Bannon's War Room - December 23, 2023


Episode 2370： Traditions Of Christmas A WarRoom Special

Topics
The Ref and It's a Wonderful Life Combat History Christmas
Hosted by
Steve Bannon
Mentioned
Sing Noel Larry Swigert Bing Crosby Patrick K. O'Donnell Norman Rockwell Kevin Spacey Christmases Mary Jace Charles Schultz George Bailey Dennis Leary Kris Kringle Santa Claus Dean Jagger Danny Kaye Savior Steve Frank Capra's Biggest Bomb John D. Rockefeller and 29 more
Episode 3267： The Fetish Of The Uniparty Episode 3273：A Boxing Day Special

Episode Stats


Length

53 minutes

Words per minute

139.19

Word count

7,434

Sentence count

566

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

12

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

What is it about the old carols that gives us hope and enlightenment in a time and place that almost seems disconnected from our culture and civilization today? Steve and Dr. Larry Swiker discuss this and more in this Christmas Eve special.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I saw free ships come sailing in on Christmas day, on Christmas day.
00:00:06.560 On Christmas day in the morning.
00:00:09.360 And what was in the ship so free on Christmas day, on Christmas day?
00:00:14.200 And what was in the ship so free on Christmas day in the morning?
00:00:18.380 Our Savior Christ and his lady on Christmas day, on Christmas day.
00:00:22.580 Our Savior Christ and his lady on Christmas day in the morning.
00:00:26.520 Hey, where'd you sail all three on Christmas Day?
00:00:32.520 Hey, where'd you sail all three on Christmas Day in the morning?
00:00:36.520 Oh, they sailed into Bethlehem on Christmas Day in the morning.
00:00:44.520 And all the saints were waiting on Christmas Day in the morning.
00:00:53.520 And all the angels in heaven shall sing on Christmas Day in the morning.
00:01:01.520 And all the angels in heaven shall sing on Christmas Day in the morning.
00:01:10.520 And let us all rejoice on May on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day.
00:01:15.520 And let us all rejoice on May on Christmas Day in the morning.
00:01:22.520 Saturday, 23 December in the year of the Lord, 2023.
00:01:30.520 It is because of the structure of our Christmas season this time.
00:01:35.520 This is our Christmas Eve special coming in on Saturday.
00:01:41.520 I want to thank everybody for sticking around for the second hour, bringing in Dr. Larry Swiker.
00:01:46.520 So, Dr., we've talked about this with Raheem and Ben and others over the last couple of days.
00:01:51.520 And then Dr. Carol Swain in the first hour and playing these carols from the 18th and 19th century.
00:01:58.520 I don't think we're playing any from the 17th yet, but there's a certain almost swagger.
00:02:05.520 There's a certain confidence, the complexity of the music, but the way it's presented, the voices.
00:02:12.520 It just seems like it is from a time and place that almost is disconnected from our culture and civilization today.
00:02:21.520 You'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.
00:02:31.520 Talk to me about that.
00:02:33.520 What is it about this music of the old carols that you don't hear much anymore?
00:02:38.520 You very rarely hear it on radio unless you listen to a specialty station.
00:02:41.520 You certainly don't hear it in the churches except on rare occasions.
00:02:45.520 Your thoughts?
00:02:47.520 Well, Merry Christmas, Steve.
00:02:49.520 Yeah, you're right.
00:02:51.520 One of the reasons you don't hear it a lot is because these people were almost all Christians,
00:02:56.520 and they were singing from a certainty of where they were going in the afterlife.
00:03:03.520 They were singing from a certainty of victory as promised in the Bible.
00:03:07.520 And so many modern people, even when they sing these older songs, they lack that certainty because, let's face it, they're not believers.
00:03:18.520 They're having trouble with this stuff.
00:03:20.520 So it was a different era.
00:03:23.520 It was a different age.
00:03:25.520 It 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.
00:03:41.520 So, yeah, it was different then.
00:03:46.520 Let me ask you that.
00:03:47.520 When you say hope and enlightenment to Western nations, that'd be Europe and ourselves.
00:03:51.520 And we find ourselves today, it seems like besieged on every side, particularly Christians. 0.99
00:03:56.520 But you look in Europe where you're seeing the collapse of classical society, right?
00:04:01.520 I mean, they're on the edge, it seems like, of civil war because of what they've allowed for the invasion.
00:04:07.520 They call it migration, but the invasion of Europe over the last 10 years or so.
00:04:11.520 It's been bad for 30 or 40 years, but, I mean, really accelerated over the last 10.
