The World and Everything in It: December 9, 2024

PREROLL: Good morning! This week we begin WORLD’s Year-End Giving Drive. A crucial time of year for us where we ask you to answer the question what is WORLD worth to you? Only you know the answer, and we’ll ask you to express that at W-N-G-dot-org-slash-Year End Gift. Hope you enjoy today’s program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket: Can a state protect kids from puberty blockers and surgery as a response to gender dysphoria? Tennessee says of course it can.

RICE: The Equal Protection Clause does not require the states to blind themselves to medical reality or to treat unlike things the same.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also the Monday Moneybeat … financial analyst David Bahnsen is standing by.

And later, the WORLD History Book…today the backstory to a handful of Christmas traditions…

GAUGER: There is something in the very season of the year that gives a charm to the festivity of Christmas.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, December 9th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: It’s time for the news now with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Syria » Thousands of Syrians celebrating the ouster of the Assad regime. Celebratory gunfire echoing through the streets after a stifling, nearly 14-year civil war.

In Washington Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina says the world is now a better place with Bashar al Assad chased out of Syria.

WILSON:  This is so good. This is so significant. The fall of the Assad dictatorship, the ripple effect of this is just going to be remarkable. It, it's truly, I believe, equivalent to the Berlin Wall, which led to a ripple effect of dozens of countries becoming free after 50 years of occupation and totalitarian control.

Officials say Assad’s outers means Russia is losing access to a warm water port, and Iran is losing supply lines to the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon.

Assad is taking refuge in Russia, which granted his family asylum. Moscow’s forces helped to prop up the Assad regime for years.

President Biden said Sunday:

BIDEN: At long last, the Assad regime has fallen. This regime brutalized and tortured and killed literally hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians.

Syria: What’s next » But plenty of questions remain.

The rebels who defeated Assad's forces are made up of a coalition of groups banded together to overthrow the regime. The strongest group in the coalition is HTS, which the U.S. has designated as a terror group.

Biden said the United States will do what it can to achieve stability in Syria.

BIDEN:  Looking ahead. The United States will do the following. First of support Syria’s neighbors, including Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Israel, should any threat arise from Syria during this period of transition. I'll speak with leaders of the region in the coming days.

The rebels face the daunting task of healing bitter divisions in a country still split among armed factions. One rebel commander said “we will not deal with people the way the Assad family did."

President-elect Donald Trump says the United States should have no involvement in Syria, saying “This is not our fight.”

Trump interview » Trump is also calling for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine.

TRUMP: Hundreds of thousands of bodies laying all over fields. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen, and it never should have been allowed to happen.

While he doesn’t take office until next month, Trump says he is actively working to bring an end to the war. He met over the weekend with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zeleskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Zelenskyy posted on social media that the trio discussed reaching "a just peace.”

Zelenskyy says any deal would have to pave the way to a lasting peace. The Kremlin's spokesman says Moscow is open to talks with Ukraine.

Notre Dame » Trump’s meeting in Paris happened on the sidelines of a ceremony celebrating the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral …

… which just hosted its first Mass since a catastrophic fire in 2019. Archbishop Laurent Ulrich presided over the Mass …

ULRICH: [SPEAKING FRENCH]

Notre Dame’s journey from ruin to reopening was a painstaking process. More than a billion dollars in donations poured in from around the world to restore the historic cathedral.

Secret Service » The Secret Service has kept too many secrets from Congress. That according to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who served on a House task force investigating the agency’s failures, which almost led to the assassination of Donald Trump.

Democratic Congressman Jason Crow:

CROW:  Their response is, this is an ongoing criminal investigation and we can't give that information to Congress. That, in my view, is an unacceptable position.

That task force held its final meeting last week. And Republican Congressman Mike Kelly told CBS’ Face the Nation:

KELLY:  The whole goal from day one is to restore the faith and trust and confidence that the American people must have in this agency. At this point, it's probably at the lowest ebb it's ever been.

