Well, here we are, getting ready to celebrate our fifth Christmas together,

and getting ready to close out the fifth official season of Christmas past.

I say official because, even though the podcast is year-round now,

I'm well aware that this family gathering of ours is at its most bustling

during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And that's when I share the episodes

that tell the backstories to your favorite Christmas traditions and share your Christmas memories.

So after today, I'm not going anywhere, but I know that many of you are, and that's okay. I'll

see you next year. But before I let you

go, let's take a look back at this most recent Christmas of ours, and remember the sights and

sounds, the news and trends, and the things that just might have the makings of lasting Christmas

traditions as time goes on, because after all, starting tomorrow, Christmas of 2020 belongs

to Christmas past. The big news, of course, that tomorrow, Christmas of 2020 belongs to Christmas past.

The big news, of course, that loomed large over the season and pretty much everything else this year, was the pandemic.

Annual Christmas events were cancelled or seriously scaled down or reimagined.

We started hearing about those things as early as June.

We heard reports of children visiting Santa

behind Plexiglass. A well-known Christmas parade in Raleigh, North Carolina, happened, but without

any spectators. I could go on and on because there were thousands of stories like this, but the

gist of it is that everything related to Christmas was impacted somehow by the pandemic, including

events, family gatherings, shopping, travel,

and more. And by the time we got to the holiday season, a lot of us were feeling pandemic fatigue,

and decided that enough was enough and tried to have a normal season anyway.

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