Creating and Recreating Holiday Traditions with Brian Earl from “The Christmas Past Podcast”

Let’s get into the nitty gritty of our holiday traditions—real tree or a fake tree? Love egg nog or hate it? Decorating to the hilt or like to keep it minimalist? In this kickoff episode of our Untraditional Traditions series, we’re doing a deep dive into some of the traditions many of us may observe at the holidays, and a few we might want to try! Like, how many of you put up your Christmas tree at Halloween and take it down on Valentine’s Day? Well, our guest this week does and he just gave us all permission to do that same (you’re welcome). Because that’s the fun thing about traditions—we can take the ones that mean the most to us and build off them to create something that really reflects who we are. And if our old traditions leave us feeling flat, there are always new things to explore. Brian Earl, the host of the “Christmas Past” podcast is the perfect guide as we begin this series. Brian dedicates hours of research to uncovering the roots behind many of our beloved (and maybe to some, annoying) holiday traditions. Ever wonder why we put up a Christmas tree in the first place? He lays it out for us, along with many other interesting facts around traditions. Also, he and Jen reminisce about being kids in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s and the nostalgia around gifts we received and the Christmas commercials that used to barrage us on TV. (Rubik’s Cube, anyone? How about Teddy Ruxpin)? As they wind through the nostalgia of traditions past, Jen and Brian also talk about creating new traditions, and how valuable those are and will become to us and our people. Brian’s years of research have resulted in a book about all the fascinating, sometimes really surprising stories behind our holiday traditions, why we should care about them, and what they mean. Get into the spirit of the holidays as we wax nostalgic and dream of new ways to celebrate the season.

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Thought-Provoking Quotes

“I grew up in the '70s and '80s. Those are two decades that I feel like produced maybe twice their fair share of popular culture. And all of that worked its way into Christmas.” - Brian Earl

“Christmas for your great-great-grandparents was very different from what we celebrate. They would take a look at our celebration and sort of recognize it as Christmas, but not really.” - Brian Earl

“During the Christmas season, anything in my community that's going on, any Christmas thing, we're always running around to it, and [my wife] gets a little tired, because she loves Christmas too, but very few people love it as much as I do.” - Brian Earl

“Every year we write the next chapter in the story of Christmas. And I mean that on a small scale–you write the next chapter in your family's Christmas. But then collectively, with changing our behaviors, and just what kinds of things we want as a culture for Christmas, we write the next chapter collectively as the larger Christmas-celebrating community.” - Brian Earl

Guest’s Links

Brian’s Website

Brian’s Instagram

Brian’s Facebook

The Christmas Past Podcast

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

For the Love Podcast episode with “Deck the Hallmark”