Christmas is a time for making memories and reminiscing about the ones already made.

That's what brings us together in today's episode.

Here on Christmas past, I love telling the stories behind our Christmas traditions and narrating classic Christmas fiction,

but what I love most of all is hearing and sharing your Christmas memories,

those little glimpses into your childhoods and families and

hometowns and traditions. And so I'm very excited to welcome you to this first of our little

family gatherings like this of the season, the kind dedicated solely to members of the

Christmas past family sharing and reminiscing with the rest of us. I say the first of these

gatherings because there will be at least one more.

How many more exactly depends on you. So before we dive in, let me just tell you that there is

still time for you to send a Christmas memory to appear this season. Don't be shy and don't feel

like it has to be anything elaborate. Just record yourself speaking into your phone's voice memo app

and send it to Christmas Past podcast at gmail.com. Just keep it reasonably short, clean and family friendly, and be sure

to say your name and where you're from. And until I receive your Christmas memory, we'll have

these to tide us over. So, if you have some hot chocolate nearby, take a sip now and snuggle up.

Now, here we are about two weeks into the Christmas season, and that sounds a lot nicer

than saying we're almost halfway through. Halfway, if you count the day after Thanksgiving,

as the start of the Christmas season. Now, for many of us, it's even earlier than that,

like Levon in California. My Christmas memory doesn't even take place during Christmas.

It has been a long-standing tradition with my family that Thanksgiving would be celebrated at my

parents' place.

And even after my father passed away, we continued this tradition.

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