00:04:16.520 And now you have France and England.
00:04:18.520 They're beside themselves.
00:04:20.520 They're beside themselves.
00:04:21.520 You're seeing the same thing starting to happen here in the United States in our inner cities because of the invasion.
00:04:26.520 What was it about then that gave them hope that they were the future?
00:04:33.520 It was about enlightenment and deeply imbued with Christian belief cut to today when you have more material wealth and science and technology.
00:04:43.520 Remember, a lot of this music was done right around the time of the steam engine.
00:04:47.520 The steam engine, it changed mankind's history like no other invention, no other technology in the world.
00:04:52.520 So what was it about then that had them so, you know, positive and energetic and urgent in their mission as a civilization or society?
00:05:05.520 And you can see in the music and the voices, but here today, it seems like we're almost worn out.
00:05:11.520 Well, there were kind of two goals for those Europeans and Americans.
00:05:17.520 One was a material goal to improve the material world.
00:05:20.520 When you get John D. Rockefeller, he would say, I want to give the common man kerosene.
00:05:27.520 He must have it good and he must have it cheap.
00:05:30.520 And then he would make record profits and then he'd turn around and give a million dollars a year to his Baptist church.
00:05:37.520 In Europe, the same thing. You see this in the building of cathedrals.
00:05:42.520 And I wanted to kind of talk to you about this a little bit with regards to architecture.
00:05:47.520 I like chrome and glass as much as the next guy.
00:05:50.520 I do like modern architecture, but I don't like only modern architecture.
00:05:56.520 And 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.
00:06:13.520 I mean, even some of Frank Lloyd Wright stuff, you can't match that today.
00:06:17.520 And a lot of that comes because we have a much different view of where humanity is heading.
00:06:24.520 And it's overwhelmingly a secular view that says we're not going anywhere.
00:06:30.520 And if we are, it's not it's not any place good.
00:06:33.520 So why would you create art?
00:06:36.520 Why would you create buildings?
00:06:38.520 Why would you create great music that would be a testament to man's enduring nature with God, not apart from God, but with God?
00:06:52.520 Talk about the difference between Europe and the United States and particularly in your historical research and writing, writing your seminal work.
00:07:01.520 You know, there are many of us. 0.96
00:07:04.520 And now we're being said that you're Christian nationalists and you guys are the worst people on Earth. 1.00
00:07:09.520 You're you're you're you're domestic terrorist. 1.00
00:07:12.520 You're violent extremist. 0.97
00:07:15.520 But there's a big group of people in this country that think America is the new Jerusalem and that America is a covenant nation.
00:07:23.520 And 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. 0.57
00:07:37.520 But is America was America founded in a big part of that as a new Jerusalem and as a covenant nation?
00:07:46.520 Yeah, absolutely.
00:07:47.520 I mean, God loves Israel because God chose Israel.
00:07:51.520 But God loves America because America chose God. 0.67
00:07:54.520 And 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.
00:08:06.520 And 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.
00:08:15.520 And what the Europeans have lacked is two of the pillars of American exceptionalism. 0.94
00:08:22.520 One is a common law.
00:08:25.520 Only England had that.
00:08:27.520 England had that.
00:08:28.520 And that is a notion that law bubbles from the bottom up because God puts the law in the heart of every man and woman.
00:08:35.520 And we see that both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament where God says, I will write my law upon your heart.
00:08:42.520 The other pillar is a Christian, mostly Protestant religion.
00:08:47.520 And 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.
00:08:56.520 So in America, you had this relationship to the common man.
00:09:02.520 We might call it a populist relationship that simply didn't exist in anywhere in Europe.
00:09:09.520 No country had those two factors.
00:09:11.520 So what kind of music are you going to get out of people like this?
00:09:15.520 What kind of architecture?
00:09:17.520 What kind of art?
00:09:19.520 You know, in Patriots history, we go into a long discussion about Norman Rockwell, who I believe is still the greatest living American artist, period.
00:09:27.520 You say Jackson Pollock, you know, maybe Andy Warhol, whatever.
00:09:33.520 Rockwell captured the essence of America.
