Who is Santa Claus?

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:17

Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Sinterklaas Baba, Natalie kanakaloka, Papa Nelson, St. Nicholas.

Now, I've butchered the pronunciation of all of those, I'm sure, but they are just some of the names used for a figure who's become synonymous with Christmas around the world. But who is this jolly fat man with the beard? And what makes him so American?

In this episode, as we deck our halls and get ready for the holidays, I want to know who, who is Santa Claus? Welcome to America, a history podcast.

I'm Liam Heffernan, and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places and the events that make the USA what it is today.

To discuss this, I am joined first by Thomas Rees Smith, professor of American Literature and Culture and Deputy Director of Area Studies at the University of East Anglia. His book, the Last the Christmas Stories of Mary E.

Wilkins Freeman is still available, and we'll link to that in the show notes again for you to enjoy. And hello, Tom.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:01:33

Ho, ho, ho. Hello, Liam.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:37

Yeah, I'm sure we're going to fill this episode with Christmas cons, and it's been nearly a whole year since we had him on the podcast last. Almost like our own little Christmas tradition now.

So, like Santa himself, he's popping back up on the show and he's also the creator and host of Christmas Past. A holly, jolly welcome to Brian Earl and to you.

Brian Earl: 00:01:59

Thanks so much for having me on.

Liam Heffernan: 00:02:01

It's really great to have you on, and I just. I feel like it's just become a bit of a thing that we can't really cover Christmas on this podcast without getting you on the show in some way.

Brian Earl: 00:02:09

I'm always happy to have what they call a new tradition. A contradiction in terms, but festive nonetheless.

Liam Heffernan: 00:02:15

Yeah, well, it's. It's great to have you here and Tom as well.

So today we're discussing all things Santa Claus, not just in America, but also some incarnations of Santa around the world and sort of some of the backstory that that's made him kind of what he is today. I say him because he's generally seen as a male. I'm just going to clarify that for any listeners out there, but let's kick off.

Do we know when and where Santa Claus sort of made his debut?

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:02:44

I think we can. We can say pretty much roughly that Santa Claus emerges In the late 18th, early 19th century in America as a distinct figure.

Now, if you're trying to pin down a precise moment when Santa Claus, as we understand him, comes into the popular consciousness that's kind of tricky. But there are some moments that we can, we can pinpoint that are interesting steps along the way.

So any account of Santa Claus, I guess, has to take into consideration a group of 19th century, early 19th century New Yorkers who had a combined interest in antiquarianism and were looking to, in a sense, create a cultural and cultural and social identity for New York. And St.

Nicholas emerges as a figure amongst this coterie of well to do New Yorkers in the early 19th century, as a semi serious figure who is put forward as a kind of patron saint of New York.

So you've got writers like Washington Irving, who you may know from Rip Van Winkle, we've got a fellow called John Pintard, who's head of the New York Historical society in the 19th century. We've got early American writers who are important, like James Kirk Paulding. So they're all playing with the figure of St Nicholas.

Now this is not necessarily the St Nicholas who was the fourth century bishop in Turkey, who was a saint in his own right. It's not necessarily either the Dutch figure of St. Nicholas who would come and distribute gifts on December 6th. But he's.

They're kind of playing with all of those resonances when they're talking about St. Nicholas in the early 19th century. And in some of those representations of St. Nicholas, he's given the name Sancter Claus.

also get accounts from around: 1813

It doesn't specify Christmas necessarily, but it talks about them waiting for old Sancta Claw, a guy who arrives, brings presents, comes down the chimney, etc. So that suggests there's also a kind of folk tradition running alongside this slightly more rarefied print culture tradition.

generally, I think we look to: 1821

ink we can say that by around: 1820

How's that?

Brian Earl: 00:06:11

mplete. Yeah. The. Around the: 1820

An anonymous poem and largely forgotten today, especially here in America. Most people have not heard about it at all. It predates a visit from St.

Nicholas by two years and almost certainly had a huge influence on it because a visit from St Nicholas also is very influential in shaping how we understand Santa Claus. What does he look like? What does he act like? When does he come? How does he get into your house? What does he do once he's in your house?

How many reindeer pull his sleigh?

All of those kinds of things that really, really shaped our understanding were informed by this other poem that actually did a lot of that groundwork and then kind of vanished. It did a couple other important things, too.

