The song says Christmas is the most wonderful time of year. Certain folks say it’s the most stressful. Grumpy people says its too commercial. After you’re done eating, it’s definitely the fattest. More than all of that however, it is the most nostalgic. Thanksgiving is probably a close second. Opening Sunday of the NFL season, that first time in fall when you smell burning leaves…those are all nostalgic days.
But not like Christmas.
Things that are synonymous with Christmas. My mom’s homemade poppyseed roll, college bowl games, Christmas decorations at the mall, It’s a Wonderful Life, and whatever the hell Bing Crosby was talking about when he sang, “in the air, there’s a feeling of Christmas.”
You know what I’m talking about. It’s still there even though you’re not a kid anymore. Although on Christmas Eve, admit it, you take a peek out of the back window near the chimney just before you go to bed and look up. You do it. Everybody does. And just for a second…you’re a kid again. It’s awesome.
Christmas has this mesmerizing quality to it. For one, you physically see it everywhere. Lights, decorations, iconic commericals, and TV specials, etc. In school you sing Christmas songs and have Christmas parties. Or at least we did, but I went to Catholic school. We didn’t have to substitute “winter” every time we wanted to say “Christmas.” We could sing “O Come all ye Faithful” and nobody worried about somebody’s crazy hippie Mom calling the ACLU to sue to the school.
Back in the day we’d get two weeks off from school and the anticipation for that last day of school before Christmas vacation was staggering. Seriously. It was nearly incapacitating. In my mind is burned the date of Friday, December 19, 1980. Last day of school in 5th grade before Christmas vacation. On top of a filing cabinet in the corner of the room was one of those changeable block calendars and I’d stare that damn thing down every day until the bell rang at 3:15 letting us out of school. By the time you are 10, you’ve unfortunately figured out the whole Santa thing. But it didn’t change the anticipation. Which, as I have come to realize, is really the best part. December is like a three and a-half week long Christmas tailgate. I mean there’s nog, special gear you break out, and everybody sings the same songs.
But the best part of Christmas vacation was that first Sunday. You were able to watch all the NFL games during the last weekend of the regular season without that impending sense of dread that you had to go to school the next day.
Anyway, real Christmas nostalgia needs to stop you from doing whatever it is you are currently doing. You hear “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and you get that goofy half smile. Or you’re out in your driveway and you smell that cold crispness in the December air combined with smoke wafting out of somebody’s chimney. Or you take a bite of the aforementioned homemade poppyseed roll.
Personally, whenever I see this commercial it takes me back to Christmas when I was a kid. The irony is that it is a beer commercial. But c’mon, it combines Christmas, beer and “I’ll be Home for Christmas.”
If you really think about it, is there a person on the planet who has ever sounded more like Christmas than Andy Williams? No. No there isn’t.
Anyway, Christmas clip of the day below:
