Radio and PodcastLive Radio & PodcastsOpening Radio and Podcast...
Radio and PodcastLive Radio & PodcastsFetching podcast shows and categories...
Radio and PodcastLive Radio & PodcastsFetching podcast episodes...
It's the fascinating backstories to the Christmas traditions you cherish. Christmas Past brings you year-round Christmas history, forgotten Christmas fiction, roundtables, interviews, and mo...
Merry Christmas! The festive season reaches its peak today. And for the tenth year in a row, I'm here on Christmas Day to take a look b...
This episode arrives on Christmas Eve Eve. It's our final family gathering of the season, where members of the Christmas Past family sh...
A mysterious philanthropist spent more than 25 years handing out cash anonymously around Kansas City at Christmastime. Music in this Episode...
We're at the end of the last full week of the Christmas season. Christmas 2025 is right around the corner. And today, we're back w...
During the Great War, the fighting briefly ceased on Christmas on some parts of the front line. The so-called "Christmas Truce" has become a...
1968 was one of the most tumultuous years in modern history. But one bright spot occurred on Christmas Eve: an amazing feat that captivated...
A tragic accident at Christmastime in 1917 gives way to a story of a heroic response, a lasting friendship, and a unique Christmas tradition...
Boy, are we right in the thick of this Christmas season. Thanksgiving was just a little over two weeks ago. Christmas Day is just a little u...
A child's Christmas surprise for his family in 1902 became the stuff of myth and legend. Music in this Episode " Crystal Dreams " — Lit...
In 1953, a Christmas Eve train bound for New Zealand's capital city met a tragic fate. Music in this Episode " Ourselves at Least " — C...
In 1882, inventor Edward Johnson set up a one-of-a-kind Christmas display in his New York City home...and it changed the face of Christmas a...
The Christmas season is in full swing. The tree is up. The carols are playing. The shopping and baking merrymaking of all sorts is here once...
On a cold winter's night, a man working in a field saw an out-of-place object in the night sky. This is a Christmas story, but it'...
Inventor Reginald Aubrey Fessenden received hundreds of patents in his career. And one invention that debuted in 1906 changed Christmas as w...
Teenaged Annie Ide resented being born on December 25 because Christmas always overshadowed her birthday. But a unique birthday gift from an...
Just dropping by with a quick hello, now that the season is in full swing. Today, I share an announcement about this season of Christmas Pas...
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! It's the kickoff to the main season of Christmas Past. What better way to get things going than with a co...
In today's episode, Vaughn Joy, Ph.D. joins Christmas Past to discuss how the social and political climate of the mid-20th century shap...
Today, we welcome back a frequent guest on Christmas Past. Thomas Ruys Smith is a professor of American literature and culture at the Univer...
Today, I'm talking to Alonso Duralde, film critic, podcaster, and author of Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas (2nd Edition). Music...
Happy Halloween, everyone! 👻🎃 And welcome to the 2025 pre-season for Christmas Past. For the past several years now, we've kicked off...
The big day is here, and so is our final episode of 2024. As we so do every year, we'll take a look back at all the news, trends, sight...
The small, unassuming wren may be nothing much to look at, but wait till it starts singing. Its loud, complex songs, and its tendency to sin...
One by one, over a series of nights during Christmastime in Iceland, the Yule Lads come down from a mountain, making mischief, rewarding goo...
Ded Moroz ("Grandfather Frost"), went from folk tale to fairy tale, from beloved symbol of Christmas to exile, and then back to beloved symb...
Once again it’s time for one of my favorite traditions here on Christmas Past: dedicating an entire episode to you and your Christmas memori...
For a long time, ivy conjured images of all things pagan, superstitious, gluttonous, debauched, and morbid. For those reasons, it would be f...
Forty years ago, audiences got into the Christmas spirit by watching a little green creature get killed in a blender. Gremlins was more than...
If Christmas commemorates the birth of Jesus, and we celebrate it on December 25, then Jesus must have been born on that day, right? Not so...
Who doesn't love a parade? The very idea of a procession, usually involving costumes and music, is at least 4,000 years old. But grand...
The three kings. The wise men. The magi. They're the supporting cast in many a Nativity scene...the subject of several postage stamps a...
The creative team of Rankin and Bass have produced some of the most enduring, nostalgia-producing Christmas specials in television history....
The more than 75-year success story of Toys for Tots may seem like a fairly simple story: the Marine Corp reserve starts up a holiday charit...
A lot of people complain that Christmas comes earlier every year. But, is that really true? Extended holiday shopping seasons have been the...
Danny Pellegrino is a bestselling author, actor, and screenwriter. His latest book, The Jolliest Bunch: Unhinged Holiday Stories , is a nost...
Actor John Rhys-Davies (Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones) joins Brian to discuss Scrooge, A Christmas Carol. Rhys-Davies plays Dickens'...
We're in the early Christmas preseason. It's the perfect time to discover some new Christmas music before the radio stations start...
Happy Halloween, everybody! And more than that: welcome to another season of Christmas Past. Yes, it’s still Halloween. But that's the...
It's our eighth consecutive Christmas together. As we close out the 2023 season, we're taking a look back at the news and trends t...
Here in America, the day after Christmas is simply that: the day after. The party's over. But in England, it's an official holiday...
Christmas Day is less than a week from now. In this final stretch of the 2023 season, let's have another gathering of the Christmas Pas...
For many families, the Christmas Eve feast is a so-called "meatless meal." It's a tradition of European Christian roots that has gone o...
Old Fezziwig sure knew how to throw an office Christmas party. Dickens's description of Christmas Eve in Fezziwig's counting house...
In the late nineteenth century modern postal systems were still coming into their own. Around the turn of the century, many countries, inclu...
The Brady Bunch is an iconic American sitcom that ran for five seasons. But it produced only one Christmas episode during its original run....
For a bread that’s short, its history is long. Exactly how long, and the particulars of how it all came about, though, are unclear. But one...
One of my favorite parts of creating Christmas Past is sharing your Christmas memories. I love the warm connections I’ve had with so many of...
Colorful, glossy, enticing. For generations of children, the annual department store Christmas catalog was a field guide, a treasure map, an...
Stollen is a Christmas staple in German homes. This cake/bread hybrid is packed with flavor and shaped to resemble a swaddled baby. Food wri...
The mostly warm, fuzzy, cozy, sanitized Christmas is mainly a product of 19th and 20th century American influence. In earlier times, Christm...