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This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company. Mm-hmm.
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IBM helps your AI access your data wherever it lives to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business. IBM. This is Rob Gronkowski from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jules. For the second season in a row, I partnered with T-Mobile's Friday Night 5G Lights, powering up hometown football across America.
This year, T-Mobile invested over $4 million in prizes to help schools take their Friday nights to the next level.
Now it's time to crown our $1 million grand prize winner. A huge congrats to Derricks High School in Derricks, Arkansas, home of the Outlaws and your 2025 T-Mobile Friday Night 5G Lights Champion. They scored a home field upgrade, Gronk Fitness Weight Room, a 2026 tailgate party, and an all-expense paid trip to the SEC championship game. To every school that competed, posted and rallied your communities. Thank you.
And a big thanks to T-Mobile for making it all possible and helping communities shine under the Friday night lights. This season may be over, but the story isn't. Stay tuned for season three in 2026. Did you know Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows 10? Upgrade to Windows 11 with an LG Gram laptop.
Voted PC Mag's Reader's Choice Top Laptop brand for 2025. Thin and ultra-lightweight, the LG Gram keeps you productive anywhere, and Windows 11 gives you access to free security updates and ongoing feature upgrades. Visit lgusa.com/slash iHeart for great seasonal savings on LG Gram laptops with Windows 11. PC Mag Reader's Choice used with permission. All rights reserved.
Ooh. Yeah. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Coming to you from the city where the West begins. Fort Worth, Texas.
trees strung with twinkling lights, Grand table set with all the trimmings. The sound of peaceful carols being sung. mantles decked with stockings and garland. These are just some of the many magical images that come to mind when we think of Christmas traditions. But it wasn't always that way.
In fact, in early America, Christmas was so out of control that it was actually banned.
So how did we get from chaos to cozy?
Well, one writer from the 1800s, Washington Irving, helped reinvent the ways we celebrate the Christmas holiday. and he didn't even mean to do it. Here's Brian J. Jones. with the story.
So, when Irving is writing his collection of stories for What Becomes the Sketchbook, at one point he bundles together five short stories that he titled Old Christmas. And it's about his narrator who is alone at Christmas time, is invited by a friend of his to ride out to the countryside to Bracebridge Hall. And observe the way Squire Bracewood celebrates the old-fashioned English Christmas. And Irving starts telling the reader about all these traditions that Squire Bracebridge is celebrating. He is celebrating Christmas old school.
It's Yule logs burning. And it's eggnog, and it's tons and tons of food out 24-7 for anybody to eat at any time. It's children waking up early and waking up the adults. And it's mistletoe, and it's people singing songs, and it's people riding in sleighs, and it's, and it's. Hillsides glistening under snow, and sort of everything we associate with Christmas.
And Irving. Has his narrator sit through these wonderful settings of these wonderful dinners and watching Squire Bracebridge sitting at the head of the table and regaling people with stories of the old days and how this is old Christmas and this is the way they've always done Christmas. And at one point, somebody. literally turns to the reader. and lays their finger aside their nose.
And back in Irving's day, that means we all know that this isn't true, right? I mean, we're all in on this joke, right? Irving's nodding directly to the reader saying, This isn't really the way it was, but I'm telling you it is. None of this is real. None of this really happened the way Irving says it happens.
But it's such a great story. It's such a great vision of Christmas. You want to be in Bracebridge Hall. You want to wake up in this old English country manner. And go downstairs in the morning, and the fires are crackling in the fireplace, and the tables are groaning under food, and venison, and beer, and pie, and vegetables that they picked and grown themselves.
You want to be in Bracebridge Hall. You want to experience this kind of old Christmas, which is what Irving calls this section: old Christmas. Whether that's true or not. And I think even Irving letting the reader know, you're in on the joke here, right? Uh American readers really didn't care.
