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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm in the Christmas mood. I am not a huge celebrator of Christmas, but my sister put up two trees at my mom's house and decorated them. Now I'm like, I really do like Christmas when someone else does the work.
J. Aughenbaugh: My daughter McKenzie said something similar this past weekend because she and I have a tradition that we usually put up all the Christmas decorations the Sunday after Thanksgiving. But she wasn't in the mood, and I actually played hardcore dad. I said, unless you help me, I'm not putting up the Christmas decorations, and McKenzie said in response, Dad, I really like Christmas decorations when other people put up the decorations.
N. Rodgers: I'm just saying me and Mac. I'm inherently lazy, I think, at some level. I'm not a big celebrator of most holidays, so that's not my jam.
J. Aughenbaugh: You and I have that in common. Perhaps for different reasons. For me, I don't like taking off too much time from work. Holidays, for me, I'm just like, that's nice. We get to hang out. But when can I get back to work?
N. Rodgers: See, I'm too lazy for that. It's mostly for me. It's that they start playing Christmas music on July 4, and I'm like, by the time you get to the actual Christmas season, I'm so done that I'm like, if you play one more Christmas song, I'm going to just start screaming in the store. Let me have Halloween and Thanksgiving first.
J. Aughenbaugh: I don't mind hearing Mariah Carey.
N. Rodgers: Mariah is a queen.
J. Aughenbaugh: Once or twice. But if I get to early December and I've already her Chris, what is her infamous Christmas song?
N. Rodgers: All I want for Christmas is you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is you. At that point, I don't want anybody for Christmas after carrying that song.
N. Rodgers: You don't even want Mariah Carey. She's gracious.
J. Aughenbaugh: 36 times. I'm like, I'm sorry. If you guys wait until the weekend after Thanksgiving, then I'm like, now you can bring out melon camps. I saw Santa.
N. Rodgers: Springsteen. Santa Claus is coming to town, one of the best renditions. But it's probably saturation. That's the problem for me. I get saturated with too many. It is ridiculous to say that we were not a Christian based country because the Native Americans were not, but the people who came here from Europe, many of them were coming here for religious freedom and specifically different Christianity. They were trying to be.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they weren't Anglican and they wanted to go [inaudible] .
N. Rodgers: They didn't want to be church in England. They weren't into the Henry eighth thing they wanted to do other stuff. There is a long tradition of Christian holidays in America. We're only just now modernly welcoming other holidays. We're welcoming Diwali. We're welcoming Kwanzaa. We're welcoming lots of other… But we are doing more of that as a country, which is great, but we are still a heavily Christian nation in the sense of a large number of people in the United States identify as a type of Christian.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Towards that end listeners, today's episode looks specifically at how various states or state and local governments celebrate the Christmas holiday. For our newer listeners, Nia and I have our own holiday tradition. Which is typically, every early December or late November, we will do an episode. It's at least for us, fun.
N. Rodgers: Light hearted.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's light hearted. Some might say a little bit silly where we look at holiday traditions and how it relates to governments. For instance, we have a podcast episode about presidents pardoning turkeys.
N. Rodgers: Even though, technically, you can't pardon a turkey, but you can't enlist it in the military.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Or you can enlist it in some other service.
J. Aughenbaugh: Government service.
N. Rodgers: But, the White House gets its Christmas tree I did an episode on that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then who decorates the White House, and the controversies that have arisen over the years?
N. Rodgers: NORAD tracking Santa. That was accidental at first, but became a thing. This year I think we may have missed last year, but we're holding we're hearkening back to this tradition of what's going on with Christmas in the governments in the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: The day we are recording this episode, listeners, again, Nia and I work at Virginia Commonwealth University, which is located in Richmond, Virginia. The day after we record this episode, the city of Richmond will have its annual Christmas parade. Which is sponsored by various local businesses, but it is a city of Richmond government, if you will, sanctioned Christmas parade.
N. Rodgers: They close the streets. They provide the security. They do all that stuff so that the parade can happen. That is not unusual. Aughie and I are not currently co located. He's in Richmond right now, and I'm in North Carolina at my parents farm. The local town here, which is a tiny little town, it's 1,200 people, tomorrow will have its parade, and by the way, we have a stoplight here now. They're going to have to turn the stoplight off so that the parade can go through. Which I think is hilarious. There's been this whole thing in the town about how you turn the stoplight off.
