00:00:09.360And what was in the ship so free on Christmas day, on Christmas day?
00:00:14.200And what was in the ship so free on Christmas day in the morning?
00:00:18.380Our Savior Christ and his lady on Christmas day, on Christmas day.
00:00:22.580Our Savior Christ and his lady on Christmas day in the morning.
00:00:26.520Hey, where'd you sail all three on Christmas Day?
00:00:32.520Hey, where'd you sail all three on Christmas Day in the morning?
00:00:36.520Oh, they sailed into Bethlehem on Christmas Day in the morning.
00:00:44.520And all the saints were waiting on Christmas Day in the morning.
00:00:53.520And all the angels in heaven shall sing on Christmas Day in the morning.
00:01:01.520And all the angels in heaven shall sing on Christmas Day in the morning.
00:01:10.520And let us all rejoice on May on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day.
00:01:15.520And let us all rejoice on May on Christmas Day in the morning.
00:01:22.520Saturday, 23 December in the year of the Lord, 2023.
00:01:30.520It is because of the structure of our Christmas season this time.
00:01:35.520This is our Christmas Eve special coming in on Saturday.
00:01:41.520I want to thank everybody for sticking around for the second hour, bringing in Dr. Larry Swiker.
00:01:46.520So, Dr., we've talked about this with Raheem and Ben and others over the last couple of days.
00:01:51.520And then Dr. Carol Swain in the first hour and playing these carols from the 18th and 19th century.
00:01:58.520I don't think we're playing any from the 17th yet, but there's a certain almost swagger.
00:02:05.520There's a certain confidence, the complexity of the music, but the way it's presented, the voices.
00:02:12.520It just seems like it is from a time and place that almost is disconnected from our culture and civilization today.
00:02:21.520You're the co-author of The Patriot's History of the United States, which is still one of the most powerful books recently in the last 20 or 30 years written about American history.
00:03:25.520It was a time when, let's face it, all Western countries believed that they were to lead the world to a new era of hope and enlightenment and that kind of stuff.
00:04:21.520You're seeing the same thing starting to happen here in the United States in our inner cities because of the invasion.
00:04:26.520What was it about then that gave them hope that they were the future?
00:04:33.520It was about enlightenment and deeply imbued with Christian belief cut to today when you have more material wealth and science and technology.
00:04:43.520Remember, a lot of this music was done right around the time of the steam engine.
00:04:47.520The steam engine, it changed mankind's history like no other invention, no other technology in the world.
00:04:52.520So what was it about then that had them so, you know, positive and energetic and urgent in their mission as a civilization or society?
00:05:05.520And you can see in the music and the voices, but here today, it seems like we're almost worn out.
00:05:11.520Well, there were kind of two goals for those Europeans and Americans.
00:05:17.520One was a material goal to improve the material world.
00:05:20.520When you get John D. Rockefeller, he would say, I want to give the common man kerosene.
00:05:27.520He must have it good and he must have it cheap.
00:05:30.520And then he would make record profits and then he'd turn around and give a million dollars a year to his Baptist church.
00:05:37.520In Europe, the same thing. You see this in the building of cathedrals.
00:05:42.520And I wanted to kind of talk to you about this a little bit with regards to architecture.
00:05:47.520I like chrome and glass as much as the next guy.
00:05:50.520I do like modern architecture, but I don't like only modern architecture.
00:05:56.520And what's interesting in our society today is you see none of the inspiring and inspirational and uplifting buildings like La Sagrada Familia or Westminster Abbey or Notre Dame or anything like that.
00:06:13.520I mean, even some of Frank Lloyd Wright stuff, you can't match that today.
00:06:17.520And a lot of that comes because we have a much different view of where humanity is heading.
00:06:24.520And it's overwhelmingly a secular view that says we're not going anywhere.
00:06:30.520And if we are, it's not it's not any place good.
00:06:38.520Why would you create great music that would be a testament to man's enduring nature with God, not apart from God, but with God?
00:06:52.520Talk about the difference between Europe and the United States and particularly in your historical research and writing, writing your seminal work.
00:07:15.520But there's a big group of people in this country that think America is the new Jerusalem and that America is a covenant nation.
00:07:23.520And from our founding, as you do such a great job laying out with the pilgrims and the Puritans in New England, a little different than the more entrepreneurial cavaliers down in the common down in Jamestown in my beloved home state.
00:07:37.520But is America was America founded in a big part of that as a new Jerusalem and as a covenant nation?
00:07:47.520I mean, God loves Israel because God chose Israel.
00:07:51.520But God loves America because America chose God.
00:07:54.520And from our earliest time all the way up through at least the Civil War, there was this notion that America was a special place chosen and protected by God.
