Special Holiday Radio Programs on NWPB: December and New Year’s Day 2025

Turn on your radio this month and enjoy uplifting music, heartwarming stories and inspiring performances to celebrate the season.

Here’s a list of special programs coming your way throughout the month of December.

Three Tales of Christmas with Cantus

NWPB Classical December 16, 8pm & December 25, 3pm

Three Tales of Christmas with Cantus weaves together holiday stories with time-honored carols and new classics. Blending narration and song, the program features Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Christine Lê’s The Hawai’i Snowman, alongside Mark Twain’s “A Letter from Santa Claus,” offering an opportunity to reflect on the meaning and joy of the holiday season. 

Christmas with Madrigalia

NWPB Classical December 16, 9pm & December 25, 9pm

This holiday season, the Rochester, NY chamber choir, Madrigalia, and their Artistic Director Cary Ratcliff return to public radio for Christmas with Madrigalia. The program celebrates the excitement and joy of the holiday season with traditional carols and anthems from the around the world celebrating the Winter Solstice, Chanukah, Christmas, and the New Year.  

Carols at Home with the Imani Winds

NWPB Classical December 17, 8pm

Carols at Home features a modern take on classic Christmas carols as hosted by Imani Winds founding oboist, Toyin Spellman-Diaz. Toyin coaxes intimate stories of Christmas memories from the members of the ensemble, and why these classic carols are still essential today. You’ll hear many of your favorite carols updated with the ensemble’s own imaginative take. 

Welcome Christmas!

NWPB Classical December 17, 9pm & December 25, 2pm

There’s no better way to welcome Christmas than Welcome Christmas! The VocalEssence holiday concert. It’s an hour of joyful, classic holiday music from VocalEssence, one of the world’s premiere choral groups singing traditional carols and new discoveries.

A Chanticleer Christmas

NWPB Classical December 18, 8pm & December 24, 2pm

Holiday favorites, new and old, will be presented in concert by Chanticleer, the superb 12-man ensemble known as, “an orchestra of voices.” Chanticleer is one of the premiere vocal ensembles in the nation. The ensemble has won two Grammys and is a member of the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. 

Carols, Customs and Candlelight: A Celtic Christmas Celebration

NWPB Classical December 18, 9pm & December 24, 3pm

The Celtic lands of Northwestern Europe have an especially rich musical heritage, and many Christmas songs and carols come from places like Ireland, Scotland, Brittany and other Celtic nations. Listen as host Andrea Blain explores music and customs that have roots in ancient winter celebrations and traditional Christmas festivals. The music features classical ensembles, and soloists like Apollo’s Fire and Bryn Terfel, as well as traditional instruments like harp, fiddle and mandolin. Lots of well-known Christmas music come from the Celtic tradition, and some very beautiful but lesser-known festive music. 

St. Olaf Christmas Festival

NWPB Classical December 19 & December 24, 8-10pm

A service in song and word that has become one of the nation’s most cherished holiday celebrations. Tickets to the event – which takes place at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN – are always gone months in advance. The festival includes hymns, carols, choral works, as well as orchestral selections celebrating the Nativity and featuring more than 500 student musicians in five choirs and the St. Olaf Orchestra. 

Press A to Play Winter Special

NWPB Classical December 20, 3pm & December 21, 6pm

What makes a video game’s snow level sound like winter? Join your hosts Anjuli Dodhia, Devin Gay, and Connor Henricksen for game music to put one in mind of the winter season.  Hear tunes that evoke the holidays and maybe some that feel like cold snowy weather. 

Willie Nelson – Last Leaf on the Tree

NWPB News December 20, 7pm

A deep dive into the collaboration between Willie Nelson and son, Micah, in producing Willie Nelson’s latest album, Last Leaf on the Tree. Including interviews with Willie and Micah Nelson, John Densmore, Mickey Raphael, Daniel Lanois, Neil Young, Keith Richards, and the Flaming Lips. 

Christmas Revels in Celebration of the Winter Solstice 2024

NWPB Classical December 21, 9-11am & 8-10pm

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

Selected Shorts Holiday Hitches 

NWPB News December 21, 3pm

We love the holidays, but sometimes things don’t go as planned. This seasonal special from selected shorts, hosted by Meg Wolitzer, offers three tales about uncommon roads travelled by the celebrants. 

In Winter’s Glow

NWPB Classical December 21, 7pm 

A winter solstice program, with modern classical sounds for the longest night of the year, chosen especially to complement the chilly, starry nights of the season. 

