Christmas: May Your Heart Be Light

Strong Sense of Place | Travel Through Books

Melissa & Dave

Books, Arts

5.0 • 559 Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2025

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sometimes, it really does feel like Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Give us the fairy lights, colored baubles, fresh smell of pine, whipped cream-topped hot chocolate, and cookies. ALL THE COOKIES, PLEASE. One of the best things about Christmas is that it stretches and bends to fit the shape we want and need it to be. Sure, holiday traditions can punch above their weight in December — sometimes feeling more like an over-loaded sleigh of obligation than a yuletide treat. But Christmas also invites us to adapt the season to be just as we like it: Stay up too late with books, greet the dawn with a walk, eat one more bite of your favorite treat, Grinch-out under a blankie, or get together with your people for holiday hijinks. Do all of it! Do none of it! Santa will add you to the Nice List no matter what. In this episode, Mel explains why she thinks everyone should read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and Dave tries to trick us with a holly-jolly version of Two Truths and a Lie. Then we recommend five great books sprinkled with Christmas magic, including two fantastic (and fantastical) books about holiday traditions around the world, a rom-com with just the right level of sweet and sassy, a YA Gothic mystery set in a smuggler’s inn, and a cozy murder mystery that proves making merry can be quite dangerous. The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter The Atlas of Christmas: The Merriest, Tastiest, Quirkiest Holiday Traditions from Around the World by Alex Palmer The Dead of Winter by Sarah Clegg Greenglass House by Kate Milford 12 Ways to Kill Your Family at Christmas by Natasha Bache For more on the books we recommend, plus the other cool stuff we talk about, visit show notes. Sign up for our free Substack to connect with us and other lovely readers who are curious about the world. Transcript of Christmas: May Your Heart Be Light Do you enjoy our show? Do you want access to awesome bonus content? Please support our work on Patreon! Strong Sense of Place is an audience-funded endeavor, and we need your support to continue making this show. Get all the info you need right here. Thank you! Parts of the Strong Sense of Place podcast are produced in udio. Some effects are provided by soundly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, welcome to Strong Sense of Place.
0:03.3	In each episode, we focus on one destination and discuss what makes it different than any other place on Earth.
0:09.2	Then we recommend five books we love that took us there on the page.
0:12.9	I'm Melissa Jolwan.
0:14.2	I'm David Humphreys.
0:15.5	We're going around the world, one great read at a time.
0:18.9	Thanks for joining us.
0:43.0	Thank you. one great read at a time. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Strong Sense of Place.
0:46.1	Today we get curious about Christmas.
0:54.5	Today in Tuturess and Eli will talk about the dark origins of one of our favorite Christmas carols,
0:59.1	as well as the terrifying creatures that are running around in Iceland this time of year.
1:02.1	And then we'll talk about five books we love.
1:07.6	I'm recommending a completely over-the-top Christmas murder mystery. That is so ridiculous, it goes all the way around and comes back to awesome.
1:14.4	That's great. If you have ever wanted your Christmas to include a golden pig, a candy
1:20.8	pooping log, and a witch on a broomstick, I have the perfect book for you. But first, Mel's
1:27.4	going to bring us up to speed with the Christmas 101.
1:30.8	It's Christmas 101.
1:33.3	Sugar, here's the plan.
1:36.3	Everyone might not know this about us, but we go all in on Christmas.
1:41.4	Yeah.
1:41.7	The day after Thanksgiving, we make a schedule for the Christmas movies we're going to watch.
1:46.9	We negotiate which cookies we're going to bake.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Melissa & Dave, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Melissa & Dave and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.