Youtube, Christmas, and Me

There are a lot of people that tell me that I am a nostalgic person. I don't necessarily see it. And I don't see myself as someone who necessarily wanted to hold on to her childhood. I was always eager to grow up. Its one of my fatal flaws actually. I tend to focus on the destination a lot more than the journey itself. I spent grade school planning for high school, high school planning for college, college planning for life... I sadly was never much of one for living in the moment and appreciating it.

I've slowed myself down some and I find, especially at certain times of the year, reflecting more and more on the past. I find myself thinking about grade school art projects and how completely inept I was at them. I can remember, on a cold evening like yesterday, the smell and feel of the cold coming through the window in my fifth grade classroom. Despite the fact that we have a tree filled with ornaments from my grown up travels and our grown up moments together, I refuse to let Bill throw away the box of old, falling apart Christmas tree ornaments that were on my childhood Christmas tree. I shy away from church at St. Hilary's, which prides itself on a vibrant, modern Catholic service, in favor of St. Sebastian's, an older church that still uses the hymns that I learned in the first grade.

But my most sentimental moments come from holiday specials. And thanks to Youtube, I get to relive some of the most simple yet most important memories of high school. There is not a single holiday special from the 70's and 80's that cannot be found on Youtube if you look hard enough. I know that by watching them I am probably contributing to delinquency in some way. I mean, you are not supposed to publish copyrighted material, and I am pretty sure that Frosty the Snowman and the Grinch fall into that category. I have gone so far as to make myself a holiday playlist of every special I can find, even the more hard to find shows, like Yogi's First Christmas and Twas the Night Before Christmas. (Remember the victorian mouse that destroyed the clock?) Everyone stop to watch Rudolph if they happen to catch it on TV. But I am positively obsessed with these. I actually listen to them during the day at work!

What is it that makes these holiday classics so special to me? I can't really explain it. Maybe its how when we were growing up, and you didn't have a DVR to record Charlie Brown while you watched Family Ties. The evening stopped, and you dropped whatever you were doing to watch Charlie Brown direct the Christmas play. It was a really big deal! We made popcorn and a fire in the fireplace, and every year were sure never to miss a single special. Maybe it reminds me of a simpler time, when my biggest concern was one of those pop quizzes that we used to have in Reading or whether or not I was getting a grip on long division. Maybe it wasn't just that my life was simpler, but that the world was simpler as well. Not that I don't love the conveniences of today, but I never tore the house apart looking for our telephone (it was on the wall in the kitchen) or my iPod (the music player was the size of a mini fridge and you couldn't miss it.)

If my obsession with holiday tv makes me nostalgic, then I guess I am. I can't definitively explain why I watch these shows over and over again. I just know that they are still as much a part of holidays today as they were twenty years ago. And I think they still will be in twenty more years. Thanks to Youtube, I can listen to my holiday favorites any time I want, whether I am analyzing a portfolio (can't work without background noise you know!) , working on my book, or knitting in front of the Christmas tree. I can indulge my holiday craving for Muppets singing around the fireplace whenever I want. And I can remember the Christmases of days gone by, of the safety and security of childhood, and the carefree feeling of being a kid.