Burn on, Yule Log!
-
- December
- 16
We just had a holiday lunch here at LoHud/The Journal News.
While a group of us were sitting around eating a Big Sandwich, assorted chicken dishes and sides, someone brought up the famous Yule Log on Channel 11 in New York.
Well, it’s famous to those who grew up in New York. In fact, someone at lunch said that you can tell a real New Yorker by whether or not one is familiar with—and has warm feelings toward—the Yule Log. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, it was popular with people of all faiths (make that Catholic and Jewish) because of the sheer absurdity of it.
The Yule Log was a TV program that aired on Christmas morning and, I think, Christmas Eve. It showed nothing more than a log burning in a fireplace. That’s it. No narration. No rolling headlines. No shifting camera angles. Just a log burning in a fireplace. Christmas music and secular, seasonal music played in the background.
It was such a city thing. Anyone who grew up in an apartment (like I did) or the kind of multi-family houses that were all over south Brooklyn could never imagine having a fireplace. Where would it go? How would the smoke get out? Where do you get wood? Fireplaces were for the country.
But we had the Yule Log. According to a fan site (hey, there is a fan site for everything), WPIX in New York—Channel 11—started the Great Tradition in 1966. It was a film loop of a burning log that played over and over (some colleagues insist they remember seeing the film end and start again, but I don’t recall).
The original film was shot at Gracie Mansion, according to the WPIX website. On the first Christmas Eve it aired, WPIX sacrificed $4,000 in advertising and and canceled a roller derby show.
The Yule Log was discontinued after 1988. But WPIX brought it back in 2001, after 9/11.
In 2006, for the 40th anniversary of the Yule Log, WPIX aired a one-hour special about its strange but undeniable popularity through the years.
The WPIX website does not list the dates or times for this year’s Yule Log. But check back.
The website does make available a downloadable Yule Log for use on your video iPod.
Burn on, Yule Log! Burn on!
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 2:10 pm by Gary Stern.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Print
| 
Email
The world of religion, we don't have to tell you, is vast. The purpose of this blog is for Stern to note, flag and comment on some of the more interesting religious developments on the scene – weighty and quirky, somber and laughable, far away and just down the road. He won't interpret Scripture, take sides in conflicts or judge anyone. But he will take advantage of the journalist's license to observe.
Now that I have an HD projector and a Dolby Digital home theatre setup in my apartment, I am incredibly excited to see what the Yule Log will look like in a fully digital environment.