In testimony last week, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe conceded that the agency failed its mission, and said those responsible for those failures are being held accountable but he did not expound on what that meant.

TikTok » The popular social media app TikTok could be heading closer to an all-out ban in the United States over security and privacy concerns. But some lawmakers say they’re skeptical that it will actually happen.

A federal court last week rejected TikTok's appeal to overturn a law that would force the company's Chinese owner to sell the platform or face an all-out ban.

Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna voted against that legislation and says he believes the mood has shifted Washington on the issue.

KHANNA:  I had a minority position. Now every politician is, uh, celebrating their TikTok following. Uh, but let's see. Look, let's see where it goes with the Supreme Court.

But it may be the Supreme Court that decides the matter, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is asking the high court to review the appeals court ruling. In that decision, the court ruled that the law did not violate the First Amendment and that the law was justified in protecting the U.S. from foreign nations.

US intelligence agencies have warned that the Chinese communist government could gain access to American user data or launch an influence campaign.

Gas prices » Gas prices dipped after the Thanksgiving weekend to a three-year low. The national average for a gallon of regular unleaded is now $3.02. That’s down 3 cents from a week earlier and down almost a nickel per gallon from this time last month.

And industry analyst Trilby Lundberg says prices could drop further as gas stations just got a price cut from wholesalers.

LUNDBERG:  It was so recent that retailers getting that price cut at wholesale have not yet had time to pass through. I think that they can pass through a few more pennies sometime in the next few days, so we'll probably see a little more price cut on the way.

Oklahoma has the cheapest gas in the nation right now, with a per-gallon average of $2.52.

Hawaii edges out California for the most expensive gas at $4.56 per gallon.

I’m Kent Covington and still ahead,  a state court tackles concerns surrounding prescribing puberty blockers and surgery for gender dysphoria.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 9th day of December, 2024. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

we’re now into our Year-End Giving Drive and over the next several days we’re asking you to think about what this daily program means to you and then try to put a dollar value on that. We don’t charge for this program but remember the weird acronym TANSTAAFL, stands for, “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” an immutable fact of economic life.

There are no free breakfasts, either, but that ruins the acronym. Point is, we don’t charge, but that doesn’t mean this is free. It costs a great deal to put out journalism of this kind and to do it at this level day in, day out and we rely on your support.

So we ask you to make your own economic calculation how much is this “free” breakfast worth to you? And you can weigh in with your answer at WNG.org/Year End Gift.

REICHARD: And thanks so much for your support. It does keep us going.

Again, WNG.org/Year End Gift …

It’s time for Legal Docket.

AUDIO: It is one of the great deceptions of our time to teach children that they might have been born in the wrong body. Affirming care would be to tell our children that they are beautiful just as they are.

That was the scene outside the Supreme Court last week … as inside was the most-watched case of the term so far: United States versus Skrmetti.

The dispute is over a Tennessee law that protects children from medical treatments that try to change their bodies’ sexual characteristics.

The legal question? Whether those protections violate the 14th Amendment … the Equal Protection Clause. It’s a requirement that the government treat similarly situated people in the same way.

EICHER: And that’s the heart of the issue—whether these treatments are medical necessities: namely, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.

Or are they dangerous experiments?

Nearly half the states have similar laws. They argue they’re protecting children from risky, unproven interventions.

But challengers frame these laws as discriminatory and harmful.

The challengers are three teenagers with gender dysphoria, their parents, and a doctor, along with the Biden Administration.

The government position came from US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. She argued that Tennessee’s law discriminates on the basis of sex … and therefore violates the 14th Amendment:

PRELOGAR: You have this population of adolescents and there are documented, very essential benefits for a large number of them and maybe a small number that will regret this care just like any other medical care. But for the state to come in and just say across the board you can’t have the medication because of your birth sex, we don’t think that’s a tailored law.

