I remember fondly Christmas TV. I still get excited about it. Radio too. It's as much part of the Festive Season as the tree and tinsel. Buying the Christmas TV or Radio Times was and still is the start of the season proper. The covers are always wonderful but it's the little vignetts and black and white drawings in the mag that I love the most, especially those sprinkled over the radio listings. Woodcut-style drawings are my true favourites, their simplicity hark back to a rustic past when the countryside was full of magic, folklore and myth. What could be more evocative of Christmas in Winter, the top of the year and turning of the world once more.
A particular treat one Christmas in the late Sixties/ early Seventies was a repeat of a British gem, the film Ghost Train starring Arther Askey! Atmospheric, funny and for me, forever linked to Christmas! I always look out for it when I get December's Radio Times!
What's your favourite Xmas TV?
I used to feel all that, way back. Those b/w drawings were evocative, and not just at Christmas. I loved them on the Doctor Who listings (the old, proper Doctor Who, I mean).
ReplyDeleteI still think of Christmas TV as being Wizard of Oz, and of late, those wonderful feel-good American films like "Jingle All the Way" and "Call Me Claus".
But, I dunno, it just doesn't have the magic it used to when I was a child. I think that longing for magic, but knowing it won't be there, makes me dislike Christmas more than I already do (ie, because the neighbours spoil it).
ReplyDeleteSigh .... have I become old and cynical? How to get back that magic?
Buy some old Project Sword toy and play with it in the back garden - sod the neighbours ; D
ReplyDeleteHeh, heh. Not a bad idea, MIke. Still kinda hoping for the Barbie Astronaut though (hint hint) ...
ReplyDeleteTell me though, Bloggers ... am I the only one who's lost the sense of Christmas-time magic?
Seriously, Christmas can be a bummer for some folks, and it doesn't help with big hyper-markets shoving it down your throat six months before! Mega pressure if you've got kids and you don't know if you're job's safe, but hey, it is just one day and it should be fun. Make it fun.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I like to watch Alister Simms ' Scrooge' on Christmas morning if I can. I must have seen it a million times but the ending always cracks me up. I guess it does sum up the Christmas spirit for me.
i miss the xmas spirit of the sixties terribly. after i got past 16 it all started to downhill. Now at48 and with kids of my own, its a real struggle to evoke that special magic when your faced with an xmas list totalling the national debt of venuzuela. Sometimes its still possible to feel the magic, late on 24 dec when the house is quiet and the tree is lit...
ReplyDelete"bear but a touch of my cloak and you shall be upheld in more than this..". Alistair Sim - best Scrooge ever
It seems to me that the ghost of Alastair Sim should be visiting Mr Toad and Mr Wotans homes on Christmas eve - hopefully with some cash.;D
ReplyDeleteYes, Christmas is not what it was.
ReplyDeleteI always put it down to not being a kid any more. I generally have a quiet Christmas, and resolve not to do any work for at least 2 days (I'm self employed, so this can be a treat!) Hven't found any space ship toys I'd want to give or receive in the shops, but that's the usual story...
For me, Christmas TV will always be associated with the wonderful BBC M.R.James Ghost Stories,
ReplyDeleteAlso "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer", the one with Burl Ives narrating and singing. That Yeti monster in it always scared me silly when I was a kid.
Those old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films too, they had a whole series of those on for a couple of Christmases as I remember...and then there was the old Flash Gordon series...
Some of the old monster/fantasy films are forever etched in my Christmas memories too..."Jack The Giant Killer" and "Gulliver's Travels" being on in that wonderful period immediately before Christmas day and "Valley Of The Gwangi" being on on Boxing Day when the sadness that that wonderful pre-Christmas feeling has all gone had set in!
My sister and I standing infront of a switched off telly on Christmas Eve singing carols...
I could go on and on and on.....
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ReplyDeleteHmm, yes, maybe it is to do with leaving childhood. That's when it happened for me, and seems so for Wote too. But why? It's not like we don't like the same things still. Least, I do ... and I'm pretty sure lots here do too. If anything, there is even more that has the potential to lead to that feeling of specialness at this time of year.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not like childhood was perfect. My parents argued through most Christmases I recall.
What's hard about it all is being aware of the absence of that sense of magic ... that feeling that something wonderful was about to happen. It's a longing, almost a terrible longing, for something more. Damn, but I wish right now I was a drinker ... probably just as well I'm not I guess.
Someone post something uplifting quickly, please. Come on Woodsy, Wote ... you're needed ^_^
OMG, yes, eviled! I'd forgotten the Flash Gordon series. Remember watching those while sitting in front of a lovely, warm fire one Christmas! I actually do seem to recall that year it did have magic, despite crappy life circumstances. How odd.
