CNN Radio News Day: December 25, 2012

CNN Radio News Day is an evening news program providing an informative, thoughtful and creative look at the day's events. It's posted Monday through Friday at 4:30 pm ET.

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(CNN) –Merry Christmas and welcome to a special holiday edition of CNN Radio News Day.

• Family, friends, feasting, it's all part of the fun of Christmas day.  But, for some volunteers in Pasadena, California there's no time to rest.  That's because they're preparing the beautiful floral floats for the New Year's Day  Rose Bowl Parade.  CNN's Jim Roope visited the floral workshop where every little flower matters.

" We are cutting the pedals off the tops of the flowers and then it takes forever", says 17-year-old Marcy Campos a Tournament of Roses Parade float decorator volunteer.

• A fierce winter storm is bringing a white Christmas to many across the country, but  that doesn't necessarily mean a white Christmas is a lock.  CNN's Tommy Andres found out that countries around the world have different definitions for what makes a white Christmas:

"In the U.S., the official definition of a White Christmas...is a snow depth of at least one inch at 7:00 am local time on Christmas morning."

• It's a song that's been recorded by hundreds of artists.  And just recently after the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, Hallelujah emerged again.   CNN's Edgar Treiguts talked with author, Alan Light who writes about the song's journey from obscurity to a modern standard in his new book,  Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley and the Unlikely Ascent of Hallelujah, the Holy or the Broken:

"There are now countless ways that people first encounter this song. And, so there isn't one fixed version that everything gets compared to because people enter it through all of these many different uses and these many different versions."

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