Morning Wire - Christmas Traditions Explained & A Very Morning Wire Christmas | 12.25.25

Episode Date: December 25, 2025

Christmas traditions around the globe range from delightful to strange and even frightening. We ask Professor Michael Foley about the odd origins of some of these familiar traditions, including the title of his book, “Why We Kiss under the Mistletoe.” Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Ep. 2551 - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsor: Jeremy's Razors - Visit https://jeremysrazors.com today! - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy morning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Where did Christmas trees come from, and why do Eastern Europeans scare children with crampus parades? Christmas traditions around the globe range from delightful to strange and even frightening. In today's special Christmas episode, we speak to an expert about the origin story of things like Santa, mistletoe, and candy canes. Plus, we have a special Christmas message from Team Morning Wire at the end. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley. Merry Christmas, everyone. This is this year's special Christmas episode of Morning Wire. The best deals of the year are still live right now at Jeremy's Razors,

and you can score up to 50% off. Now's the time to stock up. You want a full year of shaving? $49.99. That's it. No games. No virtue signaling. Just a damn good razor that works.

And if you're ordering over $100, free shipping. These razors are built for men who don't back down, guys who show up, work hard, and refuse to cave to the nonsense. Head over to jeremy'sraisers.com right now. Deals expire soon, so don't wait. That's jeremy's raisers.com today. Joining us now to educate us on the history of the strangest Christmas traditions is author of

Why We Kiss Under the Missletoe and Baylor University Professor Michael Foley. Michael, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me on. Now, I want to ask you about a whole bunch of Christmas traditions, but first, just because of the title of your book, Why Do We Kiss Under Missletoe? Well, the short answer is that there was a pagan Celtic tradition of mistletoe as a sign of peace, and that when England and Ireland became Christian, they took that idea of peace and added the Christian signature gesture of peace, which is a kiss. And originally it only started on New Year's Eve.

You never put your mistletoe up before that. it was peace for the new year. And do we know how it ended up being a Christmas thing or just people liked it and it sort of encroached further into the calendar? That's exactly right. So it started to last longer and longer than New Year's Eve after New Year's, but then also before New Year's. And so now you can put it up as early as, you know, December or when the other decorations go up.

Yeah, November these days with some people. Yeah, exactly. Historically speaking, where do our main? Western Christmas traditions come from. So we have Christmas trees, Santa, candy canes, gingerbread houses, and we don't have to go over all of those. But where do most of those come from? How did we get those and how recent are they? You know, it depends on the particular custom, but most of them started in the Christian Middle Ages in Europe. Germany is responsible for a lot of them, including the Christmas tree. A lot of people think that the Christmas tree was sort of like mistletoe, a baptized

pagan custom, but it actually is uniquely Christian. It started off as a symbol of the tree of paradise. Actually, the two trees from the Garden of Eden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. And the knowledge of good and evil was represented by red apples, or red balls, and the tree of life was represented actually by hosts, unconsecrated communion hosts, which were eventually changed to candy and candy canes. And is that representative of the different decorations on the tree, like the apples and the candy? That's exactly right. That's where the red balls and the candy canes come from. They were actually symbols of the two significant trees in the Garden of Eden.

Now, what about Santa Claus? Boy, he's gone through some major transformations. He started out as St. Nicholas, a gift giver and a patron saint of children, but he was a celibate bishop from present-day Turkey from the fourth century. And somehow, in the early 19th century, thanks to New York City, he got transformed into a married fellow who lives in the North Pole and has sleigh and reindeer. And he wears red and white, not a bishop's robe. Yeah, it was a big, it was a big transformation.