00:09:37.520 And it was this very same uplifting, heroic essence that you refer to in this music of the hymns that you were playing.
00:09:47.520 What?
00:09:48.520 Go back and give me that.
00:09:49.520 What was the connection?
00:09:50.520 I don't want to make sure I understand this myself of the common man.
00:09:53.520 You're saying this was different here in the United States than different in Europe.
00:09:56.520 What was that?
00:09:57.520 Well, 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.
00:10:13.520 So it was bottom up governance.
00:10:15.520 So at our very root, Americans are bottom up.
00:10:20.520 That's how the nation was founded.
00:10:22.520 And most of these people were Christians and were believers, were religious Christians.
00:10:29.520 They weren't just, you know, Sunday attenders.
00:10:32.520 They were believers.
00:10:34.520 The most common book in any American household was the Bible.
00:10:38.520 So, and of course, we've been through this before in your show that almost all of the founders were devout Christians.
00:10:46.520 The exception probably being Jefferson, but certainly not Franklin, who was a believer and he was not a deist.
00:10:54.520 He may not have been a Christian.
00:10:55.520 Why are they accused of being deist?
00:10:59.520 And make the distinction for the audience.
00:11:01.520 What's the difference between a deist and a Christian?
00:11:03.520 Sure.
00:11:04.520 Why are they, they're accused all the time of being either Freemasons or being deist?
00:11:09.520 Yeah.
00:11:10.520 A deist is someone who believes that there is a God, but he just doesn't get involved in human affairs.
00:11:16.520 He's not alive in this world.
00:11:19.520 He just sits back and kind of watches.
00:11:21.520 It's known as the clockmaker.
00:11:23.520 He creates the great clock and sets it in motion.
00:11:26.520 And 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.
00:11:40.520 You know, the term walk with Jesus implies that there's a living person that you are with and around all the time.
00:11:50.520 And that's the big difference between a Christian and a deist. 0.51
00:11:54.520 So 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.
00:12:05.520 I want to take a, we're going to take a break here and we're going to listen to some more music.
00:12:10.520 Dr. Larry Sweikert joins us, the co-author of The Patriot's History.
00:12:14.520 Well, I got a minute before we get back to some music.
00:12:17.520 I want to make sure people get to your website.
00:12:19.520 You're constantly putting things up about history and connecting history to current events.
00:12:23.520 Where do people go to get all of your stuff?
00:12:27.520 Wildworldofhistory.com.
00:12:30.520 Wildworldofhistory.com.
00:12:31.520 There's tons of free stuff up.
00:12:34.520 But I also have a subscription service where I put up constant new videos.
00:12:39.520 Reagan, the American president, we put up about 21 videos.
00:12:43.520 The latest is Integrity featuring Winston Churchill.
00:12:47.520 I've got about seven up and I add one every couple of weeks.
00:12:51.520 If you're more interested in the political commentary, you can catch me at the wildworldofpolitics.com.
00:12:59.520 And I try to keep the two separate because homeschoolers may not be too interested in politics or vice versa.
00:13:06.520 Very interested in the history.
00:13:08.520 You do a great job.
00:13:09.520 The Patriot's History is one of the seminal works for the homeschool movement.
00:13:14.520 Okay, we're going to take you out with some of this incredible music we've put together.
00:13:18.520 Our team, Avery and the team, I want to thank him.
00:13:21.520 We're going to go ahead and leave with some great music.
00:13:23.520 Be back with Dr. Swiker in a moment.
00:13:25.520 It was no certain, O shepherds, in fields as they lay,
00:13:32.520 In fields where they lay, they keep me their sheep,
00:13:40.520 On a cold winter's night that was so deep.
00:13:47.520 Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel!
00:13:56.520 Born is the King of Israel,
00:14:03.520 And let us all withdraw, our God, sing praises to our heavenly Lord,
00:14:19.020 That earth made earth and earth a lot, and with his child mankind hath bought.
00:14:34.040 Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, Lord is the King of Israel.
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00:16:17.800 God rest you, Mary, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.
00:16:24.360 Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day.
00:16:28.860 To save us all from Satan's car when we were gone astray.
00:16:33.180 Oh, tidings of calm, heart, and joy.
00:16:36.580 Comfort and joy.
00:16:37.740 Oh, tidings of calm, heart, and joy.
