Original subtitles

George Washington's like, look, we have to attack the British on Christmas

night. Come on, man.

Charles Dickens writes a Christmas carol in six weeks.

Are we still doing the show here?

President Roosevelt decides, I do not want a Christmas tree here. So the kids

hatched a plan.

Dreams in the closet and the mother of the saga.

Christmas, a celebration of life and just having a good time.

Family, friends, spending time with people you love. To Christmas.

17 years of friendship.

To you, Craig. To you, buddy. Thank you.

Again.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. Craig, sing your favorite

song. Sorry,

I'm just trying to clean this up.

Hey, no, no.

Oh, you... Well, if you do it to me, I have to do it to you. We're brothers.

Hi, I'm... Oh, boy.

Hello.

Hello, I'm Craig Anstead.

And today, we're going to talk about George Washington crossing the Delaware

River. On Christmas Day.

So at the end of the year, 1776, the Continental Army is camped out on the

shores of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania.

George Washington is like, the Continental Army is, it seems hopeless.

Across the river in Trenton, New Jersey, is the Hessians. The Hessians are

German mercenary soldiers for the British Empire.

And we're like, hey man, we're cool.

And we're making the money.

On December 23rd, Washington brings General Hugh Mercer, who's a Scottish

general, and Captain Alexander Hamilton.

George Washington's like, look, we have to attack the British on Christmas

night. They're going to be drunk. They're going to be burping, you know,

shit. That's the night that's the least expected.

So we have to move. We got to go. It's a surprise attack.

So Mercer's like, you know, he's a Scottish guy. He's like, you know, we

have munitions.

I don't even know how to do it. Think about Sean Connery.

Mercer's like, well, we can't do this now. We don't have the provisions.

And Alexander Hamilton's point of view is, hey, that's exactly why we need to

attack, because the Hessians have...

Infinite musicians.

They have infinite, infinite, infinite munitions, and we can capture all that.

So, all right, well, this is what's going down. We got 5 ,000 troops. We're

going to cross the river, like 300 yards wide.

You all right?

Yeah. We have to go full force and attack, which is fighting against the

with their hired Hessian, German, and army shit.

So the Germans, so the Germans, shit.

All right, so it's a German Christmas, December 25th, 1776.

They're all celebrating.

Hey, it's celebration.

They have sausages and sauerkraut.

They're being festive. They're drinking eggnog. That's exactly what the Germans

were doing.

Back to the three platoons.

They all set sail across the Delaware River.

Mercer's, Washington, Hamilton.

Mercer, it's too much snow, too much ice. We have to back off.

Jesus told me so.

So they back off.

You know, Hamilton falls to the wall. We got to get across there, man. We got to

help Hamilton.

Or we got to help Washington.

Can't do it, man.

Too much snow, too much ice, too much. It's too cold.

Washington says, we're getting across this river. Dude, everyone knows the

from a painting. The painting is like a pretty picture of this.

It was a lot more grimy and dirty than the painting.

It's the wind, man, blowing 60, 70 miles an hour. Little tiny icebergs smashing

up against these primitive boats that are made out of cheap pine wood that's

been nailed together with... garbage, nails, it's horrible.

Some of the soldiers have towels on their feet. They don't have shoes. And

they're thinking, hey, man, this is Christmas. I should be eating

man. Washington's like, hey, man, this is the birth of our nation.

This is the birth of our nation. I mean, it really is.

Thank you. Let me have a drink.

They roll up upon the shore, Trenton, New Jersey. George Washington looks at

sun and he's like, hey, shit, we're late.

Let's do this.

Washington and his soldiers march into the fort of Trenton and sure as shit

catch the entire Hessian military off guard. They start attacking the

Hey, Merry Christmas, mother...

They're not met with much resistance. They're like, well, wait, we need to

fight, but we're kind of drunk and we're kind of f***ed up.

Like mistletoe and jingle bells.

So by the time the battle was over, Washington had captured over a thousand

Hessians and only four Continental Army troops had died. And then they look,

there's all these supplies.

And then in the corner, there's a pile of rum.

They all start pounding rum, getting drunk.

So when they took these Hessian soldiers back across the river after capturing

them, a lot of them were drunk just putting them on boats. And people are,

falling off, shit -faced, trying to get... It's just funny.

