Link to our own Yule Log: • Occam's Yule Log
Follow us on social media:
Twitter: / occamanswers
Facebook: / occams-answers-1609580...
Reddit: / occamsanswers
Flipping through the annual flood of holiday specials and frantic advertisements, you may come across an oddly simplistic and comforting sight: a single stationary shot of a burning fireplace accompanied by Christmas music. Natives of the New York metropolitan area may recognize this as the yearly Yule Log broadcast, but few people know the story of how the broadcast became a Christmas tradition.
The burning of a Yule log is one of the many traditions that medieval Christians adopted from pagan Midwinter celebrations. While early European pagans would often enjoy a time of feasting, fellowship, and rituals involving large bonfires, medieval households would venture out on Christmas Eve to cut down a large tree, haul it to the house with much celebration, light it in the hearth with the scraps of the Yule log burned last Christmas, and keep the log lit throughout the entire twelve day Christmas celebration. Over time, this tradition was gradually pared down, but for an increasingly urbanized world, even burning a small yule log in a home fireplace is simply infeasible.
In 1966, this led Fred Thrower, the general manager at New York City TV station WPIX, to suggest broadcasting a video of a burning Yule log on Christmas eve. He reasoned that this “christmas card” of sorts would provide apartment dwellers with the comfort and nostalgia of a burning hearth, while giving station employees time off to be with their families. The idea was greenlit, and a film crew headed to Gracie Mansion, home of the New York City mayor, to film the burning fireplace there. They returned with 17 seconds of footage, at the cost of the mayor’s $4,000 carpet, which was burned when the crew removed the protective grate on the fireplace to get a better shot. That Christmas Eve, the station aired the 17 seconds of footage, looped over the course of 3 hours, accompanied by traditional Christmas music and completely uninterrupted by commercials. The Yule Log broadcast was an instant success, and was reaired every year until 1970, when the quality of the original film began to suffer. The film crew was understandably banned from the mayor’s residence, so a similar looking fireplace was filmed in California. This film was broadcast annually until 1990, when executives at WPIX decided that running a 3 hour long commercial free broadcast was an unnecessary financial strain on the station. While various online versions of the program were made available, fans of the Yule Log broadcast spent the next decade urging the station to return the broadcast to the airwaves. Then, in 2001, WPIX general manager Betty Ellen Berlamino announced that the station would be reintroducing the traditional broadcast that Christmas. In the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, TV networks noticed a huge demand for nostalgic and comforting programming, and for the people of New York, the Yule Log broadcast fit that description perfectly. After a thorough search of the WPIX archives, the 1970 version of the film was located, having been mislabelled as an episode of the Honeymooners, and was digitally remastered for broadcast that Christmas. The program was again an instant success, and since 2001 has been increasing in length and broadcast to markets outside of New York. In 2016, while searching for footage of New York native and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, digital director Rolando Pujol uncovered a copy of the original 1966 footage, long thought to have been discarded. The discovery came just in time for the film to be remastered and broadcast that Christmas, exactly 50 years after its original broadcast.
Today, few Americans haul an entire tree inside to burn in the fireplace, but the Yule Log broadcast allows this tradition to live on in a modern yet somehow charming and nostalgic way. The original films are still aired on WPIX, or you can enjoy one of the many variations and parodies from a variety of online sources. We’ve included a link in the description below to watch our own version when it uploads on Christmas Eve.
We want to take a moment to thank our viewers for all the support and encouragement you’ve shown our fledgling KZread channel. We hope everyone has an excellent holiday season, and we’ll see you in January!