00:16:41.180 From God our Heavenly Father, the blessed angel came.
00:16:47.320 And unto certain shepherds, from tidings of the Savior.
00:16:51.620 How better that the Son of God are made.
00:16:56.320 Oh, tidings of calm, heart, and joy.
00:16:59.740 Comfort and joy.
00:17:01.200 Oh, tidings of calm, heart, and joy.
00:17:05.240 Now to the Lord's in praise.
00:17:08.080 As on you will live in this place.
00:17:10.680 In the true love and brotherhood, each other love and grace.
00:17:15.220 This holy time of praise.
00:17:17.220 That some others got their face.
00:17:19.740 Oh, tidings of calm, heart, and joy.
00:17:22.980 Comfort and joy.
00:17:24.180 Oh, tidings of calm, heart, and joy.
00:17:32.820 Welcome back.
00:17:33.760 You're in the war room with our traditional Christmas Eve.
00:17:39.680 We're going to replay, obviously, the Christmas Eve tomorrow.
00:17:42.880 Technically, the real Christmas Eve.
00:17:44.540 And then on Monday, Christmas Day, we will have the Combat History of Christmas.
00:17:48.780 Something we've done now, I think, for 10 years between Breitbart Radio and the war room.
00:17:55.080 And Patrick K. O'Donnell will join us, as he does every year, to go through that.
00:18:00.780 So I want to thank Patrick K. O'Donnell in advance for doing this.
00:18:03.840 Satan's power.
00:18:05.060 Larry, 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?
00:18:21.020 What'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?
00:18:32.680 What were the old traditions?
00:18:33.580 I think probably you can mark sometime in the 90s when we began to desacralize the Christmas music.
00:18:44.940 You probably remember this maybe back in the 80s.
00:18:48.680 If you walked into a department store or a mall, the music was 50-50, what we call Christian music about Jesus and the birth.
00:18:58.960 And about half, it's winter, it's snow, it's fun presents.
00:19:04.380 You don't hear very many places, unless it's a Christian business like Chick-fil-A or something like that.
00:19:11.140 You don't hear Christian music being played today at Christmas.
00:19:15.560 It's all about—
00:19:16.160 Hold it, hold it, hold it.
00:19:17.200 Hang on.
00:19:18.440 I thought when you were talking about the 80s, you were talking about the 1880s or 1890s.
00:19:21.700 Help me out here because this is totally—I've missed this one totally.
00:19:24.940 You'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.
00:19:37.100 You're saying if you're going to malls today, you don't hear any of the religious songs?
00:19:40.160 It's all kind of the commercial Christmas songs?
00:19:42.500 Oh, no.
00:19:43.200 Probably not since the early 90s.
00:19:45.580 I distinctly remember the change and going, wow, they're not playing any actual Christmas songs.
00:19:52.300 They're only playing things about winter or—yeah, it's Christmas, but you don't mention, as they say, the reason for the season.
00:20:00.220 Now, going way back, of course, you had very traditional Christmases.
00:20:05.180 And 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.
00:20:17.700 And you go up to, say, around the early 1900s.
00:20:22.340 The Courier and Ives were from the 1880s, 1890s, the Gilded Age.
00:20:28.140 Is that where those lithographs came from?
00:20:30.800 Yeah.
00:20:31.080 So that's that time frame?
00:20:32.160 Yeah, and then you get up another kind of tradition that we used to celebrate was people would put up a model train around their tree.
00:20:43.920 I remember as kids, we used to do this all the time.
00:20:46.420 It was always a Lionel train.
00:20:48.180 Where did that come from?
00:20:49.540 That came from Lionel Cohen, who invented the Lionel trains and was selling them and using them in department store windows at Christmas time.
00:21:00.780 And then all of a sudden everybody wanted to have a train that ran around their Christmas tree.
00:21:06.660 So you get these kinds of traditions and you get our music that we're still so familiar with.
00:21:13.720 The number one selling song of all time isn't The Beatles.
00:21:17.960 It'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.
00:21:37.060 He didn't have a name for it.
00:21:38.540 And the movie, Holiday Inn, happened to be showing on TV and says, that's what I'll call my hotel chain.
00:21:45.500 So White Christmas is just an amazing song.
00:21:49.400 It only has two verses, no choruses.
00:21:52.320 It's one of the shortest lyrics ever written.
00:21:55.540 And 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.
00:22:06.120 And a relative of Bing's asked him one time, what's the hardest thing you ever had to do?
00:22:11.380 And he said, well, in 1944, I had to sing in front of about 5,000 GIs in northern France.
00:22:18.340 And they insisted I sing White Christmas.
