Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. It's yours truly, Brian Earle, back for another season of Christmas

past. I've got a fun season lined up for you with more of your Christmas memories and, of course,

more of the fascinating stories behind your favorite Christmas traditions. But we're going to start

things off a little differently than usual with a family gathering of sorts. Thanksgiving is a day

when the whole family comes together, and that's also true for the growing family of Christmas

podcasts. You may remember last year that several of us came together to tell you the classic Christmas story,

The House of the Seven Santas.

Well, we're back to our old tricks, and this time it's in a more official capacity.

You see, the world of Christmas podcasts just keeps growing and growing.

So a bunch of us got together to form the Christmas podcast Network, a collection of the best Christmas

shows around. We've got comedy shows, history shows like mine, movie review shows, and of course

no collection of Christmas podcasts would be complete without a couple of shows dedicated to

the Hallmark Channel. You'll hear me mentioning the network and the shows in it all throughout the

season. But today we're coming together to bring you this special episode. And because Thanksgiving

is the day when most people are finally ready to listen to Christmas music, we figured we'd share

some stories and thoughts and fun facts about that as a way to kick things off.

I'll go first with a fun little story you may have never heard about a song you definitely have.

As a Massachusetts native, I feel a certain pride in knowing that some of our most beloved Christmas traditions began right in my own backyard.

The first apartment store Santa Claus appeared in the city of Brockton, a ten-minute drive from where I grew up.

And that well-known song It Came Upon the Midnight Clear? Well, that was written by a minister from the

nearby town of Wayland. And speaking of well-known Christmas songs, there's another one that came to be

in the town of Medford, just a few miles north of Boston in 1850. The town even placed a commemorative

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