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Dec. 24, 2024 - Human Events Daily - Jack Posobiec
49:28
The Truth About Christmas

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This is what happens when the fourth turning meets fifth generation warfare.
A commentator, international social media sensation, and former Navy intelligence veteran.
This is Human Events with your host, Jack Posobiec.
Christ is King!
I want you to tell her the truth.
What's your name?
Kris Kringle.
I'll bet you're in the first grade.
Second.
I mean your real name.
That is my real name.
I say name, you say Scott Calvin.
Name?
Kris Kringle.
Name?
Sinterklaas.
Name?
Père Noël.
Babo Natale.
Père is Nicole.
Papa Gijo!
Ho, ho, ho!
Ho, ho, ho!
Uh-oh!
Get him out of here.
Hello, sir.
Oh, how do you do?
Would you like to come and sit on my name?
Now then, what's your name?
Susan Elizabeth Walker.
What's yours?
Mine?
Well, I have lots of names.
Chris Kringle, Santa Claus, Father Christmas, or Nicholas.
If you were in Holland, I'd be Sinterklaas.
Or in Italy, La Bifana.
Who the heck are you?
What are you talking about?
I'm Santa Claus.
No, you're not.
You disgust me.
How can you live with yourself?
Just cool it, Zippy.
You sit on a throne of lies.
Thank God.
Oh!
She's in a plaster!
Christmas time, pretty baby.
And the snow is falling on the ground.
It's Christmas time, pretty baby.
And the snow is falling on the ground.
And Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard and Merry Christmas Eve.
Today on Human Events Daily, I want to talk about the true essence of Christmas, where Santa Claus, of course, plays his part.
And we know, though, the real star of the show is Jesus Christ.
Now, Santa Claus is a beautiful figure, derived from Saint Nicholas, and he embodies the spirit of giving and goodwill.
But Christmas fundamentally celebrates the birth of Christ, the cornerstone of Christian faith.
And all of this stuff is, you know, kind of mixed up, and it is complicated, so I wanted to go through that quite a bit.
We know Jesus was born in a humble major in Bethlehem, came into the world not with pomp or power, but in simplicity and humility, teaching us that true greatness lies in love and service to others.
Jesus' message is one of peace, love, forgiveness, and charity, values that resonate deeply within the spirit of Christmas.
And so when we talk about keeping Christmas alive, we're not just talking about keeping Santa relevant, We're speaking of preserving the message that Christ brought into the world.
His life, his teachings are the bedrock of why we celebrate this season.
Santa Claus, derived from Saint Nicholas, in his own way reflects those same teachings.
The gifts he bring symbolize the gifts of Jesus to humanity, a reminder of unconditional love.
And also, by the way, building off of the gifts of the three wise men.
However, the commercialization of Christmas can sometimes overshadow this core message, and that's where we need to be careful.
And we can use Santa to teach children about generosity, just like Jesus taught through parables and actions.
But we also have to educate them that the greatest gift of all was Jesus himself, who gave his life for the love of mankind, The joy of Christmas is not found in the wrapping or the gadgets, but in the act of giving, in the spirit of forgiveness, in the love shared among family and friends and the love that Jesus showed.
And we need to show that love and we need to show that And a great way to do that, an important way to do that, to keep the magic of Christmas lasting beyond the season, but also something that lasts in our day-to-day lives, is telling the true story of Santa Claus.
And that's something that I wanted to do here on the program today.
Not only explaining the origins of Christmas the way that we celebrate it, but also talk about the origins of one of, not the central, but one of the central figures of the Christmas holiday today, Santa Claus, who was of course based on the very real Saint Nicholas, whose tomb, by the way, may have actually been found earlier This year.
And so here on today's program, we're going to give you the truth about Christmas and the truth about Saint Nicholas.
So I hope you will enjoy.
Our guest for the full hour will be the great Dr. Taylor Marshall.
Stay tuned.
We'll be right back.
All right, Jack Posovic back live Christmas Eve.
We're talking about the truth about Christmas and the truth about Saint Nicholas.
And I knew that the way to really tell this story was to bring the man on who literally wrote the book.
His name is Dr. Taylor Marshall.
He joins us now.
