This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.

This edition of Mayor La Guardia’s regular Sunday program was a departure from usual entertaining monologue taking WNYC listeners through current events, budgets and city services. This Talk to the People was a produced Christmas show that inluded a Bible story, live musical perfomances and a children’s chat.

Mayor La Guardia made much of this holiday season being the first without war in five years. “The war is over,” he said, “But we must continue to pray for peace because a wicked world has not fully learned the lessons taught by Him nearly 2,000 years ago.”

The show combined scripture with vocal and instrumental music and closed with His Honor reciting, Clement Clarke Moore’s, “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” Among the other performers were tenor Carlo Carrelli, the 35-member Collegiate Chorale conducted by Robert Shaw and the Queens College Chamber Ensemble conducted by Boris Schwartz.

In a tone reminiscent of La Guardia’s iconic reading of the comic’s during the newspaper deliverymen’s strike just five months earlier, an excited Mayor said, “Come children! We’ll celebrate Christmas together! Gather around your radios and listen!”

On this eve of Christmas Eve, La Guardia also recalled the legend of the firefly. He said the insect came into being because a little “bug” on a rafter of the manger was anxious to hurry out into the dark night to tell the animal world about the Nativity. “The angels, seeing the worthiness of his desire, placed a little lantern between his wings…so he went out telling the glad story,” related the Mayor.

It’s hard to imagine, on several levels, a public official doing such a program today. Still, it has a certain period charm and illustrates just how adept La Guardia had become as a master of the medium by the time he was about to leave office.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 71086
Municipal archives id: LT2575