I have to admit, I’m a sucker for “ambient”-type programming — shows that feature relaxing scenes that you can have on in the background and look up at for a few minutes on occasion. The Puppy Bowl, for example, or some of those aquarium scenes you can watch on your computer. But the granddaddy of them all also happens to be my favorite — the Yule Log.
The original idea came in 1966 from Fred M. Thrower, president and CEO of the WPIX television station in New York. It’s brilliantly simple: Video of a roaring fire is aired, with popular Christmas carols played in the background. Thrower saw this as a little Christmas gift to New Yorkers who lived in apartments or homes that did not have a fireplace. It probably was a risky move at the time (the fire even — gasp! — preempted a Christmas Eve roller derby telecast originally on the station’s schedule) but it proved a success. The Yule Log that still airs today for several hours on WPIX on Christmas Eve/early Christmas morning is a six-minute loop shot in 1970 at a California home, on a hot August day, no less.
A few years ago, Tribune Company, which owns WPIX, began airing the Yule Log throughout the country on its WGN America superstation. This Christmas Eve, though, WGN America will be presenting a new version of the cult holiday favorite. Filmed in HD, the setting of this new Yule Log is at Tribune Tower in Chicago, in the fireplace found in Col. McCormick’s office (McCormick is the former Tribune Company president and onetime editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune). Having toured the tower and seen this office, I think this should be a pretty sight. Also different in this new version is what’s heard in the background. Rather than Christmas music, broadcasts of classic holiday-themed shows from the Golden Age of Radio will be played. Among these are the Lux Radio Theater’s version of It’s a Wonderful Life from 1947 (and featuring the movie’s stars Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed); the Campbell Playhouse 1939 version of A Christmas Carol; holiday episodes of Burns & Allen, Fibber McGee & Molly, The Jack Benny Show; and other programs.
WPIX, and some other Tribune-owned stations around the country, will be airing the original Yule Log as well this year.
If you are a subscriber to Comcast, Cox, Time Warner or Bright House digital cable, starting this week and through New Year’s Day, you can access a Free On Demand version of their Yule Log, shot in HD. The systems take the “ambient” theme a little further by also letting you choose instead to watch a quiet, snowy pine forest, or a snowman bravely weathering a winter storm, with all the scenes accompanied by Christmas carols.
Although not yet in HD, the original WPIX Yule Log has kept burning into the new century in another way by becoming available for download to play to your heart’s content on your iPod.
Over the years, plenty of other Yule Logs have been ignited — some with more care put into the production than others — on DVD (Rhino’s The Happy Holiday Hearth is particularly good), and on local cable stations (these can be cheesy fun sometimes; in the town where I grew up, the local cable access Yule Log kept falling apart, and rather than re-filming it, a hand with a poker would periodically come into frame to adjust the faltering fire).
There’s even the occasional parody.
These have their charms, but it’s hard to compete against the original holiday flame, still burning after more than 40 years.
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Yule Log photo from retrothing.com