Pick a Christmas favorite: It’s likely a blast from the past
By Jane Holahan
Updated Feb 19, 2007 15:40
What are your favorite Christmas songs? Christmas movies? Christmas TV specials?
When did they first appear on the Christmas radar screen? I’ll bet most of them have been around for a while.
Of course, you’ll say, nostalgia takes hold. Christmas is really for kids, so you’ll most fondly remember the things you saw and heard when you were a kid.
Fair enough, but there are adults walking around who were kids in the 1990s, and I’ll bet you a Christmas dinner they wouldn’t pick anything from that era.
I’ll bet their favorites are pretty similar to mine. And trust me, I was no kid in 1990.
I even asked two kids who were born in the 1990s, and their favorites ranged from 1942’s “White Christmas,” for favorite song, to “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” which first aired in 1966.
Look at the great holiday movies.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” is from 1947. “Miracle on 34th Street” is from 1946.
Has any holiday film even come close since then?
OK, “A Christmas Story,” about Ralphie and his Red Ryder BB Gun, is a genuine classic, and it came out in 1983.
But folks, that was 23 years ago!
These days, we get movies like “Christmas with the Kranks” and “Deck the Halls,” which critic Richard Roeper said was “excruciatingly awful.”
There are more and more Christmas specials on TV every year, but are the new ones any good?
Do any of them beat “The Grinch,” or “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” or “A Charlie Brown Christmas”?
And have any found their way into our pop-culture lingo?
When you tell people you have a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, they know exactly what you mean. Call somebody a Grinch, and everyone knows that person isn’t being particularly nice. And haven’t we all suggested that some lame present we got belongs on the Island of Misfit Toys?
An Island of Misfit Toys seems perfectly normal, doesn’t it? Just like one of Santa’s elves wanting to be a dentist.
And what about about Christmas carols? Have they written a really good one in the last 40 years?
Nothing comes close to “O Holy Night” for sheer beauty and reverence. Can anyone top “Joy to the World” or “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” for bringing a holiday smile to your face?
Ah, you say, those are classics that have been around forever.
Well, let’s look at more pop-oriented songs.
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, better known as ASCAP, recently announced the most performed holiday songs of the last five years.
The newest song on the list is “”Do They Know It’s Christmas (Feed the World),” which was written in 1984.
The oldest is “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” which, despite that cool Bruce Springsteen version, is actually 72 years old.
And then there are Christmas books.
Every year, the shelves of bookstores get heavier and heavier, filled with Christmas romances, Christmas mysteries, and Christmas stories about cats and dogs and very special Christmases that almost didn’t happen.
But we all know there’s only one Christmas novel that really matters, and that’s “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens.
Written in 1843. I rest my case.
Maybe what I love the most about Christmas is that it allows us to step into the past and celebrate it every year.
So Rudolph and Ralphie, Ebenezer Scrooge and George Bailey, Charlie Brown and Cindy Lou Who, who is still no more than 2, it’s good to see you all again.
CONTACT US: jholahan@LNPnews.com or 481-6016. The Footlights column appears every other Wednesday.
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