Christmas: Are they shoving it down our throats too early?

[D'Snowth]

I guess this might as well be our permanent MC Christmas thread? I notice we're still posting it in, even though it was originally about expressing annoyance or irritation over the oversell of Christmas extra early this year... but, that's besides the point.

Anyway, I know Thanksgiving is one holiday that seems to get the short end of the stick as far as marketing goes, on any end of the spectrum, but I also got to thinking that another major holiday that doesn't seem to get as much attention as the others do is Easter.

Well, okay, retail-wise, Easter gets plenty attention, what with egg-coloring kits, and pre-packaged or fill-it-yourself baskets for kids, bunnies and chicks all over the place, but, like Thanksgiving, notice that you never see any Easter specials or Easter episodes of popular shows or anything? I know there are some out there, but they're few and far between: Rankin/Bass has one that was more like a crossover between the story of the Easter Bunny and The Little Engine That Could (and that other one where Casey Kassem was the Easter Bunny who missed Easter and kept trying to make up for it by delivering eggs during the other holidays), and of course we know that Snoopy is the Easter Beagle... and even THE FAMILY CIRCUS (which I know everybody else hates) had an obscure animated special with Dizzy Gilespi as a musical Easter Bunny. That's about all I can think of.

I was reading TV Tropes (big shock), and read on SST's page that CEOSST has a Sequel Hook because Oscar asks Big Bird, "How do you think the Easter Bunny can hide all those eggs in one night?", which kind of got me to thinking (not about how that itself should be a sequel to CEOSST) why SST never did an Easter special. The closest we've got was ELMO SAVES CHRISTMAS, with Harvey Fierstein as the Easter/Christmas Bunny trying to sell Easter/Christmas eggs. With a ton of Christmas specials as well as a couple of direct-to-video Halloween specials under their belt, surely they could come up with an entertaining Easter special.

 

[CensoredAlso]

Well I guess the difference is the Easter Bunny never really developed a nuanced pop culture back story the way Santa Claus did.

As far as the religious aspect, I guess most people are more comfortable celebrating a birth than a death. Makes sense when you think about it.

 

[D'Snowth]

Well, as far as religious aspects go, with commercialism, materialism, secular glee, etc., Easter always felt closer to a spiritual holiday than Christmas, but I guess that's because Easter actually falls on Sunday, so part of a traditional Easter Day celebration would be to attend the Easter Sunday cantata service (of course, that's not to say there isn't the Christmas Eve cantata as well).

That may, or may not have something to do with it, considering you really can't talk about that kind of stuff of TV anymore these days. I always think back to LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, when June tells Beaver that he can never get away with something, even if he thinks he is, because God is watching him, and sees everything he does (even through the roof and if he hides in the closet). Try having that on a network show today, and there would be all kinds of outcry demanding the scene be removed from future airings.

But, getting back to the Easter Bunny, you do bring up a point, and I think I brought it up before, but as far as Santa Claus goes, yes, he is actually based on a real saint named Nicholas, who would deliver toys to poor children on Christmas Eve... but I'm not entirely sure just where the concept of the Easter Bunny first arose, or what inspired it... unless there actually was a bunny who would hide painted eggs the night before Easter, but... eh... that would be far-fetched.

 

[mr3urious]

That may, or may not have something to do with it, considering you really can't talk about that kind of stuff of TV anymore these days. I always think back to LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, when June tells Beaver that he can never get away with something, even if he thinks he is, because God is watching him, and sees everything he does (even through the roof and if he hides in the closet). Try having that on a network show today, and there would be all kinds of outcry demanding the scene be removed from future airings.

It feels more like that was forced in there because of the Red Scare at the time, just like the line in The Day the Earth Stood Still in which a revived Klaatu states that Gort's power over life and death is reserved for the Almighty Spirit.

but I'm not entirely sure just where the concept of the Easter Bunny first arose, or what inspired it... unless there actually was a bunny who would hide painted eggs the night before Easter, but... eh... that would be far-fetched.

