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Christmas weekend on WRKF

We'll hear traditional music, storytelling, conversation, and even a little radio theater this holiday weekend on WRKF. We'll keep you company through the day Saturday and Sunday for your gift wrapping, gift unwrapping, preparations, travels, and holiday gatherings.

Sunday, December 25 also marks the final evening of Hanukkah. For full details on our Hanukkah programming, click here.

Monday, December 26 begins Kwanzaa. Learn more about our Kwanzaa programming here.

Saturday: Christmas Eve

A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
Saturday, December 24 at 9am (live)
Sunday, December 25 at 5am (encore)

A traditional annual broadcast of a service of carols, hymns, and readings live from the candlelit chapel of King's College, Cambridge, England. This service, based around nine Bible readings interspersed with Christmas hymns and carols sung by the famous chapel choir, has been held at King’s College since 1918 and has been broadcast by the BBC since 1928.

Christmas with Madrigalia 2022
Saturday, December 24 at 11am

We celebrate the excitement and joy of the holiday season with traditional carols and anthems from the Medieval era through the 21st century. This one-hour program, recorded live in concert, features beautiful music for the winter holidays by Richard Wilder, Dennis Rosenbaum, Tomas Luis de Victoria, John Rutter, Franz Gruber and others.

Founded in 1975, Madrigalia has built an extensive repertoire encompassing traditional and contemporary styles of secular and sacred choral literature from the Renaissance through the twenty-first century. The eighteen-member ensemble uses choral music as a powerful tool to communicate humor, sorrow, prayer, meditation, celebration and remembrance.

This American Life
Saturday, December 24 at 12 noon

Baby's First Christmas: Stories of people experiencing Christmas in brand new ways, giving the holiday even more meaning.

The One Recipe Holiday Special
Saturday, December 24 at 1pm

Join us for a holiday edition of The Splendid Table’s newest “podbaby,” The One Recipe. We talk to culinary superstars about their “One,” the recipe that signals the holiday has begun! They’ll get into traditions and food with influences from all over the world and leave you with recipes that could jumpstart your own festivities! It’s delicious eating all month long. Guests include chef, YouTube personality and best-selling author Carla Lalli Music; The New York Time’s food writer Eric Kim, author of Korean- American: Food That Tastes Like Home and more to come!

Toasty Winter Treats with Earth Eats
Saturday, December 24 at 2pm

A winter holiday special with chestnuts roasting, cookies baking, and coffee outside, featuring wintery, food-centered activities and baking. We drop in on a cookie baking workshop with kids at a food pantry, we enjoy a hot cup of coffee on a chilly bike ride, and we toast up a batch of maple granola for holiday gift giving.

Hidden Brain
Saturday, December 24 at 3pm

Where Gratitude Gets You: Many of us struggle with self-control. And we assume willpower is the key to achieving our goals. But there’s a simple and often overlooked mental habit that can improve our health and well-being. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore that habit — the practice — of gratitude.

A Christmas Carol: REDUX
Saturday, December 24 at 5pm

A retelling of the Charles Dickens classic in the present day, giving it a satirical comedic spin. Amidst a crumbling economy, skyrocketing unemployment, and mass protests on Wall Street, cheapskate Scrooge (the 1%) refuses to share his wealth with those less fortunate (the 99%). Join our narrator, Russell Thomas, as he recounts this classic Christmas tale with visits by The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future (all while he battles his own ghosts due to a recent divorce).

Selected Shorts: Holiday with Mom
Saturday, December 24 at 6pm
Sunday, December 25 at 1pm

Two stories about being home for the holidays and how you can count on your Mom to be there for you—and possibly to complicate things. First, memoirist Augusten Burroughs recalls a disastrous—and hilarious—childhood cooking project. Reader Michael Cerveris relishes every bite. And in “Live Wires” by Thomas Beller, a young man invites his girlfriend to his mother’s annual Hanukkah party. The reader is Jane Curtin.

American Routes
Saturday, December 24 at 7pm
Sounds of Winter Solstice and the Holidays: It’s the season of cold weather, darkness, solstice, and… holidays. Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza and New Years ahead. A time of celebration and contemplation, family and friends but also some broken hearts and Christmas blues. From cold weather and cold-hearted blues of Snooky Pryor, Big Maceo and Aretha Franklin to the warm side of the season with Louis Jordan and Ella Fitzgerald, Wille Nelson and Elvis. And Hanukkah sounds from Bela Fleck and Andy Statman. Plus, we explore Santa’s exploits, fallibility, and possibility with songs from Baltimore’s Fat Daddy, Tampa Red and Tennessee Ernie Ford. Merry Xmas and more from American Routes!

Sunday: Christmas Day

A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
Sunday, December 25 at 5am (encore presentation)

The Christmas Revels
Sunday, December 25 at 9am

A celebration of the winter holidays: Christmas, the Solstice, Jonkonnu, New Year’s, and Twelfth Night/Epiphany, featuring traditional carols, wassails, hymns, spirituals, children’s game-songs, and folk dance-tunes excerpted from live Christmas Revels stage productions presented around the country.