J. Aughenbaugh: Wait a minute Nia, you got to pause right there. Again, for our listeners who did not grow up in small rural towns in the United States, stoplights are big deals.
N. Rodgers: When you get a stoplight, we didn't have a stop light for the longest time, we had a flash of yellow. Flash yellow on one side, red on the other.
J. Aughenbaugh: The debates about whether or not a stop light or stop lights should be installed.
N. Rodgers: Go on forever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Go on forever.
N. Rodgers: That's years before you actually get one.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then when you get one, then they have these major debates about when it can be turned off or suspended. Which events are important enough? To merit that.
N. Rodgers: To merit getting the county to come out and turn it off. Because nobody in the city knows how to do it. There's only 1,200 of us. None of us know how to, I guess we could knock it down, but then it would be broken. We have to get somebody from the county to come out and turn it off and then turn it back on. The city has to pay the county to do that. That guy's not free. He doesn't come over here and do it for free. He's not doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He's doing it as part of his job, and he's getting time and a half he's doing it on a Saturday. Like, it's a whole thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: We could do an entire episode about the politics of stoplights. In small rural towns, in the United States.
N. Rodgers: I don't know if there's enough civil discourse in the world to have that podcast, Aughie. It turns ugly. People have feelings, big F feelings.
J. Aughenbaugh: You want to talk about the intersection of politics and governing,.
N. Rodgers: That's where it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Stop lights in small towns.
N. Rodgers: On one side of our stoplight is the railroad track. When the light turns red, and then there's the extra sign that hangs down at the bottom that says, railroad crossing something. I can't remember what it says underneath there now. My goodness. Because you can't go forward. You can only go left or right. You can't go straight because straight is where the train is crossing. There was even more drama because we had to have one of those. We couldn't just have a regular stoplight. My goodness. Anyway, But the town gets together, everybody goes downtown and we watch the parade, and it's we have a K-12 school because we're a small town. They have a little marching band, and they march, and there's a group of dancers and they dance, and Santa is on the fire truck. He comes down and throws candy out for the kids, and like, it's a whole thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, when I was in high school, for a couple of years, I was in my school band, and it was a big deal. We got to participate. We thought it was a big deal until we actually had to go out in the freezing cold. This was North Central Pennsylvania. You couldn't wear winter coats.
N. Rodgers: Because you have to play your instrument.
J. Aughenbaugh: You had to be in your band uniform. The band uniforms are designed for fall football. They're not designed for mid December, we just got our first six inches of snow in North Central PA. But I remember marching down the street of my small town, as a member of the band. It was a big deal. You might.
N. Rodgers: End up in a picture in the county newspaper.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. What we're going to do here, listeners for roughly the next half hour is to talk about what some states, local governments do in regards to celebrating the holiday season. Many of these celebrations are again, Christmas related, but others, they got a wide variety, and what's fascinating to me Nia, as I was doing research is the way these state and local governments advertise this. It was so easy to find information, they have more stuff on their websites in some instances.
N. Rodgers: About this than they do about how much the mayor makes.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: You can't figure out how much the mayor makes, but you can figure out when your Christmas parade is.
J. Aughenbaugh: They announce it months in advance.
N. Rodgers: We have a banner that's been up since Thanksgiving downtown. There's a banner that goes across the street that we have down because we have two streets downtown. There's one street gets the banner, and it has written on it and it gets put up every year, and then the actual date is not written on there. It's added each year. It says December and then you have the date. It gets added because they don't want to keep making banners year after year. That's too expensive. There's a little piece that you can tie onto it that tells you which of the days it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: My hometown, where my mom still lives, their website actually has a box you can click down at the bottom of the homepage for the holiday announcement, they get more feedback about the town's Christmas decorations than they do anything else throughout the year.
N. Rodgers: It's amazing. We have big snowflakes. Our town has big snowflakes and they get lit up at dark. They're not on during the day. They go on at night. But the next town over has wreaths. When we went to replace ours, everybody was like, you can do anything but a wreath, because we don't want people to be mixed up about which town they're in. There's some real serious competition with small towns. But can I say I like that Alabama was the first place to declare Christmas a legal holiday.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I would have thought it would have been one of the older states. But that was in what?
