For NY area dopers WPIX channel 11 is airing its Yule log from 9am to 1pm 
We don’t get that channel here but I wish we did. I love the Yule Log! Last year the Chigaco station (WGN?) showed it but they aren’t this year, at least according to the channel guide. Last night the CW was showing an entire fireplace, complete with a mantel and stockings but it isn’t the same. 
Wow. That brings back memories of when I was young, broke, and living in New York. We’d turn on channel 11 and snuggle on the couch while watching the fire on TV on Christmas Eve. It was like your TV was a fireplace. Freaky, but kind of cool at the same time.
Heh. WPIX still exists, eh?
Wow. The Shaw Yule Log (well fireplace with disembodied plaid clad arm to tend it from time to time) starts up around here at the beginning of December and will run until sometime in the new year. I feel so lucky and snuggly warm.
Speaking as a relocated New Yorker…
Never mind the Yule log, does WPIX still show “March of the Wooden Soldiers”?
What’s a Yule log? Is it like a captain’s log?
Yep they showed it right after the Yule log
A 6 minute video of a large wooden log burning in a fireplace with easy listening Christmas music playing.
LOL. This year I actually looked up “fireplace” on youtube and put it on fullscreen mode on my computer for ambiance.
I don’t get it.
Here is a Youtube video of the WPIX Yule log. It is a tradition in NYC for many years. It is a loop of a fireplace shot at Gracie Mansion (The official residence of NY mayor’s)
They had a commercial for it this year. A man chopping wood. He brings a piece of chopped wood in his house, sets it down, puts on the TV and watches the log. It was pretty funny.
First, reference on what is the actual tradition of the Yule Log, courtesy of Wikipedia.
At some point in the past of American TV, some station had the genius idea of simply broadcasting the image of a Yule Log for some time during the holiday, providing an ersatz simulation of the tradition to fireplace-less urban dwellers.
And of course for us of the smart-aleck generations, it became a perfect example of something so daft it’s brilliant.
IMO, I suspect that in the beginning this had the practical benefit that it allowed them to have several hours of the day with just the absolute minimal skeleton crew and give most of the staff some time off for the holiday. In the days before the 24-hour TV cycle and large paid-programing distribution, non-network local stations could face a real possibility of just going dark during part of the holiday save for some cheap, easy space-holder. Like filling the time with prerecorded Reality-TV marathons, only slightly more intelligent 
The wife and I spotted a Blu-ray yule log disc in November for $8 and couldn’t resist. We also read that Comcast has a 3D Yule Log avail. for free on their VOD, but didn’t check it out.
I once put The Yule Log at a family Christmas to revel in its daftness. Unfortunately my unsophisticated relatives couldn’t see it’s brilliance “Four hours of a log burning on a TV screen?”
The Yule Log disappeared from WPIX for a decade starting in 1990 but was brought back after 9/11 to provide New Yorkers with comfort. I am waiting for for nitwit like Pat Robertson to say that’s why the Twin Towers were destroyed: No Yule log meant we got complacent.
The original was filmed at Gracie mansion but around 197o the 6 minute version was filmed in California.
WPIX will have a Honeymooner’s marathon on New Year’s Day
Do the children of crew members still wish us a very Merry Christmas from their family and the whole Channel 9 family?
I was always under the impression that showing the yule log allowed the maximum number of people at channel 11 have Christmas day off. It’s definitely part of my Christmas memories. When I think of it I always think of it on my grandparents’ Zenith TV.