This holiday season, you can watch The Yule Log in next-generation 3-D. Or HD. Or standard def on Comcast, starting November 22.
The Yule Log video was made in 1966 by WPIX-TV President and CEO, Fred Thrower, as a "Christmas card to our viewers." According to TIME Magazine:
That Christmas card, he proposed in a November 1966 memo, would be a closeup shot of a cheery fireplace, complete with Christmas stockings and flaming Yule logs, "which would be repeated (via a looping process) over and over continuously" accompanied by Christmas music. It would serve, he hoped, as a comforting holiday backdrop for those New York apartment-dwellers with no fireplace of their own.
The Yule Log -- with festive holiday music in the background -- ran for three straight hours on Christmas Eve that year. No commercials.
It has since become an American classic. There's even a website for Yule Log fans that includes FAQs, a full history and even the eulogy Thrower's son read at his dad's funeral in 1999.