ReplyDeleteBut not the M.R.James Ghost Stories!!!! Yikes! Took me almost a year to get over the last one I watched. Never again. Mitzi's forbidden me anyway.
That sense of magic was palpable as a child, I would do almost anything to get it back Toad.
ReplyDeleteI can remember the most mundane of things were suddenly incredibly potent with a sense of occasion. For example, I can remember polishing some apples with my sister for the fruit bowl one Christmas Eve, hardly an event of earth shattering momentum but I can close my eyes and be back doing it like it was a few minutes ago, complete with the warm yellow glow of the kitchen lights and the feeling that I was involved in some kind of fairy tale.
Sounds soft I know but it is the truth...I did believe in magic...back then.
Nothing soft about it at all, eviled. I pity those who don't know what we're talking about.
ReplyDeleteIn an attempt to post something uplifting, I find snow falling still brings back something of the magic of childhood -always loved snow, and can even remember a white xmas once.
ReplyDeleteYes Andy, I agree. Snow can definitely bring back some of the magic...I love the effect it has on the sound of everything.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I can't remember an actual white Christmas, I do remember one Christmas school concert taking place in the big hall where one wall was almost total glass and the snow began to fall outside.
I hated school and the concert was the very last thing before we had our Christmas holidays...that was a truly magical occasion.
That would have been the very early 70s, I'd be about 10 or 11.
Well heres to xmas 2010 - in a small virtual way we can all have a nostalgic xmas once more.. im sure ill be wishing for falling snow, the smell of apples and the jingle of bells on the rooftops once more. As long as we can still hold the memories alive theres no reason we cant recreate them once more for ourselves and our friends. It didnt do scrooge any harm changing the future did it!
ReplyDeleteAndy, thank you! Snow does that for me too, but I'd forgotten. Depression can mask everything - can obscure the good. I've scoffed in the past at the idea of lists of happy things ... but maybe there's something in it. Just something to remind me there are lil bits of magic ... or at least hints of them, even now.
ReplyDeleteEviled, last Christmas was a white one for me. I was lucky enough to stay with family of a friend, and they live in a part of the country where the snow was the best I've seen since Childhood. Sadly, a crap year had chased that memory from my mind. But now you've reminded me. ^_^
And Wote ... while I'm not sure we can recreate what was, you're right ... we can try and make some magic now.
Thanks, guys. Feeling a whole lot better now ^_^
and just to go back to the original question - my favourite xmas telly would be the original BBC production of Quatermass and the Pit! Ive got it on dvd and dig it out every bloody year!
ReplyDeleteHmm... we spent a few Xmases in London when I was young, and anything on the Beeb was a marvel to my brother and self. Funnily enough, whenever I see the old ident of the (single-colour) globe turning in front with the continents in silhouette in the back and BBC 2 underneath I can remember some London hotel lobby with that typical red hotel wall-to-wall and the quaint (to us) fire doors and Smith's crisps in a gazillion strange (to us) flavours, etc. When in London a trip to Hamley's was always included, and that was magic indeed. Stuff I remember getting there was that distinctly-smelling goop in a tube that you put a straw in to make large orange bubbles, all the way up to an Action Man tank that I proudly held on my lap during the entire flight back to Schiphol. No way I was going to let that out of my sight. :)
ReplyDeleteIn Holland we didn't do prezzies at Xmas until much later in life, and then only because it was more convenient viz student holidays allowing us all to be home. When young, we celebrated St Nicholas Eve (December 5th), where my Mom would take us to see the department store windows in The Hague, while my Dad would install the St Nick's Surprise he'd secretly make every year. On our return a beaming Dad would say we'd just missed St Nick, but he left us something in the living room. Which one year would be a (to us) sizeable rocket (from large carboard barrels with xmas lights inside) or biscuit house or even a huge dragon once. Those were magic occasions, which I cherish as memories. And which indeed can't be bettered by anything in later life, true.
ReplyDeleteAnd finally I agree with you all about snow. Covers up all the dirt and my unkept garden and presents you with this beautiful white world when you open the curtains in the morning. First footsteps in the snow are still magical, as is the deep silence it provides. And then the family and self get out the sleighs, scramble up the street (which is on a hill) and just keep sliding down for the rest of the day. The council had one of those "you're doing XX kph" lightboxes in our street for awhile, and I'm amazed that my youngest and self together managed nearly 20 kph on our Soviet-built ski-sled. The wooden traditional sleigh didn't even register... :)
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