分类： entertainment

As much of Europe swelters through the height of summer heatwave season, a uniquely cheerful holiday tradition is unfolding hundreds of kilometers north of the European continent’s warmest regions, in the fourth-largest city of Denmark: Aalborg. For decades, this Nordic country has hosted the annual World Santa Claus Congress, a one-of-a-kind midsummer gathering that has drawn dozens of professional Santa Claus performers, Mrs. Clauses and elf actors from every corner of the globe to celebrate festive spirit far outside the traditional December holiday window.

The iconic event traces its origins back to 1957, when it was first launched at an amusement park on the outskirts of Copenhagen. After decades at its original venue, the congress relocated to Aalborg, located on Denmark’s Jutland peninsula, just two years ago, and has quickly settled into its new home. This year, attendees clad in thick, traditional red Santa suits found the warm Danish July sun made their iconic costumes surprisingly sweltering — a small price to pay for the chance to connect with fellow festive performers. Next year, the beloved gathering will mark its 70th anniversary, a milestone that organizers and attendees are already planning to celebrate in style.

What began as a small initiative to bring extra joy to children has evolved into a must-attend professional and social gathering for Santas who work in department stores, shopping malls, and private events across the world during the busy Christmas season. Held roughly five months before the annual Yuletide rush begins, the four-day event gives professional performers a rare opportunity to exchange industry stories, compare iconic flowing beards, refine their holiday craft, and compete in a series of lighthearted, playful competitions long before families start drafting their naughty-or-nice lists.

This year’s agenda was packed with beloved holiday-themed activities, including gingerbread eating contests, speed gift wrapping challenges, balloon modeling workshops, and multiple boisterous parades through the streets of central Aalborg. Photographs from the event captured participants posing for group photos, waving at onlookers, and snapping selfies with fellow Santas from across the world, showcasing the warm, inclusive energy of the gathering.

Peter Gislund, the event’s organizer and a part-time Aalborg-based Santa during the Christmas season, shared that public reaction to the mid-year holiday gathering is often split. “The grandmas say: ‘Oh, it’s too early to come here’,” he explained. “The kids say: ‘Hooray! Santa’s here already.’”

While the event has drawn attendees from as far afield as Australia, Hong Kong, Canada and the United States over its decades-long history, most of the roughly three dozen Santas and Mrs. Clauses participating this year came from Scandinavian countries. Even so, several international guests made the long trip to attend, including Paradise Yamamoto, a Santa performer traveling all the way from Tokyo. After parading through downtown Aalborg waving a Japanese flag and dancing along to the Christmas classic *Feliz Navidad*, Yamamoto laughed and shared his impression of the event: “This is very fun, so many children … Ho, ho, ho!”

For first-time attendee Robert Hercz, a 64-year-old Santa from Oslo, Norway, the gathering proved that despite different national backgrounds, all professional Santas share a common core. “We all share a gene” for generosity and spreading joy, Hercz explained. “You have it or you don’t. We have the true Santa spirit. And it’s all about giving, sharing, and putting a little bit of joy in people’s hearts.”

Beyond the fun and games, the congress serves an important purpose for working Santas, Gislund noted. “It’s not all ho-ho-ing and belly rubs. When Santas are together, they always mingle and talk a little bit,” he said. Attendees exchange tips for everything from maintaining the perfect beard shine to interacting with shy children, making it a valuable professional development opportunity as well as a social gathering. “That’s the good part of meeting some Santas from all over the world.”

For 33-year-old Danish Santa Simon Brøns, the annual gathering drives home a simple but powerful message: festive spirit is not limited to the month of December. “Christmas is not a season. It’s a feeling you have in your stomach,” he said with a smile. “So if you want, you can have Christmas the whole year.”

Bonnie Tyler, the Grammy-nominated Welsh pop star whose signature gravelly roar turned the 1983 power ballad *Total Eclipse of the Heart* into a generational cultural staple, has died at 75. Her death came unexpectedly at a hospital in Portugal, where she had been receiving treatment for an illness, her family confirmed in a public statement posted to Tyler’s official website Thursday.

Tyler had been admitted to a Faro hospital — near the coastal Portuguese home she maintained — for emergency intestinal surgery in May. After a period in an induced coma, medical updates last month indicated her condition was improving, and a full recovery was widely expected. “Bonnie’s family and team are heartbroken to announce that Bonnie unexpectedly passed away last night in hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness that she was being treated for,” the statement read.