REICHARD: She elaborated on what her clients object to specifically in the law known as S-B-one:

PRELOGAR: This case is about access to medications that have been safely prescribed for decades to treat many conditions, including gender dysphoria. But SB1 singles out and bans one particular use. ….It doesn't matter what parents decide is best for their children. It doesn't matter what patients would choose for themselves. And it doesn't matter if doctors believe this treatment is essential for individual patients. SB1 categorically bans treatment when and only when it's inconsistent with the patient's birth sex.

Prelogar argued that that is sex discrimination on its face. Flat out unconstitutional.

Justice Clarence Thomas pushed back:

THOMAS: Much of your opening statement …seemed to suggest that there's an outright ban on this treatment. But that's not the case. It's really for minors. So why isn't this simply a case of age classification when it comes to these treatments as opposed to a ban…

Prelogar disagreed and stuck to her assertion that it’s the classification by sex that makes the law discriminatory.

Arguing for Tennessee was Matthew Rice. He said the distinction is about medical purpose.

RICE: That is not sex discrimination. The challengers try to make the law seem sex-based this morning by using terms like "masculinizing" and "feminizing." But their arguments conflate fundamentally different treatments. Just as using morphine to manage pain differs from using it to assist suicide, using hormones and puberty blockers to address a physical condition is far different from using it to address psychological distress associated with one's body. The Equal Protection Clause does not require the states to blind themselves to medical reality or to treat unlike things the same, and it does not constitutionalize one side's view of a disputed medical question.

EICHER: The argument then turned to medical risks and international trends.

A main argument for Tennessee involved the irreversible effects of medical interventions for gender dysphoria—namely, infertility, reduced bone density, removal of healthy reproductive organs, among other things.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor sought to downplay the side effects:

SOTOMAYOR: Every medical treatment has a risk, even taking aspirin. .. The question is: Can you stop …one person of one sex from another sex from receiving that benefit? So, if the medical condition is unwanted hair by a nine-year-old boy who can receive estrogen for that because, at nine years old, if he has hair, he gets laughed at and picked on and his puberty is coming in too early, but a girl who has….unwanted breasts, or a boy at that age can get that drug, but the other can't, that's the sex-based difference. The medical condition is the same.

RICE: We don't agree.

SOTOMAYOR: But you're saying one sex is getting it and the other's not.

RICE: We do not agree that the medical condition is the same. We do not think that giving puberty blockers to a six-year-old that has started precocious puberty is the same medical treatment as giving it to a minor who wants to --to transition. Those --those are not the same medical treatment.

Meanwhile, Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed to evolving perspectives on transgender treatment around the world.

KAVANAUGH: If it's evolving like that and changing and England's pulling back and Sweden's pulling back, it strikes me as, you know, a pretty heavy yellow light, if not red light, for this Court to come in, the nine of us, and to constitutionalize the whole area when the rest of the world or at least the people who --the countries that have been at the forefront of this are, you know, pumping the brakes on this kind of treatment because of concerns about the risks.

Prelogar contended that no other country has imposed an outright ban as Tennessee has.

Besides that, she said, the justices only need to decide a narrow question: Does this law classify people based on sex? Yes or no. If yes, she wins. If no, she doesn’t.

But on the other side, Rice for Tennessee pointed to the Cass Review from the UK. That scientific review found so-called gender medicine was based on shaky foundations, not scientific evidence. One oft-repeated claim is that without medical intervention, young people will kill themselves.

Justice Samuel Alito had a question for the lawyer representing the families … Chase Strangio … a woman identifying and appearing as a man.

ALITO: Do you maintain that the procedures and medications in question reduce the risk of suicide?

REICHARD: Strangio said yes, and Alito bore down:

ALITO: Do you think that's clearly established? Do you think there's reason for disagreement about that?

STRANGIO: I do. I do think it is clearly established in the science and in -- in the record.

Justice Alito noted elsewhere in the argument that the petitioner’s brief only mentioned the Cass Review in a footnote. And yet:

ALITO: On page 195 of the Cass report, it says: There is no evidence that gender-affirmative treatments reduce suicide.

