The Everything Family Christmas Book (50 page)

Your Christmas Budget in the 1980s

Technology is seen increasingly in homes, exemplified by this list of items.

• Microwave oven: $227.00

• Videocassette recorder (1980): $1,395

• Videocassette recorder (1989): $299

• Garfield telephone: $44.70

• Space Invaders video game cassette: $24.88

• Your favorite Care Bear: $13.99

• Castle Greyskull, from the Masters of the Universe Collection: $23.99

• Lazer tag game kit: $29.99

• Rambo Rocket water launcher: $14.96

In the News in the 1980s
And Then What?

Highlights from columnist Ellen Goodman’s tongue-in-cheek 1981
Boston Globe
column “Ways to Lose Weight During the Holidays” included giving birth, “the only surefire way to drop seven pounds overnight between Christmas and New Year’s"; joining a cult that consumes only food of a certain shade; hiring a food stylist to assemble beautiful, but inedible, meals; and getting a divorce.

Christmas, USA

• Bethlehem: 838

• Holly: 542

• Joy: 145

• Holiday: 110

• Christmas: 89

• Noël: 30

• Carol: 17

• Mistletoe: 12

• Santa Claus: 7

—From a 1985 U.S. Geological Survey report of places, including local landmarks, bearing names reminiscent of Christmas themes

A Yuppified Christmas

“Ghost,” said Jeremy, “tell me, please, what do I have to do to become president—or at least managing director?”

—From Michael Lewis’s 1989
New York Times
column “A Christmas Bonus,” a parody of
A Christmas Carol
in which a Wall Streeter ponders his awful fate in years to come: a door bearing the words “Jeremy Gaunt, Vice President”

The Brady Bunch, Revisited

Debuting on Sunday, December 18, 1988,
A Very Brady Christmas
was CBS’s highest-rated TV movie of that year. Following its premiere broadcast, the telepicture elevated CBS’s third-place ranking to the number-two spot for the first time that season in the weekly ratings.

Says (producer) Sherwood (Schwartz), “The success of it was a combination of two things. One was the fact that it was Christmas time, which is family time, so it was a perfect opportunity to bring them back. And number two, many people wanted to know what they looked like. There was a great longing to see what happens. It’s like with any family reunion.”

—From Elizabeth Moran’s book
Bradymania

Christmas Advertising in the 1980s

Hot Shirt for Berzerk Fans

Straight from Atari’s latest home video challenge comes this sharp-looking official Berzerk T-shirt. Captures all the fast-blasting action of this all-time favorite. $7.95

—From the Atari Club Christmas Catalog 1982, from
www.gamingsteve.com

Christmas in the 1990s

The 1990s brought an unsettling decade, as we coped with the first Gulf War and the bombings of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. On the economic side, however, the nation was booming, alongside advances in technology that brought the World Wide Web to homes and businesses, connecting people around the world like never before. Popular toys included Beanie Babies and Tickle Me Elmo, and a move from skateboards to Rollerblades.

Your Christmas Budget in the 1990s

• Sony Walkman: $69.99

• Transformer toy figure: $15.00

• Girl’s bicycle: $150.00

• Hardcover book: $25.00

• Music CD: $19.99

• Cordless power drill: $95.00

• Polar fleece scarf: $9.99

• DVD Player: $525

In the News in the 1990s
Vatican Text of Pope John Paul II’s Message to Children for Christmas 1994

People cannot live without love. They are called to love God and their neighbor, but in order to love properly they must be certain that God loves them.

God loves you, dear children! This is what I want to tell you at the end of the Year of the Family and on the occasion of these Christmas feast days, which in a special way are your feast days.

I hope that they will be joyful and peaceful for you; I hope that during them you will have a more intense experience of the love of your parents, of your brothers and sisters, and of the other members of your family.

This love must then spread to your whole community, even to the whole world, precisely through you, dear children. Love will then be able to reach those who are most in need of it, especially the suffering and the abandoned.

What joy is greater than the joy brought by love? What joy is greater than the joy which you, O Jesus, bring at Christmas to people’s hearts, and especially to the hearts of children?

Raise your tiny hand, Divine Child, and bless these young friends of yours, bless the children of all the earth.

—John-Paul P.P. II, December 13, 1994

In 1999, a 100-foot Norway spruce made history at the Rockefeller Center, when it became the tallest tree to grace the Center during the Christmas season, an annual tradition since 1933. The tree came from the yard of a couple from Killingworth, Connecticut.

Christmas Advertising in the 1990s

New online ordering from L.L. Bean lets customers wrap up holiday shopping.

L.L. Bean Inc., the Maine based outdoors catalog company is pleased to offer customers the option of shopping online this holiday season.