Born Gaynor Hopkins in 1948, Tyler grew up the daughter of a coal miner in working-class public housing in Skewen, Wales, just outside Swansea. Raised alongside three sisters and two brothers, she fell in love with music from an early age: her first album was The Beatles’ *A Hard Day’s Night*, and at 13 she purchased her first single, The Swinging Blue Jeans’ *Hippy Hippy Shake*, as documented in her memoir *Straight From the Heart*. A devout viewer of the iconic UK music program *Top of the Pops*, Tyler would record episodes on a vintage reel-to-reel recorder, transcribe lyrics to her favorite tracks from artists including Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, and Tina Turner, and practice singing for hours into a hairbrush. Even in those early years, she noted her distinctively husky vocal tone, though she never imagined it would become her trademark. That signature sound was solidified in 1976, when she underwent surgery to remove vocal nodules, leaving her with the rough, powerful delivery that would make her famous.

After performing under the stage name Sherine Davis as the frontwoman of a local soul band, Tyler was discovered by talent scout Roger Bell, who brought her to London for demo recordings. When RCA Records signed her, the label encouraged her to adopt the stage name Bonnie Tyler. Her 1977 debut album *The World Starts Tonight* spawned her first chart hit, *Lost in France*, and earned her a Brit Awards nomination for Breakthrough Artist. A year later, she scored a No. 3 UK hit with *It’s a Heartache*, but her career would reach unprecedented heights after she signed with Sony. After seeing Meat Loaf perform *Bat Out of Hell* on the BBC, Tyler personally requested to work with Jim Steinman, Meat Loaf’s iconic songwriter and producer.

Steinman offered Tyler the centerpiece of what would become her fifth studio album *Faster Than the Speed of Night*: *Total Eclipse of the Heart*. The track borrowed the iconic line “Turn around, bright eyes” from Steinman’s 1969 student musical *The Dream Engine*, and the producer originally framed it as a cut for a planned stage adaptation of the vampire classic *Nosferatu*. Recalling the recording process in a 2023 interview with *The Guardian*, Tyler said: “Jim liked to put down a basic rhythm track, do nine takes of the song, choose the best one and then put the kitchen sink on there, like Phil Spector used to. He gave me a cassette to listen to in my hotel and we both preferred take two.” Backed by E Street Band members Roy Bittan on piano and Max Weinberg on drums, the track is a soaring, gut-wrenching meditation on lost love, with lyrics that explore the loneliness of a broken heart.

Its accompanying music video became a defining staple of early MTV, filmed at a creepy, gothic former psychiatric asylum in Surrey, where guard dogs reportedly refused to enter the basement rooms that once held electric shock treatment sessions. The over-the-top visuals included slow-motion doves, flickering candles, dancing ninjas, greaser dancers, oversized shoulder pads, fencers, gymnasts, wind machines, and shirtless teen boys in swim goggles being doused with water. The track spent four consecutive weeks atop the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and earned Tyler two Grammy nominations: one for the album in the Best Rock Vocal Performance category, and one for the single for Best Pop Vocal Performance. Though she lost both awards, the track’s cultural legacy only grew across decades. In a 2020 reevaluation, music outlet Stereogum hailed *Total Eclipse of the Heart* as an “extinction-level event rendered in musical form,” adding: “It’s pop music as heart-pounding, chest-thumping, blood-gargling, heavens-falling passion explosion. It’s sheer spectacle. It’s fireworks and lasers and lightning and thunder. It soars and swoops and barrel-rolls.”

The track has never faded from public consciousness: it has been covered by dozens of artists, from Nicki French in 1995 to Westlife in 2006, and has appeared in dozens of films and television shows, including a memorable scene in the 2001 comedy *Bandits*, where Cate Blanchett sings the track before hitting Billy Bob Thornton’s character with a car, and a wedding scene in the 2003 comedy *Old School*. One Direction performed it on the UK’s *The X Factor* during their 2010 audition run. Streaming numbers have spiked repeatedly during real solar and lunar eclipses, pushing the track past 1 billion total streams as of 2024, with major surges during the 2017 and 2024 total solar eclipses.