STRANGIO: What I think that is referring to is there is no evidence in some -- in the studies that this treatment reduces completed suicide.

… completed suicides in these situations being very rare … yet that admission shed light on overblown claims of suicide risk and presenting a stark and emotionally manipulative choice to get parents to go along: Do you want a dead son or a living daughter?

While the justices debated legal standards, personal stories loomed large outside the courtroom. One prominent voice included Chloe Cole, a young woman who detransitioned after taking testosterone at age 13, and going through a double mastectomy at 15.

She’s made the argument consistently: Here she is back in July, testifying before a House Judiciary subcommittee: 

COLE: The drugs and surgeries changed my body but they did not and could not change the basic reality that I am and forever will be a female. …So what message do I want to bring to American teenagers and their families? I didn't need to be lied to. I needed compassion. I needed to be loved. I needed to be getting therapy to help me work through my issues. Not affirmed in my delusion that by transforming into a boy, it would solve all my problems. We need stop telling 12 year olds that they were born wrong. ….Puberty is a rite of passage to adulthood, not a disease to be mitigated. My childhood was ruined along with thousands of detransitioners that I know through our networks. This needs to stop. Enough children have already been victimized by this barbaric pseudoscience.

Another crucial legal question is deciding which level of scrutiny applies. Here are the choices:
First is rational-basis review. That’s the easiest standard for states to meet. Under that standard, a state merely has to demonstrate a reasonable purpose.

Then heightened scrutiny: That’s a little tougher and requires the demonstration of a compelling state interest.

Finally, strict scrutiny: That requires that a law meet both a compelling-state interest and be narrowly tailored to achieve its purpose.

EICHER: Something that would push the court toward strict scrutiny would be a finding that gender identity is considered an immutable characteristic. Under civil rights law, that term refers to an unchangeable human trait, like race, sex, or national origin. Civil rights are based upon immutable traits.

Given that, Justice Alito laid a trap:

ALITO: Does transgender status apply to individuals who are gender fluid? 

Strangio answered it depends on whether a person’s sex aligns with his or her gender.
Because Strangio tried dodging the question, Justice Alito again bore down:

ALITO: Are there individuals who are born male … who at one point identify as female but then later come to identify as male, and, likewise, for individuals who are assigned female at birth, at some point identify as male but later come to identify as female? Are there not such people?

STRANGIO: There are such people. I agree with that, Justice Alito.

ALITO: So it’s not an immutable characteristic, is it?

Justice Kavanaugh also raised concerns about the implications for women’s sports. Recall that Kavanaugh has a personal interest here in that he coached his daughters’ basketball teams.

He directed this question to Solicitor General Prelogar:

KAVANAUGH: If you prevail here on the standard of review, what would that mean for women’s and girls’ sports in particular? Would transgender athletes have a constitutional right as you see it to play in women’s and girls’ sports, basketball, swimming, volleyball, track, etc, notwithstanding the competitive fairness and safety issues that have been vocally raised by some female athletes seen in the amicus brief of the many women athletes?

Prelogar deflected, saying that’s not the issue before the court.

But it did seem clear throughout that the justices are divided along ideological lines. The three liberals Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor seemed squarely in favor of striking down Tennessee’s law protecting minors.

But the majority six more conservative justices seem poised to uphold. Justices Thomas and Alito citing deference to state legislatures as one reason, aligned with their reasoning in the Dobbs decision that returned the matter of abortion to the states.

REICHARD: Much more is at stake than merely one state law. A decision here will affect parental rights, sports opportunities for females, medical authority, and protections for vulnerable young people.

And for Christians, the trans ideology pushed onto children is at odds with Creation and so it’s jarring to have the debate play out at the nation’s highest court.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It … the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. He is here now. Good morning to you, David.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Well, good morning to you. Good to be with you.

