Last night, my daughter and I watched a Christmas classic: Santa Claus is coming to town. It's a Rankin/Bass stop-motion special that's one of the staples of my childhood.
While watching, I narrated to Christine how, as kids, we didn't have VCRs or streaming services (or the Internet for that matter!), but we knew that RPN-9 (one of the local TV channels would start broadcasting these goodies come September. So on weekends we would check out the channel mid-afternoons and we would inevitably be able to catch either this, or the more popular Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, or the cartoon Frosty the snowman.
When I got this DVD set, this was when I learned that there was actually a Little Drummer Boy special as well. So that's a bonus!
I told my daughter how we didn't even know these had colour because we only had a black and white TV! And in those segments where the movie fades out and fades in are where TV commercials are inserted which is essentially toilet break for us or time to grab something to eat.
For us back then, watching these favourites signalled the coming of the Christmas season and of good things to come. I still turn to these simple joys when the 'ber months come rolling in.
Watching this last night gave me warm fuzzies. My daughter also appreciated it, being a sort of origin story for Santa Claus. Now she knows how Santa met Mrs Claus, why he goes through chimneys, why he gives toys, how the reindeer received the power of flight, and how stockings figure in all this!
Interestingly enough, I found this special on YouTube. Enjoy!