But I know we're going to discuss those points later, later on in the discussion, so I'm gonna have to save those for a little surprise. Specifically around kind of how we understand what Santa Claus looks like.

Liam Heffernan: 00:07:09

I mean, I am. I mean, Tom, you mentioned, you know, Turkey and Dutch traditions as well.

So is it perhaps safe to assume that Santa Claus, in the way that he is, sort of.

Sort of looks and acts today in American culture, is pretty much entirely due to the sort of traditions that were imported from European migrants, broadly speaking.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:07:36

Yes. But I think it's important to know that. To note that even though it seems very neat to think that St.

Nicholas just becomes Santa Claus, that's probably too tidy. And there's. There's a. There's a lot more kind of working into. Into that.

And I mean, I guess sometimes it's put forward that one reason that Santa Claus wears red is because he's wearing bishop's robes in some of the early representations of him. So they're red. That's one reason. That's one way to kind of link him back to the figure of St. Nicholas.

But, yeah, there are other European traditions that are coming over from the Old world at pretty much the same time that we might also think of as feeding into. Into the image of Santa Claus.

So there's a guy called Belsnickel, comes from Germany, who's dressed in furs in a way that we might think of Santa being not necessarily red furs, but, you know, he's dressed in furs. He comes with a sack of presents. He also comes with a stick to beat naughty children with.

And that kind of naughty, nice thing is part of the Santa Claus mythos as well as it develops. So. Yeah, so you can see other European traditions feeding in there as well. And as we go on to.

As people go on to build a world around Santa again, I think you can see, you can see lots of those old world traditions feeding in. In various ways.

Liam Heffernan: 00:08:51

But.

Okay, so firstly, Bell, I'm so happy that that's actually a real character, because my only reference about the Office, which I'm sure anyone else who watches that will greatly enjoy.

I'm really thinking about sort of the image of Santa Claus here and how these kind of other versions of this character and even sort of these, you know, the religious sort of grounding from the very real St. Nicholas, how that transformed into this, you know, red suited, bearded, jolly sleigh riding figure we know today.

Brian Earl: 00:09:27

Yeah. So, I mean, I think after the historical St Nicholas's death, he becomes a legendary figure. He becomes the patron saint of basically anybody.

He was the patron saint of brewers, seafarers. It was common for ships to have an effigy of St Nicholas at the front for protection.

There are all kinds of legends about him resurrecting the dead, multiplying stockpiles of grain, like things that should sound pretty familiar in Christian traditions. And his birthday was marked on St. Nicholas Day, was December 6th. Sometime around the 12th century.

We start seeing people giving gifts in the name of St. Nicholas.

And the best record I have of this is these French nuns who would go around leaving gifts on the doorstep of families in need on the eve of St. Nicholas. And that's where we start to connect the idea of gifts in St. Nicholas. That's a far cry from Christmas.

Liam Heffernan: 00:10:17

Right.

Brian Earl: 00:10:17

He still wasn't coming on Christmas Eve once he becomes a gift bringer. And perhaps it's worth pausing here to say that he is one of many Christmastime gift bringers who all have certain similar characteristics.

Some of them may be based on real people, some of them are just purely fictional characters, but all of them are sort of legendary figures. You know, there's stories about where they live and they might have a.

They might travel around by magical means, whether it's La Befana flying on her broom or, you know, a magical flying Horse or whatnot. So there's a. There's a bit of mystery and mythicism and magic associated with these characters that wouldn't come for St.

Nicholas until much, much later when he. His celebration gets moved down the calendar toward Christmas.

And a large part of that is because the Protestant Reformation came along and said, well, devotion to saints is one of the things that we're protesting as Protestants. So we're going to get rid of St Nicholas Day celebrations along with all the other devotion to the saints. But the Protestants wouldn't stand for it.

They love St. Nicholas so much. So his celebration gets moved down the calendar to Christmas. And even that wasn't working out.

Eventually the Christ child, another one of these magical gift bringers, starts going around with him and that became one of his traveling companions. We mentioned Belsnickel. Sometimes he would go around with Belsnickel. In the Dutch tradition, he had Zwart Piet. He also had the Krampus sometimes.

So I'm going off on a tangent, I realize, but yeah, so for a long time he's traveling around in his bishop's robes. He's wearing red. He has the mitered hat and all of that.

