Today in History: Dec. 25

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Today is Christmas Day.

In a book that is known to have been compiled in the year 354 A.D., these words appear in an entry for the year 336: “25 Dec.: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae.” (Translated: December 25, Christ born in Bethlehem, Judea.) Thus, since some time in the 4th Century, Christians have celebrated the mass of Christ’s birth on December 25.

By the 6th Century, the December 25 date for the birth of Christ was common knowledge, so common that the monk who is credited with inventing the concept of the B.C./A.D. calendar, Dionysus Exiguus, wrote that “December 25 in the year 1” was the date of Christ’s birth.
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The Original Yule Log Is Back!

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The New York City television station WPIX first broadcast its yule log “show” on Christmas Eve 1966, fifty years ago tonight.

It was a brilliant idea that the president of WPIX, Fred Thrower, had that year: give New York City’s many apartment dwellers an old-timey Christmas fireplace like the one they had never had for the night on their virtual hearth, the television. The station tossed out several thousand dollars worth of advertising in order to air two continuous hours of a fire burning in a fireplace. The advertisers may have wound up the ones gnashing their teeth, though, as a few hours of a burning log in a fireplace won the city’s ratings for the night. It was an idea that was instantly loved.

Since 1969, the original recording had been believed to be lost. WPIX announced this month that the original tape was found this year, was digitally restored, and will be aired from 11:00 p.m. till Midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The above pretty much describes the TV viewing in my house on Christmas Eve when I was 10 or so.
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Today in History: Dec. 24

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft; einsam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh!—Joseph Mohr, “Stille Nacht”

Father Joseph Mohr, a parish priest in Oberndorf, Austria, composed a poem he called “Stille Nacht,” and brought it to a local organist, Franz Xaver Gruber, to see if he could write a tune for it. Gruber did. On this date in 1818, Mohr and Gruber debuted their song, Gruber on guitar, during a Christmas Eve Mass.

John Freeman Young translated it into English decades later, and published “Silent Night” in 1859.
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