Taylor, how are you?
Jack, I'm great.
Merry Christmas to you.
Merry Christmas.
Let's go.
Let's go.
By the way, remind us all that Christmas Day is actually the beginning of Christmas tide.
The 12 days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day.
Is that right?
That's right, the 12 days of Christmas run from December 25th till January 5th.
There's a famous Shakespeare play called Twelfth Night.
Twelfth Night.
That occurs on January 5th, celebrating the twelfth night of Christmas.
So some people get that confused, but yeah, December 25th begins, does not end, the Christmas season.
Well, and this is a huge, actually, it's so great that you brought up Shakespeare because, you know, people know Twelfth Night, but it's like we have this sort of, it's almost like the detritus of Christmas traditions and culture all around us.
And people know the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas.
People know about Twelfth Night.
My kids love the chipmunk version of the 12 days of Christmas.
But it's like, we don't know how to put it all together because, you know, and Catholics, okay, you know, Advent, we have the four candles, and that's the season, and then Christmas starts.
But it's like, we kind of seem to have forgotten that it actually does all fit together, that these are not just You know, random pieces of traditions that have carried on.
And at one point, it was very common for Christians to, in fact, celebrate all of these things in concert, wasn't it?
Yeah, I mean, I think the modern day Christian living in a postmodern context says Christmas is about Jesus Christ.
It's all about Jesus.
Jesus is the reason for the season.
And then there can be, amongst certain groups, a rejection of everything that is not Obviously connected to Jesus Christ.
And as you just said, there's this giant puzzle.
There's this matrix that's built around Christmas with Advent and the 12 days and Epiphany.
And that's been broken apart.
And so these pieces are kind of lying on the table.
And what we want to do today, especially with St. Nicholas, is show that there is a cohesive Not only preparation with Advent, but a season of Christmas, and that the traditions, and especially the tradition of Saint Nicholas, known in our culture as Santa Claus, is deeply rooted in Jesus Christ, who is the reason for the season.
I think those of us with kids and families and everyone who's a Christian, We can better incorporate and see how all of this used to fit together without all of the commercialism and secular appropriation.
It's not about giving it up, it's about taking it back and finding out, for example, St. Nicholas is perhaps one of maybe top 10 most heroic Christians in the last 2000 years, but people don't know about him.
They don't know that he delivered young women from sex trafficking, that he is the patron of sailors and mariners, that he gave gifts to children, that he was imprisoned So many great,
true historical stories about St. Nicholas are lost and sort of Reduced towards commercialism, which is all about buying stuff at the mall and giving it to other people.
And there's a root of truth in St. Nicholas as a gift giver.
But I hope today that we can show that Jesus is the reason for the season.
And St. Nicholas is one of the greatest Christians, greatest bishops in the history of the church, pointing people to Jesus Christ.
And that's why he's situated around Christmas.
Let's address that one right on then.
The main tradition, even beyond nativity scenes and the 12 days and advent and all the rest, the main thing that everyone around the world associates with Christmas is the tradition of gift giving.
This is the one central thing that is held true for the entirety of the history of Christmas.
So here's a question that I have because every year this happens and you and I did that fantastic and award-winning documentary episode about the history, the true history of Halloween.
Where we debunked the idea that Halloween was pagan in its basis well people will tell me as well they say oh this is Saturnalia this is a Roman feast a pagan feast that the Christians came along and co-opted and that's that's really all it goes back to and it was tied to the winter solstice and things like that so let me ask you that question is this tradition of gift-giving Christian or pagan?
Well, the tradition of gift-giving at Christmas is not originally tied to Saint Nicholas, who also was a gift-giver, and we'll talk about that today.
The tradition of gift-giving is seen in the canonical gospels, right?
When you read the nativity story in the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, but in Matthew, The wise men, the magi, come from the east, they're following the star, and they bring gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and they present them to Jesus Christ literally as birthday gifts.
And so the notion of gift-giving It actually went from the first day of Christmas, as we discussed earlier, December 25th, all the way to January 6th, which in historic Christianity was called the Feast of the Epiphany or the manifestation to the three kings, the Magi.
And gift-giving was done all 12 days.
It wasn't just on December 25th.