So this is the first major victory for George Washington and his Continental

Army. And it made an announcement to the entire world that, hey...

This Continental Army is a force to be reckoned with. You can't underestimate

them.

I'm Craig Anastas.

And I had a little bit too much to drink.

But hey, f*** it, right? Craig!

Merry Christmas.

Thank you.

Welcome to our show.

Want to do a quick shot? Sure. Let's do one more.

In the name of giving, in the name of Christmas, in the name of our lineage

our friends and our family and our community and our world.

Amen.

Cheers. To you, brother.

To you.

Oh, yeah.

Hello, I'm Phil Hendry, and today we'll be discussing the man who created modern

Christmas, Charles Dickens.

Holy shit. Yeah, man.

Thank you, Phil. Let's go for it. Thanks, brother.

So Charles Dickens is a smash hit in England. He's a very, very prominent

writer. And he's sitting there thinking, I don't know, I've written Nicholas

Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, a thing called Oliver Twist.

Now he wanted to speak about the, you know, the degenerating aspects of

society. English society?

is a big hovel. It's a steaming mass of just... And you've got poverty and the

ragged schools.

And the people are like, that's really great, man. You've got another Oliver

Twist. I'd really appreciate it because, man, you are boring me.

Suddenly everybody's leaving.

So now his publishers don't want to publish him. The people are not all that

interested in his political points of view because he's a long -winded, dull

creep.

And suddenly, in 1843, out of the blue, comes an invitation.

I say, sir, you're invited to the Athenium of Manchester. Come and drink,

cetera, et cetera, so and so forth.

So he goes up there and sees the big sign. The Athenium of Manchester.

It was actually a place where the working class and the poor could go to

educated people speak.

So he gives his speech, and he looks out across this vast sea of paces.

Oh, man.

Woo!

Holy shit, dude.

And it is then that it hits him.

You are the regular people, the working people, the people of England, but the

man that I see is overseeing all of these people that I'm looking at

he's an asshole.

Is that the word? Yes, I'm looking for the word asshole.

And that night he went out and he walked and began to think about this tale.

My God, I saw in the face of those people, I saw the very working man. I

man that I was and the boy that I was. Those are the faces of all the suffering

people that I've been working with. Yeah, you're my people, aren't you? Yes,

sir. In his mind, he's doing this. It's not really happening.

So it began to coalesce in his mind. He goes back to London.

And he's beginning to put this together in his mind with the time of year.

Well, this is the birth of Christ, isn't it? This is Christmas. He's thinking

about love and charity and how all of that's missing in this world that he'd

been living in. And Dickens suddenly got the idea for a tale of the working

class coming in touch with this redemptive spirit of Christmas.

And he says, I saw the man that was keeping them down.

Ebenezer Scrooge. And his sister had a little boy who had what was called

tuberculosis of the bone. Tiny Tim, he's thinking about this tale of these three

ghosts. That was the Christmas spirit of whatever happened before.

The Christmas spirit of the future. The Christmas spirit of now.

And he keeps writing, and he keeps writing, and he keeps writing until his

gets tired, and he looks and he sees a Christmas carol.

Charles Dickens writes a Christmas carol in six weeks.

Right away? Gone.

Yeah. Wow.

Chuck Dickens, Charles, if you will.

I will. Went to his publisher, and the publisher said, Chuck, you haven't had a

hit, baby, in years, man.

I'm not going to publish this.

So he leaves. He goes home, and he's thinking, this is impossible, man. All

these guys are telling me the same thing, that I stink on ice.

Bull! I'm going to self -publish.

Yeah, that's right. He has John Leach, who was a very well -known illustrator,

do the illustrations.

I'm going to go ahead and bind this stuff up. I can put it in multicolored

paper. I can give it a little kind of a flash.

Give it a little, you know, a little sell.

I print 6 ,000 copies.

Bang! Sells out. It was a hit. A Christmas Carol is virtually

renowned. His fortunes take off again, and he begins to perform A Christmas

Carol. Why, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Charles Dickens.

Hey.

Thank you, thank you.

Let me get my glasses.

All right, here we go.

A Christmas Carol.

You mind, anyone? All right, here we go.

One, two, and a one, two, three.

A Christmas Carol, one night... It's all... Excuse my language.

And begin.