Building upon an 84 year tradition of customer commitment, L.L. Bean now offers on-line ordering for customers who prefer the convenience of shopping from their computers. Customers may now order and send L.L. Bean merchandise to everyone on their Christmas list while visiting the company’s Web site…. For Christmas, customers will find a Product Guide that offers over 300 of L.L. Bean’s most popular products for the holidays in all of L.L. Bean’s product categories: Clothing, Home and Camp, Sporting Goods, LL Kids and Gift Certificates. The order process is simple and expedient. Each detailed product display contains the illustrative photos and informational copy that customers are accustomed to finding in the L.L. Bean catalogs. Upon selection the customer will immediately know if the item is in-stock, and will receive prompt confirmation of the order via e-mail.

—L.L. Bean

Christmas in the 2000s

Although the decade opened with the hope brought by the turn of the millennium, emotions turned to shock at the events of September 11, 2001 in the United States, with conflict ensuing in countries around the world. As the decade continued, however, further advances in technology, health, and environmental research provided hope again—in the battles for wellness, quality of life, and climate change. Toys based on cartoon characters remained very popular, from Buzz Lightyear to Spiderman, along with ever-more-sophisticated computer-simulation games.

Your Christmas Budget in the 2000s

A century later, here’s how your very first Christmas-budget list looks, updated to keep up with the times.

• Men’s sport jacket (smoking optional): $99.95

• TV cabinet: $450.00

• Portable MP3 player: $109.99

• China candlestick: $35.00

• Boys’ worsted sweater: $30.00

• Toy sewing machine: $29.99

• Toy automobile: $9.99

• Railroad set: $34.00

• Paperbound copy of
Peck’s Bad Boy:
$19.95

In the News in the 2000s
Green Christmas: Tips for an Eco-Friendly Holiday

Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s day, Americans throw away a million extra tons of garbage each week, including holiday wrapping and packaging, according to Robert
Lilienfeld. Lilienfield is coauthor of the book Use Less Stuff: Environmental Solutions for Who We Really Are.

So why not recycle holiday gift wrap? Lilienfield, who has published a newsletter on reducing waste since 1996, notes that if every family reused just 2 feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet.

And not all gifts need wrapping. “Think back to your three favorite holiday memories,” Lilienfeld said. “I’m willing to bet that they all involve time you spent with your family and friends.”

By giving gifts that can be experienced, like tickets to a baseball game or a homemade dinner, you can minimize wrapping and still win points with the receiver. “People like these gifts just as much,” he said.

—Cameron Walker for
National Geographic News,
December 20, 2004

Trees for Troops

Christmas Tree growers donated more than 11,000 Christmas Trees to U.S. troops and their families during the 2006 holiday season. The Trees for Troops Program, sponsored by the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation (and FedEx Corp., which donated the shipping for all of the trees), kicked off on Nov. 14, 2006, with the collection of trees in Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana. These trees were shipped overseas to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East and sailors in the 5th fleet in the Gulf.

Additional Christmas Trees were delivered to U.S. troops and their families at military bases across the United States.

—
www.christmastree.org

Christmas Advertising in the 2000s

Fantasy Gifts

Neiman Marcus revealed its annual list of fantasy gifts in 2005 to include a private Elton John concert for $1.5 million, a prototype M400 Skycar (a personal vertical take-off and landing aircraft) for $3.5 million, and a designer tree house by artist Roderick Wolgamott Romero for $50,000.

—CNN

11
Christmas Around the World

C
hristmas is observed in all kinds of places around the world—from the privacy of a single home to public worship in a cathedral, in the smallest villages and the largest cities, in the jungles and in the deserts. In many places, however, it looks much different than a North American Christmas. Do they have Santa Claus in China, for example? What’s for Christmas dinner in Sweden? What happens when Christmas arrives during summer vacation? Here’s a sampling of global traditions, to answer these questions and more.

Christmas in Europe

As a general rule, the Christmas season in Europe begins in early December and lasts through January 6. The celebration is marked by beautiful and expansive Nativity scenes, delicious feasts, and the observance of Epiphany. Though each culture has its unique customs and rituals, there are elements that unify the holiday for all within a given country.

France

For the French, the winter holiday (known as Noël, from an expression meaning “day of birth”) begins on December 6, St. Nicholas’s Day. St. Nicholas’s Day is celebrated most heartily in the provinces, particularly in Lorraine, as it is believed that the Virgin Mary gave Lorraine to Nicholas as a gift; he is its patron saint. He is also, of course, the patron saint of children; little ones throughout France leave out their shoes in the hope that St. Nicholas will leave gifts of nuts and candy during his night visit.