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145: Christmas Special 2019 with Heather LeFebvre

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Transcript

Note: This transcript is automatically generated. There will be mistakes, so please don’t use them for quotes. It is provided for reference use to find things better in the audio.

 

Dan LeFebvre: [00:00:00] Christmas today is filled with festive family gatherings, great food, gift-giving, decorations. And I’d like to start by focusing on one of those decorations, the nativity. Another reason I’d like to start there is because for a long time, the nativity scenes kind of shaped how I used to imagine that first Christmas might’ve been, and I don’t think I’m alone there.

After all, in the Christian tradition of the nativity scene, it’s supposed to kind of depict that first Christmas as told from Luke two verse seven. Now, not all nativity scenes are the same, but generally speaking, it looks pretty similar. You have Mary and Joseph, they’re looking over a baby in a manger that looks kind of like a wooden bassinet, very uncomfortable looking.

and then sometimes you have three wise men in there and there’s almost always, Hey. Animals and all of it’s kind of set in a standalone building by itself. It looks kinda like a barn, because the in was overbooked as, as the Bible says, of course, I don’t expect anyone to assume that the N is a holiday Inn or motel six, like we think of the word today.

But it doesn’t stop there because when you explain the major in your book. My, in my mind that’s a very different picture from the wooden bassinet looking thing that I see in a lot of nativity scenes, and I think a lot of people today might have a mental image of what that first Christmas might’ve looked at and have it be driven by.

A nativity scene that they see, but that might be wrong. Could you paint a picture of what that first Christmas might’ve actually looked like?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:01:44] Sure. So what scholars right now think that first Christmas probably looked like was a bustling household in Bethlehem and just a regular house that you’re a regular, everyday family would live in.

And that house would have been divided into two parts. There would have been the part for the family to actually live in eat, have their food, sleep, and then in the same structure, under the same roof would be a part of the house that would be for keeping their animals, especially overnight. So yes, there might be some hay there and probably a manger, although the manger would have most likely been made out of stone, a stone trough that was chiseled out, and that manger probably functioned as the separation between the animal side of the home and the people side of the home.

So what most likely was happening in the first Christmas was Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem during a very crowded time because of the Roman census, when everyone was returning to their hometown. So it was kind of like we do at Christmas where we all travel back to see our relatives and our houses are filled to bursting with people sleeping on the floor and all the spare bedrooms.

So Joseph went to his relatives house and their guest room was full. There was no place for them to stay. All the guestrooms were probably full in Bethlehem. The only place for them to rest, for Mary to have this baby was in the animal side of this house. The manger would have provided maybe the only safe place to place a baby.

So that it wouldn’t be trampled on the floor by either the animals or the visiting relatives. I think we got the idea of an Inn from medieval interpretations of the Greek word caught Luma, which can better D translate it as a guest room. So when Joseph knocked on the door, there was no room in the guest room for Mary and Joseph.

So they had to be put in the animal side of the house. So probably the first Christmas was loud, hot, smelly, full of hay. Yes. Bustling with people. And I mean, maybe they took the animals out. So Mary and Joseph could have a little privacy to have the baby, but maybe the animals were there too. So, yeah, quite a different picture than we all grew up with.

But scholarship changes over time and thanks to archeology and Greek scholars, this is probably closer to what really happened.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:04:25] Yeah, that’s, that’s a, that’s a very different picture than I think of when I see the nativity scenes and things. It kind of seems. Quiet and by itself and you know, it is its own building and so you don’t expect a lot of people there.

And the animals are all well behaved,

Heather LeFebvre: [00:04:40] like this romantic idea of quiet and peaceful and everyone wants, wants that in their mind at Christmas. But I think it was a lot more like our real lives in general. Crazy and chaotic and bustling.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:04:52] In your book, you mentioned how no one kept track of birthdays back then, which.

Make sense from a historical perspective, but then to contradict that, we still know when Christmas is and so they had to attract something. Can you give an explanation of how we began celebrating Christmas on December 25th.

Heather LeFebvre: [00:05:14] This really puzzled scholars about exactly when and how it came about, but the best sort of way we can explain it is, yeah, no birthdays were being kept, kept written down around Jesus’ time.