00:22:20.960 He said, I thought it was a little too depressing, but they insisted I sing it.
00:22:24.240 And he said, I had to sing it with dry eyes as all 5,000 of the GIs were crying.
00:22:30.400 And 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.
00:22:37.880 So the song White Christmas then was redone in the movie White Christmas.
00:22:44.060 So we have these traditions coming up all the way from the late 1800s through the early 1900s.
00:22:50.840 But I think modern families have developed kind of more modern traditions.
00:22:55.300 And, of course, you could name your top three Christmas movies, but I'm sure many people today would say something like The Christmas Story,
00:23:04.040 about a kid who wants a Red Ryder BB gun, or Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation, which is, of course, one of our favorites.
00:23:13.220 Or 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.
00:23:22.680 So, number one, I pride myself I've never seen any three of those.
00:23:26.980 And I would literally throw anybody out of my house over Christmas that even mentioned they wanted to play it.
00:23:32.060 But I want to go back to – because I do know a lot of people watch the Chevy Chase thing.
00:23:37.100 I want to go back, though, to White Christmas.
00:23:39.960 If you remember – because the song broke in the movie Holiday Inn.
00:23:45.060 But when they decided after the war to make a movie White Christmas, they actually start at the Battle of the Bulge,
00:23:52.260 where 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.
00:24:00.560 But he's been relieved for cause.
00:24:02.540 He's been fired.
00:24:04.280 And Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye actually are trying to do a thing to perk people's spirits up.
00:24:08.940 But they want to hear White Christmas, and they play White Christmas.
00:24:12.180 It's one of the most moving – in any war movie, it's an incredibly moving performance.
00:24:18.160 And it actually kicks the movie off.
00:24:19.860 Now, 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.
00:24:28.740 But it's incredibly powerful.
00:24:32.600 Well, you know, we – it's not like we've totally forgotten these traditions.
00:24:37.360 For example, and I'm not hawking Michael W. Smith's album here, but he has an album called It's a Wonderful Tradition.
00:24:43.220 And 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.
00:24:56.020 It's just really amazing stuff.
00:24:59.000 So – but, you know, you get these top five lists, and people say Miracle on 34th Street.
00:25:05.620 Yeah, 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.
00:25:23.280 Have 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.
00:25:35.620 The 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.
00:25:44.680 Is that when also these other movies started to come out?
00:25:47.560 Yeah, very much so.
00:25:48.840 You don't get a whole lot of religiosity in Christmas Vacation, although there are some references.
00:25:56.320 Probably the one that does the best in terms of maintaining some of that tradition is Home Alone.
00:26:02.680 And 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.
00:26:23.680 Okay, we're going to leave with some hymns.
00:26:29.600 We're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:26:34.300 We're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:27:04.280 We're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:27:34.260 We're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:27:41.260 We're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:27:44.320 Yeah, so we're going to bring Larry Swigert back after a short commercial written.
00:27:57.420 For me, for you.
00:28:01.420 Hail, hail, the word made flesh, the rain, the sun of Mary. 0.92
00:28:17.920 Angels, we have heard the night, sweetly singing o'er the place,
00:28:25.720 and the mountain sea reply, echoing their choices.
00:28:32.720 Glória, glória, glória, glória, glória, glória, glória, glória.
00:28:52.720 Hail, hail, the word made flesh, the rain, the sun of Mary. 0.92
00:28:59.720 Hail, hail, the light, the sun of Mary.
00:29:05.720 Hail, hail, the rain, the sun of Mary.
00:29:09.720 Hail, hail, the sun of Mary.
00:29:11.720 Gloria in excelsis Deo, Gloria in excelsis Deo,
00:29:35.720 Sing in the major and native, and the voice of a major's praise,
00:29:43.720 Major's and major age, while our hearts in glory reigns,
00:29:50.720 Gloria in excelsis Deo, Gloria in excelsis Deo,
00:30:01.720 Gloria in excelsis Deo, Gloria in excelsis Deo,
00:30:16.720 Merry Christmas. Welcome back. You're in the War Room. It's our 23 December Year of the Lord 2023.
00:30:23.720 It's Saturday, but this is also our Christmas Eve show, which we'll replay tomorrow.
00:30:28.720 Larry 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.
