This is my Christmas message to you, Premium Members. And we are letting everybody hear it, because it is the spirit of Christmas, and we want people to know what they get on the Premium Membership.

This is the No Spin News that we give you guys everyday, I usually go over news stories with you that we do not have time to cover on The Factor, and my perspective on them.

But this one is going to be about Christmas.

As I said in the Talking Points Memo tonight, I think the country is heading toward a fairly significant change. I think that the experiment of the progressives for the past 6 years has not really worked, and I think that anybody looking at it objectively (not from an ideological viewpoint) will see that is true. There are two big things. The first is money.

In a capitalist system, you need money to protect yourself. Protect your health, protect your family, have a decent place to live, have decent food on the table. So money is very important. But in our competitive society, the way it was designed by the Founders, the government does not give you money. You earn it. But the capitalistic system provides a lot of opportunity, so you can earn it – but you have to buy into the system.

When I was a child, I lived very modestly. My mother still lives in the Levit house that we grew up in. I tried to get her out, I bought her a nice condo, but she knows everybody in the neighborhood, she is 92, she doesn’t want to go anywhere, so she is happy there. Fine. But when I go back and look at my house, it is so tiny. But when I was growing up, I did not think it was tiny. It did not look tiny to me. I remember sitting on the stairs on Christmas morning, I was the first one up at like 4 in the morning, and under the tree, it was magical.

And all my other friends lived in the same small houses. So there was no envy – we knew there were wealthy people that lived miles away from us. We saw their houses and how big they were, but nobody really cared. Everybody accepted their circumstance. My parents were both college educated, but they were children of the Depression, and they were not going to take a chance in life. So they got jobs, and they kept the jobs.

My mother was a physical therapist, worked part time and raised my sister and myself. My father worked as a low level accountant in New York City, never made much money at all. And we lived very frugally, as I have documented in A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, which, if you want to know about me, that is the book to read.

Anyway, when I was growing up, it was not a big money play. We were frugal, my father would not spend a lot of money, but it was not like money money money money money. It was not that way. It was, let’s enjoy what we have. I had what I needed, although there were times when, I have to say, I was playing ice hockey for example, I had secondhand equipment and most of the other guys on the team had first, beautiful equipment. They mocked me a little bit, but I was a better player than they were, so I got my revenge on the ice. But there were times, we were riding around in a ratty car, and other people had nice cars, and you kind of just roll your eyes a little but. But that never motivated me. It never motivated me at all.

And on Christmas, my parents were extremely generous to everyone, and everybody got a lot of nice stuff. My parents would fake me out a little bit by giving me maybe two or three headline toys, and then filling me in with underwear and socks. So you can imagine how thrilled I was opening those presents. I knew what was going on, but I got the stuff I wanted, the main stuff. They were generous people, there was never any way, and I was brought up that I had to work hard. That was the main thing.

When it snowed, I was out there with my shovel and my thug friends, and we were shoveling driveways for $5 a pop. And in the summer, we were cutting the grass. And then when I got older, I babysat urchins and I did what I had to do. I was always in motion, always trying to make a little money so I did not have to go to my parents and ask for money! I always hated that.

The only one I ever took money from, in my whole life, was my grandmother, who did have some money, because she was the first telephone operator for AT&T in the New York area. The first telephone operator, can you imagine that?

And she stayed with AT&T for a while. My grandfather was a train conductor who used to go up to Canada, the Montreal line. The two of them pooled their salaries, and they saved money. They were depression people too. But when my grandmother hit 85, she had some money, and she would slip me $10 or $20, and I would take it. I would not take it from anybody else, I made my own money. It was just a matter of pride for me; I did not like taking anything. I never borrowed money, ever.

So anyway, the Christmas thing galvanized my whole lifestyle. Because when Christmas came around, it was all about helping other people out.

And we kids went around singing off-key Christmas carols. Karen Carpenter would just have vomited hearing us. But we went to the house and they gave us a book, to go away, pretty much. But we would go to thirty or forty houses and sing carols. And people would give us a dollar, and then we gave it to charity. That was pretty good for 10, 11-year-old kids. And everybody was always thinking that way. It was not like me me me me, gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme. It was not that.

And my strongest memories from my growing up period, outside of school, which again, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity will tell you about that, are the Christmas things that we used to do, and how much fun they were, and how much I appreciated living in a country where you could have Christmas.

One of the interesting things that Seth Meyers asked me last night on his program over at NBC was that Stalin banned Christmas in Russia, because Communists do not believe in God. And then they invented their own “Father Frost” holiday, because Stalin’s daughter loved Christmas so much. And I was just always appreciative, even as a stupid kid, that this is a great country, and this is a place where we can have all these joyful celebrations. We’ve got Thanksgiving, Halloween, Easter, all of this stuff. And I really look forward to that.

So my Christmas greeting to you is this: we are all in this together. I keep trying to tell our African American detractors that their road of grievance and bad country is not going to lead anywhere. I try to keep telling them that. That if they join with most people who want to see them succeed, then the injustices will be a lot easier to fight. But if they throw in with the Sharptons of the world, you are always going to have that division.

But we are all in it together, and you do what you can. I do what I can, you do what you can. I am lucky in my life to have prospered economically. I never look for money, I never work for money. I developed myself in a position where I could do my job very well. And I always knew that if you could do your job very well, you are going to be able to make money for somebody. If you can make money for somebody, then you are going to get well paid. That is the way it goes in capitalism.

And all of this other business about the government this, the government that, I just do not want to hear it. I want my government to have an infrastructure so I can get from state to state. I want them to protect us from evil. I want a safety net for those who cannot succeed through no fault of their own. I want that. But that is all! That’s all. Then just stay out of it.
The Found Fathers were smarter than you, they set up a good system, do not mess with it.

That is my message to you; we really appreciate you guys being our vanguard.BillOReilly.com Premium Members, we hear from you everyday on the Message Boards. You give us some tremendous suggestions, like this one. This came from a Factor viewer: let’s open up the Premium No Spin News so everybody can hear it. And that is what we are doing.

And we hope that you guys who are not PMs will come on board. You will like it – you will meet some great people. That is the big thing about BillOReilly.com Premium Membership: the thousands of people, and they are good people. Smart people. People who will like the lively debate, who will have good ideas. You can’t buy that. You are not going to get that on the other websites. Because this is a crew that is focused, that believes in traditional America primarily. It is a good place to be.

I want you guys to have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We will see you again in a few weeks. 

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