So that tracks.
I believe the geomagnetic pole falls somewhere in that region
Nope.

That’s a map of the magnetic “dip” pole not the geomagnetic pole. They are slightly different things.
I’m a bit out of my depth, so I’m not gonna try to explain the distinction because I don’t really understand it very well myself, it’s just a fun fact I picked up somewhere.
But AFAIK, the geomagnetic pole is still supposed to be somewhere around Canada/Greenland
Also, not for nothing, but those are two different map projections so with how things get distorted around the poles in the OPs map,it’s a little hard to directly compare them. Remember that with cylindrical projections the whole top edge of the map basically represents a single point (the geographic north Pole) so things are often a lot closer together than they may look on the map. Just from eyeballing the two maps as an amateur who uses maps more than the average person but doesn’t exactly study them, I wasn’t 100% confident that the dip pole wasn’t in one of those higher spots of the puffin’s range (it’s not, I confirmed on a couple other maps, but it’s closer than you might think just from casually looking at these two maps.)
mapswithoutNZ
Above the Arctic Circle at least.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen penguins in relation to christmas
I’m part of the problem. I have a penguin inflatable on my lawn. (I also have a dragon and a dinosaur, also not known for Christmas)
So, you’re telling us this but not sharing a pic?!

Apparently you haven’t seen the seminal classic from 2014, “The Christmas Dragon”. Lovingly covered by Mystery Science Theater 3000 in season 13 episode 13.
Just snagged the movie to watch next week
The latest Coca Cola slop ad probably.
I thought Coca Cola used polar bears
The latest slop ad has sloths and pandas. Don’t recall if it has penguins too but probably.
You don’t recall “Topper” from Santa Claus is Coming to Town?
First time hearing of santa claus is coming to town ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s a classic animated Christmas movie. I highly recommend.
Puffins are penguins if they didn’t give up on the whole flight thing
Am I missing something? A few penguin references / associations with Christmas, sure I’ve seen that. But, at least in my part of the world, they’re not a major part of the lore – or am I having a moment?
Either way, this can be easily explained: It’s called being inclusive. The last thing you want is a north pole versus south pole world wide Christmas turf war, best to extend an olive branch andlean into that diversity and inclusion metric for the good of the world’s children and the fate of humanity.
In order to do that you’d need to get the branch from more temperate latitudes so in keeping with this thread here goes their approximate range:

I don’t know what those labels are, but they’re not latitude.
Oh that’s simple, instead of the standard latitude degrees to demarcate the Mediterranean climate zone, this diagram is measured in fahrenheit.
USA got pretty lucky there. Almost matches the borders.
I think it’s marketing overreach. christmas->snow->snow animals->penguins
I do find it strange that there are less polar bears than penguins in Christmas decorations in NA
Probably Coca-cola and its legal teams have some degree of responsibility for the minimal polar bear association.
What has the north pole to do with Christmas? Santa lives in Rovaniemi, Finland. Jesus was born in the middle east. Presents are made in China. Your house is whatever it is, surely not on the north pole.
Santa lives at North Pole, Canada. Poatal code H0H 0H0. You can write him a letter and he will reply.
Fake news! https://maps.app.goo.gl/2aYT9gQfh29zr8V58
You can’t fucking trust anyone anymore.
Santa essentially has teleportation. Space is meaningless to the entity we know as Santa.
Puffins are cuter, usually less, ahem, fragrant, too.
Well, Topper the penguin, did help Santa when he was trying to deliver his toys in Sombertown.
Aren’t they only called penguins because of their resemblance to the now extinct great Auk, a Northern pole bird? Which would justify the attachment to the North pole and Santa?
Great phylogenetics YouTuber discusses this very connection.
Probably. Humans driving real penguins to extinction, travelling to the geographic south:
Eh, close enough. Tis a penguin.


