00:08:06.520And then we couldn't fail for that reason that, you know, Lincoln said we'd like to have God on our side, but we have to make sure that we're on God's side.
00:08:15.520And what the Europeans have lacked is two of the pillars of American exceptionalism.
00:08:28.520And that is a notion that law bubbles from the bottom up because God puts the law in the heart of every man and woman.
00:08:35.520And we see that both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament where God says, I will write my law upon your heart.
00:08:42.520The other pillar is a Christian, mostly Protestant religion.
00:08:47.520And again, that's not due to theological issues, but it's due to the church structure of the Congregationalists where decisions were made from the bottom up.
00:08:56.520So in America, you had this relationship to the common man.
00:09:02.520We might call it a populist relationship that simply didn't exist in anywhere in Europe.
00:09:19.520You know, in Patriots history, we go into a long discussion about Norman Rockwell, who I believe is still the greatest living American artist, period.
00:09:27.520You say Jackson Pollock, you know, maybe Andy Warhol, whatever.
00:09:33.520Rockwell captured the essence of America.
00:09:37.520And it was this very same uplifting, heroic essence that you refer to in this music of the hymns that you were playing.
00:09:57.520Well, because of common law, which only England had and none of the other European nations had, maybe Switzerland, and because of a Christian, mostly Protestant religious tradition that was congregational.
00:11:23.520He creates the great clock and sets it in motion.
00:11:26.520And practicing Christians, of course, believe that God is alive in our hearts, is involved in our daily lives, is involved in everything we do, gives us wisdom, direction, inspiration.
00:11:40.520You know, the term walk with Jesus implies that there's a living person that you are with and around all the time.
00:11:50.520And that's the big difference between a Christian and a deist.
00:11:54.520So a Christian would expect that God would be involved in the activities of the United States of America, as with any nation who chooses to follow him.
00:12:05.520I want to take a, we're going to take a break here and we're going to listen to some more music.
00:12:10.520Dr. Larry Sweikert joins us, the co-author of The Patriot's History.
00:12:14.520Well, I got a minute before we get back to some music.
00:12:17.520I want to make sure people get to your website.
00:12:19.520You're constantly putting things up about history and connecting history to current events.
00:12:23.520Where do people go to get all of your stuff?
00:18:05.060Larry, what's the line of demarcation in your research and study between the more traditional Christmases we're talking about and really where we get into more of the commercial aspects and then see even some of what we call the traditional Christmases of this commercial aspect?
00:18:21.020What's the line of demarcation, and what were the old ways like from coming up shore with the pilgrims all the way through the Revolution and to the Civil War?
00:19:18.440I thought when you were talking about the 80s, you were talking about the 1880s or 1890s.
00:19:21.700Help me out here because this is totally—I've missed this one totally.
00:19:24.940You're saying now when you're in malls, which it used to be in the old days, our department stores used to hear many of the songs that we're playing in other religious music.
00:19:37.100You're saying if you're going to malls today, you don't hear any of the religious songs?
00:19:40.160It's all kind of the commercial Christmas songs?
00:19:45.580I distinctly remember the change and going, wow, they're not playing any actual Christmas songs.
00:19:52.300They're only playing things about winter or—yeah, it's Christmas, but you don't mention, as they say, the reason for the season.
00:20:00.220Now, going way back, of course, you had very traditional Christmases.
00:20:05.180And this is where the Courier and Ives cards come from, celebrating the sleigh ride with the wreaths and all that sort of stuff and the presence around the tree.
00:20:17.700And you go up to, say, around the early 1900s.
00:20:22.340The Courier and Ives were from the 1880s, 1890s, the Gilded Age.
00:20:28.140Is that where those lithographs came from?
00:20:49.540That came from Lionel Cohen, who invented the Lionel trains and was selling them and using them in department store windows at Christmas time.
00:21:00.780And then all of a sudden everybody wanted to have a train that ran around their Christmas tree.
00:21:06.660So you get these kinds of traditions and you get our music that we're still so familiar with.
00:21:13.720The number one selling song of all time isn't The Beatles.
00:21:17.960It's White Christmas, written by Irving Berlin, sung by Bing Crosby in a very popular movie, still popular today, called Holiday Inn, which has its own weird story because the guy who created the Holiday Inns had set up all of the architecture, all the drawings for everything.
00:21:52.320It's one of the shortest lyrics ever written.
00:21:55.540And it just became one of the biggest selling songs of all time, especially when Bing Crosby would take it on the USO tours to Europe.
00:22:06.120And a relative of Bing's asked him one time, what's the hardest thing you ever had to do?
