Something You Should Know
The Real Stories Behind Christmas Traditions and Songs - Holiday Bonus Episode
23 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Today on Something You Should Know, another Christmas bonus episode about holiday traditions. Have you ever stopped to wonder where these traditions came from? Some traditions didn't start out having much to do with Christmas at all.
I think the mistletoe tradition is fascinating because it really goes back to over a thousand years when the early missionaries were going to reach the Vikings, and the Vikings looked upon the mistletoe plant as this incredible plant.
When these people converted to Christianity, what they did was they brought the mistletoe plant with them and put it over babies' cribs and other things to represent their faith. They also wanted their bride and groom to be married under a symbol of faith, and so they were married underneath a mistletoe plant.
Today, we're going to explore the stories behind some of the most familiar Christmas traditions. And once you hear them, you may never look at these traditions the same way again. On this bonus holiday episode of Something You Should Know.
Ah, the Regency era. You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place, or as the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. The Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history.
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Chapter 2: What is the origin of the NORAD Santa Tracker?
Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History, Regency era, wherever you get podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.
Hi and welcome to our final holiday bonus episode of Something You Should Know This Year. These are so much fun to do. I love putting these episodes together. And I want to start with a question. Have you, or maybe it's your kids, ever tracked Santa on the NORAD Santa Tracker?
Every Christmas Eve, millions of people all over the world check the NORAD Santa Tracker to see where Santa is at that moment. And it all started with a typo. Back in 1955, a Sears department store ran a newspaper ad telling kids to call Santa directly. But the phone number was printed incorrectly. Instead of reaching Santa, kids were calling the Continental Air Defense Command.
That was the Cold War military operation that later became known as NORAD. Well, rather than hanging up on disappointed children, the officer who was taking the calls answered the phone and played along, telling them that Santa was already on his way. Well, the idea caught on and the military began officially tracking Santa using radar and satellites.
So what began as a Cold War accident has turned into a beloved annual tradition that's been running for nearly 70 years. And that is something you should know. Every year around this time, people in the U.S., as well as people all over the world, engage in their favorite holiday traditions. The same ones their parents engaged in, as did their grandparents, and on and on.
We also listen to and sing the same Christmas songs every year, over and over again. So where did these songs and traditions come from? In many cases, the backstories are really interesting, and someone who's researched and written about them is Ace Collins.
Ace is the author of many books, including Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas and Stories Behind the Best Loved Songs of Christmas. Hi, Ace. Welcome. So let's dive in here because there's a lot to cover. Let's start with the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe. Where did that come from?
Well, I think the mistletoe tradition is fascinating because why do we have this plant during Christmas that's essentially a makeout plant? I mean, you know, why do you have that? And it really goes back to over a thousand years when the early missionaries were going to reach the Vikings and The Vikings looked upon the mistletoe plant as this incredible plant.
It was able to grow out of dead wood in the wintertime, because they believed trees died in the wintertime and spring back to life. And the early missionaries actually just kind of used that as a religious symbol, where The mistletoe plant represented Christ being crucified on the cross, came back to life. The green represented eternal life.
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Chapter 3: Why do people kiss under the mistletoe?
Hi, I'm Adam Gidwitz, host of Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest. On every episode, we tell a grim fairy tale. Not the cute, sweet versions of the fairy tales that your children have heard so many times. No, we tell the real grim fairy tales. They're funny, they're weird, sometimes they're a little bit scary.
But don't worry, we rate every episode grim, grimmer, or grimmest, so you, your child, your family can choose the episode that's the right level of scary for you. Tune in to Grim Grimmer Grimmest and our new season, available now.
Let's talk about Christmas music. And, you know, one of the things that interests me about Christmas songs is there aren't a lot of new ones. I mean, every once in a while, you know, like Paul McCartney or the Eagles or Wham kind of sneaks into the mix and people start listening to that.
But year after year, it's the same Christmas song sung by the same people, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Brenda Lee, Bobby Helms. It's all the same Christmas songs every year, year after year.
Yeah, I think in the last, if you look at the songs that were introduced in the last 30 years, Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You will probably stick around. Mark Lowry, when he wrote Mary, Did You Know? It was such a unique viewpoint song, you know, brilliant concept will stick around. But you're right. Very few do.
You know, when you look at the nature of Christmas music, the song that we sing still at Christmas that goes back in a complete form to performing it just as it was performed 1,200 years ago as O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. So that's our oldest complete carol. It probably wouldn't have stuck around, but it was discovered in the 1800s and reprinted at that particular point, and people caught on to it.
It was so easy to sing. You look at other songs like Silent Night, it was a stopgap measure when a priest had an organ that died and he had based his entire service around music, went to his friend, the school teacher, and Joseph Moore told Franz Gruber, I have nothing. And Gruber offered to play guitar for the service, but the music they had picked out didn't work with it.
Moore had written a song two years before, not as a song, but as a poem, when he had been visiting his uncle. He found that, they sent it to music, and Silent Night became known as the song that saved Christmas in Obendorf, Austria, about you know, really about 200 years ago. Joseph Moore used that song as a stopgap measure.
When the organist, when the man who fixed the organ came by and was playing the organ later, when he got it working, he asked Moore, what did you do for Christmas? Well, Moore sat down at the organ and played him Silent Night and sang it to him. The man who fixed the organ jotted down the words and remembered the melody, and that was it. Silent Night should have gone away.
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