The History of Santa Claus & Christmas Culture w/ James Cooper
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's Christmas time and this week we're resharing the original RTN Christmas Classic!
Christmas expert James Cooper joins Bob and Ben to explain how Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and other Christmas traditions made their way into popular culture. He also shares stories of lesser known traditions, such as setting fire to the giant Swedish straw goat known as the Gävlebocken!
You can find out more about the history of Santa Claus and Christmas at James Cooper's website WhyChristmas.com
This is a rebroadcast of RTN #82, which originally aired on December 18, 2017. This reair was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. |
| 0:08.5 | It's the week of Christmas and as is the tradition, we are going to be sharing our incredible |
| 0:13.7 | conversation on the history of Santa Claus and Christmas culture with James Cooper. |
| 0:17.7 | Still to this day, one of the most fun episodes we ever recorded. It gets into all of |
| 0:24.0 | the stories of Santa Claus, including actually St. Nicholas and the differences between American and |
| 0:30.3 | British culture. It's all the fun parts of Christmas. Make sure to check out James's website, |
| 0:35.8 | whychristmas.com. We can find out more. I hope you guys |
| 0:39.9 | have a great Christmas. We're actually going to take next week off from the feed and then we'll be back on |
| 0:44.1 | January 5th with some new episodes we've already got recorded. Patrons, thank you so much. You guys |
| 0:50.9 | keep this podcast going and we couldn't do it without you. And if you want to join us over |
| 0:56.2 | there, patreon.com slash the road to now. It is the fuel in the engine of the road to now in terms of |
| 1:02.3 | its finances. And that is a huge gift to us. So we're grateful. To everyone listening, to everyone |
| 1:08.8 | who supports the show, Bob and I are so grateful. This is a |
| 1:12.2 | labor of love. And I can't wait to share some of this new stuff that we're recording because, |
| 1:16.5 | spoiler, we've got an episode on a proposed constitutional amendment that might have more |
| 1:22.3 | traction than you think right now. So can't wait to share that with you. Have a great rest of 2025 and we will see |
| 1:30.4 | you in 2026. Merry Christmas or happy Christmas if you're in the UK. Happy to all your holidays. |
| 1:37.0 | Take care. James Cooper, welcome to The Road to Now. Well, thank you very much for having me. |
| 1:41.2 | It's great to have you on because you are an expert on the history of Christmas, the history of Santa Claus, and all things cultural. And you are joining us from the other side, not the other side of the planet, but pretty far away. Where are you at, James? I live in southwest England and a little seaside town called Minehead. And Santa Claus makes it there, huh? He does, yes. |
| 2:01.4 | It's everywhere. |
| 2:19.4 | It's amazing. Ben, he makes it everywhere. I don't know what your problem is. Yeah, well, I just, you know, a little picking on the English guy. You know, I got to do a little bit of that or I'm not a real American. We're cousins, right? We are Anglo brothers and sisters, right? we're cousins, Americans in English. |
| 2:20.1 | Yeah, absolutely. |
... |
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