However, as Christians moved into the Roman empire, we went through the first few centuries of church history. Roman persecution came on hard, and in fact, many Christians were put to death. And the early church was in hiding. They wanted to remember these Christians that died and they started recording death dates.

So the death dates started to be written down and remembered by the early church. And there was a list that was compiled that was passed around. Many Christians knew about. So over time, this list began to include a remembrance for Christ’s baptism, and of course a remembrance for his death and resurrection, which that date was easy to come up with because it always fell with the Jewish celebration of Passover.

So there’s no trouble on finding a date for that. There wasn’t any record of Christ’s birth, so people had to come up with an explanation of when that could be. And there’s all sorts of lines of, well, it would be nine months from his conception, and we’ll set his conception in March, March 25th so you count nine months, and that’s December 25th everyone had their own ideas for this.

However, there was something else going on in the culture, and that was the fact that the Roman culture was celebrating already a huge festival in December for a week called the festival of Saturnalia, and it was accompanied by feasting people being off of work. A lot of Marymount drinking going on.

They also had another separate festival specifically on December 25th which was their winter solstice date, and that was the festival of the unconquered sun. And so there was a lot of speculation that as Christianity was growing and spreading in row, this December 25th date, which was already a holiday.

To a son, God could easily assimilate and be converted into a Christian holiday to the son of God. Official records from at least three 45  show that Christians were now celebrating the birthday of Christ on December 25th

Dan LeFebvre: [00:07:45] almost sounds like a little bit of convenience to know that there was already a celebration going on.

And so. This is a good time as any almost, I mean, we don’t really know when it is.

Heather LeFebvre: [00:07:55] Right, right, right. It seemed very convenient and when the Roman empire converted to Christianity in three 13 suddenly Christians could be celebrating out in the open, and this gave that something to focus around when all their neighbors were focusing on pagan festivities.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:08:14] Okay. That makes sense. Now, how about the name Christmas, because I’m sure, I mean, the first Christmas wasn’t in their minds the first Christmas, but when did the name Christmas come into the picture?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:08:25] That took a really long time. And, it’s funny to think that the word Christmas was not in use until a thousand years after Christ was born.

The first record of the actual word, it would be an old English word for Christmas. comes into the records in 10 38. And it’s, two words put together Christ’s mass mass being the word that the Roman Catholic church, which was pretty much the only church in the West at this time, used for a worship service.

So this was Christ’s worship service as opposed to a worship service to remember a different Saint. There were masses named after various saints throughout the year in celebration of their death dates.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:09:16] So like a Peter mass, almost like that would be to celebrate him, a specific for him. And then this one is Christ mass.

Is that, am I getting that right?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:09:25] Yes. So Martin mass would be to celebrate Saint Martin’s death date. And so Christ mass was not his death, but for his nativity.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:09:36] Thousand years later. Wow. Do we know, what they called it before that the celebration before that time? I

Heather LeFebvre: [00:09:44] think just nativity, because in the early medieval years they were preaching activity sermons.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:09:51] Okay. Keep it simple. Today you think of Christmas, and one of the key things, as I mentioned in the beginning was gifts and giving gifts, and that’s one of the most popular traditions around Christmas today is giving gifts. When did the tradition of giving gifts start to take shape?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:10:11] For the Christians as they were beginning to celebrate this anniversary of Christ’s birth.

Gift-giving really wasn’t a part of that. They were focused more on the religious aspect, so it would have been more of going to church, having a church service, maybe having a meal in their homes to celebrate, but gifts were not really a part of it. gifts were somewhat of a part of the Roman Saturnalia festivals and other winter pagan festivals in Europe, but also the gift-giving seems to have taken place more around new year’s celebrations, not so much for Christmas.

So there was some gift-giving going on. Mostly it was gift-giving from the rich to the poor. So the Nobles might provide gifts or the peasants, a master might provide gifts for the servants. It wasn’t really focused on children. These were adult festivities and celebrations. Definitely not child focused yet.