Though Tyler never matched the commercial peak of *Total Eclipse of the Heart*, she maintained a prolific decades-long career, releasing fan-favorite tracks including 1984’s *Holding Out for a Hero* (featured on the *Footloose* soundtrack) and *Here She Comes* from the *Metropolis* reissue. In 2013, she released the country-influenced album *Rocks and Honey* recorded in Nashville, which included the track *Believe in Me* selected to represent the United Kingdom at that year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden. Recalling the experience in a 2023 interview, she said: “It was an absolutely wonderful atmosphere there. I was being interviewed every 15, 20 minutes, and when I walked out onstage behind the British flag, I thought the roof was going to come off! It was awesome, just awesome!” In 2017, she performed the iconic track alongside DNCE, Joe Jonas’ band, on a special “Total Eclipse Cruise” during the 2017 total solar eclipse, drawing global attention. Her 2019 album *Between the Earth and the Stars* featured duets with legends including Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard, and Status Quo’s Francis Rossi, and she closed the year with a performance at a Vatican Christmas concert for Pope Francis.

In 2022, Tyler was honored as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her decades of contributions to music. She is survived by her husband Robert Sullivan, a property developer and former Olympic judo competitor.

Associated Press writer Brian Melley contributed reporting from London.

In a heartfelt tribute to groundbreaking Dutch conceptual artist Wim T. Schippers, who passed away last month at the age of 83, Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has recreated one of his most iconic and absurdist works: an entire exhibition floor covered in 800 pounds of creamy peanut butter. Enough to make roughly 15,000 peanut butter sandwiches, the sweet, sticky installation — known originally by its Dutch name Pindakaasvloer, or Peanut Butter Floor — first debuted to public audiences in 1969, when Schippers first challenged long-held conventions about what qualifies as fine art. The new iteration of the work will open to visitors this Friday and remain on display for a two-month special engagement.

Schippers, a cultural pioneer whose career spanned decades, was far more than a visual conceptual artist. He also lent his voice to two beloved characters for the Dutch-language adaptation of the iconic children’s television series *Sesame Street*, portraying both Ernie and Kermit the Frog for generations of Dutch viewers. Throughout his career, he built a reputation for creating playful, thought-provoking works that upended traditional assumptions about art’s purpose and form. The Peanut Butter Floor was not an isolated experiment: it was part of his broader Floor Covering Series, which also included equally unorthodox installations featuring floors covered in broken glass shards and granular salt.

When Pindakaasvloer was exhibited for the second time at Utrecht’s Central Museum in 1997, Schippers summed up his delight in the work’s ability to spark conversation and confusion. “Isn’t it fantastic that we are all standing here looking at peanut butter?” he asked a crowd of gathered reporters at the time.

For visitors who saw that 1997 showing, the work left a far more visceral impression beyond its conceptual novelty. Mieke Weismann, a food photographer and writer who attended the exhibition as a teenager, recalled the overwhelming sensory experience for the Associated Press. “The thing I remember is the smell,” she said, noting that the thick, nutty aroma of the peanut butter drifted through every corner of the museum.

Recreating the legendary installation was no small feat for Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s staff. Last week, two full-time employees spent multiple days smearing 40 buckets of peanut butter across a 270-square-foot hexagonal section of the exhibition floor. Using ordinary drywall trowels, the pair worked the creamy spread into an even layer roughly 0.8 inches thick, matching the loose spirit of Schippers’ original work rather than strict technical specifications: the artist never laid out exact requirements for the installation’s size, shape, thickness, or even what type of peanut butter to use. For this tribute, Dutch peanut butter brand Calvé stepped in to donate hundreds of pounds of its signature smooth product.

Over the decades, the interactive nature of the work has led to unexpected moments of audience participation that Schippers always embraced. During a 1997 showing, a group of visitors “vandalized” the installation by placing 12 slices of bread and several bags of hagelslag — a popular Dutch chocolate sprinkle topping commonly eaten on breakfast bread — across the peanut butter surface. Far from being upset, Schippers reacted with characteristic good humor when speaking to Dutch newspaper *Volkskrant* at the time. “It doesn’t look bad,” he said. “The sprinkles have been applied with a sense of proportion and a skillful hand.” On another occasion in 2011, multiple visitors even stepped directly onto the sticky surface, leaning into the work’s invitation to break down barriers between art and audience.

