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Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR’s daily morning newsletter, WBUR Today. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here.
Happy Christmas Eve! A quick scheduling note: this is our last regular WBUR Today newsletter of 2025. We have a special end-of-year newsletter coming up next Monday, and then will resume our normal daily newsletters on Jan. 2.
Thanks for reading and supporting us this year — and happy holidays!
Now to the news:
Stay brassy, Boston: A long-forgotten holiday tradition is returning to Boston today. As WBUR’s Amanda Beland reports, a group of trumpeters will play holiday carols live from the balcony of the Old State House on the corner of Congress and State streets, reviving what used to be an annual practice for the first time since World War II.
‘Tis the [sniffles] season: The Boston Public Health Commission is warning about a spike in flu cases this season. The commission said yesterday that there’s been a 114% increase in reported cases, compared to this time last year. While there’s often an uptick around the holidays, the city says it’s happening a month earlier than usual — and after early hints that this flu season could be particularly nasty worldwide.
Closing time: Acton-based Circle Furniture has suddenly shut down. According to the Boston Globe, the 70-year-old company told its 65 employees in an email last Friday that it was closing all nine of its stores across Massachusetts and New Hampshire until further notice. And then in an additional email yesterday, company leaders told employees that they’re being laid off, effective immediately.
P.S.— We dropped a surprise, extra episode of our (cough, award-winning) podcast, Postmortem: The Stolen Bodies of Harvard. WBUR’s Ally Jarmanning talks to fellow podcast host and reporter Amory Sivertson about the prison sentences for those involved, describes what it was like to meet Cedric and Denise Lodge for the first time outside a courthouse in Pennsylvania and explains what’s next in the lawsuits against Harvard. Listen to the episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Nik DeCosta-Klipa is a senior editor for newsletters at WBUR.
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