00:22:11.380And he said, well, in 1944, I had to sing in front of about 5,000 GIs in northern France.
00:22:18.340And they insisted I sing White Christmas.
00:22:20.960He said, I thought it was a little too depressing, but they insisted I sing it.
00:22:24.240And he said, I had to sing it with dry eyes as all 5,000 of the GIs were crying.
00:22:30.400And then not too long after that, most of those GIs would be in battle, in the Battle of the Bulge, and many of them would die.
00:22:37.880So the song White Christmas then was redone in the movie White Christmas.
00:22:44.060So we have these traditions coming up all the way from the late 1800s through the early 1900s.
00:22:50.840But I think modern families have developed kind of more modern traditions.
00:22:55.300And, of course, you could name your top three Christmas movies, but I'm sure many people today would say something like The Christmas Story,
00:23:04.040about a kid who wants a Red Ryder BB gun, or Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation, which is, of course, one of our favorites.
00:23:13.220Or if you're really a little weird, you might say something like The Riff with Dennis Leary and Kevin Spacey about a dysfunctional family that gets taken hostage.
00:23:22.680So, number one, I pride myself I've never seen any three of those.
00:23:26.980And I would literally throw anybody out of my house over Christmas that even mentioned they wanted to play it.
00:23:32.060But I want to go back to – because I do know a lot of people watch the Chevy Chase thing.
00:23:37.100I want to go back, though, to White Christmas.
00:23:39.960If you remember – because the song broke in the movie Holiday Inn.
00:23:45.060But when they decided after the war to make a movie White Christmas, they actually start at the Battle of the Bulge,
00:23:52.260where they – in fact, the general that becomes central to the entire story of starting the ski lodge in Vermont that they've got to bail out.
00:24:19.860Now, they play it later at the Vermont, but they actually – I guess he takes that real life in northern France, and he put it into the movie.
00:24:32.600Well, you know, we – it's not like we've totally forgotten these traditions.
00:24:37.360For example, and I'm not hawking Michael W. Smith's album here, but he has an album called It's a Wonderful Tradition.
00:24:43.220And in it, he's got five different choirs singing Sing Noel, Sing Hallelujah, which is one of the most astounding and amazing performances I've ever heard.
00:24:59.000So – but, you know, you get these top five lists, and people say Miracle on 34th Street.
00:25:05.620Yeah, yeah, okay, but you'll also get people like me insisting that Die Hard is a Christmas movie because any movie that says, ho, ho, ho, I have a machine gun has to be an American Christmas movie.
00:25:23.280Have the other movies – did they pick up the same time that you've seen this demarcation between at the malls, the playing of – all of a sudden you had Christian music or music about.
00:25:35.620The traditional hymns maybe done a more modern way, and then all of a sudden over a couple of years that totally faded, and you had more of this winter wonderland music.
00:25:44.680Is that when also these other movies started to come out?
00:25:48.840You don't get a whole lot of religiosity in Christmas Vacation, although there are some references.
00:25:56.320Probably the one that does the best in terms of maintaining some of that tradition is Home Alone.
00:26:02.680And the final turning point of the movie occurs when Kevin, who's been left home alone and is fighting off these burglars, goes into a church and meets an old man that he had previously been scared of, thought he was like kind of a boogeyman, and finds out he's a wonderful old man who's just missing his daughter.
00:26:23.680Okay, we're going to leave with some hymns.
00:26:29.600We're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:26:34.300We're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:27:04.280We're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:27:34.260We're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:27:41.260We're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:27:44.320Yeah, so we're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:29:11.720Gloria in excelsis Deo, Gloria in excelsis Deo,
00:29:35.720Sing in the major and native, and the voice of a major's praise,
00:29:43.720Major's and major age, while our hearts in glory reigns,
00:29:50.720Gloria in excelsis Deo, Gloria in excelsis Deo,
00:30:01.720Gloria in excelsis Deo, Gloria in excelsis Deo,
00:30:16.720Merry Christmas. Welcome back. You're in the War Room. It's our 23 December Year of the Lord 2023.
00:30:23.720It's Saturday, but this is also our Christmas Eve show, which we'll replay tomorrow.
00:30:28.720Larry Swigert, I want to get to a movie both of you and I want to talk about that, interestingly enough, is a classic today, but it was a horrible flop when it came out.
00:30:38.720Talk to me about this, kind of the break of the commercialization of what we know. You mentioned, Norman, what Rockwell.
00:30:45.720Talk about 1920s, when so many of the traditions of the big department stores became an active part of the more secular part of Christmas,
00:30:53.720but it is looked at as some of the great traditions we have.
