It’s a Christmas tradition on 7MS. Aaron recites a story popularized by the radio legend Paul Harvey.
Happy holidays and see you in 2023!
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Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Music: thomas j. duke
Hey, everybody, it's Aaron. This is the last 7 Minute story of 2022. The first half of season 3 has gone really fast. We're going to take a couple of weeks off here, a few weeks off actually for the holidays, and then be back with all new episodes in January, so stay tuned for that.
Also, from me, and Cori, and Ken, and Pete, and TJ, and the entire 7 Minute Story team, from all of us to you—there's really no way to say this without sounding generic—from all of us to you, wishing you, from everybody here in our family at ABC, we wish you... There's no way. Here's the thing. I'm just trying to say Happy Holidays to you and how much we appreciate you every week, providing the space, giving the space of seven minutes and meeting me halfway here and listening to my stories.
The thousands and thousands of listeners every month, and over the course of three years, millions of listeners around the globe that is not lost on me, what a gift that is. I work really hard to try to improve and tell more dynamic stories every time to get better every time so that I'm fulfilling my end of the bargain because of the space you've created in your life just to listen and consider my stories. Thank you for that. It is the ultimate Christmas gift, and I am eternally grateful for it.
The great radio announcer personality, Paul Harvey, I can't really do the impression of him, but great voice. He popularized a story, and he told a story every Christmas called The Man and the Birds. If you're a listener of this show, you know it's coming.
Every year, I recite and record The Man and the Birds, and I share it with you every year. When Paul Harvey did it originally, it was published in the magazine, and he wanted to recite it for his radio show, but he and his team scoured all over the US and couldn't find the original author, and they never have. It's a mysterious thing.
But he recited it to his audience. Over the course of the last few years, I've recited it to you every Christmas. I rerecorded it this year because I felt like I didn't want to do just a rerun of a recording I did a couple of years ago. I rerecorded it because I feel like, even though the story is the same, I'm different. Maybe what I've gone through in my life and some of the stories that you've heard and what I've experienced in my private life, some of that nuance underneath the words will come through and bring the story alive again.
Again, appreciate you. We'll see you on the other end of 2023. For now, enjoy The Man and the Birds.
Now, the man who I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge. He was a kind, decent, mostly good man, generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas time. It just didn't make sense.
He was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus story about God coming to Earth as a man. "I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He told her he would feel like a hypocrite, that he would much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. He stayed, and his family went to the midnight service.
Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window and watched as the flurries got heavier and heavier. He went back to his fireside chair and began to read the newspaper. Minutes later, he was startled by a thudding sound, then another, and then another, a thump or a thud.
At first, he thought, someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.
Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. It would provide a warm shelter if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly, he put on his coat and galoshes, and he tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in.
He figured food would entice them in, so he hurried back to the house, fetched breadcrumbs, and sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow lighted, wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the breadcrumbs and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them and waving his arms.
Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn. Then he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, "I'm a strange and terrifying creature. If I could only think of some way to let them know that they can trust me, that I'm not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how?"
Any move he made tended to frighten and confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language, then I could tell them not to be afraid, then I could show them the way to the safe, warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, hear, and understand."
At that moment, the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. He stood there listening, ad'Espé Fidelis, hearing the bells peel the glad tidings of Christmas. He sank to his knees in the snow.
Mary Christmas. Happy holidays to you and yours with all our love. We'll talk to you in the new year. Take care.
7 Minute Stories is created and performed by Aaron Calafato. Our senior audio engineer is Ken Wendt. Our resident artist is Pete Whitehead. Original music by TJ Duke.
If you or your company needs help starting a podcast, Aaron and Ken's company Valley View does just that. Reach out to them at valleyview.fm. Special thanks to our partners at Evergreen Podcasts, and I'm Cori Birce. Make sure to tune in next week for another story.