J. Aughenbaugh: 1836.
N. Rodgers: 1836. That's pretty late. Well, no, it's about 0 years in, I guess. It's about 40 years in. Somebody said, Christmas should be an official holiday in Alabama.
J. Aughenbaugh: Alabama was the first.
N. Rodgers: Are there other states that have it as an official holiday?
J. Aughenbaugh: Pretty much almost every other state in the country does.
N. Rodgers: Legal holidays, so that means state workers don't work.
J. Aughenbaugh: Work. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Virginia has that, too.
J. Aughenbaugh: Some of them have changed the wording to be more inclusive.
N. Rodgers: It's a holiday day. But it magically falls on December 25 most of the time, regardless of what the other holidays are.
J. Aughenbaugh: What my research indicated is that in over 40 of the states by law, you also have to give off workers at least part of Christmas Eve and all of New Year's Day off.
N. Rodgers: Interesting. I know that in a lot of states, this is a small digression, but we'll go here anyway, real quick, a lot of companies give any religious holiday that is celebrate. If you take Diwali off, if you take Kwanzaa off, if you take Passover off, whatever those holidays are, it's not Passover. It's Easter.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's Hanukkah.
N. Rodgers: Hanukkah Thank you. That's me getting that all wrong. Sorry about that our Jewish listeners. I apologize, but those holidays are recognized. Like you can't be denied taking those holidays off if you're not a person who celebrates Christmas. You're allowed to celebrate and you should celebrate whatever holiday your faith prescribes. It's good that the governments have come to that because that was not always the case.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, it wasn't always the case. Again, that led to pitched battles, particularly as we move into typically, my research found we saw a lot of pitched battles starting in the 1980s and '90s. Prior to the 1980s, not so much. What's really fascinating was many scholars connect the pitched battles to having more inclusive government holiday, if you will, government holidays, but government holiday displays to a series of Supreme Court rulings in the 1980s that went ahead and said that if a government has a Christmas display.
N. Rodgers: It should also have other faiths.
J. Aughenbaugh: Others faiths or other elements that would be more inclusive. This became known as the Reindeer Test. If you had a crash, a manger scene, you had to go ahead and balance that with Frosty the Snowman or Santa with reindeer or allowing a Kwanzaa unit of the display, etc. It couldn't just be about Christmas because according to the Supreme Court, that would denote establishment of religion.
N. Rodgers: In case of First Amendment.
J. Aughenbaugh: It would violate the First Amendment. But it became known derisively among constitutional law scholars as the "Reindeer Test."
N. Rodgers: Always something.
J. Aughenbaugh: For our non American listeners.
N. Rodgers: In fairness, it should be that everybody feels represented by their government. The government isn't saying if you don't celebrate Christmas, we don't recognize you as people. That's not cool, that's not fair. It should be that there's a dreidel and there's lights for Diwali there's the beautiful candles for Kwanzaa all of that, because it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do to make everybody feel included.
J. Aughenbaugh: For our non American listeners, not every nation's Constitution has an establishment clause restriction.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, we do in the United States. But that's a challenge because you also have the Free Exercise Clause in the First Amendment.
N. Rodgers: The tension between those is what makes the First Amendment so interesting.
J. Aughenbaugh: But back to states and local governments. One of the more fascinating things EI found is how much or how many states their Christmas displays are tied to local terrain, flora, fauna, etc. For instance.
N. Rodgers: If we could pick a tree out of Kudzoo in North Carolina, we would. Let's be on post.
J. Aughenbaugh: In Arkansas, the city of Fayetteville hosts the lights of the Ozarks. It's a drive-through light show that runs from late November through December 31. If you've never driven through Arkansas, the Ozark Mountains is one of the most prominent geographical features of that state. You can see from miles away.
N. Rodgers: I can tell you that out west in Utah and Arizona, they don't put up a Christmas tree. They put up a Christmas cactus. They will decorate. Now, in Utah, they put up Christmas trees, but they also decorate cactuses, which I just think is hilarious. But if you live in the desert, if part of where you are is the desert, why would you not do that? That's the useful thing to you, and it's funny. It's a light-hearted. Imagine that happens in New Mexico and Arizona.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's what they do in Arizona, yes.
