THE YULE LOG
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John Pazmino
NYSkies Astronomy Inc
nyskies@nyskies.org
www.nyskies.org
2011 December 28 initial
2016 December 30 current
Introduction
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Each Christmas Day, with a few exceptions, New Yorkers turn on
their televisions to watch a continuing view of a fireplace with a
flaming log. This strange show, with background Christmas music, runs
for three hours or so, displacing precious airtime.
When my household turned it on this year, it occurred to me that
there must be some fascinating story about this bizarre squandering of
prime viewing hours. I just figured it was a public service show but
really didn't give it much attention other than to enjoy it.
It is a pleasing backdrop in the house for other holiday activity,
specially since most City homes have no real fireplace. Even when it
was seen in black-&-white on older TV receivers, The effect was quite
soothing.
My home had for way back a cardboard fireplace. We set it up each
year, before there was the Yule -Log show. It had a fake fire, a roll
of crinkled tinfoil reflecting light from a small bulb. The fold-out
panels were printed with a brick pattern to look like the enclosure of
a fireplace.
It eventually fell apart. We folded up the boards for storage.
When the Yule-Log came along we forgot about this cardboard fireplace.
We now had a 'real' fireplace playing on television.
One year we got the idea to place the leftover panels in front of
the television, flanking the screen! This made the unit into a
fireplace with the Yule-Log playing inside of it!
I started to look up material about the Yule-Log for a new NYSkies
article and found several interesting items. For one, it was a loop of
film that repeated for the many hours of the show. I until then just
assumed there was a real fireplace some where with a TV camera set up
in front of it.
The show was off-air for many years, altho I don't specificly
recall seriously missing it. It, I learned, started some 40 years ago,
which sounds correct because I do recall watching Yule-Log while still
in school.
I didn't get far in my search before on Christmas Day of 2011 the
New York Daily News published a major history of the Yule-Log. It told
a lot more story than I could collect myself and probably has
everything you really want to know about Yule-Log. Because of its
importance in New York culture I reprint it, as published. it may
bring back memories from prior years, many of them.
= = = = =
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
David Hinckley
Originally Published: Sunday, December 25 2011, 6:00 AM
Updated: Sunday, December 25 2011, 6:00 AM
The Yule Log, a beloved New York television tradition, returns on
Christmas morning
There's 45 years of history behind the fireplace film and its
accompanying Christmas music
Sitting around the television set on Christmas morning watching an
image of a burning fireplace might sound, at first, like sitting
around the television set on the Fourth of July watching a video of
your grass growing.
And maybe to some of the world it does sound like that.
To New Yorkers, it sounds like the Yule Log.
And sure enough, the Yule Log returns Christmas morning, 9 a.m.-1
p.m., marking its 45th anniversary on Ch. 11.
It's being carried in a number of other cities as well these days,
but it's still New York's Log, and darn it, Christmas just wouldn't be
Christmas in New York without it.
In those 45 years, moreover, it's built up a backstory that goes
beyond easy-listening holiday music played over a video loop of a
bright warm fire.
It's a story that involves a courageous television programmer, a
tragically singed Oriental rug, a dozen years in the wilderness, a
corporate epiphany triggered by Sept. 11, an onslaught of imitators, a
discarded "Honeymooners" film canister and the mysterious absence of
Bing Crosby.
What it all adds up to, though, is an artifact from a time
capsule, a cultural institution essentially unchanged since it first
crackled onto New York TV screens on Dec. 24, 1966.
To Lawrence F. (Chip) Arcuri, the Log's historian and biggest fan,
that's why we love it.
"It brings back all our Christmas memories," says Arcuri. "We
remember the Christmases when we watched it as children, and all the
people we watched it with."
Nowadays, in a world that moves at warp speed, Arcuri suggests the
Yule Log lets us slow down.
"Watching the Yule Log is a time to be patient and relax," he
says. "Before Christmas, you're rushing around to get the presents,
fix the food, get everything ready.
"This is the time when you can finally sit back and enjoy it,
enjoy your family, enjoy Christmas."
For years the Yule Log ran on Christmas Eve, and Arcuri admits he
personally thinks that was the ideal time. He still runs it on
Christmas Eve at the Arcuri house, thanks to a video he made some
years ago.