00:30:38.720 Talk to me about this, kind of the break of the commercialization of what we know. You mentioned, Norman, what Rockwell.
00:30:45.720 Talk about 1920s, when so many of the traditions of the big department stores became an active part of the more secular part of Christmas,
00:30:53.720 but it is looked at as some of the great traditions we have.
00:30:56.720 Strangely 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.
00:31:09.720 And 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.
00:31:21.720 And 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,
00:31:33.720 and he would put it in her basket, to actually doing the shopping for themselves.
00:31:38.720 And so this was picked up by many of the department stores, and the larger department stores started to branch out in multiple cities,
00:31:51.720 Wanamakers and others, and to attract customers, they, of course, would have the store window.
00:31:58.720 This 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.
00:32:09.720 At any rate, at Christmas time, they would decorate their windows huge in terms of a celebration of Christmas.
00:32:17.720 And, 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,
00:32:29.720 to see what the store window was going to look like when it was open.
00:32:34.720 So part of the commercialization of Christmas came about simply because the nature of shopping itself changed between 1900 and 1940.
00:32:44.720 It changed a lot.
00:32:47.720 How much did the, I mean, so much of the music, so much of what we know about the perception of Santa all came from that time, right?
00:32:55.720 From the department stores and these kind of very homey, the Norman Rockwell paintings of Christmas, all of that.
00:33:04.720 That was all the 20s and 30s before World War II, correct?
00:33:07.720 Right.
00:33:08.720 And 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.
00:33:22.720 And 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.
00:33:33.720 And it's endorsed by the U.S. Post Office because they delivered the mail, so Santa Claus must be real.
00:33:39.720 And so the idea of a department store having a Santa Claus became something of a tradition well before that movie.
00:33:50.720 Talk 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?
00:34:01.900 This 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.
00:34:15.900 He made message pictures, although he would deny that.
00:34:19.280 But 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.
00:34:27.780 It kind of bombed.
00:34:28.720 Well, the movie is a message movie.
00:34:33.420 You've got George Bailey.
00:34:35.280 Now, think of this.
00:34:36.660 George Bailey runs a bank.
00:34:39.100 It's an SNL, but modern Americans who can – so the hero is a banker.
00:34:44.740 A banker?
00:34:45.420 Oh, no, they can't be heroes, right?
00:34:47.460 And what's his issue?
00:34:48.640 His 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,
00:34:57.360 but because he feels like he's let down so many people in society.
00:35:03.200 And the way that the movie wraps up, he's going to go out and commit suicide.
00:35:07.000 He jumps off a bridge but is rescued by his guardian angel who shows him what life would be without him.
00:35:14.480 And it's much worse.
00:35:15.700 Things literally go to hell in town.
00:35:18.380 And so when he comes back – and modern Americans would never believe this.
00:35:22.900 He 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.
00:35:35.680 I mean modern people would have real trouble with donating to a bank.
00:35:40.980 You've got a big kid in me.
00:35:42.800 It's just – and the famous line that – I think it's every time a Democrat resigns from Congress, an angel gets its wings.
00:35:50.960 Isn't it something like that?
00:35:52.380 Isn't that?
00:35:54.440 Yeah, no.
00:35:55.120 So where's – yeah, no.
00:35:56.520 What is it about the film though?
00:35:59.880 It came – they had a technical problem that it came off copyright in stations in New York and then others started running it.
00:36:06.940 And what we – what you say in the film is ran the sprockets off it nonstop because it was free.
00:36:13.320 And then all of a sudden people started watching it.
00:36:15.800 The film is obviously – it's a wonderful life.
00:36:18.300 It became a – what we call a cult classic and now it's a standard on TCM and others over the Christmas season.
00:36:25.240 But 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?
00:36:35.480 There was already enough agony from World War II and people just wanted to get on with their lives now.
00:36:40.560 What 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?
00:36:49.120 Well, some of that may be just what you said, that it got out to much broader audiences.
