Of Christmas as long, long ago is my new book arriving for the 2025 Christmas season.

Find out what Christmas was like centuries ago.

Sneak preview, it was weird, and spooky, and rowdy.

Kind of gross sometimes.

Find it wherever books are sold in hardcover from Lions Press and audiobook from recorded books.

It's Christmas as you've never seen it before, and it makes a great gift.

I'm Brian Earle. This is Christmas Past.

Christmas morning, 1902, in a grand old house of a grand old family. A couple were their six children. The house

dressed for the season, evergreen boughs on the mantles, reeds on the doors. The children

woke up early, of course, banging on their parents' bedroom door, racing down the halls. In the library,

six stockings hung from the fireplace, bulging with treats and gifts, racing down the halls. In the library, six stockings hung from the fireplace, bulging

with treats and gifts, hanging for eager hands to tear them open. But the children weren't

the only ones receiving gifts that morning. The second youngest son, little eight-year-old

Archie, had a surprise of his own. He led the family to a closet, grinning wide, his secret barely

contained, opening the closet to reveal inside a tiny Christmas tree, two feet tall, wired with those

newfangled things called Christmas lights, and hanging from the branches, gifts for his parents,

brothers, sisters, and even all of the family pets.

A surprise for sure, but not the good kind.

Because the father of the house had some very strict ideas about cutting down trees for something as frivolous as a decoration.

The house had no Christmas tree, and that's why Archie had to smuggle this one

in. And the father of the house was used to getting his way. And not just because it was 1902

when the man of the house was commander-in-chief back then. Well, maybe a little bit of that,

...