But it is once he comes over to America and we start to ascribe other kind of qualities to him. And Tom said that he gets sort of associated with Germany, right, With like the Belsnickel character, I think in America.

One of the sources attributed to making him more of that northern image, northern figure is the publication of that poem Santa Claus with much delight from a children's friend. One of the first to actually say that he wears red out loud and printed. This was like when color printing was coming into its own.

And it includes color images of him not only wearing red, he's not wearing bishops red, but he's wearing red and it's a fur suit. So now again, we're building on that legend, right? He doesn't live in Turkey anymore. He lives in the north, right? The. The un. Un Non specific north.

But he wears red and he has, you know, like a long beard. And again, this is very similar to other figures like him. Bel is one of them. Who are some of the other ones? Tom, help me out here.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:13:02

There's Connect Reprecht.

Brian Earl: 00:13:04

Connect Reprecht. Hans Trap. Figures like this, these sort of like scruffy, very often seen as very tattered looking figures.

Grouchy little guys carrying sticks, but then also carrying, you know, sacks of clothes to hand out to children who behaved well.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:13:19

And some people will even push that further and trace the image of those kind of wild, wild winter visitors to figures like Woden and Odin. I mean, how much. How much you can actually stand that up, I'm not sure, but certainly that's. That's an argument that, you know, it's. There's a.

Liam Heffernan: 00:13:34

There's.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:13:35

There's a much more ancient reflection in there as well.

Liam Heffernan: 00:13:38

So I do wonder about this intersection, though, between, you know, the myth and the magic of the character of Santa Claus and the more religious aspects of Christmas, because there has been a bit of a blurring of the lines. And, you know, Santa himself is referred to as St. Nicholas.

And, you know, there's a connection there, but just some of the other Christmas traditions. I mean, Christmas is a religious holiday, but Santa has kind of become very much a part of that.

And are we kind of slightly walking a fine line between just being incredibly, like, blasphemous here?

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:14:14

Well, they. This is something they tangle with.

In the 19th century, as in print, in magazines, in books, people really try and get to grips with Santa Claus as a figure, and they build him a backstory. You know, as time goes on, aspects of his life that we're now familiar with know, find their way into print. So as Brian said, where does he live?

Okay. It becomes established that he lives in the. In the frozen norths, the North Pole, probably because he's. He's. He's carted around by reindeer.

So there's a kind of rationalization there. Where are the reindeer coming from? They're coming from the frozen north.

So that's where Santa lives, partly because there's a fascination with the North Pole at this point through various, you know, exploratory missions that go well and go badly. Who makes the toys? Okay. We start to imagine Santa's workshop filled with small creatures. Sometimes they're fairies, sometimes they're elves.

And then the elves become the kind of dominant figures. Is Santa Claus married? Yes and no. Sometimes. But throughout, there is actually a really interesting concern for religion.

So where does Santa Claus fit into the religious vision of Christmas? So in some ways, Santa is almost immediately secular figure, despite whatever saintly associations they might have.

rticle in, I think, about the: 1840

And it's a poem where a child essentially says to Their parent, hang on this guy, he's. We can't see him, but he can see us all the time. He knows what we're doing. He. He knows if we're naughty or nice.

And he comes and he bestows gifts upon us like so surely Santa Claus is a God. And the parent is, is very quick to correct their child that, no, no, Santa Claus may, may be, you know, doing good work, but there is only one God.

And, and again, I think Santa Claus becomes, as the century develops, actually a way to teach children about religion. So one poem I've read recently actually says that Santa Claus kind of begins his mission on the day that Christ is born.

And in a way, you know, bringing gifts at Christmas time is always a kind of reflection of the three wise men, you know, turning up to the baby Jesus. You know, gift giving at Christmas goes back to the first Christmas, if you want to think of it in those terms.

So I think there is a really interesting tension between Santa and religious impulses at Christmas time. Throughout the 19th century. In some ways, he's already a secular figure.

In some ways, he becomes used as a figure to actually teach religious messages to children.

Brian Earl: 00:16:58

And I think perhaps more broadly, especially here in America, there is, I read recently, a survey where about one third of Americans really believe there is some kind of war on Christmas. And this is fueled by a lot of people of certain political persuasions who are loud voices in the media.