00:36:55.720 You know, exposure is everything in movies and you can point to any number of modern movies if they only open in 200 theaters.
00:37:03.240 I don't care how good the movie is.
00:37:05.060 It'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.
00:37:12.640 But the movie itself has an incredible message of redemption.
00:37:17.920 I 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.
00:37:26.800 In fact, he played a key role in every person's life that he interacted with.
00:37:32.280 And the suicide aspect may have been what hit people initially.
00:37:37.040 They didn't want to see any kind of death after World War II, after the Great Depression.
00:37:42.960 But 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.
00:37:54.140 And 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?
00:38:06.120 When he comes back, I mean, it's some of the darkest filmmaking.
00:38:09.460 There'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.
00:38:16.840 And this is a PG-13 film.
00:38:18.960 But the way Capra is such a genius, he and Jimmy Stewart, so powerful.
00:38:23.260 But 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.
00:38:33.780 Yeah.
00:38:33.900 Well, and again, this is one of these movies you said you wouldn't allow in your home.
00:38:38.760 But The Ref is a sort of modernized, a little bit different version of this.
00:38:43.700 But 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.
00:38:57.760 How can this marriage ever be resolved and you later find out the kid is some sort of derelict?
00:39:03.620 But 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.
00:39:15.920 And that is the Christmas story, the story of somebody who brings redemption to the whole human race.
00:39:22.520 No, so having never seen The Ref, I was really talking about Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation.
00:39:31.680 And 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.
00:39:37.820 Of course, I excuse myself to go –
00:39:40.900 Larry, a great movie.
00:39:44.120 Just putting the heck of it.
00:39:45.660 Okay.
00:39:46.160 Larry, hang on.
00:39:47.640 Larry, hang on.
00:39:48.620 We're going to take a short break.
00:39:50.180 We've got a very special thing on the other side of this.
00:39:53.880 The music here, and I want to thank the production, particularly Real America's Voice.
00:39:57.540 It'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.
00:40:08.980 Always very proud about all of that.
00:40:11.460 I want to thank the Real America's Voice team, Patrick O'Donnell, everybody that makes the Christmas Day special.
00:40:18.160 And 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.
00:40:27.300 It hasn't always been – the Christmas season, with everything it represents, hasn't been that easy for a lot of patriots.
00:40:34.480 Okay.
00:40:35.060 Short commercial – going to go with some great music.
00:40:36.780 Short commercial break.
00:40:37.800 Back with Larry Swank in a moment.
00:40:39.100 play I'm sorry for a lot of at this time.
00:41:09.100 O Lord Jesus, asleep on the grave.
00:41:15.740 The cattle on the road may be raised.
00:41:25.500 But let the Lord Jesus no crying be raised.
00:41:34.800 I love thee, O Lord Jesus, who'd come from the sky.
00:41:44.840 And stay by my cradle to watch the light.
00:41:53.560 And stay by my cradle to watch the world apart.
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00:43:50.740 I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
00:44:09.380 Just like the ones I used to know
00:44:16.520 Where the treetops glisten
00:44:23.140 And children listen
00:44:27.560 To hear sleigh bells in the snow
00:44:34.200 I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
00:44:48.600 With every Christmas card I write
00:44:55.960 May your days be merry and bright
00:45:05.360 And may all your Christmases be white 0.83
00:45:16.780 One of the toughest opens of any war film.
00:45:24.920 And that is a magnificent movie.
00:45:26.880 If you have not had a chance to watch it, I can guarantee you it's a classic.
00:45:32.180 White Christmas.
00:45:33.600 Right there you see Danny Kaye, Dean Jagger, and of course Bing Crosby.
00:45:39.120 Dean Jagger, as everyone knows, is watching.
00:45:41.480 You should watch it and you should watch it if you're part of the war and posse.
00:45:44.240 12 O'Clock High is really, in fact, he was nominated, I think, in one Best Supporting Actor from 12 O'Clock High.
00:45:50.580 Gregory Pecky had done for a few years earlier.
00:45:53.560 Those are all done with the living memory of World War II in everybody's mind.
00:45:57.640 Larry, very powerful.
00:45:59.200 And that song, it kind of comes out of nowhere in Holiday Inn, but here it's central to the story.
