Christmas in the 1940's

I've have this odd association between Christmas time and the 1940's. It's hard to say exactly why, or when it started. And I've often wondered if others experience a similar effect.


For awhile, whenever I saw a black and white movie it would make me feel a little Christmasy. And in reading about history, I would wonder how those people and those cultures celebrated that time of the year. It's as if my brain uses the Christmas holiday, or the various variations, as a common ground with which to relate to those other people and other cultures.


The reason I wonder if this feeling is shared or local to my head is that I'm most guilty of doing it with comic books. The Golden Age of comics, from 1938 to about 1953. For the longest time, whenever I read one of these older stories it would feel Christmasy to me even if the story had nothing to do with Christmas.





The reason for this is easily discernible. Christmas reprints. Comic books have a long history of casting their characters in Christmassy settings and situations in the month of December. When I was a boy, two Christmases in a row I got the large Treasury editions of Christmas with the Super-Heroes in my stocking from Santa. I read and re-read and re-read these comics until they were threadbare. They consisted mostly of reprinted stories from the forties. I guess these multiple readings created the association in my head between old comics and Christmas.





The need to relate to people through their celebration of the holiday and the constant presence of super heroes in my life kinda combined in my head. I think the Christmas entertainment I enjoy most is the kind that takes a set of characters that you enjoy year round and showcases them in a Christmas setting. The Christmas episode of Magnum P.I. I always loved the holiday episodes of That 70's Show. The Christmas Jack Benny episodes. And, of course, the Star Wars Christmas special. something that I've never had the bravery or strength of character to get all the way through.






At some point the feeling switched. I started reading and enjoying so much various entertainment from that era that I no longer associated the 1940's with Christmas. But I still associate Christmas with the 1940's.



I think one of the reasons that I associate Christmas with the 1940's and 1950's with Christmas is that it's really a holiday driven by nostalgia. Growing up, we became familiar with the movies and traditions of our parents, who were experiencing the holiday through their own nostalgia. Constantly playing It's a Wonderful Life and listening to Bing Crosby. Even as adults, we've started to overly our own childhood nostalgia onto our kids. How many of you have played Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer or the Charlie Brown Christmas special for your children? Perhaps when they are our age, they'll associate the holiday with the seventies.



Which is.... awesome.

I got a Space 1999 Eagle ship with figures one year. Nothing's more seventies than that.


In closing, it's time to lay another one of my quirky obsessions down on you. We talked about Christmas comics already. Well, a few years ago I became consumed with the idea of cataloging out the Christmas stories in comics. I started a spreadsheet, natch. And catalogued all the stories I could think of or find in my box of Christmas comics. Then I hit the wonderful Grand Comics Database at www.comics.org and searched for any story title containing "Christmas", "Holiday", or "Santa Claus". I've built quite the least, but it's no where near complete and I'm still finding and adding stories.


Thanks,
DCD