K.A.C. 2019 - T - 23 ...

          Good morning and welcome back! The King Radio advertisement to the left from the 1920s kicks off the second day of our Christmas For Your Ears theme. Click on the ad and LOOK at the prices for these beauties (in 1920s dollars!) - ouch! But if you wanted to hear the new shows, you had to have one! Here's what Wikipedia had to say about radio dramas: 

     "Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatised, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension." Radio drama includes plays specifically written for radio, docudrama, dramatized works of fiction, as well as plays originally written for the theatre, including musical theatre and opera. Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of its initial development in the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was a leading international popular entertainment. With the advent of television in the 1950s, however, radio drama began losing its audience, however, in most countries it remains popular."

American Weekly, December, 1948

     And with that, our second tale in our Christmas For Your Ears collection is one of the earliest I've found and one that begs the question: when is a ghost story chilling AND uplifting? When it's a 'Christmas Eve Ghost', which coincidentally is the title of today's tale, as heard on 12/21/1933 on the show American Weekly's Front Page Drama. As radio dramas were finding their way and scripts were being written, many early stories (such as this one) were adaptations of magazine stories - Pinterest had this to say: "The American Weekly (1896-1966) was published by the Hearst Corporation as a Sunday supplement. Billed as having >50,000,000 readers and filled with scantily clad showgirls and tales of murder and suspense, the name was changed to Pictorial Living in 1963 before it was finally cancelled in 1966. Due to the low quality of the paper on which it was printed, many issues have been lost despite the large circulation. As a result, it has become a collectors item."

     What's fascinating about this tale is the announcer's ad at the end of the program saying if you liked HEARING the tale on the radio, you could pick up next week's issue of American Weekly and READ it and other ghost stories ... I would have been at the newsstand in a heartbeat for that! :)

      Without further ado, enjoy the tale of the 'Christmas Eve Ghost':

      https://archive.org/details/500OTRChristmasShows/1933-12-21_SYN_Front_Page_Drama_-_Christmas_Eve_Ghost.mp3 

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     In today's entry of Christmas News of the Weird we feature tasty (?) treats (and trees) you can eat, starting with this year's delicious (debatable) must-have item: Kale Candy Canes! Why stop with Bacon Candy Canes when you can have these nutritious noms? OK, nutritious is pretty much a fallacy, as I'm sure these are completely chemical concoctions to simulate the taste of kale (itself a crime against humanity). They're being sold by (who else?) Archie McPhee, and how's this for truth in advertising? They're marketed as 'All the Flavor of Kale With None Of the Nutrition'! Gotta love that! And if you've got the perfect person in mind for these monstrosities, here's the place to order them!

      https://mcphee.com/collections/candy-canes/products/kale-candy-canes 

     

      If your hunger isn't going to be satisfied with some tiny-ass canes, then get yourself a Sunflower Tree! I know plenty of folks who munch sunflower seeds year round (I'm married to one of them), so these would be just the thing for your holiday nosher! And no, I'm not suggesting you eat the flowers right off the tree! But have some packages of seeds handy (and watch your tree shiver while it watches YOU eating those)! Click on the link below to see how this latest, sunniest Christmas tradition started:

     https://life.shared.com/sunflower-christmas-tress-summery-twist-holiday-tradition

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      More tomorrow!