Chicago Christmas Past
The end of the year is always a time for reminiscing. These podcasts are based on the long-running radio series I used to do in Chicago. They are called Christmas Past and concern the news, the music and the sweetness of Christmastimes in the past.
Listen on:
Episodes
Monday Dec 11, 2023
Monday Dec 11, 2023
A new dance craze is sweeping the nation, but it doesn't sit well with a preacher in Indiana. Then there's the matter of libations during this Prohibition Christmas season.
Monday Dec 04, 2023
Monday Dec 04, 2023
An armistice in Korea, money swirling along the train tracks, Jack Benny goes Christmas shopping.
Thursday Nov 30, 2023
Thursday Nov 30, 2023
Because of the energy shortage, even Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer was affected. Watergate was closing in on President Nixon, and Merle Haggard wondered if we'd ever make it through December.
Sunday Nov 26, 2023
Sunday Nov 26, 2023
A very special Christmas in Chicago: the city lights its first municipal Christmas tree, a 35-footer donated by the land-based partner of Captain Herman Schunemann, who with his crew on the Christmas Tree Ship, died when it sank in Lake Michigan in 1912.
Monday Nov 20, 2023
Monday Nov 20, 2023
This was the coldest Christmas in Chicago's history. It also was a time when bombs and fears of bombs were near the top of the public mind. It also was the debut year for what is now a Christmas movie classic.
Saturday Nov 18, 2023
Saturday Nov 18, 2023
A slight uptick in the depths of the Great Depression; depressing news from Germany with its new leader; some red faces in Berwyn.
Saturday Nov 18, 2023
Saturday Nov 18, 2023
This was a subdued Christmas, coming just weeks after the assassination of a president. On the other hand, the music was pretty good, at least to a certain generation.
Thursday Nov 16, 2023
Thursday Nov 16, 2023
Christmas, 2003: American soldiers were hunkered down in Iraq; Chicagoans came to the rescue after burglars stole a large quantity of toys meant for poor kids; parents might have been flummoxed by the new technologies the kids wanted.
Thursday Nov 16, 2023
Thursday Nov 16, 2023
A golden oldie broadcast in 1993 detailing the wartime Christmas of 1943, complete with an Edward R Murrow report on a bombing mission and Lionel Barrymore playing Scrooge in the radio version of "A Christmas Carol."
Saturday Nov 11, 2023
Saturday Nov 11, 2023
The drama of a Christmastime kidnapping of a little girl, the top tunes of the year, toys and that new thing, a computer, under the Christmas tree.
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