00:30:56.720Strangely enough, because of a cracker called Unita Biscuit, and Unita was one of the first ones to actually offer packaged crackers that had a longer shelf life.
00:31:09.720And this gave rise, along with Campbell's Soup and some other products, Kraft cheeses, to modern-day grocery stores where you found products on shelves.
00:31:21.720And it changed the whole nature of shopping from going in, usually a housewife, going in asking a clerk, usually a mail clerk, for help in finding this item or that item,
00:31:33.720and he would put it in her basket, to actually doing the shopping for themselves.
00:31:38.720And so this was picked up by many of the department stores, and the larger department stores started to branch out in multiple cities,
00:31:51.720Wanamakers and others, and to attract customers, they, of course, would have the store window.
00:31:58.720This is a whole new side story in itself that the guy who designed the store window, of all things, was Frank Baum, who wrote The Wizard of Oz, so on and so forth.
00:32:09.720At any rate, at Christmas time, they would decorate their windows huge in terms of a celebration of Christmas.
00:32:17.720And, in fact, there were department stores in Dallas that people would line up down the street the night before, almost like you would for some sort of rock concert today,
00:32:29.720to see what the store window was going to look like when it was open.
00:32:34.720So part of the commercialization of Christmas came about simply because the nature of shopping itself changed between 1900 and 1940.
00:33:08.720And we get the Miracle on 34th Street movie, which in fact is about a Santa Claus, a guy who thinks he's Kris Kringle and insists he's Kris Kringle and he's taken to court as a fraud.
00:33:22.720And the way he finally proves his case that he is Santa Claus is that he produces dozens and dozens of bags of mail addressed to Santa Claus.
00:33:33.720And it's endorsed by the U.S. Post Office because they delivered the mail, so Santa Claus must be real.
00:33:39.720And so the idea of a department store having a Santa Claus became something of a tradition well before that movie.
00:33:50.720Talk to me about one of our favorite films that when it came out, I think at the time it was Frank Capra's Biggest Bomb, right?
00:34:01.900This guy was a legendary director who came in on time and on budget and just did hit after hit after hit, all of which had kind of a sociological – he was a message.
00:34:15.900He made message pictures, although he would deny that.
00:34:19.280But he came out with this film, which I think is probably one of his greatest, and yet it came to the box office and people didn't get it at the time.
00:34:48.640His issue is that some of the money has been stolen from the bank, and he doesn't know how to make good on it, not for himself, not because he wants to get rich,
00:34:57.360but because he feels like he's let down so many people in society.
00:35:03.200And the way that the movie wraps up, he's going to go out and commit suicide.
00:35:07.000He jumps off a bridge but is rescued by his guardian angel who shows him what life would be without him.
00:35:18.380And so when he comes back – and modern Americans would never believe this.
00:35:22.900He comes back and he's bailed out by the townspeople who make donations to a bank to save the bank because it was such an important part of their lives and helped them out so much.
00:35:35.680I mean modern people would have real trouble with donating to a bank.
00:35:59.880It came – they had a technical problem that it came off copyright in stations in New York and then others started running it.
00:36:06.940And what we – what you say in the film is ran the sprockets off it nonstop because it was free.
00:36:13.320And then all of a sudden people started watching it.
00:36:15.800The film is obviously – it's a wonderful life.
00:36:18.300It became a – what we call a cult classic and now it's a standard on TCM and others over the Christmas season.
00:36:25.240But what was it when people actually got to see it that got them that – when it came out in theaters, was it too close to World War II so it was too depressing?
00:36:35.480There was already enough agony from World War II and people just wanted to get on with their lives now.
00:36:40.560What was it – why did it go from originally a big flop to later a cult classic and now a standard part of the repertoire during the Christmas season?
00:36:49.120Well, some of that may be just what you said, that it got out to much broader audiences.
00:36:55.720You know, exposure is everything in movies and you can point to any number of modern movies if they only open in 200 theaters.
00:37:05.060It's very difficult for word of mouth to carry that to the 5,000 to 10,000 theaters that we may have or screens that we may have in America.
00:37:12.640But the movie itself has an incredible message of redemption.
00:37:17.920I mean this guy is going to commit suicide and he has shown that every life is important, that all the stuff he thought was terrible and meaningless.
00:37:26.800In fact, he played a key role in every person's life that he interacted with.
00:37:32.280And the suicide aspect may have been what hit people initially.
00:37:37.040They didn't want to see any kind of death after World War II, after the Great Depression.
00:37:42.960But then, you know, not too long after that, they were willing to entertain that for the larger message of there's always hope and life is worth living.