The American colonies, at one point, when the nation's young, even before we're a country, Christmas is banned by a lot of the colonial governors because it was an excuse for people to get drunk and get in these big fights and beat each other up. There's a remnant of that, I think, in the Christmas Carol, We Wish You a Merry Christmas. One of the verses is: you're standing outside, and they say, Now bring us some figgy pudding, and we won't go until we get some. I mean, that was, you would have these drunken people stand outside of houses, and they'd be singing with their arms around each other. They'd say, Now bring us some food, and if you don't bring us some food, we're gonna drag you out of the house and beat you up, which actually did happen.
So the cleaner group said, That's it. Everyone out of the pool, we are canceling Christmas.
So, Christmas was not really the big glamorous center of the TID year, for sure, but it wasn't like our big holiday. It wasn't a big holiday at the time. It didn't really exist in a lot of places because it was an excuse for bad behavior. Irving is sort of rescuing Christmas and giving it back to us neatly tied up in this package called Old Christmas, which didn't really exist the way Irving said it did. But readers didn't care.
They just loved this interpretation of Christmas. Americans found that really, really attractive, as did Charles Dickens. Yeah. Charles Dickens was a huge fan of Irving and his work. Irving and Dickens write each other fan letters much later in life.
But Dickens later said that he was really influenced by Irving's take on Christmas. Dickens sort of takes Irving's version of Christmas and runs with it when he creates something like a Christmas Carol, and especially as in a Christmas carol when he's going back to Christmases of days past and, you know, talking about Christmas traditions in that book that didn't exist really that way either.
So Irving's view of Christmas really spawns Dickens' version of Christmas, which by then really spawns the Christmas industry as we kind of know it today. Victorian Christmas was influenced by Washington Irving, picked up and run with by Charles Dickens to make it sort of what it is today.
So, Irving can be fairly said to be the founder of the American version of Christmas because that. Portrayal, that interpretation of Christmas is so seductive and so fantastic that why wouldn't we want that to be what Christmas is about? And it sort of informs the way Americans start viewing Christmas. And so between Irving and Dickens, we sort of have the modern, I will still say American Christmas. We like to think of it as a Victorian Christmas.
That doesn't really exist until Irving creates it. and Dickens runs with it. Yeah. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Madison Derricott. and a special thanks to Brian J.
Jones and his book is Washington Irving, the definitive biography of America's first best-selling author. And my goodness, who knew that Christmas was banned? Because it was an excuse for people to get drunk and act stupid. And well Washington Irving wanted to do something about it, so he writes this book. and in the end, reinvents and invents.
Many of the traditions that we now consider Well, lifelong and forever traditions. Charles Dickens, by the way, was a huge fan. and took a lot of Irving's version of Christmas and, as we learned from Jones, just ran with it. The story of the founder of the American version of Christmas, Washington Irving. here on Our American Stories.
Yeah. Lee Habib here, and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily. Again, please. Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts.
It helps us keep these great American stories coming. Early birds always rise to the occasion for summer vacation planning because early gets you closer to the action.
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Siemporciento música regional mexicana proves uno quetro chisme. Holiday season's here and the studio is feeling festive. We got the tracks, the exclusives, yes, it's bright winter spice cranberry bien frio. That refreshing cranberry flavor, it's just right. A seasonal favorite, but limited time only.
So don't sleep on it to keep your fiestas festive. Adarle. Flo frio, con sprite winter spice cranberry. Obey your thirst. Did you know Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows 10?
Upgrade to Windows 11 with an LG Gram laptop. voted PC Mag's Reader's Choice Top Laptop Brand for 2025. Thin and ultra lightweight, the LG Gram keeps you productive anywhere, and Windows 11 gives you access to free security updates and ongoing feature upgrades. Visit lgusa.com slash iHeart for great seasonal savings on LG Gram laptops with Windows 11. PC Mag Reader's Choice used with permission.
All rights reserved. At CVS, it matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us, day or night. And we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and yeah, healthy snack.
At CVS, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters.
So visit us at cvs.com or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location. Ten athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit.
Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000. This is where mindset comes in.
Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. Trainer Games on Prime Video, January 8th. Watch the trailer on TrainerGames.com. This is an iHeart podcast.
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