Bethlehem, Pa., December 17, 2014—If you’re tired of the same old holiday songs on the radio this season, tune into WDIY 88.1 FM, the Lehigh Valley’s community radio station for it’s annual 'Blues for Christmas' celebration. The eight annual “Blues for Christmas' on Bluesville, will air on Saturday, December, 20 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. The program, underwritten by Moravian College, can also be streamed from WDIY’s website at www.wdiy.org.

The program will be hosted by Captain Teddy Teach who will take a long winter's listen to the best of holiday-related blues, featuring the likes of Freddie King, Victoria Spivey, John Lee Hooker, and, of course, Mr. Christmas Blues himself, the late great Charles Brown.

According to Moravian College Sociology Professor Dr. Joel Nathan Rosen, the connection between the blues and Christmas has a history in the American south. “Understanding the so-called Santy Claus Crave is paramount to understanding the role of Christmas, and Santa Claus in particular, in the lives of sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South. Santa becomes a deity in his own right. But instead of the usual array of toys for tots, Santa, for the non-church crowd, is the grantor of a day of wine and song and frivolity of a very adult nature, which is why the songs seem to reach beyond the pale and are often so rip-roaringly so not "O Little Town of Bethlehem!"

WDIY (88.1 FM) is a community public radio station licensed to Allentown, Pennsylvania, with studios in Bethlehem. The station serves the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania and western Warren County in New Jersey. The station is licensed to Lehigh Valley Community Broadcasters Association, Inc., a nonprofit organization. The station's mission "is to engage the Lehigh Valley community through a wide-ranging exchange of music, arts, news and culturally diverse information."