Trevor Noah and Jimmy Kimmel riff on Google Search for 2020 — a Norther special

At the end of Fantastic and futuristic politics and government nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards for National Science Fiction Day, I told my readers to "Stay tuned for an entertainment angle for the year in Google search that I plan on using for Norther, which I promised in Farewell to 2020 from Vox, TODAY, and CBS Sunday Morning on New Year's Eve." It's time to follow through.

I begin with the segment containing more original comedy hosted by the bigger star, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah asking What Did We Google This Year?

What did people search for in 2020? Toilet paper? New pets? Trevor dives into Google’s Year in Search.

Noah cracked me up with his aside of "Ad time!" Still, he and his writers and editors intregrated it seamlessly into his show and made great jokes about what people searched for on Google last year.

In Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel take closer looks at Trump saying he won't leave the White House I noted that "this was the last Jimmy Kimmel Live of the year." Unlike Stephen Colbert, James Corden, and Jimmy Fallon, who ran down 2020 in original fashion, Kimmel also outsourced his end of year rundown to Google and made money off it as well in Year in Search 2020 - Sponsored by Google.

Google has released their highly-anticipated Year in Search film for 2020. They make one of these every December based on the top questions and moments the world searched for that year. Google even did some special research for us too and we found out some very interesting things about Jimmy and our lives in 2020.

As usual, Kimmel had the more comprehensive video description. I think he has the most informative summaries of his videos of all the late-night talk show hosts.

Google's Year in Search 2020 took the search results and tried to make stories out of them. Marketing Charts presented the raw top ten search in the U.S. and world, which I've embedded below.



No surprise, the top searches were about the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 U.S. presidential election, followed by Chadwick Boseman and other celebrity deaths, hurricanes and fires, sports, and murder hornets. Even without COVID-19, 2020 was a busy and eventful year!

Follow over the jump for an explanation and celebration of Norther, the fake holiday I'm celebrating today.

Happy Norther! To explain, I'll be a good environmentalist and recycle.

What is Norther? It's a fake holiday created by John Michael Greer the Archdruid in response to my telling him about Wester and its animal mascot, the Wester Squirrel.

Druids would likely demand a Souther and a Norther, too, with a Souther Wombat and a Norther Lemming as animal mascots; I'll leave you to decide what if anything they do with goodies.

Ah, but which solstice gets which holiday? At first, I was not amused by your suggestion, as I thought one parody holiday was enough. Then I slept on it and not only was I OK with it, I decided that Norther would come after the Winter Solstice and Souther would come after the Summer Solstice. Why would a lemming visit in the middle of summer?

As a result of that conversation, Norther takes place on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Winter Solstice, which is today.

I added another tradition to the holiday in Feats of animal strength for a Blue Norther on Festivus, when I wrote "Of course, it isn't a complete holiday post of mine without a drink for it...Tipsy Bartender just happened to have created the perfect one for Norther, The London Lemming."

The next Sunday after the first full moon after the Winter Solstice will be January 23, 2022, which is pretty late, but it will be the next Norther. Here's to my readers and I being around to celebrate it next year!