In honor of the birth of Christ and the coming of the wise men.
So the gift of giving is actually in the Bible.
It's not pagan.
It's right there on the pages.
And then when we turn to Nicholas, We really get into a gritty story.
And this is the story that I retell in my book, Nicolaus.
It's the origin story.
People like origin stories of like Marvel movies.
This is the origin story of Nicolaus.
And as people might rightly know, if you've seen like Gladiator 2 or any recent films about the Roman Empire, human sex trafficking was a big deal.
Still is today, but back then it especially was.
And for poorer families that could not afford to place their daughters in society, provide dowries, et cetera, you know, these young women, it wasn't just like go be a barista or go to get a BA in journalism.
These young women often were turned out into the streets, were sold sometimes by their family.
And in the original story of Nicolaus, he as a young pastor is aware of girls From poor families having to go into this horrible lifestyle.
And so he identifies a certain family and he sneaks into their house, doesn't mention the chimney, doesn't come down the chimney, but he does sneak in the house and he leaves a certain amount of money as the oldest daughter is coming of age, which provides their family to place their daughter in society and for her to get married.
And the man who's poor has three daughters and Nicholas sneaks into the house and is leaving this gift of money To prevent these girls to being sold into sex trafficking, prostitution.
And on the third daughter, the dad stays up and he catches Nicholas in the house because he's curious on who's doing this.
And it reveals to the father and to all of history that the anonymous sacrificial giving to preserve chastity and to promote matrimony is this humble pastor, this bishop named Nicholas of Myra, And he has great concern.
He himself came from a very wealthy family, so he was a man of means.
And he chose to become poor, celibate, chaste, and to give away his fortune rescuing young girls, in this case.
And from this story comes the idea, you know, you have the three wise men bringing gifts to Jesus, but then this idea that this generous Christian pastor is sneaking into the homes to benefit children, and that's the origin story that gets developed over time.
He becomes the patron of children, he becomes the patron of gift-giving, and he died, this is also very important, he died on December 6th in the year, what was that, 343 A.D., And in the Catholic Church, often when a saint dies, they're given a saint's day on the calendar of usually the day of their death.
And so because he died on December 6th, the feast of Saint Nicholas is December 6th, which is at the beginning of December.
And so over time, The church and Christians began to associate the feast of St. Nicholas on December 6th as at the beginning of the preparation of Advent, preparing for Christmas, and also reminded the church and the faithful that Nicholas is a gift giver, the wise men are gift givers, and they kind of create the bookends.
December 6th, St. Nicholas January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, the Feast of the Wise Men, and between those 30 days is a period of gift-giving, self-sacrificial giving.
So you can see there's deeply Christian roots to Saint Nicholas and to this whole phenomenon of this time of year being gift-giving.
And think about that, by the way, now.
We live in a world surrounded by OnlyFans culture.
We have this influencer and she's, you know, a hundred guys in a day and she's like an OnlyFans influencer.
And now they do it themselves.
It's not even something that is done to them.
And you have the parents Celebrating it.
The mom and dad, they're the business managers of that individual.
And so when I look at the true story of Saint Nicholas, Nikolaus, and the book is Nikolaus, by the way, everyone should go and get this thing.
It actually teaches us something far deeper than just, oh, I'm going to give gifts to people.
It's I'm giving gifts to people as an act of charity, and I should want to do that charity because of the goodness that it turns myself into and as a way to show the goodness of the Christians.
And in fact, this has always been in times of tragedy, in times of plague, in times of real pandemics, by the way, That it was the Christians who always stepped up.
And this was a key reason that people switched from the paganism to Christianity very early on.
Constantine didn't force people to convert.
They did of their own accord.
We're going to be right back.
The truth about Christmas, Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus.
Jack Posobiec, Dr. Taylor Marshall.
All right, Jack Posobiec, Dr. Taylor Marshall.
The truth about Christmas.
The origin story of Santa Claus and St. Nicholas.
And just as we were leaving the last segment there, I couldn't help but think that, you know, the direct tie between Nicholas and how he was saving girls from trafficking versus we live in a society today Where OnlyFans and the Lily Phillips culture are prevalent,
and you hear people celebrating it, and then they'll still go and celebrate Christmas without seeing the glaring contradiction in terms between the two.