The whole gift giving for everyone really came into its own during the Victorian era, especially handmade gifts were popular at that time, and the Victorian era is also when a child centered holiday came into its own. And gifts became very important guests for children in the sort of late middle ages to 1516 hundreds would have been given on December 6th and feast of Saint Nicholas or on January 1st so really it’s the last 200 years where the gift giving at Christmas has, has become a major focus of the holiday.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:11:52] Okay. So relatively recent overall as far as the overall celebration is concerned. Now, you mentioned the dates of that guests were given, but in your book you mentioned Martin Luther. Gives gifts, gave his gifts on Christmas Eve, even though in the 15 hundreds it was popular to give gifts on the celebration of Saint Nicholas that you mentioned earlier.

Now, I know a lot of people today even carry on that tradition, probably without even realizing that it may have been Martin Luther who started that, was he actually the one who started that tradition of giving gifts on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:12:26] It’s always hard to say who starts what. Martin Luther had a lot of popularity and whatever.

He did kind of spread around the whole Western world. So he is attributed in Germany with switching the gift-giving from December 6th the feast of Saint Nicholas to Christmas Eve. So we could definitely attribute his influence to that. Martin Luther was one of the foremost leaders of the Protestant reformation, so he was concerned with correcting abuses in the Roman Catholic church.

Something he was concerned about was that there was so much focus on venerating the saints, and he felt that some of that focus should be returned to. Christ. And one way he could do this with children was switching the gift giving for children from the feast of Saint Nicholas to Christmas and switch out this gift giving figure from Saint Nicholas to the Christ child.

So yes, he kind of was a forerunner in switching the gift giving and, and making it focused on Christmas Eve.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:13:34] You mentioned Saint Nicholas in there, cause that’s something I want to talk about because that is of course an alternative name for Santa Claus. Jolly old Saint Nick. Right. So what does Saint Nicholas have to do with Christmas and when does that Christmas tradition, because you were saying Saint Nicholas, the celebration was earlier in December.

When did that start to kind of merge into the Christmas tradition and start mixing Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus and it all kind of becomes a hot mess of different characters merged into what we know today. Well,

Heather LeFebvre: [00:14:10] that’s exactly what it is. It’s all a hot mess and we can fill a whole book with this.

You have Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus, so let me try to pull out a few key points of this history and how it all fits in. So we do know that there most likely was an actual man named Nicholas who was a Christian Bishop of Smyrna that would be in Turkey. He lived around the time of 270 80 to 343. Now, the tricky part is that we don’t have any written records from me is actual living time period.

The first records we have of his life come 400 years later. So that means it’s hard to prove what’s right and, and what’s been made up. the other thing that adds to this, there was another Nicholas of Scion who, and these two lives became confused and no one knows which information goes with which Nicholas.

And then in the middle ages it became popular too. Compile lifes, and these were sort of embellished stories of important figures, and they were written with good intentions. The lifes were written to be moral lessons, for, for the people alive. Then they took people that maybe had done something good and they really added extra good stories to their lives.

It hoping that this would motivate. Current people to do good things. So a lot of legends grew up around this name of Nicholas, especially the legend that we hear in various forms of, of him wanting to help a poor man who had three daughters of these three daughters couldn’t marry because they didn’t have money for dowries.

So Nicholas decides to use some of his wealth and he puts some gold in his sack and one night throws it in the window and the next morning one of these daughters discovers it, and lo and behold, she has enough money to marry. Well then the same thing happens two more times so that each of the three daughters are able to marry.

So there’s all kinds of versions of the story of the gold, maybe lands in someone’s shoe or, or the gold comes through in a different way than the window. It lots of different details. but the, the gist of the story is that Nicholas was a kind and good man. He cared for young people and we should emulate what he’s doing.

His fame spread, and he was well known from Russia all the way to the Western part of Europe, and eventually December six became the legendary date of his death. So no one really knew the date of his death, but December six was somehow decided upon. And so. He eventually became Saint Nicholas, and he was remembered every year on December six and then somehow the gifts got started.

He was also known as the patron Saint of sailors, and he was a painter, patron Saint of a few other things too. So his scope of influence was very wide and varied, but somehow, somehow he came to also be the, the Saint who gave gifts to children. He was well known as a Saint when the reformation hit and the Protestants really wanted to back off on the remembrances of saints and the veneration that was happening.