Speaking of videos, it's pretty easy these days to get your own
DVD of a fireplace with Christmas music. Just don't think that any of
those productions is the real Yule Log.
"The Yule Log has never been released on DVD and probably never
will be," says Arcuri, primarily because the music licensing costs
would be prohibitive.
So everything else out there "is an imitation," says Arcuri. "I
know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but to be honest,
none of them is nearly as good as the real thing."
The real thing today, however, is not the same as the real thing
from 1966.
When WPIX general manager Fred Thrower okayed the idea that year -
ignoring the people who thought he was crazy - the video footage was
shot at Gracie Mansion.
A 17-second image of the fire there was repeatedly spliced
together until it was three hours long.
Thrower then chose the music, primarily soothing renditions of
holiday classics by artists like Percy Faith and Mantovani.
That original production ran for four years, by which time the
16mm film was starting to wear out and WPIX decided it needed fresh
footage.
The plan for returning to Gracie Mansion was short-circuited,
however, by then-Mayor John Lindsay's staff. During the original 1966
shoot, it turns out, the camera crew removed the fireplace's
protective screen and a burning ember jumped out and damaged an
expensive Oriental rug.
WPIX launched a nationwide search to find a fireplace that looked
like the one at Gracie Mansion, and finally found it, at a private
home in Palo Alto, Calif.
"It's a gorgeous fireplace," says Arcuri. "Better than the one at
Gracie Mansion. So the crew set it up and on a hot day in August 1970,
they shot seven minutes of perfect film.
"They really shot a little more, but a log fell or something, so
they just used the seven minutes - which became the loop that's still
used today, and that most people know as the classic Yule Log."
By the 1980s, however, WPIX had cut the Log from three to two
hours, and after the 1989 showing, the Log was canceled.
Fans, including Arcuri, pressed for its reinstatement over the
next decade.
But it wasn't until 2001, in the wake of Sept. 11, that WPIX
decided the city could use what Arcuri calls "some comfort television"
and announced the Yule Log would return.
That involved some drama itself. "When the program was cut to two
hours, they just threw the old footage away," Arcuri says. "The only
footage that remained, in a vault in New Jersey, was a canister marked
`The Honeymooners: A Dog's Life.'
"Betty Ellen Berlamino, who was the general manager of WPIX, called
it `A Log's Life.' So that was what we had."
As it happens, Arcuri also collects Christmas music. So once the
film was digitized and the Log restored to three hours, he had the
music to accompany it.
In 2009 he programmed a fourth hour.
"I had been mentally putting together a fourth hour for years," he
says. "I had more than a hundred songs that I finally whittled down to
23."
That includes four from Percy Faith, whom he calls "The King of the
Yule Log."
He also added a couple of classic Christmas artists Thrower had
omitted, Bing Crosby and Johnny Mathis.
The Crosby song, however, is not "White Christmas." "People hear
that everywhere," Arcuri says. "So I picked `A Time to Be Jolly,' from
Crosby's fourth and last Christmas album in 1971."
Getting the music exactly right, says Arcuri, is essential.
"To my mind," he says, "you could have a mediocre fireplace and
with this music you'd still have a great program. If you had a great
fireplace and mediocre music, you wouldn't."
Arcuri himself, who now runs the website theyulelog.com, founded
by his former partner Joe Malzone, first discovered the Yule Log in
1972, when he moved to New York from Cleveland.
One of the things he liked about his new house was that it had his
first fireplace.
Then he turned to WPIX on Christmas Eve and it was love at first
flicker.
For years," he says, "my family would gather on Christmas Eve and
we'd have the real fireplace at one end of the room and the Yule Log
at the other.
"I think we watched the Yule Log more than the real fire."
That happens a lot in these parts.
= = = = =
= = = = = = =
The Daily News article seemed to be the complete and ultimate
story of the Yule-Log broadcast. The original film was lost and the
new edition is used for the annual show.
On Christmas Eve 2016 WPIX noted that the Yule-Log show will
feature a short playing of the original 1966 film! It played for the
first hour of the Yyle-Log broadcast on Christmas Day, The scene then
flipped to the new film for the rest of the show.