And so, you know, Dr. Taylor Marshall, St. Nicholas, it's not just about giving gifts, is it?
No, it's about, in his case, redeeming young women, but if you look at the whole scope of his life, it's redeeming culture, it's redeeming the Roman Empire, it's redeeming politics, it's redeeming everything, and it's these small acts of charity.
And in the book, it retells, it's a historical novella, and it retells how gritty and ugly ancient Roman culture was and how Christians like Nicholas were these bright and shining lights of hope and of redemption for people who were given over to idolatry, sexual immorality, slavery, all kinds of degenerate behaviors.
I think it's absolutely fitting.
It's a divine miracle.
It's providential.
That St. Nicholas on December 6th is positioned there at the beginning of December for Christians to begin their focus on how do I bring redemption to my culture, my family, my town, my neighborhood, because that is how the culture war is won.
It's exactly how St. Nicholas did it.
He was doing small acts of charity anonymously.
I think that's another key about Nicholas.
He wasn't like a Pharisee on the street corners saying, look how holy, look how righteous I am.
He did all of this in secret because he wanted the credit from God, not from man.
And as I said earlier, he was a very wealthy man from a wealthy family.
He gave all that up.
And during the persecution under Diocletian, Nicholas was on death row.
Most of the bishops during this time, most of the pastors in the early 300s were all being martyred.
They were dying.
To be baptized was a very good chance to be killed by the Roman Empire.
But to be ordained, to be amongst the clergy, was almost a certain death sentence.
So Nicholas was in prison and they were saying, deny Christ and you can go free.
And he would not.
So he goes from one of the wealthiest men to rotting in a jail cell.
On death row, condemned to be killed, and then Constantine arrives, and Constantine makes Christianity tolerated and legal in the Roman Empire, and it's because of Constantine that Nicholas gets out of prison And gets a second half to his life.
He gets another chance in this world to extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
And because of Constantine, Nicholas goes back to his pastoral work and he becomes very important in the controversy over whether Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God.
Which also roots Nicholas back to Christmas and fighting the Arian heresy.
There's a famous story where they're at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and Arius the heretic is there and Arius is saying Jesus is not truly the Son of God.
And Nicholas was so perturbed and so upset he stood up and slapped Arius across the face in front of a whole assembly of bishops because of the blasphemy.
So we see here I think there's definitely A masculinity, a presence.
He doesn't put up with heresy.
He stands for the truth, and he stands for Jesus Christ, true God, true man, which ultimately is the message of Christmas, that the baby lying in a manger is not just a cute prophet, but that is the Son of God, light of light, True God of true God.
So there's a lot of theology there.
There's a lot of history there.
And this is why Nicholas has been so popular for almost 2,000 years.
And the sad thing is, is basically the red and white Ho Ho Ho Santa was just a...
It was an appropriation by the Coca-Cola company to sell Coca-Cola.
And that's the association with the red and white.
and it became a marketing scheme, a marketing plan.
And unfortunately, as our culture became less and less Christian...
Yeah, actually, just on that real quick, that the in...
Because as everyone knows, my wife comes from the Orthodox world, that the Orthodox, and they call it "Dead Moroz," which is like Father Frost.
who is essentially the same character in some ways.
He's got a granddaughter, In that tradition, and he always wears blue.
So the red is very much a Western marketing tradition.
Even traditional Santa Claus, you can find nutcrackers and things that'll be green or more elf-like.
And again, in the Orthodox world, you'll see blue a lot.
Not always, but you'll see a lot of it.
So the idea then that the red and white, that's really a modern marketing tradition.
But I guess one of the questions that I have is, so let's say folks are watching and they've got little kids or little grandkids.
And, you know, they want to, you know, keep the idea of Santa Claus still alive for them, but they want to connect Santa Claus to Christ.
And one of the things that I hear a lot is, you know, well, it's simple.
The magic of Santa Claus, it's, you know, he's able to do what he does because of God, because he's been given the job by Christ.
And that's something that you just, you never see.
And then in every single adaptation, every year there's like a new adaptation of Santa right now, but I've never seen one where they say, yeah, it was Christ who gave him that gig.