Of course, in Germany, Martin Luther’s switched the focus from December six to Christmas Eve at the Christ child in England. They just gave up on Saint Nicholas altogether and introduced their own gift-giving figure by the name of father Christmas. The Netherland stopped having the Saint Nicholas during the reformation in somewhere afterward, they came up with their own version, who may call it Sinterklaas, so you can begin to hear the progression from Saint Nicholas to what we know as Santa Claus with this middle name of Cintra clause in the 18 hundreds it was, these figures were becoming popular again in Europe as the original effects of the reformation were kind of lessening.

Well it happens that Washington, or being a famous American writer was living in New York in the early 18 hundreds and he decided to write a comical history of New York. So you have to catch that word comical. This was not to be a true history of New York. This was to be sort of a joke. And in his book he described the importance of Saint Nicholas to their first residents of New York city.

Those residents being from the Netherlands. So Sinterklaas was mentioned, Saint Nicholas, it was kind of all in one and Washington Irving being described this Sinterklaas as coming down chimneys. And flying above people’s sets. So this idea is moving from a Saint of the Christian Church to a mythical character who can sort of work magic.

And then around the same time, an anonymous poem was published and like for Christmas, and that described further details of this, this emerging figure. there was a sleigh reindeers it was Christmas Eve. There were no saintly robes that, that, Saint Nicholas would have been in, in the middle ages.

Instead, he now had first. And Sinterklaas suddenly translated into American English as Santa Claus. So throughout the 18 hundreds this whole Santa Claus thing began to develop. I think the newspapers every year at Christmas would, would print more details of this. There’ll be drawings, and every year the drawings added something more, maybe a belt, different details of maybe the names of the reindeer.

Finally, in the 1930s Coca-Cola decided to use Santa Claus as part of their advertising campaigns, and that really helped to consolidate everything that was going on is to. Who Santa Claus was, what he looked like and what he did. So yes, it’s really been less than a hundred years to have this modern idea of a Santa Claus in the red clothing with his flying reindeer.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:20:26] It sounds like almost, you know, the entire world had something to say. They added a little bit of a tradition here and a tradition there, and a little bit there and a little bit here in order to create this, this overall character.

Heather LeFebvre: [00:20:39] Actually, yeah, that’s a good way to describe it. It was like a 1700 year in the making project that everyone participated in.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:20:48] Yeah. There were two things that kind of stood out that you mentioned there, and one of them was when Saint Nicholas, when this story of him putting the gold in the window, as for dowry. And then the story of, you know, the, the comical, story in, in New York of, being one of the first mentions of coming down the chimney.

And those two things, I don’t know if they’re, they’re tied together at all. If, if he may have written about coming down the chimneys that way. But when you’re talking about Saint Nicholas putting the money in the window, the first thing that comes to mind is, Oh, that could easily translate into. He’s coming into the house some way and an unconventional form in order to give gifts.

In that case, it was dowry. Not necessarily the gifts that we get today, but yeah, it was, it’s interesting that even little bits like that could be used changed over the. Over the years and, and pull into the story that we know today. Oh, absolutely.

Heather LeFebvre: [00:21:49] And I think probably Irving was pulling off of that story because that story has been told in every country in a different way.

There probably was a chimney person back there.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:21:59] Yeah. Depending on the architectural of the different regions and houses in that time and, and such. Now talking about gifts for Christmas, and regardless of where Santa comes in, if he comes in the window or he comes down the chimney, regardless of how the gifts get there, we know during Christmas they all end up in one place and that is under the tree.

How did. The tree or the pine tree, I should say, because it seems like it’s always a pine tree, and I have yet to celebrate Christmas with a Dogwood or an Apple tree or anything. How did this become a part of the Christmas tradition?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:22:40] This is also something that is shrouded in obscurity and really hard to pick out exactly.

How did this all start? Some people attribute it to Martin Luther, but I think we can be safe in saying he probably didn’t start that. we do know that pagan winter holidays often involved decorating homes outside of foams with greenery. Mistletoe, Holly. These were all symbols of fertility of the spring coming round again, and as Christians adopted a lot of these big and traditions into their religious ceremonies, they changed the meanings so that Holly could be seen to represent.