A thoro account of of this film's recovery, plus additional
details of the show's history, was issued by the web NorthJersey.com.
I give it here as an update of the Yule history. I added a coule
clarifying words in bumpers.
= = = = =
Original Yule Log returns for 50th anniversary
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NorthJersey.com
December 22, 2016
WPIX is again airing the Yule Log on Christmas Eve and Christmas.
"Watching Paint Dry." Now, there's an idea for a three-hour TV
special. Not much crazier, though, than the idea Fred Thrower, general
manager of WPIX-TV Channel 11, proposed in November 1966: three
uninterrupted, televised hours of a log burning in a fireplace.
Who could have guessed that, 50 years later, The Yule Log would be
a cherished New York-area Christmas tradition and, through its many
imitators, a staple of holiday TV programming across the country?
"The fact that it's so counterintuitive, so much unlike anything
else you see on television, makes it stand out as something worthy of
attention," says Rolando Pujol, director of digital and social
strategy for PIX11 (as the station now brands itself), and the
corporation's de facto archivist.
You can thank Pujol, and a trove of old film reels recovered from
Paramus, for a special treat that PIX11 will be bringing viewers on
this golden anniversary year.
The original Yule Log, last seen on air in 1969 (it was replaced
the following year by a new and improved model), will be back on TV or
an hour at 11 p.m., Christmas Eve [2016], and again on Christmas
morning at 7. From 8 a.m. to noon Christmas Day, as per usual, the
1970 log will be burning merrily in its accustomed grate, accompanied
by carols rendered by Percy Faith, Mantovani, Arthur Fiedler and the
Boston Pops and Nat King Cole.
"This idea is still so fresh and so inviting, and still draws
people together on one of the most emotional and special times of the
year," Pujol says. "It gives us here at the station just such an
immense sense of pride, that something that our predecessors created,
and we nurtured and cared for, means so much to people."
The PIX11 Yule Log is derived from one of the oldest Christmas
traditions, predating Santa, stockings and the Christmas tree. It was,
in the old days, a log substantial enough to burn the entire 12 days
of Christmas, Dec. 25 to Jan. 5, a symbol of the light that would
return in the spring. There are references to yule logs in Europe
dating back to 1184 C.E., but the tradition doubtless goes back much
earlier, to pre-Christian times.
To have a yule log, though, you need a fireplace, and that's just
what most city dwellers do not have. Which is what made Thrower, on
Nov. 2,1966, propose a startling idea to his staff at WPIX: Why not
bring a fireplace into the apartment of every New Yorker, via
television?
"He sent a memo to his executive team: 'Here's my vision, I want a
fireplace, I want it to be accompanied by beautiful Christmas music,
you guys figure out how to do this,'" Pujol says.
It was a Coca-Cola commercial of the previous year, featuring
Santa in front of a fireplace, that had sparked Thrower's imagination,
Pujol says.
"He felt that New Yorkers during the holiday were deprived of the
yuletide comfort of a roaring fireplace," Pujol says. "A fireplace is
not what we normally have. We have steam heat."
The head of the team given this assignment was a Paramus [in New
Jersey] resident: Bill Cooper, a director, producer and documentarian,
and close associate of Thrower. He arranged to have 16 mm footage of a
log fire shot at the most New York of all fireplaces: the one at
Gracie Mansion, then occupied by Mayor John Lindsay. For that original
broadcast, and for more than a decade after, the Yule Log was
programmed on Christmas Eve, not Christmas morning.
"It was such a novel idea and so unusual that it got a lot of
press coverage even then," Pujol says.
The PIX11 Yule Log was, and remains, a loss leader: The station
foregoes three hours of valuable advertising money each year. But the
ratings, from the first, were high, Pujol says, and the viewer
goodwill the show brought more than compensated for any lost revenue.
"It may not bring in money, but it's a gift that we're giving to
our audience," Pujol says. "Sometimes you lose money on gifts. That's
OK. It does have intangible benefit to it. It fosters goodwill. And we
like to think it has a halo effect over everything we do at the
station."
Four years later, PIX11 decided on an upgrade. TV sets were
getting bigger and sharper by the late 1960s, and the original 16mm
footage didn't cut it any more. "People were getting those big wood-
panel TV sets, with nice color," Pujol says. "They felt it was time to
come up with a nicer looking fireplace."