EICHER: David, I want to ask you about something from your most recent Dividend Café and that’s the Bessant Bond rally … so called because of a positive market reaction to the choice of President-elect Trump to lead the Treasury Department … Scott Bessant. So the president’s not sworn in, Bessant’s not been confirmed, hasn’t articulated policy or put policy in place … and yet there’s already this sense that his mere nomination is moving markets. How is that?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, well I would point out that the bond market rallying means interest rates are coming down, and some people may not consider a great thing if they want interest rates going higher.

What it is saying, though, is that because there's been such a universal association with the stock market rally that began the day after the election, it does seem that it's reasonable to say: Hey, the bond market began a very big rally when the Treasury secretary, who oversees such things as the United States debt structure and issues related to the US dollar and foreign exchange—you know, the only thing I would say is Scott Bessett has articulated policies.

So you're right he hasn't been confirmed, but he's a shoo-in for confirmation. There won't be any pushback there.

He has really been more on the record in terms of what his views are about economic growth, about dealing with our debt crisis—by starting with a pro-growth scenario, by targeting with specificity, a budget deficit to GDP of 3%, which right now is 7%.

By targeting a growth rate of over 3%, because you're certainly not going to accomplish the first if you don't accomplish the second, and by targeting additional US energy production—so you combine those things and confidence in his ability to execute and his proficiency as a 30-year veteran in markets and global macroeconomic world, then you have a lot of other factors that I think lend markets to believe that there will be downward pressure on bond yields, which has pushed bond prices up substantially.

It’s a good position for the president to come in as he's negotiating other things regarding trade deals and also most importantly, I can't say this enough: They can only get the tax bill done is by dollar for dollar having it “paid for.”

So if they're going to go do a trillion dollars of tax cuts, they have to have a trillion dollars of pay-fors and that involves spending cuts and it involves other tax cuts that they get rid of.

What are those tax pay-fors going to be now? And if he's going to get no tax on tips, which is the one of all his campaign promises, he promised he would, he has to have pay-fors so other things that are bringing down the budget deficit are going to help the tax cuts a great deal.

EICHER: All right, and the economic team is filling in more and more. Some of the lower-level appointments are getting made. What can you take from this most-recent batch of nominees?

BAHNSEN: Well, it's interesting because I don't think that a lot of the appointments got a lot of attention. So the SBA in particular is one that a lot of Americans end up dealing with, the Small Business Administration, they became uniquely important in the last administration because at the COVID moment, SBA was tasked with administering one of the largest government programs in history, the infamously known a PPP, the paycheck protection program. So the SBA has a lot in its portfolio.

He named Senator Kelly Loeffler from Georgia to run that and she has a vast amount of experience in business and and I think it was an encouraging pick. The other former senator of Georgia, David Purdue, was named the ambassador to China. I think most of these ambassador positions, we kind of look past. But with China, that's different, you know, there's gonna be so many things going on with trade, with the relationship, with technology, potentially the future situation with Taiwan. David Purdue was a real open advocate of trade with China when he was CEO of Reebok and he subsequently was CEO of Dollar General.

So I'm interested in a lot of it.

The final thing I'd mention, Nick, was Pete Navarro, who did not get a cabinet position, did not get a formal position, did not get U.S. trade rep, but then was named this week, almost sort of as a postscript to be a White House adviser on trade. It won't require Senate approval. It doesn't have any formal authority, but to my knowledge, it's the only person now who's been named who does advocate a universal tariff on all countries, on all imports, because the rest of the folks that were named are not really in that camp.

So those are the big takeaways I had from some of the appointments this week.

David Sachs was named a sort of Czar of AI and crypto. He's a very bright guy. He's a bit out there. But, you know, he'll be there as a sort of advocate in the administration for that crypto space.

It's interesting to me how many Silicon Valley people have gone onto the side of the right, or the Trump administration, or the Republican Party, and that was just absolutely unheard of 10-15 years ago.