The red berries is the blood of Christ, that the thorns on the Holly as the crown of Christ on the cross, these types of things. So the whole decorating with greenery stayed alive in the Christmas celebration, even as it was taken over by the Christians where it went from decorating with greenery outside to actually bringing the tree inside the house.

It’s, we’re not quite sure, probably the late middle ages, 1415 hundreds. 16 hundreds we do know Germany seemed to be the area where it came from, and then during Victorian times it was famously made more popular by Prince Albert importing his. Growing up, years experience into that there with queen Victoria and their nine children.

There was a picture of their family standing around their Christmas tree in the palace that was published in the newspapers and went viral, as we would say now. and from then on, everyone wanted to have a Christmas tree, just like the Royal family. So it’s definitely something that started in Northern Europe where we have pine trees.

it’s not something that other parts of the world really had in mind. But then again, Christmas really was started and celebrated more in the European area of the world and not so much in other cultures as, as I talk about later on in the book. I think that the first winter celebrations were an antidote against the depressing weather of, December and January.

And that that’s not something that the rest of the world that had a more moderate climate really needed, and that’s probably why Christmas really concentrated in Europe.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:25:13] Does that make sense why there would be so many European traditions heavily, heavily influencing what we know today as just traditional Christmas celebrations right now?

Speaking of that, there’s a lot of stuff that, that you’ve mentioned. Up until now. That seems to kind of all come together into the Christmas celebration that we have today. I would imagine if we go to a Christmas celebration in the 15 hundreds we wouldn’t really recognize it as a Christmas celebration.

If we go to a Christmas celebration in year 1000 it wouldn’t necessarily recognize it as a Christmas celebration, and I know that where you go and he’s going to make a difference to, you know, where in the world that celebration is. But is there an era of history where if we went back in time, it would start to resemble celebration and traditions that we have

Heather LeFebvre: [00:26:05] today?

I think it has to be the Victorian era. This is really when we see a lot of the elements that we enjoy today coming into their own commercialization of, of the whole holiday. Carol’s singing card sending was invented. Gift giving kind of exploded. The whole child focused holiday came into being. Santa Claus was gaining popularity.

Really, when it comes down to what people were moving away from, a more religious focus to the secular commercialization, which is often what we see today. There were a lot of writers in the 18 hundreds who were writing about Christmas. And in fact, I was kind of disappointed to discover that some of these writers, like Washington Irving almost invented a a weight medieval type Christmas and wrote about it in their books as if this was actually how Christmas was being celebrated to convince their readers of all these wonderful traditions that needed to take place.

And reading that, I was like, wait, what. We’re not carrying on these traditions that have been in place for hundreds and hundreds of years. We’re just sort of trying to have a Washington Irving invented in his mind

Dan LeFebvre: [00:27:19] for us. Can you give an example of what one of those might’ve been that was not really a tradition that he made up?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:27:26] Well, it’s not raw fresh in my mind exactly right now, but sort of the idea that Christmas was a huge, huge deal and that involved so much. Presence, feasting days and days of feasting in the whole idea of going to a little village where there’s tons of snow and everything’s jolly and happy. I don’t think it was really quite such a big deal as Irving made it out to be.

I think that celebrations at that point were quieter, not so big. not so detailed and involved.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:28:01] Well, I guess you got to start a tradition somewhere, and if nothing else, make it up.

Heather LeFebvre: [00:28:04] Right. Exactly. But yeah, the books available to people to read about Christmas celebrations and men to want what they read as part of their own celebration is all happened in the Victorian era.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:28:17] Okay. And then, so yeah, he made it into, this is just what people have done all along, even if not necessarily the case. Yeah. Now, as you were researching this book, and maybe that maybe you already gave the answer there, but I was curious, was there anything about the, the overall history of Christmas that really just shocked you and surprised you that you didn’t expect?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:28:37] Definitely the setting of the first Christmas kind of has surprised me. I, I’ve been thinking about that for a number of years as I’ve been researching that. I think I was surprised. I didn’t, hadn’t quite realized that Christmas had been outlawed in the original colonies here in America. I think I knew that it had been outlawed in England during the 16 hundreds but not for quite some time in America.