N. Rodgers: By the way, Christmas cactus is a thing. If anybody wonders, my mother has a Christmas cactus. They bloom around this time of year, big, bright pink and red and white. They're gorgeous. You really came and have it be a celebratory.
J. Aughenbaugh: Imagine, though, you have to be careful. I mean, because we are talking about a cactus plant. But nevertheless, you imagine how easy it would be to go ahead and string lights that provide a nice color contrast.
N. Rodgers: To the bright pink and bright red. It would be gorgeous.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, I have next to no, if you will, color or appreciation, but even I can be like, oh, wow, I could see how that works. Not surprisingly, in California, the big one is at Disneyland. They have a grass castle decorated with wreaths.
N. Rodgers: Disney goes all out at Christmas time. Like, there are huge trees and lots of Mickey ornaments and lots of the same thing with Florida for Disney World. Those are big.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, listeners, this is the other thing. You might think, well, hey, what about those states in the South? They don't get snow. It doesn't really get all that cold. No. They go all out just like states in the North do.
N. Rodgers: Please, do not even think that you're going to miss the big light display downtown in Atlanta. Down by Peachtree Plaza, all that. It's apparently stunning. I've never seen it. My sister lives down that way, and she says it's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. The city puts up a lot of that. There's lots of light displays. The city seems to really like using lots of electricity. I think part of that is that you can do really interesting things with lights, but also, lights are not denominational. Lights are not necessarily Christmas. A lot of the religions talk about light, because it's winter and you're trying to bring light to the winter. You're trying to bring the start.
J. Aughenbaugh: If the book of religion is to bring salvation. It's the light at that end of the Dark Tunnel.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. There's a lot of light displays. You were mentioning, is it you or somebody else who was telling me that Virginia does a big display. I had never heard of it. I've heard of the one in the city. I have heard of the Richmond light display because you can't live in Richmond and not know about the light display here. It's an ongoing thing, and it's in different parts of the city in different years. But it's quite a beautiful display.
J. Aughenbaugh: In Virginia, what you have, Nia, is what's referred to as 100 miles of lights, and it spans from Virginia Beach to Richmond. The entire region coordinates all these lights. You have the large light displays and living history reenactments.
N. Rodgers: Well, of course, in Virginia. I love Virginia, but it can't let go of the fact that it was first.
J. Aughenbaugh: The colonial Williams were great. But you got the historic candlelight Christmas tour at the Berkeley Plantation, which, by the way, again, in a whole bunch of southern states where they used to have plantations. This is where you see a lot of Christmas displays.
N. Rodgers: Yes, Mount Vernon puts up a beautiful display at this time of year.
J. Aughenbaugh: You got the lights. Some of it is historically related. Christmas at the Codys. This is in Nebraska. This is part of the Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park, where you have the mansion of Buffalo Bill and Louisa Cody. In the North Platte, they have an annual Christmas at Cody celebration. They have what you would expect. You have lights, carols, horse-drawn carriage rides, and it ties into Nebraska's history.
N. Rodgers: It's a State park.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it's a State park.
N. Rodgers: It's funded by the State. Disney's not funded by the state of California.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, I mean, but a lot of the governments do the public-private partnership. For instance, the parade in Richmond is hosted by Dominion Energy.
N. Rodgers: But it's with the city. Like works in conjunction with the city. Some of these we're mentioning aren't state and local. They're private enterprises, but not most of them. Most of them are public. I love that in Louisiana, in New Orleans, that big park in New Orleans, where there was a statue that came down not too many years ago, but that park gets lit. Like really brightly lit and is a big attraction. New Orleans probably hadn't seen the snowflake. Ever. I don't know what they would do if they got a snowflake. They probably probably freeze it and put it in some museum because it's just not a cold-weather place.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not a cold-weather place. In contrast, we have George Washington's crossing reenactment between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
N. Rodgers: I love that. I love that you can go and watch guys get in a boat and go across the river.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, this is a historical re-enactment of Washington leading the troops on Christmas Day, 1776.
N. Rodgers: Which is why they went because nobody was expecting them on Christmas.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: The British were not expecting.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they crossed the Delaware River, which is a divide between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
N. Rodgers: If you're trying to place it mentally, it's the painting where he is standing on the front of the boat, which was unlikely.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That he was actually standing on the front of the boat. That would have been a silly thing for a commander to do.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. You could not have put a bigger bull's eye on you as a commander.
