How Our Christmas Traditions Came to Be
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 26 December 2023
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, before it became a Federal Holiday—June 26, 1870—the way we chose to celebrate Christmas would be unrecognizable to us.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:14.3 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories. |
| 0:18.4 | And welcome to our very special Christmas episodes and we love doing this |
| 0:23.7 | at this time of year every year to remind everybody why we're celebrating this season. Here's Greg |
| 0:30.0 | Hangler with the real story of our cherished Christmas holiday. Ah, Christmas. |
| 0:40.6 | Up goes the tree and on go the lights. |
| 0:45.2 | An exciting season of presents and parties only as Scrooge could hate. |
| 0:47.7 | But where did all our traditions start? |
| 0:51.5 | Why do we bring huge evergreen trees into our homes? |
| 0:54.9 | How did we get Santa and his eight tiny reindeer? |
| 1:00.8 | We are about to pull back the curtain to unveil the hidden history of our cherished holiday. |
| 1:07.4 | These days, cities and towns seem to be dressing up earlier and earlier for the Christmas season, and there are lights, lots and lots of lights. |
| 1:12.6 | 250 strands of light, 100 individual bulbs per strand for a grand total of 25,000 imported |
| 1:20.1 | Italian Fuego Lights. |
| 1:21.6 | Hey! |
| 1:22.6 | 25,000. |
| 1:24.6 | Drum roll, please. |
| 1:26.6 | Here's Ace Collins, author of Stories Behind the Best Loved Songs of Christmas |
| 1:31.3 | and Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas. |
| 1:36.1 | Christmas trees would not be the same without Christmas lights. |
| 1:39.1 | And yes, for hundreds of years, there were Christmas trees with no lights on them. |
| 1:43.3 | As a matter of fact, a man named Johnson who worked for Thomas Edison |
... |
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