It was illegal to celebrate Christmas.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:29:04] Why was it illegal? What was the reason behind that?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:29:09] So it’s hard to get your head around, but when the rep, the Protestant reformation came in, they were concerned to, to remedy some of what they perceived to be abuses in the Catholic church or things that had strayed maybe away from scripture in their mind.

So they did not see a mandate. In scripture for this celebration of Christ’s birth, and they felt that was adding to scripture to require people to come for special services when the Bible do not require that. So they felt that this was not necessary and was maybe putting an unnecessary burden on people.

They were also concerned about the drunkenness and crazy things happening with BYD nonreligious celebrations of Christmas, and they fought. It’s better for our children if they don’t even have access to that, so, so let’s just get rid of it all.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:30:07] It probably didn’t help thinking of the history between the Protestant and Catholic and the fact that the name Christmas is has mass.

Right. So it’s very, very on the Catholic side, whereas on the, on the Protestant side, they probably weren’t a big fan of that.

Heather LeFebvre: [00:30:24] Exactly. Yeah.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:30:27] Now the the end of each chapter in your book, I love you have some discussion questions, suggestions for how to celebrate Christmas the way that they did in, in different points in history.

And I really thought that those were a great addition. It’s a perfect way to learn about the history of Christmas as a family together and kind of experience it as if it, you know, we were going back in time, but then I love that you didn’t, you didn’t stop there. The stories. Throughout history in your book are accompanied by recipes to go along with it.

You know, there’s the Shepherd’s meal to send your taste buds back to the time of the first Christmas, the historic German Christmas cookies, Italian soups, mince pies. No, that I’ve even had a men’s pie, a at edible tree bark. going along with the, another story we didn’t even talk about, but this in your book, the story of benefits and the Oak of Thor.

There’s so many great recipes. In your book when I was reading, you know, the history of Christmas, I wasn’t expecting to get recipes there. Can you explain a bit about why you decided to include recipes in your book?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:31:34] I love history, and I love teaching history, and I’ve been teaching history to kids for at least 15 years.

And one thing that I have noticed when . Teaching kids and and adults for that matter. The more ways that you can experience history with all of your senses, the longer the information is going to stick with you. And so I really purposed in this book that I wanted people to think about what it sounded like at the these different Christmas celebrations.

What it felt like, the temperature, the, the weather, what it would taste like to actually be at these celebrations and, and eat these foods. And so I have an active imagination and I like to think that when I’m eating these recipes, I could close my eyes and just taste what I’m tasting and imagine myself right back there in that time period.

And so. I think recipes can be a really fun way to experience history and almost pretend we’re back there.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:32:36] That’s great. Wrapping yourself in the immersion of, of, of history. What a, what a better way, and I happen to know from experience that you are an amazing cook and so I can only imagine what your house smelled like as you tested some of these recipes.

Do you have a favorite from the book that, that you made? Yeah,

Heather LeFebvre: [00:32:54] it would have to be the candy cane cookies, which would be, From the 1950s chapter. I think candy canes have always been my personal symbol of Christmas since I was a little child, and a good friend of mine introduced those cookies to me about 15 years ago, and ever since, I have to make them every year and they look like candy Ks.

They taste like peppermint and yeah, they say Christmas to me.

Dan LeFebvre: [00:33:19] That is a winning combination right there. Thank you so much for coming on to chat about the history of Christmas. And I think I’ve mentioned to this, to you off air, but I will say it again. I love the approach that you took in this book. You know, a lot of history books are like text books and very kind of dry.

This is very story-driven. I have a lot of fond memories of my own mother reading stories to us as kids. We gather around and she would read stories, especially around Christmas time. And as I was reading your book, I could easily imagine this being one of those books that you gathered the kids around.

Chow down on some of that edible tree bark or, or a candy cane cookies or whatever it is, and just learn about the history of Christmas. And before I let you go, can I get you to let us know where we can get a copy of your book?

Heather LeFebvre: [00:34:07] You can find the history of Christmas on Amazon, Barnes and noble, target.com and you can find me at Heather Winslow, the fed.com.

And I also have a newsletter sign up there. You can sign up to get my

Dan LeFebvre: [00:34:21] newsletter. Thanks again so much for your time.

Heather LeFebvre: [00:34:23] Thanks for having me.

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