Now, how did that transformation come about? I mean, it sounds like there's a very specific moment that that happened in New York. Was that a book? It was several different poets, including Samuel Clement Moore, which was the night before Christmas, Washington Irving. They just kind of rift off each other. And then it just sort of snowballed into this whole new legend. It started out with Santa Claus not actually as a human being, but as a right, jolly old elf. He was originally dwarf-sized and not an employer.

of elves, but an elf himself. And that was at the beginning of the 19th century, but then with subsequent drawings of Standard Claus, he kept getting bigger and bigger until by the end of the 19th century, he was, you know, a plus-sized human. Well, I assume that when he was an elf, that's when the tradition of coming down your chimney began. Exactly. Now, what about candy canes and gingerbread, either both or separately, if they have separate stories? There are all sorts of theories about candy canes. One is that some fellow invented this particular hard candy to keep children in choir quiet during long services. They could just suck on this candy instead of make noise. Another theory is that the hook of the candy cane is supposed to represent the letter J for Jesus.

Another theory is that it's the shepherd's crook in his staff. The red and white can also be symbols of Jesus, his purity, and his sacrifice in blood. But the truth is, with a lot of these customs, we really don't fully know. Customs don't always begin well documented. Now, what are the differences between how we celebrate Christmas here in America compared to other countries? I know we have some very distinct differences from Europe specifically. That's right. And in part, that's because we are a pluralistic society.

So a lot of our Christmas customs are eclectic. You know, they meld together different traditions. The original American Christmas, for example, would never have a Christmas tree. That was a German thing. But during the Victorian era, it became popular. And then that influenced our decision to have Christmas trees. Santa Claus is another one. You know, St. Nicholas was a Dutch custom.

But because his memory lingered in New York City, which was originally New Amsterdam, he got morphed into Santa Claus and became an American thing. So there are a lot of our observance of Christmas reflects, in a sense, the American experience. Now, when I was little, I remember hearing about a tradition that I believe is in Europe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, of putting shoes outside and you get oranges or little treats in the shoes. Where is that from? That's exactly right. So that happens on the vigil of St. Nicholas's feast day. So on the night of December 5th, you leave your shoes out. And St. Nicholas, who rides a beautiful white horse, will come visit you in the night and will leave

little treats if you're good, right? So oranges or chocolate, coins, and then if you're bad, lumps of coal. And then in Europe, you would not leave out milk and cookies for St. Nicholas, because this is Europe, you'd leave out schnops or brandy, and then you'd leave out hay for his horse. But it's interesting that you mention this because one big difference between a traditional Christmas and ours today is originally the Christmas gifts had to fit inside a shoe. They were small, humble gifts. And the needless to say, the American Christmas made those gifts a lot.

bigger. Now, is the shoe tradition throughout Europe, or is that specific to one country in particular? I would say the shoe tradition was ubiquitous in Western and Central Europe before the Reformation. And then after the Reformation, St. Nicholas fell on some hard times in some Protestant countries because they were worried about the whole, you know, veneration of the saints. There are some very interesting traditions, specifically in Iceland, the 13 Santas or the Yule lads. Tell us about that. In the course of researching my book on Christmas, I concluded that Iceland has by far the most bizarre Christmas traditions on the face of the planet. And one of them was these 13 Yule lads. They are the sons of child-eating ogres. and initially they were terrifying.

They would descend from the mountain for 13 days before Christmas, one by one, and then during the 12 days of Christmas, they would go back up to the mountain one by one. But initially they were absolutely terrifying, and it was so bad that the Danish government, which then controlled Iceland in 1759, legislated to Iceland, you have to stop. telling your children these stories. They're ridiculous and sadistic.

Clean it up. And so eventually they did. And now the Yule lads are pranksters. Each of the 13 is associated with a particular practical joke. And then you see them now in like sort of cartoonish figures. So they kind of, you know, Disney eyes the Yule lads to make them more palatable. Now, are the Yule lads related to Crompus or is Crompus separate? Crompus is a demon who is separate.

He hangs out in Austria and Germany, and usually around December 5th. And the reason for that is he is St. Nicholas's scary sidekick. St. Nicholas of Mira as a bishop was famous for exercising demons from pagan temples and whatnot. And so the idea is that he imprisoned and enslaved Crampus. And Nicholas is a nice guy. So he only gives rewards to nice children, but he doesn't want to get his hands dirty. So he gives the job to cramp us to punish the naughty children. Now, these scary traditions, do they have any historical significance?