The new fireplace, filmed in 35mm, was shot in California -- no
one seems to remember where. That's the Yule Log footage that PIX11
viewers have seen ever since. In 1978, for the first time, it was
broadcast Christmas morning: becoming, for many families, an ideally
soothing backdrop for the frenzy of wrapper-tearing and toy-assembling
in the a.m. hours. Then in 1990, someone put the fire out.
"There was new management here, and I guess the feeling was, it
was basically time to move on from this thing," Pujol says.
Many viewers were outraged. By the late 1990s, an online campaign
began to bring the Yule Log back. That campaign was spearheaded by Joe
Malzone, then a Totowa [in New Jersey] resident, who in 1998 launched
the website Bring Back the Log (now theyulelog.com).
"Obviously, it must have made some kind of an impact, to stay with
me for so long," says Malzone, who now lives in Monroe Township. He
remembers, back when The Yule Log used to be broadcast on Christmas
Eve, watching it at his aunt's house in Haledon [in New Jersey].
Well, kind of watching it, the way you do with The Yule Log.
"Christmas Eve, we would be having dinner at my aunt's house, and it
would be on the TV," he says. "Rather than put the radio on, you'd put
on the TV, and there would be Christmas music."
For the first few years of his save-the-log site, he remembers
getting occasional email, which he would pass on to PIX11. But by
2000, it had begun to build. Then, after Sept. 11, 2001, the campaign
exploded."September to November, I was getting probably 400 to 500
emails a week about this," he says. "And they were all asking me, 'Are
you gonna put it back on?' I said, 'I don't own the station, I'm just
passing it on.' "
Clearly, many New Yorkers, three months after 9/11, were feeling
hopeless and bereft of Christmas spirit. To the staff at PIX11, the
message was clear: It was time.
"If there was ever a good year to bring something back that was
such a warm and loved tradition,this was the year," Pujol says. "So in
2001, after being off the air for more than a decade, to everyone's
surprise, The Yule Log was back."
But it wasn't, of course, the original Yule Log. The footage from
1966 had seemingly vanished –much to the disappointment of broadcast
historians.
"There had always been a desire to find it," Pujol says. "If
nothing else, out of curiosity to see what it looked like, what the
flames looked like, to see how it all started. It was, in a way, a
Holy Grail of PIX programming that had gone missing."
Then, two years [in 2014] ago, actress-entertainer Kay Arnold, the
widow of Cooper, the WPIX executive who had shot the original footage
died in Paramus [in New Jersey]. (Cooper had died in 1987.)
"Her family, her relatives, called me," Pujol says. "They said,
'Hey, we have a lot of material in the house from WPIX, film, tape,
memorabilia, all kinds of stuff, and we would love this to end up in
the right hands.'"
WPIX staffers, including Pujol, went to the Paramus house, where
they found a garage full of film reels and other station-related odds
and ends. These were transported to the basement of the PIX11 studios
on East 42nd Street [and 2nd Avenue, Manhattan] to be sifted through
when time permitted. This past summer [of 2016], Pujol happened to be
going through them, looking for archival footage of then-presidential
candidate Donald Trump, when he saw something scribbled on the side of
a film canister: "Orig. PIX Fireplace."
"I was thrilled," he says. "Could this be The Yule Log we have
wanted to find all these years, that's been missing? I opened it up,
there were several reels of film there. One of the reels was a small
reel, sealed with tape. It said 'Original WPIX Fireplace.' There it
was, a tiny reel of 16mm film. That was at 12 midnight on July 29 [of
2016]. I fired up the email, and I said, 'Guys, I'm not 100 percent
sure of what this is, but this might well be the lost Yule Log.' "
And so it was a grand total of two minutes of color footage. For
this year's anniversary presentation, that footage has been looped
every seven seconds, to create an hour-long journey down Santa Claus
Lane. "To me, it has tremendous value as a piece of TV history," Pujol
says. "The Yule Log is high-concept TV which, in the face of it,
sounds like a ratings disaster and a very bad decision. But it draws
people in and compels them. And they keep it on as a sort of friend
that you have over to your house every holiday. You turn it on and
it's there."
= = = = =