Christmas In Old Bay Ridge Walking Tour

“Christmas in Bay Ridge? Bah, humbug!” — Said no one ever! Step back in time and experience Christmas in Old Bay Ridge with site-specific stories, photos, audio, and more from the Christmas season in Bay Ridge from throughout the 20th Century. It’s how your parents and grandparents celebrated.

Led by James Scully — NYC historian, tour guide, podcaster, director / co-creator of the award-winning historical audio fiction soap opera, Burning Gotham, and creator of the Bay Ridge Digest Podcast — our unique holiday Bay Ridge experience will focus on and include:

• The Birth of Bay Ridge: From a Change of Name to the Festive Rites Originated In Dim Ages Past, we’ll start with recollections that stretch back all the way to Bay Ridge’s name origin in December of 1853

• Stories from the Shore Road USO, FDR’s Christmas message, Bastogne, how Bay Ridge Christmas during World War II, and departing for Europe from Bay Ridge Harbor

• A Penny’s Worth of Local Christmas tree memories as Bay Ridge became a diverse community

• Bay Ridge’s Christmas Bells and an Atomic Christmas at Fort Hamilton High School in 1961

• Stories of Greek Christmas from Father Paul and St. Mary's Antiochian Orthodox Church

• A Christmas Dream for Bay Ridge from J. Frank Griffin and the original Bay Ridge Home Reporter

• The many days of Norwegian Christmas with yule concerts, christmas pudding, and other Norse traditions at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church

• Bay Ridge’s happiest childhood Christmas memories and biggest Christmas surprises

• Christmas caroling at the old Lincoln Savings Bank

• What do you want from Santa Claus, young Bay Ridgian?

• Holsten, The Alpine, and White Christmas

• And more!

See you there!

* Please bring water and comfortable shoes as we’ll be doing a lot of walking. This tour will happen rain or shine, unless there is heavy rain or snow, which then a makeup date will be announced.

** Runtime for this tour is roughly 90-120 minutes.

*** This tour begins in front of the Shore Road Gazebo at 91st street and Shore Road and ends at the Alpine Movie Theater at 6817 5th Ave

About James

James Scully is an outgoing native New Yorker who grew up in a home with four generations of family. He had close relationships with both his grandparents and great-grandparents. This exposed him to an invaluable amount of local history and culture, helping him to become a passionate historian, writer, and director.

He’s a graduate of Xavier High School in Manhattan, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and spent over a decade working as an art director and copywriter for media companies such as Condé Nast and Hearst before becoming a writer, director, and historian. His history focus is both New York City history and US radio history.

James produces and hosts Breaking Walls, the docu-podcast on the history of US network radio broadcasting (https://www.thewallbreakers.com/breaking-walls). He has developed historical audio fiction productions, like the 2022 official Tribeca audio selection Burning Gotham, set in 1835 New York City (http://burninggotham.com), the Frank Sinatra biopic musical And Then I Sing (https://www.andthenising.com), and the western adventure series Frontier Gentleman (https://www.frontiergentleman.com/).

James is also the creator of the recently launched Bay Ridge Digest Podcast (https://bayridgedigest.com/), has given numerous talks and webinars on various history subjects, and is a New York City sightseeing/tour guide.

Testimonials

"Learning of incredible stories I'd never heard before." -Mary

"Guide was engaging, info was interesting" -Christine

"I liked all the historic information on or near the sites where events occurred and/ the people sited lived." -James

"The content was amazing, but even more amazing than the Content was our guide Mr. Scully. Thank you" -Debbie

"I liked James. He is friendly, extremely knowledgeable, speaks well and at the correct volume. He cares about getting the facts right." -Lawrence

"James Scully is the best guide we've ever had. Very informative, entertaining and passionate." -Carol