Do they come from any specific event? Or are they all just derived from the demons that St. Nicholas exercised? I think there are a couple of things going on. One is, in the northern hemisphere, winter has always been a skin. time, especially for our ancestors who, you know, food scarcity would be a real problem during wintertime. You've got, and heat would be a real problem during wintertime. So you've got long, cold, dark, scarce nights. So naturally speaking, you're already suffering from seasonal affective disorder and a number of other sorts of things. It made perfect sense to our pre-Christian ancestors

to think of this also as a supernaturally scary time, a place when ghosts and witches and demons abounded. And so when Christianity came on the scene, it was not immune to that. It also recognized the dangers of the season, but what it did was try to harness the scary under the yoke of the good news that Christ, the light, has come. So that the scary remains in Christmas, in the Christian idea, but in a weird way, in a kind of psychologically therapeutic way, you know,

by identifying, by giving voice and name to these demons, is a kind of a catharsis, letting out the stress of the season. I like that. Now, you also talk about it in your book how the World Wars, both World War I and World War II, affected some of the traditions. Can you tell us about how Christmas changed with each of the world. of the major world wars? Every war that the United States has participated in since the Civil War has, in a sense,

expanded the role of Christmas. Thomas Nash was this union cartoonist. He's also the one who gave us some of the earliest images of Santa Claus. The union used Christmas as a kind of unifying holiday, in the same way that Lincoln used Thanksgiving as a unifying holiday. He was the first, I think, to fix it to the third Thursday of November or whenever it is. World War I and World War II also did this. You know, this is where you get, I'll be home for Christmas, those very sentimental songs.

It really, the war is really ramped up the sentimental aspect of Christmas, which has not always been a part of the holiday. Now, what about biblical influence? Do any of our mainstream traditions have? have a biblical origin, or are they mostly just cultural? They definitely have a biblical origin. I mean, even the dark side of Christmas that you and I were just talking about a moment ago, remember that the original Christmas story is scary. You have a stressed out couple, a woman in labor, you have to settle for this foul stable,

and then the baby's finally born, then you discover that murderous henchmen from Herod are out to kill your family. I mean, there's a lot of fear and anxiety in the original Christmas story. And then, of course, on the bright side, gift giving. The magi bring gifts to the newborn child. So it is eminently appropriate that gift giving would be a big part of our Christmas observance. Now, Christianity has spread to South America, to Africa, to Asia now. What kind of world traditions are we seeing crop up just in the past, say, 100 years when it's sort of exploded on those continents?

Well, I can say, like, for example, with Latin America, the primary gift giver during the Christmas season is actually not Santa Claus or St. Nicholas, but the Magi. And they bring gifts on the feast of Epiphany, January 6th, rather than Christmas Day. And I've been told that there is some cultural tension because, of course, we Americans like to export our commercialist ideas. And so Santa Claus and Christmas Day have influenced certain Latin American countries, but there's

kind of a cultural pushback against that. No, no, don't do the American thing. The magi are the better gift givers, which actually does make sense. I mean, we are the most logical choice for giving gifts. What would you say is the biggest change between our modern celebration of Christmas and that of our ancestors, aside from the out-of-control commercialism that we see? I guess one other huge change between our modern Christmas and our ancestors' Christmas is that there's a way in which they actually got festivity and merriment better than we do today. It seems like every year our Christmas season starts earlier and earlier. You know, it used to be you would never shop or put up any decorations until the day after Thanksgiving. But, I mean, this year, I saw stores selling Halloween and Christmas decorations.

at the same time, which is so bizarre, in my mind at least. So our season seems to start earlier and earlier. And frankly, by the time you get to Christmas Day, you're practically sick of it. And then you throw your Christmas tree on the curb on December 26th. 200 years ago, or 300 years ago, it would have been very different. Advent would have been a time of joy, but also of restraint. You wouldn't put your Christmas tree up until Christmas Eve. And then you keep it up for the 12 days of Christmas, which lasted until the Feast of the Epiphany.

