I'm Welcome to the conversation Step Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris. We take a break

today from our regularly scheduled programming to talk about a novel that I'm very

fond of. It's actually my favorite Christmas story at this point. It's called

Old Christmas by Washington Irving. Originally it was published in 1819, 1820,, that time period as five separate short stories, and there were sketches that accompanied them.

And Washington Irving, for those who don't know, is probably one of the most famous American writers and

certainly a pioneer because of how early on he gained acclaim in Europe when American writers didn't have that acclaim yet,

but he wrote stories such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rit Van Winkle, and I think he's near

and dear to my heart in part because I spent so much time in upstate New York and in fact right now as I'm

Going to read portions of this to you. I'm sitting in upstate New York and it's beautiful.

It's a wonderful time of year to be here in my opinion, though the political situation isn't

great right now.

There's still a history that's very unique that honestly is understudied in my mind,

especially the Dutch history, which Washington Irving is of course credited with bringing into legend the Dutch history of New York.

There is a unique history to the Hudson River Valley that predates the arrival of the Puritans and there was a Dutch

influence that permeated the area. There's still hints of it here and there, especially in the Catskill

Mountains. And Washington Irving captures some here and Washington

Washington Irving captures some of that for me and in this book though he's not talking

about upstate New York he's talking about England and he's he's looking back to a time in which Christmas

wasn't so characterized by the hustle and bustle, modernity, temporariness it was

something that was more meaningful and deeper and

relationships were warmer towards one another across class distinctions and families seem to be closer and he longs for this kind of thing and

it's interesting because you pick up similar themes romanticized Christmas themes in Hallmark movies

...