PARIS — On a crisp Tuesday inside Paris’s iconic Grand Palais, the legendary fashion house Chanel transformed its presentation space into a haunting, whimsical dreamscape: oversize beanstalks stretched skyward to the vaulted ceiling, and oversized blooms blazed in unnervingly vivid hues, creating a space that felt both magical and subtly off-kilter. A-list celebrities from across the globe turned out in force, with Oscar winners Tilda Swinton and Michelle Yeoh, French cinema icon Catherine Deneuve, Pedro Pascal, Lupita Nyong’o, legendary athlete Surya Bonaly and champion boxer Imane Khelif filling the front row — a star-studded turnout only a century-old fashion powerhouse like Chanel can command.

This eerie, enchanting contrast was no happy accident: it was the intentional creative core of creative director Matthieu Blazy’s latest collection, which draws inspiration from a forgotten fairy tale artifact the designer uncovered in Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s historic Paris apartment. The small leather-bound volume of classic fairy tales sparked a question for Blazy, who joined Chanel from Bottega Veneta earlier this year after the departure of Virginie Viard — who led the house for five years following Karl Lagerfeld’s 36-year tenure ended with his death in 2019. This collection marks only Blazy’s second haute couture outing at the helm of Chanel, and already the brand’s legendary atelier feels refreshed with a new, lighter creative energy.

When Blazy traced Coco Chanel’s life story, from her childhood in a convent orphanage to her rise as the most influential designer of the 20th century, he saw a real-life parallel to the classic fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk: an ordinary unknown person who dares to climb higher, outwit the odds, and claim extraordinary success. That narrative became the throughline of the entire collection, woven into every garment and accessory with subtle, clever detail.

The opening look set the tone: a sheer tailored Chanel suit stitched with a grid of tiny embroidered bean shoots. From there, vine motifs crept up gown hems and curled around shoe heels, while delicate butterflies and blossom appliqués popped up in unexpected places across tailored blazers and flowing evening wear. Even small accessories leaned into the fairy tale theme: mini evening bags were sculpted into the shape of sleeping bears and plump chickens, while heels were molded to look like butterflies and polished golden eggs. Blazy wove in quiet nods to other classic stories including *Goldilocks*, *Puss in Boots* and *The Ugly Duckling*, never spelling out the references explicitly for those who catch them.

Much of the collection’s magic is hidden in its intimate, handcrafted details, a hallmark of haute couture craft. Tailored jackets feature hand-painted inner linings, and sheer silk panels stitched with playful mock to-do lists — high-level couture craftsmanship applied to a mundane, relatable detail of everyday life. Blazy also left raw, frayed edges on many hems, a subtle tribute to Coco Chanel’s own fitting process, where she would often attack unfinished garments with pins to adjust their fit on the spot.

Blazy emphasizes that for Chanel, haute couture is never just a whimsical fantasy. “Haute Couture at Chanel is not just a fairy tale; in essence it is for women, their realities and their adventures of the everyday,” he explained. That philosophy anchors the entire collection: for all its storybook whimsy, Blazy stripped away unnecessary grandeur to leave wearable, functional garments designed for modern women’s daily lives. Standouts include a sharply structured wool coat, a shimmering red sequined shift dress, and a streamlined evening look pared back to a simple black tunic and straight-leg trousers. This quiet, understated confidence is one of Coco Chanel’s most enduring signatures — the ability to walk into a room in a simple, understated look and outshine every overworked formal outfit around you — and Blazy has reimagined the trick for 21st century audiences. He also reinforced this inclusive ethos by casting models of all age groups across the show, letting the diverse lineup speak for itself without fanfare.

After the traditional closing bridal gown that closes every Chanel couture show, Blazy delivered a purposeful final twist: the closing look was a simple, sleek off-the-black shoulder gown, far from a traditional wedding dress. The choice was a quiet nod to a little-known detail of Coco Chanel’s life: the iconic designer never married.

By the end of the presentation, the entire event felt like a fairy tale come to life. A-list guests gathered to witness a one-of-a-kind fashion spectacle, and left with a thoughtful, grounded meditation on the everyday adventures of modern women — just as Blazy intended.