What would you recommend to folks like that?
Well, I'm working on a screenplay right now.
Oh!
Here we go.
He's pitching.
He's pitching on Human Events, folks.
Here it comes.
Hopefully, that film will come to you in maybe 2026. But yeah, that film does not yet exist.
And I think, you know, Joe and I, we have eight children.
We've been doing this a long time.
And one of the things we did when the kids were young is we had a Byzantine, like an Eastern Orthodox icon that's pretty large.
And we hung it on the wall near our Christmas tree.
And we just taught our children that is Saint Nicholas.
So it sort of shows them that this is a true saint.
He is a bishop.
And then I think it's important to tell these stories To your children.
You can give them the full, if they're older, the full kind of gritty edition of, man, there was a really bad culture at that time and St. Nicholas was a powerful influence against it for Christ.
But you can also tell them these stories about, and there's kids books of this as well, Of Nicholas being a gift giver, of Nicholas being a champion for Jesus Christ, of Nicholas being a pastor, just as you would tell of any other story of a Bible figure or a saint or an important person in our history, like telling our kids about George Washington or whatever.
And that way, Their understanding of Nicholas is rooted in truth.
And, of course, you can still have magical moments and, you know, St. Nicholas can still bring gifts.
You know, we did all that as our kids were young.
But all of our kids along the way knew that Nicholas, like, again, do you believe in Santa?
There's that magic.
All of our kids, even as they got older, like, of course, Nicholas is real.
He doesn't live at the North Pole.
He lives in heaven.
And I think teaching our kids that I think the eastern Christians have maintained that in the west as we become more secular the whole coca-cola red and white ho ho ho santa has taken over.
I think it's very important that young children realize that Saint Nicholas is a disciple of Jesus Christ.
He is a servant and teacher and preacher of Jesus Christ and that's why he was a gift giver.
So I think that's how we retake it.
Just as we were talking about Halloween, like Halloween is All Hallows Eve.
It's a celebration of all saints.
And as long as you can keep the true history, you know, the true theology connected to it, I think it's great for your kids.
I think it's great for the family.
I think it actually is very enriching to see that not only is gift-giving part of the Bible, it's part of our Christian tradition to redeem culture by gift-giving.
And that kind of guts out the commercialism of Christmas.
It shows you that really gift giving should be something that is culturally powerful, reclaiming.
You know, I had a funny kind of, I guess, situation where I took the boys out to go Christmas shopping and Tanya was sort of doing a girls night, Tanya Tay, and was with them.
So I took the boys out and I said, boys, let's go.
And we're going to go get some Christmas presents for the rest of the family.
So for the grandparents and the aunts and uncles and, you know, and for mommy.
And of course we go out and the six-year-old you know he was totally cool that he was a mission it was great but little aj who just turned four he got really upset as we were leaving because we got something for almost everybody on the list actually but he was saying but daddy we didn't get anything from me where's my christmas present and so in his mind i'm trying he's young so i'm trying to teach him that that you will get something but it's you you're not going to get it right now but the point is That we're
doing this for them and we can't wait for them to find out.
And it was rough.
I mean, he was bawling.
I mean, he was like ugly crying at one point.
But the point is, is you've got to push through it.
And we did push through that.
He may have got some candy afterwards.
At the Wawa.
But the point is, we have to push through that because you just have to instill it very, very early on.
And hopefully that, I think that come Christmas morning when he sees them opening the presents, that he'll see the process put together.
We'll do that, we'll go to church, or we'll have gone on the night before and I think at that point, he will understand the process and putting all the pieces together is what it's all about.
Yeah.
And, you know, we've done with our kids too, you know, there's children in foster care and they have these angel trees and, you know, for the last 10 years or so, each of our kids have picked out an angel off the tree and they're usually younger kids and you get them, you know, a coat and a pair of clothes and a toy.
And it's good for kids to give I think it's a great analog to say this is what St. Nicholas was doing and we are going to be like St. Nicholas and we are going to give gifts to those who are poor, those who are less fortunate.
And so, you know, as Christians, you know, we have to think about how do we raise our kids to have the spirit of St. Nicholas and that right there is it.
Folks, we'll be right back.