And Santa Claus is often called out as, you know, oh, my goodness, look at how far we're coming away from religion.

And read any of the wonderful histories about Christmas in the Middle Ages and you'll understand that Christmas was arguably never a very religious observance. Advent certainly was the period leading up to it.

But then once all of that self restraint of a month worth of fasting and prayer wore off on Christmas day and the 12 Days of Christmas opened up, people would release a lot of their restraints and cast off their moral, their normal moral behaviors for this. You know, 12 days of just partying and feasting.

It looked a lot more like, you know, bacchanalia or something like that, where there was a lot of drinking. And this was a big part of the reason that the Puritans wanted to do away with it.

And here in America, even the former president of Harvard, who was a prominent Puritan, was writing about how, oh, during the Christmas season there's. There's so much murder and gambling and drinking and prostitution and things like that.

And so I feel like a lot of people nowadays have this idea that Christmas was much more about piousness and devotion, and it's hard to make the argument that it ever really was. So for whatever that's worth, Santa Claus is not the villain here. He is simply helping things to make more merry and bright.

Liam Heffernan: 00:18:30

On that note, I'm going to put my cynical, anti establishment hat on here and ask if Santa has been just slightly weaponized by big corporations to sort of commoditize Christmas and take it more away from those religious roots.

Brian Earl: 00:18:47

I don't know if it's about taking away from religion, but you're right that the very image of Santa Claus is enough to get you thinking about buying things.

Not only because his image is so closely associated with certain brands or it's in every Christmas calendar or catalog that you see every commercial and whatnot, but also just that it triggers those feelings of warmth and generosity and all of that. He's become a very powerful. If you want to call him a propaganda tool, sure, go ahead. But he does have that effect.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:19:16

s onto the stage in the early: 1820

ink is that, you know, in the: 1840

There's, you can't say that, you know, Santa's become commercialized because Santa is commercial from the start.

Even the fact that he runs a kind of factory ultimately in the North Pole making, making Christmas products, you know, that's, that's not, that's not incidental either, I think.

Liam Heffernan: 00:19:52

I mean, you, you both talking about the sort of, the image of the bishops in the, in the sort of the red hats and clothing. I sort of ruined my hope that it was Coca Cola that was the reason Santa Claus was red.

But is there, is there any merit to the myth that Santa was green or has he always been this sort of figure draped in red?

Brian Earl: 00:20:12

There are. Because of him wearing green.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:20:13

Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, Father Christmas images of Father Christmas or old Father Christmas were plausibly more green than red.

a visit from St Nicholas from: 1864

Obviously, you know, most of the time in the 19th century, he's, he's appearing in black and white, so there's not much coloring going on.

, you know, of course, in the: 1860

Brian Earl: 00:20:58

And I think it was again, that poem, A Children's Friend, that may have been the first to not only mention, but also show in print him wearing red. That same publication also shows him wearing green, by the way, but the poem mentions him wearing red.

And then two years later, Clement Clarke Moore's poem comes out that says he's dressed all in red from his head to his foot. So I think they were the ones sort of starting to.

Again, they weren't the first to suggest it, but they were the first to suggest it in a way that could be published across the world. Right. And create a common point of reference for what this character looks like.

Then again, you know, Coca Cola also had that same power to take one image and just blast it everywhere. So, like, that is the one thing that everyone thinks of when they think about Santa Claus.

So starting in the, in the: 1930

But so they sort of put the finishing touches because this is, you know, one thing that we can say is his image evolved quite a bit.

period of the, you know, the: 1820

The only things that change are, you know, you probably don't see him smoking a pipe all that much anymore.

He may or may not wear mittens or glasses or things like that, but we've basically decided on what Santa Claus looks like and have stopped innovating in that space.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:22:30

ting images of Santa from the: 1840

There's a famous one where he just has a kind of clipped mustache and he's being pulled along by a turkey instead of reindeer. That's one of the more intriguing ones. Got a few, quite a few of them where he's clean shaven, which is very peculiar to see. But yes, it's.

I think somewhere around the: 1860

So he himself is kind of elf sized for quite a lot of the 19th century. Plenty of Thomas Nast illustrations. Nast obviously does a lot to promote his image on the covers of Harper's Weekly for a number of decades.