A Christmas Carol.

I'm Charles Dickens. Suddenly, the ghost of Christmas present becomes the ghost

of Christmas past.

And Tiny Tim came bouncing down the lane.

And he said, Father, I'm crippled. And Bob Crescent said, No shit.

What else is new?

Are we still doing the show here?

Anyway, with the publishing of that book, he reinvigorated the whole idea of

Christmas as a time of gift -giving and a time of embrace, a time of warmth, a

time of sharing.

And by the way, Christmas Carol was released on December the 19th, 1843.

174 years to the day tonight.

Cheers to Charles Dickens.

To you, man.

To you.

Let every heart rejoice and replace you, and heaven and

nature sing, and heaven and nature sing, and heaven and nature

sing. Nice.

It's a thing.

Hello, Zs. I'm Rich Fulcher, and today we're going to talk about how Teddy

Roosevelt's children saved Christmas.

Pretty cool.

It was 1901.

Teddy Roosevelt was just elected the president of the United States.

His motto was, speak softly and carry a big dick.

Theodore Roosevelt is a huge conservationist. You don't want to know.

Actually, I do.

Okay. Basically, in his lifetime, he had five national parks, 18 national

monuments, 150 national forests. He loved those trees so goddamn much.

And he thought, I don't want any tree cut down. I don't want

Christmas trees in my White House.

So Theodore Teddy was a family man.

He had six kids, and he loved his kids.

Hi, I'm Archie.

Hey, I'm Quentin.

Hi, I'm Kermit. I'm Alice.

I'm Theodore Jr.

I'm Ethel. So he had all these kids, and he was just brimming with, like, semen.

What was that?

A mouth fart.

It was a mouth fart?

Yeah. So, OK, so it's Christmas time.

Roosevelt would dress up as Santa for Christmas and he would say, oh, sit on

lap and tell me what you want for Christmas.

So Archie said to his dad,

Papa P, can I have a tree this year?

And dad says, no, I do not want a Christmas tree here because it'll

ruin our forest.

This is the thing.

So the kids hatched a plan.

Archie said to Quentin, we need to cut down a tree and show Daddy that

Christmas trees are the way to go for everyone.

Let's go to the edge of the White House lawn and chop the fucking Christmas

tree.

So, uh...

Sure enough, they cut down the tree and they get the help of the White House

electrician, whatever that is.

Well, turn the lights on if they go off.

You're good at this.

So Archie asked the electrician. The electrician said, sure, I can do it. I

put lights on the tree.

I'm a goddamn electrician. That's what I do.

And so he put the lights in the tree and then they put the tree in the

seamstress's closet.

The tree's in the closet and the mother's a saga.

And they said, we're going to make Papa believe in the trees.

The trees make you believe.

The trees make you sneeze below the knees.

Cut to commercial.

What's your favorite Christmas song?

The Paul McCartney song.

I've been wanting to have a Christmas time.

Right! What?

F*** me.

So, okay.

So, it's Christmas time.

It's exciting.

It's exciting!

They opened up the presents and everybody was happy with the presents.

Then Archie and Quentin said, now's the time to reveal the Christmas tree.

And they open the door, and there it is, a Christmas tree with lights.

And sure enough, the president says, oh, what a great surprise.

He appreciated the kid's ingenuity, but he was also kind of like, hey, whoa,

this is kind of like not what I said to do.

He decided to call his good friend and fellow conservationist, Gifford Pinchot.

Theodore Roosevelt said, hey, come on over and give my kids the what for about

this Christmas tree. So everyone gathers round.

Gifford said, ha, ha, ha, ha, Pedro.

Actually.

If you chop down the biggest trees, it leaves sunlight for the smaller ones to

grow, and there's less shit all over the place.

Well, me.

So President Roosevelt decides to lift the ban on Christmas

trees, and everyone is excited.

Daddy, so this means we can have Christmas trees.

We're going to have Christmas trees every year.

For eternity.

And from that point forward, he was a changed man.

Thanks, in large part, to Archie and Quentin, those two little f***abouts

chopped down the tree.

Oh, God, you little f***abouts.

Cheers, Rich. Merry Christmas.

We'd like to sing you a song.

See golden ring.

Holy night.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

It's pretty good. Yep.

Good one. Double click.

Hippocampus.