And now from Mark Andreeson to Elon Musk to Pete Thiel to now, um, this David Sachs, there's many others too, that maybe people wouldn't have heard kind of moved. That center of gravity shifting and it’s interesting because people talk all the time about corporate America has gone woke, corporate America's gone DEI and ESG.

Guys like Jerry Bowyer and myself have had to take on a lot of shareholder engagement projects for the purpose of kind of fighting the good fight against some of these cultural movements.

But I think you're seeing in the technology space and in Silicon Valley, a lot of these things moving away because of those issues, you know, I don't think any of these guys have become pro-life, but it is in a lot of ways, a resistance against some of the woke DEI stuff because this sector is still holding on to a meritocratic emphasis.

EICHER: I want to pick up on what you just said there, David, about fighting the good fight. You mentioned Jerry. He had a piece for WORLD Opinions about Walmart rolling back woke policies … and the subheadline grabbed my attention: “How Bahnsen and Starbuck helped turn America’s largest private employer back to political neutrality” … so how did that happen?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, a lot of Christians think if there's a company doing something bad, the right thing to do is avoid it, don't own the company. My mentality is, well, actually, you're missing out on a great opportunity to do kingdom work because by owning it, you can be small and then punch above your weight because you have shareholder rights as a matter of case law.

You get to make proposals, you get to talk to basically the board through shareholder meetings, through generating shareholder resolutions, and just the ongoing conversation with their investor relations department and in many cases with the C-Suite itself.

We have just chosen to try to engage in conversations with these companies and in many cases make proposals, etcetera. We have a little bit extra weight for us because not only am I a shareholder in these companies and own the portion I own, but then because I represent a multi-billion dollar wealth management firm, we have the clout of our aggregated client interest.

So some companies have been less receptive to ideas than others, but some have been very receptive and the greatest victory to date is definitely been with JP Morgan. It's been an incredible opportunity to engage them and have a very constructive conversation and in fact, in some cases get JP to change policy and in other cases get them to start enforcing policies very rigorously they had been lax in before around debanking.

The situation of Walmart was more complicated because Walmart, I think, was sort of dragged into something that they didn't mean to be participating in. Some of these left-wing campaigns, like the human-rights campaign, and then deciding that they weren't going to do it.

The Human Rights Campaign has this corporate equality index, which is just very, very woke and whatnot. Companies like Disney and Target had done it, and Walmart surprised us by jumping in. A guy named Robbie Starbuck on Twitter really went after them for it and we joined with the shareholder resolution. Then they also have subsequently agreed to stop selling some of this LGBT stuff that ends up in the kids’ section, which Target had famously done.

Walmart's just taken more of an active stance and my resolution really centered around asking them to avoid some of these political fights and to participate in the Alliance Defending Freedom index, the Viewpoint Diversity Index, and they requesting more information and wanting to understand it better. Right now they are looking at not joining this thing called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media—GARM—which is a real left-wing piece of nonsense.

So, we're working hard with it and my strong gratitude goes to Jerry Bowyer, who's really fighting a good fight here. My company has hired Bowyer research as a consultant to engage our efforts, and the latest victory has been with Walmart and we plan to keep fighting.

EICHER: Keep fighting! David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. David’s Dividend Café is available to you for free at dividendcafe.com. David, thanks, enjoyed it. Hope you have a great week … talk next week!

BAHNSEN: Looking forward to it, thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, December 9th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Today, artistic expressions of Christmas  and how Americans have come to celebrate certain traditions. Here’s WORLD’s Emma Perley.

EMMA PERLEY: In 1850, the French composer Hector Berlioz scribbles out a short organ composition for a friend. He’s already well known for dramatic pieces, such as his classic Symphonie Fantastique:

And the 1845 drama La Damnation de Faust:

But as Berlioz writes this particular piece, he realizes it’s much lighter and softer than his earlier works. He scraps the simple organ composition and arranges what would become L’Enfance du Christ, or the Childhood of Christ. It begins with Joseph and Mary’s flight to Egypt as King Herod issues the order for all young baby boys to be killed.

