Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas Lesson

It’s the Holiday Season! So whoop-dee do and dickery dock and don’t forget to hang up your sock…

This time of year often makes me reflective. I reflect on what I have done over the last year, where I hope to go in the year ahead and what the heck to get people who are absolutely impossible to buy for. Ahh, the joys of Christmas.

One of the things I miss from childhood TV and Christmas is the Christmas specials. Back in the day before there were 900 hundred channels and still nothing on, we were stuck with 4 channels, ABC, CBS, NBC and an independent channel. There were PBS stations too, but to get those the antenna had to be in just the right position, Jupiter had to align with Mars and the Cubs had to win the World Series. In other words, it didn’t happen much.

But the Christmas specials were the highlight of the holiday season. I learned very important things from those specials, although they were probably not the lessons that were being taught.

The Little Drummer Boy taught me that pa rum pum pum pum can be the most annoying phrase ever and will be trapped in your mind until Happy Valentine’s Day, Charlie Brown! It also taught me never to have a pet and love it because some idiot will run over it and kill it. I cried every year when the lamb died. Okay, it didn’t actually die, but I was usually crying too hard to realize that. It tied to all the heartbreak of having a pet die, not the lesson of everyone has a gift to give.

A Charlie Brown Christmas taught me that friends are schmucks and will do mean things just to hurt you. Lucy pulling the ball out from Charlie Brown. Everyone laughing at Charlie’s Christmas tree. Snoopy showing up Charlie with his fancy lights and such.  Yeah, they all came together at the end, but it is an explanation why the Peanuts gang was never allowed to grow up. No one wanted to see the very special news report of Charlie Brown on the roof of the elementary school with an assault rifle and tons of ammunition.

The animated specials Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Coming to Town taught me it is better to fit in than be an individual. Not only does Rudolph and that annoying little dentist elf, Hermey, get thrown out of the wonderland of Santa’s workshop, but also nearly get eaten by an abominable snowman. Santa Claus is on the run from the Burgermeister and has to contend with the Winter Warlock. Better to be good little drones, stay home and be safe and warm.

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas taught me that those damn little Who’s need to learn to shut up! That “Fahwho Foraze, Dahwho Doraze” was enough to turn anyone into a psycho-Christmas-hating-badly dressed-green-skinned freak.  I also learned that it’s okay to abuse your dog, as long as you are sorry about it later. Poor little Max having to pull that overstuffed Grinch and sleigh. No dachshund should ever be subjected to that, especially with a stick and some stupid looking ornaments strapped to his head.

Lastly, I learned from Frosty the Snowman that fun is fleeting. All good things must come to an end, just like this entry.

   

All pictures are from the IMDb website.

Greetings World!

I have been saying for years that I was going to write a blog. Being a procrastinator and lazy, it has taken me a long time to get to this point. So, here I go.

I am a self-confessed TV junkie. I turn the TV on pretty much as soon as I get out of bed and shut it off right before I go to sleep at night. Okay, I actually go to the bathroom first then go to sleep, but you get the idea. I watch repeats of repeats of repeats.

Some of my first memories are of TV from when I was around 3 years old.  I remember watching the news with the pictures and accounts of Viet Nam. I had no idea what was going on. I didn't understand why the only actor that showed up repeatedly was some guy behind a desk. You saw actors get killed on one show and turn up on the next one, but not on this news show. I didn't like it. My mother tried to explain it to me, but imagine trying to explain war and death to a 3 year old without scaring them to death. Yeah. I didn't get it until much later and I kind of wish I hadn't.

Over the course of this blog, I will discuss the important lessons I have learned from various TV shows, mostly American. Thanks to the wonderful world of Netflix, I am getting the opportunity to learn new things from watching British TV.

So, this is an introduction of me and my credentials, such as they are. I have been enjoying TV my whole life. When I was sick and home from school, my days were filled with reruns of Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan's Island, Hogan's Heroes, Mr. Ed and cartoons.

Summer break was filled with these as well as soap operas, Days of Our Lives, The Doctors, Another World and Somerset. My mother watched the NBC soaps and got me started on them. When my father was off work for a while one summer, he joined us for the daily viewings. When he returned to work and me to school, our dinner discussions were a daily recap of the shows and what we thought would happen next.

I will be exploring TV's impact on my life and what I have learned about life as we go along.

Buckle your seat belt, it's going to be a bumpy ride.