And during those 12 days, you made Mary. Courts were closed, shops were closed. You made sure that you had chopped all the firewood that you needed and all the meats were cured. And for 12 days, you and your family and friends in the whole town partied. That's kind of a healthier model. Yeah. Well, Michael, thank you so much. for coming on. Now, do you want to just briefly tell us about your most recent book, abstaining with the Saints? I love that title. I do indeed. So in addition to my Christmas book, Why We Kiss Under the Missile Toe, I am the author of a series of cocktail and cookbooks, drinking with the Saints, dining with the Saints. And my most recent book, which just came out

a couple of months ago, just in time for dry January, is abstaining with the Saints, no and low alcoholic beverages for sober souls. Now, before you go, our whole team is sharing their favorite Christmas traditions. Would you be willing to kick us off with yours? Have you heard of the Christmas pickle? No. It started in the Midwest, among some Germans. I don't know if they used a real pickle, but now you used like a glass ornament pickle,

and you hide it, one person hides it in the Christmas tree. and the first person who finds the Christmas pickle gets an extra present. I have six kids, and the first time we did this, they practically tore the tree apart. It was terrifying. All right. Well, Michael, enjoy Christmas this year, and we appreciate you coming on. Merry Christmas. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. That was Michael Foley, author of Why We Kiss Under the Missletoe. And this has been a Christmas edition of Morning Wire.

Hello Morning Wire listeners. We just heard about some of the history behind many Christmas traditions we know today. So we thought we'd share some of our own favorites. Merry Christmas from the Morning Wire team. A new Christmas tradition that I started last year and I really love is I started going to see a Christmas choir performance in December. There's one called Christmas at the cathedral here in Nashville, although I think most cities have something similar. And it's basically a free performance of Christmas.

hymns and carols in a really beautiful reverent space. It's only an hour. It's on a weeknight in early to mid-December, but the music is so beautiful and it's so edifying and it just gets me in the Christmas spirit. So that's one of my new favorite Christmas traditions. Hey morning wire crew, Amanda Presto Giacomo here. If you've been a listener for a while, you might remember that I love making Christmas cookie boxes with my sisters for our friends and family. This year we have about two dozen different types of cookies. almond paste cookies, ginger snaps, canoli cookies, linsers, cutouts, shortbread, and so many others. And since I'm very pregnant, I did a ton of taste testing.

Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have an amazing Christmas celebrating the birth of our Lord. Hey guys, this is Daily Wire DC Bureau Chief Tim Rice. It's hard for me to pick a single Christmas tradition to highlight this year, because my oldest daughter is finally old enough to appreciate Christmas on her own, so we're doing all of them. For Yeats, the rice household has been festooned with decorations and filled with the smell of baking cookies. If Christmas music isn't blasting through the halls, it's only because we're sitting down to watch Rudolph for the 15th time. Every morning, she demands I turn the tree on, and she stands in amazement at the ornaments that she held hang. Before the phrase, childlike wonder around a lot this time of year, this year I've had a front rose seat to what that really looks like, and man, there really is nothing like it.

Merry Christmas, everyone. We'll see you in the new year. Hey Morning Wire listeners, this is Jenny Tara, Daily Wire's Immigration Reporter. My favorite Christmas tradition was waiting by the window on Christmas Eve for Santa, and Santa never came to my house, and that's how I learned that I was Jewish. We celebrated Hanukkah, which was very fun, and I learned to love Hanukkah. We would light the candles all eight nights to celebrate the miracle, and we'd eat oily foods, and it was fun. to just pig out and eat lotkas and jelly donuts.

And no Santa didn't come to my house, but it was a really special tradition. And we still do that to this day as a family and just spend time together talking. And we sing and we say different blessings to celebrate the miracle of Hanukkah. And of course, our ancestors. And I just want to wish everyone to Merry Christmas. Hey, everyone. This is Cameron Arcand political reporter with The Daily Wire. My favorite holiday tradition is when my family brings out the Christmas tree on Thanksgiving.