N. Rodgers: He was not a short man. He was not a small man. Putting him at the front of the boat probably would have been a terrible idea. But it makes for a nice painting. It makes it a very nice painting.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because dramatic effect in a painting, you don't go ahead and put George Washington at the back of the boat covered up by a whole bunch of
N. Rodgers: Rugs and stuff. Here, hold the blankets, sir.
J. Aughenbaugh: But again, this is a state park event, and you have hundreds of reenactors.
N. Rodgers: Which is cool.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is a serious enterprise.
N. Rodgers: Showing up in Continental military dress. Like, they're showing up in actual re-enactors in actual. Remember how they were all cold at Valley Forge and thought they were going to die? I imagine it is not a warm thing to be showing up to do this. But I imagine the camaraderie is awesome. Tell me, please, that Idaho, please, tell me that they decorate a giant potato. Christmas, because that will be awesome.
J. Aughenbaugh: That would be awesome.
N. Rodgers: Remember that experiment when you put a light bulb in a potato?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yes.
N. Rodgers: Can you imagine if they had a giant potato and they just put bulbs in it? How cool that would be?
J. Aughenbaugh: That was a middle school experiment. I remember that was like one of the few things about my science classes where I'm like, okay, that's pretty cool. A lot of stuff that we learned in high school science classes were completely lost on me. But that one in Idaho, they have a large Christmas tree. It's a large blue spruce cut from the national forest.
N. Rodgers: That's beautiful.
J. Aughenbaugh: What I really like about this, and Nia, you and I are big fans of this, going back to Andrew Jackson's big block of Cheese Day. The governor will invite people to visit the Capital, see the tree. They will have complimentary coffee, hot cocoa, etc.
N. Rodgers: Nice. Come down, see the tree, hang out with us for a little while. Well, I mean, if everybody in Idaho shows up, that'd be 12 people, 15 people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let's not disparage the small population. Really?
N. Rodgers: I shouldn't because those people are hardworking, man. They provide all the potatoes we eat.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let me remind you where you are recording this episode in a small town in rural North Carolina.
N. Rodgers: Idaho, by the way, is stunningly beautiful. If people have not been to Idaho? Green River is beautiful in Idaho. If you get a chance to go, it is a beautiful place to visit. There are very few places in the United States that are not beautiful. There really are. We're very fortunate that our country is, generally speaking, lovely. But there's a lot of really pretty stuff to see, not just at Christmas time, but, like, all the time. We're pretty scenic, really.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's one of the benefits of having such a large country geographically.
N. Rodgers: There's something for everybody. If you like the beaches, if you like the mountains, if you like the desert, if you like the forests, whatever you like, we've got a place where that thing is, and it's gorgeous.
J. Aughenbaugh: When you come into those various regions, it's really difficult not to be odd.
N. Rodgers: There's something wrong with you if you're not impressed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Where you are, like, man, I am small and inconsequential to the Grand Canyon. Or this particular forest, or I mean, think about the blue waters of the Gulf of California. When I saw them, I was just like, how can the water be so blue. I mean, it just blew me away.
N. Rodgers: The beautiful lakes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The Great Lake.
J. Aughenbaugh: Anyway, there's a few more states I want to cover. You mentioned Atlanta, Georgia. We would be remiss not to mention that for years, they have held a Santa Speedo run. Through Atlanta, Georgia.
N. Rodgers: Have they really?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they did.
N. Rodgers: I'll have to ask my sister about that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Other noteworthy events.
N. Rodgers: Now, I know that in Detroit, there's a bear swim where you go out and you swim in the Detroit River, but I don't think that's for Christmas. I think that's just in the winter.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it might be for New Year's because you get
N. Rodgers: Maybe that's what it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But we already mentioned Florida. We mentioned Disney, Universal Studios, also in Florida, and one of my favorites is how the residents of a trading post outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1952, called their town the North Pole. They built a Santa Claus House General Good store. You can actually get a letter from Santa postmarked from the North Pole, Alaska and sent
N. Rodgers: Which is pretty awesome.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sent to your child on the holidays. That is fabulous.
N. Rodgers: That is pretty fabulous.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. That is absolutely fantastic.
N. Rodgers: Can we mention Iowa?
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure. Yes.