The Truth About Christmas, St. Nicholas in San Carlos.
The Truth About Christmas, St. Nicholas in San Carlos.
All right, Jack Posobiec, Dr. Terrell Marshall, The Truth About Christmas here on Human Events Daily this Christmas Eve.
So let's get into that, Dr. Taylor Marshall.
This idea of, you know, is it possible to say, look, we want to keep Christ in Christmas.
This is the big push this time of year.
Of course, you see the bumper stickers, you see the magnets, people have it around.
You put up the creche, you put up the nativity scene.
Everybody loves those.
Advent calendars, by the way, are something that have never really gone away.
They're very, very well received.
But, you know, what would you say to folks?
And they say, look, I'm not advocating for throwing out Elf on the shelf.
Maybe not yet.
Maybe we will.
But not on religious grounds, just on cringe grounds.
Because people just take it a little bit too far.
No, you know what?
I am going to say that.
Stop taking Elf on the shelf too far.
It is fun.
It is a nice thing to do with your kids.
That's all right.
But people take it way too far.
It's not supposed to be about you.
It's supposed to be about Christmas.
Same deal with Santa Claus.
You know, that's fine.
Put out the milk and cookies.
All for it.
But leave it at that, okay?
Just leave it at that.
But let's also suggest that rather than restricting Christmas, how can we do a little...
Actually, in this segment, let's talk about, yeah.
Yeah, I'm thinking it's time we do a little Christmas maxing.
What about people who want to go full on, that want to do the 12 Days of Christmas, that want to do Epiphany?
How can we practice Christmas maxing?
Other than buying the book, of course, but what other things can folks do out there that really want to bring these Christian traditions?
And a lot of them, by the way, are very fun.
Yeah, absolutely.
Before we go into those suggestions, people kind of begin Christmas on Black Friday, or even before, and by the time they get to December 25th, they are exhausted with all things Christmas.
Christmas music, Christmas decorations, and that's not how it's supposed to be.
Historically, amongst Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, there was a season of Advent, which was a season of restraint.
It was kind of like Lent.
And so I think if we can be more mindful of Advent and restraint, Then when we get to December 25th is really the time to throw huge parties.
And so I think for families, I mean, here we are on Christmas Eve, but Christmas itself should be a religious holiday.
You need to go to church, people.
December 25th is a time to worship Jesus Christ as a community and that means going to church.
So I think skipping out on church sends a bad message to your own soul and to your family.
You need to come together and offer true divine worship to God with the community at church.
You know, it's called Christ Mass.
Christ, we know the word Christ, and Mass, that's the traditional Catholic service of the Holy Eucharist.
So that Christmas is Christ and it's going to Mass.
Now, beyond that, there's the 12 days.
And we mentioned the Twelfth Night, and it was, I'll kind of jump ahead, Twelfth Night was a time for people to kind of come together, you know, drink something warm, sort of say goodbye to Christmas.
So I think there was a tradition of Twelfth Night parties where people would have a big fire and maybe consume the end of all the leftovers and the celebration and sort of say goodbye to Christmas on Twelfth Night.
So that's a good idea.
But also within those days, traditionally, there's a celebration of Saint Stephen, who's the first martyr.
There's a celebration of the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
And it can be a good opportunity in the evenings to continue to read the biblical stories, to read spiritual reflections, sacred scripture.
And then also New Year's Day, what is a holy day.
It's the eighth day after Christmas.
That's the day on which Christ would have been circumcised, circumcised on the eighth day.
And also in the Catholic tradition, it's a day honoring the Virgin Mary, saying, here's the mother of Jesus.
And everything she went through, pondering these things in her heart.
So there's a reflection there as well.
And some people give a gift every day in the 12 days of Christmas.
That practice has died out.
Maybe we need to bring that back.
I know kids would be really excited if they were getting a gift for 12 days, even if it were something small.
And I think also probably the biggest thing, Jack, is to keep the spirit of Christmas and the joy of Christmas to leave up your decorations.
And that's becoming much more popular now amongst Christians.
It used to be like a day after, a couple of days after Christmas, take down everything.
People are now leaving it up till January 6th to sort of extend the festive season.
And that communicates to your children and to your friends and to your family.
