A Holiday Escapade in a Gullah Town
Dr. J. Herman Blake is descended from the Gullah people, known for their strong African roots, but didn’t grow up in one of their communities. In 1969, when he decided to spend Christmas on Daufuskie Island off the coast of South Carolina. There, the locals used a specific phrase to describe the holiday: “Making Christmas.” At StoryCorps, he told his wife Dr. Emily Moore how his curiosity about what this meant got him in way over his head.
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Originally aired December 19, 2025 on NPR’s Morning Edition.