N. Rodgers: In Iowa, they have a City of Christmas display of lights, and I'm going to say this wrong, Keokuk, I think, K_E_O_K_U_K Keokuk Rand Park. Where you drive through the park, you see 150 light displays that include the nativity scene, Santa's workshop, reindeer, elves, 20,000 cars. Go through that. It's big. I defy you to find Keokuk Rand Park just randomly. People go to it. It's not a thing where you, oh, I happened through it. It's a destination. That's what I guess I'm trying to say. That's one of the things I love about some of these. Some of these you have to go out of your way to get to, like the row houses in Maryland, that look like 34th Street. The movie Miracle on 34th Street. You have to go out of your way to get to that neighborhood to drive down and go.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or think about how in Rockland, Maine. They built the world's largest tree out of lobster traps, reaching 40.5 feet. The tree included 155 lobster traps, 180 lobster buoys, and 2,500 lights.
N. Rodgers: You like lobster? We got you lobster.
J. Aughenbaugh: You like lights? Got lights on the lobster traps. That is fabulous.
N. Rodgers: You mentioned to me the wild lights at the Detroit Zoo, which is a 32-night event that covers the entire front half of the zoo, surrounding trees and some of the buildings with over 5 million lights. Some of the massive light displays are animals. They're shaped like animals.
J. Aughenbaugh: Whales, foxes, snakes.
N. Rodgers: Who doesn't love that idea? It's a great idea.
J. Aughenbaugh: You imagine the creativity. That's the other thing. Sure, we have these pitched battles about lights and what should be part of the display, but just think of the creativity that goes into this. Somebody's just like we could make a whale out of lights. I got your whale. I've got a snake.
N. Rodgers: I think that's great. It's so very American to dress it up and make it fun in addition to showing your prowess. The other thing too is, we've never met a parade we don't like. All these towns have Santa parades, but the biggest is the one after Thanksgiving or the one on Thanksgiving Day in New York. My friend Neil says, "Christmas doesn't start until Santa ends up at Macy's."
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: I'm like, "Does he have to shop at Macy's?" He's like, "No, his sleigh has to show up at the end of the parade in front of Macy's, and then it's okay to start Christmas."
J. Aughenbaugh: Speaking of New York, one of the most famous Christmas displays is Rockefeller Center in New York. Since 1931, they decorate and light up a tree.
N. Rodgers: That tree is huge.
J. Aughenbaugh: It has been estimated that over 125 million people visit the tree every year.
N. Rodgers: That's amazing.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's got an ice skating rink. A lot of times, you will see television images of New York in the wintertime, and you will see people ice skating at the rink. In the backdrop is the lit up tree.
N. Rodgers: It looks like it's made of lights. It's not. It's an actual tree.
J. Aughenbaugh: Tree.
N. Rodgers: The lights are on, but it looks like it's just a big giant pile of lights. It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, in my research, they even had a mention in one of the articles that when New York City was facing bankruptcy in the mid '70s, they gave no thought.
N. Rodgers: To turning off the tree.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Good for them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because it was so important to the morale of the residents of New York that they didn't even give any consideration in the mayor's office or in city council to not decorating and having the lights on the tree.
N. Rodgers: I will tell you that one of the things that is sacrosanct in the budget of the little town that I'm in is putting up the snowflakes and turning them on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We just do it. I don't know that we would even consider not doing it. If we had a year where we struggled with money in town, people would just put in money. We would just pay for it to be done. Because now, I would like to mention a point of pride.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is going to be our last one for this episode. Listeners, I threw this in there in the research notes just for my podcast partner and good friend Nia Rodgers.