Hey, we are still celebrating the incarnation, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
So, you know, be a little bit more strained up to December 24th, and then after that, pull out all the stops.
And do a lot of partying.
At our house, my favorite day is December 26th.
That's the day after everybody's left.
There's still amazing leftovers.
And I'm putting batteries into toys and playing with the kids and reading their new books and, you know, lying around in our pajamas.
And December 26th to me is just sort of like a great afterglow.
Of Christmas.
So there's a lot of things you can do there.
And I think the most important thing is don't give up.
Keep the festivity going for 12 days.
You've got it in you.
You can do it.
It's worth it.
Did you all do that, Jack?
Did you all have to keep things going?
Keep the decorations up?
No, we do that.
Actually, Tanya Tay loves that because, so we sort of, as a kind of small attempt, you know, people say this, and we, well, actually, no, people don't say it, I say it.
That we make our small attempt to mend the schism every year.
And people say, well, what do you mean, you know, Western Catholic, and she comes from the Orthodox world.
And I say, well, and we raise the kids Catholic.
But one thing that we do, because for her whole family, celebrates the Orthodox Christmas, which is, of course, held on January 6th.
So, which is the day after Epiphany, also known as Old Christmas.
Now, this of course is held this way because of the difference in the Julian calendar versus the Gregorian calendar.
Basically, they stayed On the original calendar.
And by the way, you do see this with a lot of stuff in history.
You know, even when we, you know, when we did the series a year ago about the Communist Revolution in Russia, they call it the October Revolution.
And that's great to say, when did the October Revolution start?
I said, well, it started in November.
I said, well, wait a minute, what?
How did the October Revolution, it's this huge, you know, the Communist takeover of Russia, but it started in November.
I said, well, yeah, because they changed the calendar and You know, they did this, they did that.
But one thing that we do is we actually keep the tree up until Old Christmas, which was sort of around for a little bit of time after the calendar change came up.
And I believe in England they celebrated Old Christmas.
For some time.
And it's just something that we do.
So it's at least going to be up until then.
And then the kids will usually get a little something else.
We also do, of course, the St. Nicholas with the shoes.
We do that on December 6th.
We were actually in Florida this time around because we had a Turning Point event.
But St. Nicholas found us even down there in Florida.
Which is a great way of introducing St. Nicholas to the kids, by the way.
And so all of these are great traditions that people can do throughout Christmas, throughout Christmastide, meaning the name of the various days of the 12 days of Christmas, and it all falls under that.
And it's fun, right?
It's actually supposed to be fun.
There are things that you can do.
There are things that you should do that we should all be doing in order to keep this together.
And so, you know, the other piece...
I'm glad you mentioned your wife because it takes a lot of the stress.
If you're going to put everything on one day, that is stressful.
Yes, that's a great point.
That's a huge point, actually.
We're going to go 12 days.
It's much more manageable.
It's much more chill.
It's much more fun.
Yeah, it's a lot more chill as opposed to, like, Thanksgiving is, you know, in the American tradition, of course, is just one day, which is funny, by the way, because Tanya not coming from the United States, she's like, what is this food and why do you only eat it one day of the year?
But also, why is it mandatory to eat it on that day of the year?
She's like, it just is, okay?
It just is.
It just is.
And why is July 4th and eat the turkey?
The turkey.
Actually, we had some really good, like, we had some, like, honey turkey this past year.
It was really good.
So we should, you know, you can have family over in those days.
You can get together.
During the time.
Exactly.
You know, there's a lot of time off for work.
Quick break coming up, but I want to get into that.
Some of the different Christmas traditions that we as Christians should be just going all in because we're Christmas maxing with Dr. Taylor Marshall here on Human Events Daily.
The truth about Christmas.
Christmas Eve. Christmas
Eve. Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve, Human Events Daily.
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Alright, Dr. Taylor Marshall, final segment here.
This is the question that I've got and Producer Angelo in the chat was pointing it out and he said, this is a good one.
So it's not just all fun and games this Christmas and we talked about charity towards others, but what about charity towards family and not just charity towards strangers, but we just had a massive election.
We had a huge situation where people were at each other's throats.