Christmas Revels performances are made up of sacred and secular folk materials, plus some composed popular and “art” music, from traditional European. Middle Eastern and American celebrations of Christmas, The Feast Days of Saints Nicholas, Lucia, Basil and Stephen, Chanukah, the Feast of Fools, Jonkonnu, New Year's, Twelfth Night/Epiphany, and other end-of-the-year festivals, along with various cultures' hereditary observances of the Winter Solstice, some elements of which date back to pre-Christian times.

Apollo's Fire presents Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain: An Irish-Appalachian Celebration
Sunday, December 25 at 11am

A communal celebration of the American immigrant experience, sharing the spirit and history of Appalachia’s Irish and Scottish roots through music. The 35-member ensemble includes 10 children and brings a joyous concert experience with the warmth of period instruments. Fiddlers, medieval harp, hammered dulcimer, bagpipes, singers, and children’s voices join together to evoke the Celtic roots of an Appalachian holiday.

In this one-hour special, the listener is transported from Christmas Eve in medieval Scotland to the folk carols and shape‐note hymns at a toe‐tapping Christmas gathering in Virginia. The people of the Appalachian Mountains welcome Christmas with love, singing, dancing, and prayer.

Selected Shorts: Holiday with Mom
Sunday, December 25 at 1pm
(a rebroadcast of Saturday's program)

New Letters on the Air: A Conversation with David Sedaris
Sunday, December 25 at 2pm

The writer made famous on public radio with the airing of his Santaland Diaries, David Sedaris, talks about his literary and familial influences and reads from his early bestselling memoir Naked. He also discusses the impetus for some of his stories that ended up in his collection Me Talk Pretty One Day. Join us for this conversation with one of America’s most comedic writers.

New Letters on the Air: Thomas Fox Averill shares his Christmas Novel
Sunday, December 25 at 2:30pm

Thomas Fox Averill discusses his award-winning novel, A Carol Dickens Christmas, which weaves the influences of Charles Dickens and traditional Victorian era cooking into a story about a modern Topeka, Kansas family during a tough holiday season. Averill reads from his new book that captures the diverse and complex character of flyover country.

Simply Having a Very Odd Christmastime
Sunday, December 25 at 3pm

Two stories of holiday memories and gifts that keep on giving. First, in "Merry Christmas, Mr. Kreskin:" Kent Hoffman has received a Christmas card from mentalist the Amazing Kreskin every year for more than a decade. He wants to know: who else is on the list? Second, in "The Ghost of Christmas Presents:” Ever get a present that made you wonder, "Does this person know me at all!?" Bob Kerr has, nearly every Christmas, when his mother repeatedly insists on giving him jewelry.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Kreskin: Kent Hoffman has received a Christmas card from the American mentalist, “The Amazing Kreskin”, every year for more than a decade. He wants to know: who else is on the list? For Kent, it was a surreal delight to produce an interview with Kreskin on the radio program As It Happens in 2009. But what really surprised Kent was when a few months later he received a Christmas card from the famed mind reader. And then again the next year...and every single Christmas since. It turns out that Kreskin sends out thousands of holiday cards, every year, to people he hasn’t spoken to in decades. Kent decided it was time to thank Kreskin, and find out his thoughts on cards, traditions and the true meaning of Christmas. It's a holiday story as amazing as Kreskin himself.

The Ghost of Christmas Presents: Ever get a present that made you wonder, “Does this person know me at all!?” Bob Kerr has, nearly every Christmas, when his mother repeatedly insists on giving him jewelry. Rings, necklaces, in silver and gold, decorated with crosses and pendants. Even a jewelry box to keep it all in. The only problem is Bob doesn't wear jewelry. Ever. After years of grinning and bearing that “it’s the thought that counts,” Bob takes a trip through the Gifts of Christmas Past... and finally asks his mother, what in the name of Tiny Tim she was thinking?

Portraits of Faith
Sunday, December 25 at 5pm

Nine people of nine different faiths and philosophies attempt to answer a deceptively simple question: What does it mean to you to believe? Criss-crossing the city of Baltimore, we meet with nine people of nine different faiths, asking them each a set of identical questions about what it means for them to 'believe.'

We talk with an Orthodox Muslim, a Buddhist monk, a Christian minister, a Jewish cantor, an atheist, a Quaker, a United Methodist/Episcopalian, a Catholic, and a Keetowah Cherokee. They all speak eloquently about how their beliefs give them strength and comfort, and also about how those beliefs can sometimes give way to doubt when tested, showing us the incredible amount of common ground that exists beneath the religious differences that often seem to divide us.

Sunday: Final night of Hanukkah

Our meditation and reflection upon the holiday season are not complete just because the evening has fallen on Christmas day. Learn more about our Hanukkah programming this evening here.

The Kabbalah of Chanukah
Sunday, December 25 at 6pm

An Open Gate: Jewish Culture in the Light of the World
Sunday, December 25 at 7pm

Monday: Kwanzzaa

Learn about our special programming marking the beginning of Kwanzaa here.

The Sounds of Kwanzaa
Monday, December 26 at 8pm

A Season’s Griot: A Kwanzaa Celebration
Monday, December 26 at 9pm

Adam is responsible for coordinating WRKF's programming and making sure everything you hear on the radio runs smoothly. He is Newscast Editor for the WRKF/WWNO Newsroom. Adam is also the Baton Rouge-based host for Louisiana Considered, our daily regional news program, and is frequently the local voice afternoons on All Things Considered.