In an open letter before the opera’s London premiere Berlioz writes:

From the germ of a few bars of organ music sprang the full completed work in three parts. Like ripples, the composition of the whole spread outwards from its central point of origin …”

Although Berlioz himself was an agnostic, The Childhood of Christ handles the nativity with precise, descriptive storytelling. Ben Quash, professor of Christianity and the Arts at Cambridge, writes that …

“It is made for contemplative engagement, inviting our attention to move back and forth across its musical and textual surface, to linger on some details and – having lingered – to revisit others.”

The 170 year old opera is still regularly performed at Christmastime in many countries around the world.

Next, December 10th, 1905: William Sydney Porter publishes a short story under the pseudonym O. Henry Audio from the Well Told Tale:

AUDIO: One dollar and 87 cents. That was all, and sixty cents of it was in pennies … Three times Della counted it. One dollar and 87 cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

The Gift of the Magi tells the story of a poor husband and wife who try to buy a meaningful gift for each other on Christmas. Della’s most prized possession is her long flowing hair, while her husband Jim owns an old gold watch passed down from his father and grandfather.

So, desperate, Della walks down the street until she sees a wig shop and rushes inside.

“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”

Down rippled the brown cascade.

“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.

“Give it to me quick,” said Della.

Now—with the hard-earned bills in her pocket—Della buys a beautiful gold chain for Jim’s watch. She hurries home to wait for Jim to come back from work. When he comes through the door, he just stares at her. And then puts his gift for Della down on the table ….

AUDIO: They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

Della promises Jim that her hair will grow back fast. And then presents him with the gold chain for his watch.

AUDIO: “Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs.”

The story has become a beloved Christmastime favorite among families, symbolizing unconditional love and generosity.

Finally, Washington Irving made several of his own tributes to Christmas. As an author in the 1800s, he was well known for writing some spooky tall tales—like his famous The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

But Irving was also very interested in all the “merry and bright” traditions that come along with Christmastime. Voice actor Jon Gauger (GAY-gurr) reads from Irving’s 1876 essay, Old Christmas.

JON GAUGER: There is something in the very season of the year that gives a charm to the festivity of Christmas … It seemed to throw open every door, and unlock every heart. It brought the peasant and the peer together, and blended all ranks in one warm generous flow of joy and kindness.

His essay describes the magic of Christmas—like good hot meals and fellowship around blazing fireplaces on cold, dark nights.

JON GAUGER: Where does the honest face of hospitality expand into a broader and more cordial smile—where is the shy glance of love more sweetly eloquent—than by the winter fireside?

Irving hearkens back to medieval times, where crowds used to sing and dance together to celebrate Yuletide. And he encourages readers to rediscover that holiday cheer …

JON GAUGER: if I can now and then penetrate through the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humour with his fellow-beings and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain.

Americans haven’t always been as enthusiastic about Christmas as they are today. In the 1600s, some colonies even banned Christmas for a while because of its pagan roots. And in the 1700s, most people didn’t observe it. But Irving’s cozy fantasies revived public interest in feasting and celebrations.

Irving also popularized the idea of ole Saint Nick and his make believe counterpart Santa Claus. He writes in his fictional account of The History of New York.

JON GAUGER: And, lo! the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same wagon wherein he brings his yearly presents to children.

He founded the St. Nicholas Society of the City of New York to commemorate the “spirit of fun” that Christmas brings as well as to preserve the history of New York traditions.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Perley.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Please remember our Year-End Giving Drive … WNG.org/Year End Gift.

Tomorrow: organizations once firmly committed to virtue signaling are now reconsidering their DEI policies. We’ll hear what’s behind the move. And, keeping an archaic musical tradition alive…by handing it down to the next generation. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways!” —Psalm 128:1

Go now in grace and peace.

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