A Trip Home For Christmas

Back in 2014 I shared a little one-man Christmas cheer game I indulge in at this time of year, a simple Google search string that fills your screen with seasonal warmth and goodwill from the past. Now I've found another one that does much the same, except now the pictures move.

Basically, you're going to do the same thing we did then, except on YouTube. You'll load the YouTube home page, enter "Christmas" and a year in the search bar, and hit return. And your results page will fill with home movies.

Case in point: "Christmas 1963", above. Under no circumstances miss the little girl dressed to the yuletide nines, demonstrating the Twist. Nor the fact that this footage was shot a month or less after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Terrifying things had happened, yet folks were celebrating the holidays anyway, with unstinting courage.

This life passes so fast. You turn your head, and the Twist is old and tacky, and it always was.

But that's not true. For a day or two, one Christmas long ago, it was fresh and futuristic and something old people should learn about.

And the same thing is happening right now. It'll happen tomorrow too, and the day after that, and we need to pay attention to it every day.

So we can remember how new and bright it was, and we were, when we look it up on YouTube sixty years hence.

Better still, YouTube being what it is, you'll find all kinds of other jaunts home in the margins. Old TV commercials; "hip gifts for 1963" news segments; period holiday music. And you can change up that search string: "Chanukah", "holidays", "Xmas", "New Year's", "December", "winter", and every year you've lived.

If you're a native of the pre-Internet world – that place of sustained attention and short memory – you know how miraculous all of this is.

So get out there and take advantage of it. God knows this new realm is annoying enough; might as well get something out of it while we're up.

The very best of holidays from all of us here at Rusty Ring.