The Spanish Hour: Nochebuena

NWPB Classical December 24, 9am

Christmas Eve traditions from 17th-century Mexico, El Cant de la Sibilla (El canto de la Sibilla or The Song of the Sybill,) a work of prophecy from 15th-century Valencia, and The Adoration, Part Four of Pablo Casals’ oratorio El Pesebre (The Nativity or The Manger) in an historic recording conducted by Casals. 

The Spanish Hour: A Spanish Renaissance Christmas

NWPB Classical December 24, 10am

The Spanish Siglo de Oro – Golden Age – witnessed an astonishing musical flowering. Enjoy works for the nativity by the greatest of Spain’s composers from the 16th century: Tomás Luis de Victoria, Francisco Guerrero, Alonso Lobo, Cristóbal de Morales, and Mateo Flecha “the Elder.” 

A ’40s Radio Christmas

NWPB News December 24 10am

Christmas programs on the radio in the 1940’s ranged from variety shows, to dramas, to comedies containing a generous portion of music from swing to sentimental, and religious. The decade of the 40’s represent recovery from the depression, America’s entry into World War Two, and the beginning of the cold war. This was the last decade before the advent of television, and many radio performers of the 40’s became household names to early television viewers. 

Gaudete! Early Music for the Christmas Season

NWPB Classical December 24, 11am

Sara Schneider, producer and host of Early Music Now, presents Gaudete! Early Music for the Christmas Season, with joyful and contemplative sounds of the season. In this 1-hour holiday special, hear Byzantine chant by Kassiani, and selections from Missa Puer natus est nobis by Thomas Tallis, plus hymns and motets from Spain, Germany, and France.

Festival of 9 Lessons and Carols

NWPB Classical December 24, 12-2 pm & 10pm 

A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols presents your audience with an opportunity to share in a live, world-wide Christmas Eve broadcast of a service of Biblical readings, carols, and related seasonal Classical music. This special will be presented by one of the world’s foremost choirs of men and boys and performed in an acoustically and architecturally renowned venue, the 500-year-old Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, England. 

As it Happens: The Shepherd

NWPB News December 24, 9pm

The year is 1957. An RAF pilot is heading home from Germany for Christmas. Fog sets in and all radio communication is lost. Tune in for a classic reading of  Frederick Forsyth’s The Shepherd by As it Happens’ late host “Fireside” Al Maitland. A Christmas Eve tradition since 1979.

The Spanish Hour: An Early Music Christmas from Spain and Mexico

NWPB Classical December 25, 9am

No Spanish composer of the sixteenth century was more lauded during his lifetime and for two hundred years after his death than Cristóbal de Morales. We’ll celebrate Christmas with Morales’s six-voice Missa Si bona suscepimus, published in Rome in 1544 under his direct supervision, and not recorded commercially until the year 2000, featuring the Tallis Scholars. Festive Christmas dances and villancicos of the Mexican Baroque performed by the Rose Ensemble round out the program. 

The Spanish Hour: Spanish Songs for Christmas

NWPB Classical December 25, 10am

José Carreras and Maria del Mar Bonet sing traditional Catalan carols and sacred music. Plus Joaquíin Rodrigo’s charming holiday classic for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, Retablo de Navidad (A Christmas Tableau.) 

Hanukkah Lights 2024

NWPB News December 25, 7pm

This NPR favorite returns with some of our favorite stories from the archives. Hear “Gifts of the Last Night” by Rebecca Goldstein, “Hanukkah Gelt, Hanukkah Money” by Sholem Aleichem, “Gifts of the Jewish Magi” by Allegra Goodman, How to Spell the Name of God” by Ellen Orleans and “Geek Week by Rebecca O’Connell. 

Candles Burning Brightly

NWPB Classical December 25, 8pm

A delightful hour for everyone to celebrate the Jewish Festival of Lights! Lots of music from Jewish communities around the world, plus a hilarious lesson on how to prepare a classic Chanukah dish, and a timeless and touching holiday story that brings light into every home 

New Year‘s Day from Vienna 2025

NWPB Classical January 1, 10am-12pm

The ever-popular annual New Year’s Day Concert will be performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Riccardo Muti in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna. Celebrate the 200th birthday of Johann Strauss II, exploring new perspectives on the musical world of the Strauss family. 

(Find the NWPB radio frequencies map here, stream online from anywhere or with the NWPB app.)