N. Rodgers: Merry Christmas to me. Thank you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Ashe County in North Carolina. There's two things you have to know about North Carolina. No, there's three things you have to know about North Carolina. One, we name things very simply, like we have a Deep River. Literally, that's what the name of it, is Deep River. That's who my people are. Black Swamp, we have a Black swamp here. That's just who we are. We have the Biltmore House up in the mountains, which by the way, if you've not been there for Christmas, it is not free. It is not cheap, but it is fabulous. It is absolutely fabulous. That house opened on Christmas Eve. He brought his wife from New York, the Vanderbilts and said, "Ta da, I made you a house." It's 250 rooms. I think it's huge. It's a chateau he owns. There's that. But the other thing we're known for in North Carolina, at least around this time of the year is that we produce more Christmas trees than any other region of the US.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If you swing a cat in the mountains of North Carolina, you will hit a Christmas tree. The cat will not like it, and the Christmas tree will not like it. That has been the case for a long time. I don't know when we became the first because probably out West, they also produce a lot, but we produce a lot of trees. A lot of the trees that end up at the White House come from North Carolina. We produce Christmas trees.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. We did episode about the selection of Christmas trees for the White House. There are typically three states that are in competition to provide the tree for the White House; Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. the reason why not only did I include this little tidbit in the research notes because I knew Nia would love it. But you may not know this, Nia. The summer after my first year of graduate school at Virginia Tech, I couldn't find a job to pay the rent, so I went to work for a Christmas tree farm outside of Blacksburg. Me and my crew got loaned out for a full week to trim Christmas trees in Ashe County, North Carolina.
N. Rodgers: I did not know that.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's how I went ahead and paid the rent one summer. By the way, listeners, for those of you who are wondering, Christmas trees don't grow in that nice conical shape that you see.
N. Rodgers: They grow wonky.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. One side of a tree will grow out wide, another one will go up at an angle. You actually have to go ahead and trim them in the summer, so that they continue to grow and develop into that shape that we all love and we all know. That's what me and 14 other guys did all that summer, and we got loaned out, and we went down there, and we were blown away. We never saw so many Christmas tree farms. One estimate that I found in my research is that in Ashe County alone, there is 250 Christmas tree farms.
N. Rodgers: Ashe County in North Carolina, it's at the Virginia border, the farthest West on the Virginia border.
J. Aughenbaugh: Border. That's right.
N. Rodgers: It's not our farthest West county because our state is shaped stupid and we go way out to the west underneath Tennessee.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: We don't talk about that. I'm kidding. That's actually a lovely area. But Ashe County is up in the Appalachians.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: What Aughie is not telling you is that these farms also grow on the sides of mountains. What he was also doing when he was trimming trees was standing on the sides of hills doing this. Part of that maybe because it's hard to grow other crops there, but it's not hard to grow trees there because of the way the mountains are shaped, they get a lot of sunlight.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But it's not easy work. You are doing hard work.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was one of the hardest jobs I ever had, but it was impressive. Again, we had spent the early part of the summer, Nia, trimming Christmas trees in Southwest Virginia. We were like, "Okay. It's a bunch of Christmas tree farms." No. We were like, "Oh, there's another farm." That's what they call them, folks. These are Christmas tree farms.
N. Rodgers: Ashe County, by the way, is one of our smallest counties, 429 square miles, I think, or 435 square mile, something like that. Anyway, it's a small county and yet packs a big punch in terms of its impact on the North Carolina economy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Economy.
N. Rodgers: That's one of the concerns with Helene was, were there going to be Christmas trees?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Because that was a lot of [inaudible] was flooded out and lots of things died. There were some really big concerns about that. But I think that the other thing too is, and I hope you won't take this wrong. I appreciate the work that men and women do to trim the trees. It's mostly guys, but men and women do to trim the trees, but undecorated Christmas trees aren't really all that pretty.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: I mean, they're nice. They're nice. But what makes a Christmas tree is your weird family ornaments that you know what I mean? You're like, What is this even supposed to be? They're like, "Oh, that's a ballerina you made when you were three, preschool, and we put it on the tree, and it's made out of popsicle sticks or whatever," that kind of stuff. That's what makes. I think it's funny when people have these super curated, really beautiful trees, but all the ornaments are glass balls made in Belgium, and all these other things. I'm like, "Man, our tree is full of stuff that we made as kids that my mom just refuses to let go of."
J. Aughenbaugh: The number of decorations on my old family Christmas tree. Again, we grew up in a small town. You think about the debates in families, whether or not the Christmas tree has to be real or can have artificial. But in my household, Nia, a good number of the Christmas decorations were made by me and my two sisters. If you went ahead and suggested to my mom that she get with.