Mark Halperin has talked about families that were literally torn asunder In 2024 over whether you supported Trump or whether you supported Kamala Harris.
And then in the wake of all that, we get Christmas.
How do families that are dealing with this, that are truly suffering through this, how do they navigate Christmas?
Yeah I mean this question goes all the way back to our medical crisis you know when there's masks and debates on you know should you get the injection or not get the injection this has kind of been creeping up for years now and you know in sacred scripture and you also see with Mary,
Joseph and baby Jesus a hospitality towards visitors in this case the three wise men gold frankincense and myrrh and in the biblical tradition and the christian tradition The wise men, the Magi, they're from the East.
They're not Jews.
They're not from the same culture, ethnicity, religion, language of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
And yet, they're coming with gifts and they are welcomed.
And that shows, you know, it's called the Feast of the Epiphany because it's the epiphany or the manifestation of Jesus to the nations.
And the call of Jesus Christ to his apostles was to go to all nations.
And that entails a reconciliation of all of mankind.
You know, not just the ancient Jewish people, not just the Old Testament, but a reconciliation of all men.
Peace to men of good will.
And so we as disciples of Jesus, we as Christians, need to exercise that generosity, that care.
And in the Bible, it's interesting, one of the spiritual gifts It's listed in the Bible as hospitality.
Sometimes we forget that being hospitable and welcoming to people is a spiritual gift, and a spiritual gift is something that leads people to Jesus Christ, that leads them to forgiveness in God through the Holy Spirit.
So, you know, this is not the time to bash, to booyah, our guy won, he did win, thanks be to God, but to extend the olive branch And to focus on Jesus as the Prince of Peace.
I mean, do you agree with that?
Do you think that's on the money?
No, I think that makes sense.
You know, it's the idea being that just, and look, if you're on the side that won, and I imagine most of the folks listening to me are Trump supporters, and you know, if anyone out there wasn't, then hey, there's a seat at the table for you too.
And that's kind of the point of Christ, is that there is a seat for everyone.
The family that couldn't find a room at the inn is the family that welcomes all to their table—Joseph, Mary, and the Christ child.
And the Christ, Christ being the King of Kings coming through.
And we mean that when we say that.
You know, I start every morning on X. I say, I say, GM, Christ is King.
And I say, wake up, pray up.
And people think, oh, that's just a, you know, that's just like a phrase that you guys use, Christ is King.
No, no, we actually believe it.
We actually believe that we are all in his kingdom and that we are all working towards his kingdom.
And part of that is bringing as many people as possible into that kingdom with us.
And if the way to do that, you know, if there's a disagreement over politics, then okay, fine, right?
There's a disagreement over politics, but that doesn't supersede the fact that it is our duty to bring people into Christ's kingdom.
It's just that simple.
And so, look, you say, you know how to You know, rough year, but, you know, at least it's Christmas time.
We can kick back and, you know, hopefully try to find some commonality through Christmas.
Use Christmas as a way to try to rebuild some of those familial ties, and we are called to do so.
This is part of our duty as well as Christmas.
Dr. Taylor Marshall, I wanted to say thank you for this round-robin episode.
Christmas Maxing, The Truth About Christmas, Santa Claus, and St. Nicholas.
Tell people again the name of the book and where people can go to get it.
The book is Nikolaos, which is the original Greek name of St. Nicholas.
You can get it on Amazon.com.
It's a number one bestseller last Christmas.
Probably will be another number one bestseller again this Christmas.
It's a great fireside short read and it'll give you the authentic, beautiful story of the real historical Nicholas named Nikolaos.
Go to Amazon.com.
There's also a great dramatic audio version if you want to listen to with your family.
High recommend that.
Nikolaus, go to Amazon.com.
But did you do it?
But did you do the audiobook?
I did not.
Ah, I'm trying to do mine for Bulletproof.
We'll see next time.
It's hard with fiction and you have female voices.
It's a little...
It's tough.
It takes talent.
Yeah, but I really recommend the Audible version.
It's beautiful.
It's really glorious.
It's a great thing to sit around for your family.
Here's hoping you have an incredible Christmas to you, Dr. Taylor Marshall, the entire Marshall clan, and to everyone out there.
Merry Christmas.
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