00:37:54.140And that's what you think because when he comes back, when he's saved from suicide and he comes back, what's happened to the town, which is just this wonderful, almost Norman Rockwell-type town, right?
00:38:06.120When he comes back, I mean, it's some of the darkest filmmaking.
00:38:09.460There's about 20 minutes of that film, 30 minutes of that film that makes you actually very uncomfortable watching it because of just the dark.
00:38:18.960But the way Capra is such a genius, he and Jimmy Stewart, so powerful.
00:38:23.260But you're unnerved about what's happened to the town and previous characters who you saw as like good people or good people in the town have been totally changed, almost like demonic.
00:38:33.900Well, and again, this is one of these movies you said you wouldn't allow in your home.
00:38:38.760But The Ref is a sort of modernized, a little bit different version of this.
00:38:43.700But you get these really bickering – I mean literally the movie starts in counseling on Christmas Eve where this guy is putting up with Kevin Spacey and his wife going back and forth and calling each other names and so forth.
00:38:57.760How can this marriage ever be resolved and you later find out the kid is some sort of derelict?
00:39:03.620But eventually through being held hostage by this kind of irascible Dennis Leary character, the whole family kind of comes together and the whole family begins to find redemption.
00:39:15.920And that is the Christmas story, the story of somebody who brings redemption to the whole human race.
00:39:22.520No, so having never seen The Ref, I was really talking about Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation.
00:39:31.680And I should tell you there's a lot of people in the extended band and family that love that film and play it every year.
00:39:50.180We've got a very special thing on the other side of this.
00:39:53.880The music here, and I want to thank the production, particularly Real America's Voice.
00:39:57.540It's not easy to do these specials over the Christmas season, holiday weekend, whether it's Memorial Day, whether it's Fourth of July, our Labor Day specials, Christmas, the combat history of Christmas.
00:40:11.460I want to thank the Real America's Voice team, Patrick O'Donnell, everybody that makes the Christmas Day special.
00:40:18.160And we do that because we want to make sure everybody understands that there have been patriots in this country, that it hasn't always been easy.
00:40:27.300It hasn't always been – the Christmas season, with everything it represents, hasn't been that easy for a lot of patriots.
00:41:25.500But let the Lord Jesus no crying be raised.
00:41:34.800I love thee, O Lord Jesus, who'd come from the sky.
00:41:44.840And stay by my cradle to watch the light.
00:41:53.560And stay by my cradle to watch the world apart.
00:42:07.560For War Room veterans, you know we have been all over this supply chain issue with China and medications and the active pharmaceutical ingredients.
00:42:29.100China has a stranglehold on us where there's a way to break that.
00:42:34.080I got an emergency medication kit from them.
00:42:37.320The FDA just declared a global shortage of medication and warned that critical antibiotics are in extreme short supply across the United States.
00:42:45.120But you know that because you're a viewer or listener of this show.
00:42:49.980Now, here's the action you can take to correct.
00:42:52.980Do yourself and your family a favor and get your Jace case right now.
00:42:57.200It's a pack of five prescription antibiotics you'll have on hand for common emergencies.
00:46:30.780Because this cartoon version of the Peanuts comic strip, originally Charles Schultz, they were going to have him cut the incredible scene where Linus actually drops his blanket for the only time he's ever seen without a blanket when he starts to do the nativity story from, I think it's Luke.
00:46:53.860And Schultz said, you're not going to show that show without that scene.
00:47:18.460Amazing story by the creator of Peanuts.
00:47:21.600How do people get to you, Larry, all your writings, both the political and the historical?
00:47:25.160You can get to me at thewildworldofhistory.com for history stuff or the Wild World of Politics, where I do a today's news show every day, five days a week, a little commentary on the news.
00:47:57.660Is this the 40th reprinting or something?
00:48:00.220We're in our 41st reprinting, our fifth edition.
00:48:04.940And next year I will be putting up free on my website a chapter that will take us from 2018 to 2023, and we'll call it the 20th anniversary edition.
00:48:55.760We're going to do one of my favorite shows of the year on Monday on Christmas Day and to show you the cost of patriotism and love of country.
00:49:05.040We'll take you from the Battle of the Bulge.
00:49:08.720We'll go to Korea on the Chosin Reservoir.
00:49:11.200We'll go back to what you just saw there with Bing Crosby at Bastogne with the 101st Airborne.
00:49:17.740Of course, we'll do Christmas night with Washington and the troops crossing the Delaware and surprising the Hessians outside of Trenton.
00:49:27.080This year, with Patrick K. O'Donnell, we've got also a new – we're going to go through the Civil War of a Christmas raid on Salem, Virginia,
00:49:35.380a railroad hub that became quite important in the Civil War.