N. Rodgers: To not put them on or throw them away.
J. Aughenbaugh: Those were fighting words.
N. Rodgers: Silent treatment that you got for the rest of the day would let you know you had erred by suggesting that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Here's the other thing that I don't want us to lose in this discussion, and maybe we should conclude on this note. I think what's so fascinating, Nia, is, no matter what else is going on in a state or in many of these towns, it could be an economic downturn, pandemics, wars, the aftermath of hurricanes, these communities and state governments do these celebrations every year. They are sources of pride for their residents and communities. In many instances, it's one of the few times of the year that you actually see people in these communities interact with one another.
N. Rodgers: Especially in big cities.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In big cities like in New York, you know the people maybe right around your home, but you don't know the people three streets over because it's too big of a city, but you come together to do certain things. Part of it is I think, we come together in part to do it for children because kids love parades and they love bright light. There's nothing like watching a kid when you turn on the tree, and they go, their eyes get big, and it makes me feel that way.
J. Aughenbaugh: I remember the times that McKenzie would see Santa at the Richmond Christmas parade. She would be like, "He's going back up to the North Pole afterwards so he can get ready for Christmas Day." I'm like, "Yes. But he likes to come out and meet the people who he's going to be giving gifts to." McKenzie would be like, "Ain't that." We do a lot of it for kids.
N. Rodgers: But we also do it for community. I think you're right. We do it. I think cities and localities do it to build community and to build like community. These are our traditions. This is the way we do it in our town. There is no other tree like the Rockefeller tree.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: There's all kinds of little celebrations like that across the country that are very distinctive like that one you were talking about at the Cody's [inaudible] ranch life.
J. Aughenbaugh: Building a Christmas tree out of lobster.
N. Rodgers: Lobster. That's so perfect in the sense of this is our community. We come together for our local community beliefs and our local community traditions. It's a neat thing. I like that they are expanded out not just to Christmas, but to all the holidays celebrated at this time of the year so that everybody can be included. Everybody in the community is brought in together. That's really the best purpose of government is to bring us together, and remind us that we have a lot more in common than we don't.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is a shared experience. You're not out on your own. We're all trying to go ahead and govern ourselves collectively. If that means braving cold snow or whatever for a parade or the fact.
N. Rodgers: Or braving watching Santas and Speedos, which is a different kind of bravery. You know [inaudible] .
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless, it reminds me of Robert Putnam. He was a professor at Harvard. He had an infamous book, Nia, called Bowling Alone. He talked about how the United States, at one point, had a lot of membership in bowling leagues, civic organizations, etc. He said, "It's not necessarily because a bunch of people like bowling." Or that they thought that the civic organization did anything like, really, really great. But it was the fact that you got to come together. You saw your neighbors, you saw other people in the community, and you weren't in your silo. If you hear what another family is going through and it's similar to yours.
N. Rodgers: Not so alone.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're not so alone. You begin to go ahead and see that this is a group exercise. This is a group activity. This is a group project, and not something that you're just doing yourself. You're less likely to be selfish, you're less likely to go ahead and see other people as enemies because you're like, "Oh, hey, they like the parade just like I do, or they like the botanical gardens, and they like lights," and, "Oh, yeah, hey, their kids are growing up, and they're going to college." It's really difficult to go ahead and think of somebody as an enemy when you're both enjoying.
N. Rodgers: You have such similar experience.
J. Aughenbaugh: Experiences. You're joining a cup of hot cocoa or a cup of hot coffee together, and you're watching your kids run around a holiday light display.
N. Rodgers: Do you know what that's called in the military? Nation building.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's a thing we do. Our civic institutions should be doing pretty much all the time is this how do we continue to build within our community these connections?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Cool. You and I could go to Maine and see the lobster trap someday. We should do that. [inaudible] We should take a road trip.
J. Aughenbaugh: We can get VCU to go ahead and sponsor us.
N. Rodgers: We need to do research. We'll call it a research trip. Thanks, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, before we conclude, you imagine that the residents in that small community in Maine would do if we showed up and said, "We're doing a research article." You imagine how many of them would want to talk to us about what they do. That's the other thing, the amount of pride that they have. You probably would not be able to get them to shut up about how they go ahead and do this.
N. Rodgers: Oh, my gosh. If you went down and talk to our town council city because we're not a city, town council about the parade, they would talk your ear off. We're going to do this and this, and we're planning out the next five years. We're going to do this and this and this. It's a whole thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie.
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