And then my other favorite Christmas tradition is every year we get a box from my grandmother in the mail. And we almost never know what's in it each year. So it's a nice surprise. Merry Christmas, everyone. Hey, it's Daily Wire Forward Affairs reporter Cassie Akiva. And every year for Hanukkah, my family makes oily treats like potato lodkas and donuts. We sit by our menorah and look at the lights and we just pray for the things that we want to happen in our life and we think about others and we talk about the great things that's happened this year. When Hanukkah is over, we put a little note on the bottom of our menorah that we tape there about what we are praying for to happen before next Hanukkah.

And so when we take out our menorah, we are reminded of this. Last year, I put in that I wanted to have a baby girl and I only remembered that when I took out the menorah while holding my brand new baby girl. Happy holidays, everyone. Hey, it's Tim Pierce, and my favorite Christmas tradition isn't much of a tradition yet, but last year my family got together and painted Christmas pictures. Of course, following tutorials on YouTube, and the whole fare lasted a few hours, and we all had a few glasses of wine, which may or may not have improved my painting skills, but regardless made me much happier with the finished product.

And it's easy to do if you want to try it yourselves. All you need is paint supplies, an internet connection, and a couple or four glasses of wine. Merry Christmas. Woo-hoo. Hi, it's Lyndon Blake from the Daily Wire. Merry Christmas to you all. It's my favorite time of year. Such a cold take, but it really is.

I love all the traditions. I love spending time of my family. My favorite Christmas tradition is on Christmas Day for breakfast. We all go to my grandmother's house. We were just there for the night before for the great steak dinner on Christmas Eve, but this is better. We're going to grandmothers and she's giving us her once a year premiere cream cheese braids. This is the bread that she, I don't even know.

know how puts cream cheese it's all homemade it's gooey it's delicious if you're my friend i've given you grandmother's cream cheese bread before but we call it cream cheese braids i don't know she just makes it a little fancier that way but that's my favorite christmas tradition also love reading twas the night before christmas every single year with my family no matter how old we get the magic is still there i wish you all a merry christmas and a happy new year Hey everybody, Cabot Phillips here from the Morning Wire team. To me, Christmas is all about hope. The hope of new life and forgiveness of our sins that came when God sent his son into this world.

My wife and I will soon welcome our second child in the new year. And as our family continues to grow and I experience that special love that you feel as a parent, I am only more in awe of God's love for humanity. The fact that he would choose to send his son for undeserving people like us. Thank you to all. of you who have listened to the show this year. I pray you feel that same hope, that joy and peace that comes with knowing Jesus,

and I pray that you have a very Merry Christmas. Hey there, this is Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham. So my daughters are serious ballerinas, which means that every Christmas, the months leading up to December, are dedicated to pretty much exclusively getting ready for Nutcracker performances. Inevitably, at some point in the madness

of rushing to rehearsals, checking out costumes, buying new point shoes, and marathon performance weekends, where we're all at the theater from dawn till dark, I'll think, wouldn't it be nice to have a leisurely Christmas season that doesn't involve all this running around?

But then the lights dim, the orchestra plays the initial notes of that magical Chikovsky music, and I watch my daughter's pirouet and arabesque, their eyes sparkling under the spotlights, seeing the joy on their faces, the applause from the audience, and knowing that we're part of this beautiful

Christmas tradition that families cherish year after year, well, it's all worth it. So if you're a fellow dance parent or just a parent struggling to keep up with all your kids' holiday activities, hang in there and remind yourself that the memories we're creating make every tired step worthwhile. One of my favorite traditions when I was younger was the candlelight Christmas Eve service at my parents' small but beautiful Presbyterian church. My mom was always adamant about going. her favorite service of the year. Maybe they had something to do with me being born on Christmas Eve. I was always her favorite Christmas present, she told me. But seriously, it was a service that was marked by reverence for God and the birth of his son. We quietly take our seats and we'd eventually

light our candles and we'd pass the light one to the other, like the flame of faith passing from person to person. Then we'd sing Silent Night. It's probably why it's always been my favorite Christmas song. If I had my way, we'd be able to recreate that moment. moment every Christmas. From all of us here on Team Morningwire, I just want to say we are truly grateful to you for tuning into this show. It is such a privilege to host it. And we wouldn't be here if it weren't for you, our listeners.

So thank you and have a very Merry Christmas.