Arts & Culture

Land Between the Lakes Celebrates Mid-19th Century Christmas

WKMS | By Chad Lampe,

Published November 23, 2012 at 10:52 AM CST

Shoppers today sift through huge inventories of "Black Friday" sale merchandise at area retailers, but shopping for Christmas gifts used to be much simpler 160 years ago. So says Land Between the Lakes Special Events Coordinator Cindy Earls. She says, on Christmas mornings back then, children might only receive an orange, some candy, a pair of socks or, maybe, as a special treat, a doll or a pocket knife. Earls says, after opening their gifts, 19th Century Western Kentucky farm families would visit neighbors. LBL's Homeplace celebrates Christmas 1850 Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Earls says the event provides historical context for some of today's Christmas traditions like live music and a visit from Santa Claus.

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Chad Lampe

Chad Lampe, a Poplar Bluff, Missouri native, was raised on radio. He credits his father, a broadcast engineer, for his technical knowledge, and his mother for the gift of gab. At ten years old he broke all bonds of the FCC and built his own one watt pirate radio station. His childhood afternoons were spent playing music and interviewing classmates for all his friends to hear. At fourteen he began working for the local radio stations, until he graduated high school. He earned an undergraduate degree in Psychology at Murray State, and a Masters Degree in Mass Communication. In November, 2011, Chad was named Station Manager in 2016.

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Dave Shinall

Dave is a retired Army tank platoon sergeant. During Desert Storm, he helped overrun a Republican Guard bunker complex in Iraq's Euphrates Valley. In the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, he commanded a mountaintop UN Preventive Deployment Force observation post on the Macedonian frontier with Serbia. In Bavaria, he served as news director at the American Forces Network radio station in Wurzburg, on special duty assignment from December 1981 to March 1984. He's a 2003 magna cum laude graduate of Western Kentucky University.

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