00:46:05.400 You start the story off at the Battle of the Bulge and the firing of a general and you end.
00:46:10.000 I don't want to give away the ending, but just a magnificent, magnificent ending.
00:46:13.440 Larry, your closing thoughts on the traditions of Christmas, both the old and the new.
00:46:18.460 And then I want to make sure everybody gets to your writings and to all your books and all of it.
00:46:24.980 Well, we almost forgot one of the most important.
00:46:27.480 I don't know how we can leave this out.
00:46:29.220 And that's a Charlie Brown Christmas.
00:46:30.780 Because 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.
00:46:53.860 And Schultz said, you're not going to show that show without that scene.
00:46:58.800 And so he stood up for it.
00:47:00.580 And that remains.
00:47:01.500 That's very important.
00:47:02.540 It's one of the few places where you get the full nativity story in modern media, modern Christmas media, all the way down to the present.
00:47:13.220 So we shouldn't forget that one.
00:47:17.800 Amazing.
00:47:18.460 Amazing story by the creator of Peanuts.
00:47:21.600 How do people get to you, Larry, all your writings, both the political and the historical?
00:47:25.160 You 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.
00:47:38.560 And we try to keep the two separate.
00:47:40.940 So if you're into the political side of me, go to politics.
00:47:44.100 If you're into history, go to the Wild World of History.
00:47:45.960 And, of course, Patriot's history is now – we just crossed 60,000 sales in this edition alone, which is pretty amazing.
00:47:56.140 And this edition is what?
00:47:57.660 Is this the 40th reprinting or something?
00:48:00.220 We're in our 41st reprinting, our fifth edition.
00:48:04.940 And 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.
00:48:17.640 Wow.
00:48:19.060 The years of Trump.
00:48:21.480 Larry, thank you very much.
00:48:24.220 Larry's one of the smartest guys I know in politics, polling, all of it, demographics, a renaissance man.
00:48:29.760 Thank you very much for being with us here on Christmas – our Christmas Eve special.
00:48:34.920 Thank you, Steve.
00:48:35.780 Merry Christmas.
00:48:38.200 Merry Christmas.
00:48:39.240 Merry Christmas to everybody.
00:48:41.620 There will be a replay of this tomorrow on Real America's Voice.
00:48:45.280 I think it may even be later this afternoon also.
00:48:47.520 I want to thank everybody.
00:48:48.500 Thank our entire crew, Grace and Moe and the entire team, Jane Zirkle, Natalie, everybody.
00:48:54.900 Have a Merry Christmas.
00:48:55.760 We'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.
00:49:05.040 We'll take you from the Battle of the Bulge.
00:49:08.720 We'll go to Korea on the Chosin Reservoir. 0.98
00:49:11.200 We'll go back to what you just saw there with Bing Crosby at Bastogne with the 101st Airborne.
00:49:17.740 Of course, we'll do Christmas night with Washington and the troops crossing the Delaware and surprising the Hessians outside of Trenton. 0.97
00:49:27.080 This 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,
00:49:35.380 a railroad hub that became quite important in the Civil War.
00:49:39.640 I want to thank everybody.
00:49:41.000 We're going to leave you with some great Christmas music.
00:49:42.940 We'll be back here on Monday, 10 a.m. Eastern Time, Combat History Christmas.
00:49:47.260 We'll see you then at the war.
00:49:48.180 Merry Christmas.
00:49:48.920 To the world, the Lord is come.
00:49:54.040 Let earth receive a king.
00:49:57.780 Let every heart prepare him room.
00:50:02.700 Let heaven and nature sing.
00:50:04.980 Let heaven and nature sing.
00:50:06.740 Let heaven and nature sing.
00:50:07.900 Joy to the world, the Savior reigns.
00:50:16.820 Let men their songs employ.
00:50:20.360 Let fears and thoughts are stills and pains.
00:50:25.360 Repeat the sounding joy.
00:50:27.360 Repeat the sounding joy.
00:50:29.760 Repeat the sounding joy.
00:50:34.680 He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nation's proof.
00:50:43.600 There's all he is on, his righteousness, and wonders of his love, and wonders of his love, and wonders of his love.
00:51:01.060 Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
00:51:05.980 Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
00:51:10.980 Let earth receive a king, and every heart prepare him room.
00:51:18.980 Let heaven and nature sing.
00:51:19.900 Let heaven and nature sing.
00:51:21.900 Let heaven and nature sing.
00:51:23.900 Let heaven and nature sing.
00:51:24.900 Let heaven and nature sing.
00:51:28.900 Joy to the world, the Savior reigns.
00:51:33.900 Let men their songs employ.
00:51:36.900 Let fears and thoughts are stills and pains.
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