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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff Works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question,

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Speaker 1: how does Christmas work? Or, to put it in another way,

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Speaker 1: how stuff works as Christmas Special. Christmas is the biggest

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Speaker 1: holiday on the American calendar, but how did it evolve

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Speaker 1: into such a massive event? In the United States, Christmas

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Speaker 1: was not really anything special until the eighteen sixties. Eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty seven was the first year that Macy's department store

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Speaker 1: in New York City remained open until midnight on Christmas Eve.

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Speaker 1: Eighteen seventy four was the year of the first window

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Speaker 1: displays with a Christmas theme at Macy's. It's snowballed from there.

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Speaker 1: The whole idea of giving presents on Christmas is something

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Speaker 1: that came from this retail push, along with the effect

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Speaker 1: of a single m It's amazing but true that the

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Speaker 1: common popular view of Santa that we all have today,

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Speaker 1: along with all the crazy things around Sata like the sleigh,

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Speaker 1: the reindeer, and the chimney, all came largely from two

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Speaker 1: publishing events that occurred in the eighteen hundreds and one

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Speaker 1: advertising campaign in the twentieth century. Clement Moore wrote the

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Speaker 1: night before Christmas in eighteen twenty two for his family.

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Speaker 1: It was picked up by a newspaper, then reprinted in magazines,

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Speaker 1: and it's spread like wildfire. If you've read the poem,

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Speaker 1: you will find that he names the reindeer, invents the sleigh,

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Speaker 1: comes up with the whole chimney thing, and the bag

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Speaker 1: of toys. Nearly everyone in America has been able to

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Speaker 1: recognize or recite this poem since the eighteen thirties. Then,

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Speaker 1: between eighteen sixty three and eighteen eighty six, Harper's Weekly,

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Speaker 1: a popular magazine at the time, ran a series of

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Speaker 1: engravings by Thomas Nast. From these images come the concept

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Speaker 1: so Santa's Workshop, sam are reading letters, Santa checking his list,

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Speaker 1: and so on. Coca Cola also played a role in

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Speaker 1: the Santa image by running a set of paintings and

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Speaker 1: its ads between nineteen thirty one. In nineteen sixty four,

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Speaker 1: the whole story of Rudolph appeared out of nowhere. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, Santa's at Montgomery Wards Stores gave away

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Speaker 1: two point four million copies of a booklet entitled Rudolph

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Speaker 1: the Red Nose Reindeer. The story was written by a

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Speaker 1: person in the advertising department named Robert May, and the

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Speaker 1: booklet was illustrated by Denver Gillen. In nineteen forty nine,

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Speaker 1: Gene Autry sang a musical version of the poem, and

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Speaker 1: it was a runaway bestseller. The Rudolph Song is second

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Speaker 1: only to White Christmas and popularity. That song, I'm Dreaming

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Speaker 1: of a White Christmas, written by Irving Berlin for the

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Speaker 1: movie Holiday In in nineteen forty two and sung by

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Speaker 1: Bing Crosby, is one of the best selling songs of

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Speaker 1: all time. The twelve Days of Christmas are the twelve

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Speaker 1: days that separate Christmas Day on December from Epiphany, which

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Speaker 1: is celebrated January six. Depending on the church, January six

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Speaker 1: may mark christ baptism that's the Catholic tradition, or it

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Speaker 1: may mark the day that the wise men visited the

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Speaker 1: baby Jesus with their gifts. The song demonstrates that some

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Speaker 1: people once stretched out their gifts and gave some fairly

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Speaker 1: elaborate gifts over the full twelve days, rather than stacking

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Speaker 1: them all up on the morning of December. The Christmas

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Speaker 1: tree began as a German tradition dating back as early

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Speaker 1: as seven a d. In the eighteen hundreds, the tradition

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Speaker 1: of a Christmas tree was widespread in Germany. Then it

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Speaker 1: moved to England and then America through Pennsylvania German immigrants.

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Speaker 1: In Victorian times, people had already started decorating trees with

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Speaker 1: candles and cakes hung with ribbon. In eighteen eighty what

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Speaker 1: We're sold the first manufactured Christmas tree ornaments, and they

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Speaker 1: caught on very quickly. Martin Luther in the sixteenth century

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Speaker 1: is credited as being the first person to put candles

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Speaker 1: on a tree, and the first electrically lighted Christmas tree

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Speaker 1: appeared in eighteen eighty two. Calvin Coolidge in nineteen twenty

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Speaker 1: three ceremoniously lit the first outdoor tree at the White House,

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Speaker 1: and that started that long tradition. Point Zetta's were attached

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Speaker 1: to Christmas starting in eighteen twenty eight. Joel Roberts point Zette,

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Speaker 1: then the first US ambassador to Mexico, imported the plant

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Speaker 1: for Mexico. Missiletoe has apparently been used as a decoration

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Speaker 1: in houses for thousands of years and is also associated

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Speaker 1: with many pagan rituals, so the Church wasn't very fond

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Speaker 1: of it and required that holly be used as a substitute.

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Speaker 1: Now everyone thinks holly is a part of the holidays,

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Speaker 1: And what about stockings? According to a very old tradition,

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Speaker 1: the original St. Nicholas left his very first gifts of

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Speaker 1: gold coins in the stockings of three poor girls who

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Speaker 1: needed the money for their wedding dowries. The girls had

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Speaker 1: hung their stockings by the fire to dry up. Until lately,

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Speaker 1: it was traditional to receive small items like fruit or

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Speaker 1: nuts or candy in your stocking, but these have been

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Speaker 1: replaced in the last half century by gifts in many homes.

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Speaker 1: Now that you understand where all these crazy traditions come from,

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Speaker 1: How stuff Works hopes that you have a happy Holidays

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Speaker 1: this year. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

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Speaker 1: is it how stuff works dot com