You often will show him kind of like peering over the edge of his naughty or nice book because he's not really tall enough to see over it.

Brian Earl: 00:23:27

So.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:23:27

So yeah, those kind of things are still taking shape.

Liam Heffernan: 00:23:31

Yeah. I think it's interesting because we did speak a bit about tradition last year as well in our Christmas episode.

And there's an interesting parallel that I want to draw to very recently in the election. And I'm sure our listeners are absolutely sick of me going on about the election, but I'm going to mention this.

It's the red and blue to signify the parties.

That is actually a fairly recent development because I think one of the TV networks decided that they would show blue as Democrat and red as Republican. And then another network decided, oh, okay, that makes sense, we'll just do that. And then it just became a thing.

And I think in the same way that these sort of, the image of Santa Claus has kind of evolved. It's not like there was some committee meeting where, you know, the, the directors of Christmas got together and said, this is what Santa looks like.

It's just, it just needs that collective buy in, doesn't it? And then suddenly that's. That's the truth.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:24:23

Yeah, yeah, I think that's it. I mean, it's an organic process, isn't it?

And I think that's, you know, you can never pin these things down to any one particular person or moment or piece of popular culture. Certain things you can say are definitely influential. I mean, interesting.

again, this the artist in the: 1860

Liam Heffernan: 00:24:57

Interesting.

Well, I know we are generally focusing because of the podcast on the nature of Santa in America, but I would like to understand how this compares to the image and character of Santa Claus around the world, which we've touched on a bit already.

But I'd like to just understand what those, the biggest Kind of influences of the Western Santa Claus are and perhaps some of your favorite kind of incarnations of the figure of Santa around the world.

Brian Earl: 00:25:28

Well, I think probably the main difference between previous versions or the things that fed into Santa Claus and Santa Claus itself is that he is entirely benign. He is entirely magical and generous. There are no threats. We say, if you're a naughty boy, he might leave you a lump of coal in your stocking.

And even that is a threat that doesn't really have much teeth behind it. And so that has sort of fed back into other gift bringers that use Santa Claus as a reference. I think a good example of that is in Iceland.

They have the Yule lads, who for most of their history were really scary figures.

They would come down the mountain every night and they were based on those sort of elf creatures who were very often considered they could do good things, but you also had to do a lot to stay on their good side and make sure that they didn't, you know, like, eat all the crops and kill all the animals in your field. Like they were that kind of creature. And now they've even started to look more like Santa Claus. They're wearing red hats sometimes. So he.

Santa Claus has really sort of influenced other gift bringers that way that it's just about coming, you know, in the dark of the night and leaving gifts. And then I think another one is the influence that he's had on Father Christmas. The two names are often used synonymously, you know, Santa Claus.

Oh, they call him Father Christmas in England, which, you know, is just not true. Father Christmas was his own character. He was not a Christmas gift bringer. There were no, you know, magical, legendary components to his story.

He was simply the physical embodiment of the season, the same way we have like, the Goddess of Spring or Old Man Winter or Baby New Year. It was just an image that would appear in publications. But over time they've become conflated and they're essentially the same thing now.

They're gift bringers who leave gifts on Christmas. So, yeah, I think his. It's definitely the sanitizing and the Disneyfying of this character just being all about good vibes and gifts.

And then also just a lot of his characteristics are influencing other similar gift bringers around the world.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:27:32

Yeah, that's a great point, Brian.

I mean, the Father Christmas thing I think is really interesting because, you know, growing up in the UK in the 80s, there was all, you know, there was an understanding that Father Christmas was the British gift bringer and that Santa Claus was a modern Americanization that should be resisted.

And you can actually, there are actually quite frequently articles written saying that, you know, still today that we should resist the Americanization of Christianity through the figure of Santa Claus. But as soon as you start to poke at that, as you say, Father Christmas did not serve this purpose in British culture.

u can see it happening in the: 1850

Can we leave our stockings up for Santa Claus? So Santa Claus creates the culture in Britain of expecting a gift bringer to come and leave something in your stocking.

The our Victorian ancestors were hanging up their stockings for Santa Claus. And at some point that morphs into Father Christmas as a British heritage figure. Early in the 20th century, that happens, really.

And then from that point onwards, it's always, apparently always been Father Christmas that we've been leaving stockings for. But no, absolutely, it's Santa Claus who creates that bridgehead across the Atlantic. And that without him, I think we'd be doing things differently.

Liam Heffernan: 00:28:58

Yeah, it's really interesting. And I think on that note, just to wrap up our discussion, do you both believe in Santa?

Brian Earl: 00:29:11

That's one of those questions you ask an adult and everyone, they sort of have to play this game. Well, of course, I believe, and it all gets rather simple.

But I mean, I think there's maybe another layer below that question of, you know, that we have culturally, over centuries, created a myth. You know, like there was a bit of it that was organic, a bit of it that was very deliberate, a bit of it that was market focused.

And we have created an entity and for, you know, any way you slice it, that entity, that shared reference point, our shared understanding of what this character is all about and the value that it plays, why we'd want to pass that tradition on to our children, the memories that it created for us and all of that, of course that is real. And if acknowledging that that is real is believing in Santa Claus, then yes, I believe in Santa Claus.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:29:57

Yeah. I think in recent, most recent poll, around 80% of American five year olds believe in Santa Claus.

Now, it is impossible, I think, to think of a more unifying cultural figure, someone who brings together so many people at the same moment doing the same thing in the spirit of love and kindness. And let's think about him another way.

How many other male role models are there who are defined by kindness, generosity, non Violence and general benevolence to the world. So, yes, I think there's something important to believe in there as well.

Liam Heffernan: 00:30:37

Probably while you were both answering that, one thing that come to mind was being someone who loves a film. Auto, in recent years, you've seen these interpretations of Santa, like in the Disney film Noel and in.

I don't know if you saw the animated film Arthur Christmas from about 10 years or so ago. It's this idea that maybe Santa.

The idea of Santa isn't actually assigned to a specific individual, but it's a role and one that's sort of passed down or inherited or elected on just like, you know, ahead of state. Which I think really, you know, changes our sort of fundamental understanding of who Santa is, doesn't it?

Brian Earl: 00:31:20

Yeah. And I've heard versions of that kind of role changing in some print stories from. Even from the 80s. I remember having.

I forget the name of the book now, but it was a story that I had growing up. And it may be one of the ways that we continue to iterate on the legend. You know, we keep saying things like, you know, first he has a wife.

I've seen versions where they have a child together where, you know, they live in the North Pole. Sometimes it's the different people working for him. We keep changing things, like around the legend of Santa Claus.

Maybe not necessarily about the character himself, but, yeah, little. Little pieces like that. It's just an interesting thing. I don't know if it's gonna take hold or.

We're in an environment now where, you know, almost any TV special or book can sort of lend their own spin on it. But it really takes that sort of concentrated power of a Coca Cola marketing budget to get something that's gonna stick for a long time.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:32:12

I think there's something in there that you could think about Santa Claus almost like a superhero.

So we understand that Batman can be drawn by different artists, written by different writers, that we can play with what ifs and different timelines about different Batmans. But there is still a kind of essential Batmanness that we all understand when we say Batman.

So I think Santa Claus is almost like a kind of proto superhero in that sense. So we could, different writers, different artists can put their spin on him, can extend the mythos in one way or another.

But we all know what we're talking about. We talk about Santa Claus still.

Liam Heffernan: 00:32:47

Well, there you go. If anyone's ever tuned in for the last five minutes or so, have this discussion, they will learn that Santa Claus is Batman.

So that's something to leave on, but thank you both.

I think it's been really insightful for me as someone who knows absolutely nothing below the surface about Santa Claus, to hear more about its history and origin. So thank you so much for this.

And Brian, of course we're going to get you back next year for our traditional episode if you're if you're still willing to. But we'll put some useful links in the show notes as well for any of you listening who do want to find out a bit more.

But if anyone wants to connect with either of you directly, where can they do that? Brian let's see.

Brian Earl: 00:33:29

Easiest way would be to go to Christmas Past podcast.com that's where you can find all the links to all my socials and my email, etc.

Liam Heffernan: 00:33:37

Awesome.

Thomas Ruys Smith: 00:33:37

Tom ThomasRoyce Smith.com should do it.

Liam Heffernan: 00:33:41

Wonderful. And you can find me on X I'm still there at thisisthe hef and on LinkedIn as well. Just search for my name.

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Thanks so much for listening and goodbye.