Like I said before, that was something borrowed from the Pagans, who worshiped a fertility goddess who was usually depicted with a rabbit's face.

 

[D'Snowth]

Ishtar had the face of a rabbit? Hmm.

 

[Drtooth]

It feels more like that was forced in there because of the Red Scare at the time, just like the line in The Day the Earth Stood Still in which a revived Klaatu states that Gort's power over life and death is reserved for the Almighty Spirit.

The whole show was because of the Red Scare. I'm not a huge fan of 1950's sitcoms ('cept for Lucy and the Honeymooners), as they're basically all about conformity and wholesomeness. I HATE the sitcom version of Dennis the Menace, but then again, I was spoiled by the DIC cartoon series. I like old time sitcoms about oddballs... The Munsters, The Addams Family, Gilligan's Island.. stuff like that where the characters are free to be unique and weird and wonderful.

But that's completely off topic.

Anyway, know what Christmas special I love but doesn't get much play? The Claymation Christmas special. Yeah, it's on a remarkably expensive DVD, I only have it on a very old VHS that's probably unwatchable. It must be somewhere online, though. I love the Carol of the Bells segment ("Uh... I los' mine."). That one had a nice mix of Christmas music both religious and Santa/Rudolph related. And who could forget the "Here we come a [waddling/wallowing/waffling]" carol? Much better than Elves on Shelves.

 

[D'Snowth]

I honestly don't buy any of this stuff that 50s sitcoms were all about "conformity", I know people who were actually alive and grew up during the 50s, and they've all said that what you saw on LEAVE IT TO BEAVER and 50s shows like that was pretty much exactly what life was like back in those days. I guess maybe today, where decency and values take a backseat to everything, today's modern people would look at the world of Beaver Cleaver and think conformity, but I think the real conformity is going on today with society in general conforming to its own set of rules to meet its own satisfaction, even though society's "rules" are anything but good and decent. As for wholesomeness, we need more wholesomeness in the world today; wholesomeness would offer a really nice and refreshing counterprogramming to the filth shows are like today.

 

[charlietheowl]

I honestly don't buy any of this stuff that 50s sitcoms were all about "conformity", I know people who were actually alive and grew up during the 50s, and they've all said that what you saw on LEAVE IT TO BEAVER and 50s shows like that was pretty much exactly what life was like back in those days. I guess maybe today, where decency and values take a backseat to everything, today's modern people would look at the world of Beaver Cleaver and think conformity, but I think the real conformity is going on today with society in general conforming to its own set of rules to meet its own satisfaction, even though society's "rules" are anything but good and decent.

I don't think it's fair to say the 1950s were idyllic for everyone involved. Let's remember there was the already mentioned Red Scare, which cost countless people their jobs and reputations, racial incidents (ie, the murder of Emmitt Till, the Rosa Parks incident, Little Rock's school issues), television and artistic censorship (Lucille Ball's pregnancy issue, Elvis not being shown from the waist down in his TV performances), and the general societal attitudes that continued to put women in a subservient position. I don't think the 1950s were really better or worse than any other decade in recent American history; every decade has its positives and negatives. You can't judge the fifties by Leave It To Beaver in the same way you can't say all people in the nineties lived like it was on Friends.

 

[D'Snowth]

Yeah, sure, there was racial tension back then... but there's still racial tension today too; does anyone else honestly think Obama would be receiving half the negativity his opponents hurl towards him if he were a older white guy? Frank Caliendo satired this perfectly on his shortlived MADtv spinoff where he was John McCain in a presidential campaign ad, talking about how the White House needs to be kept white, "So please vote for me, because Barack Obama is not... oh please, don't make me say it." Yeah, there were murders back then, things like that, but really, how common was all that stuff back then compared to today? BABY BLUES did an interesting take on this with Zoe and Hammy talking about how when their parents were kids, they could go anywhere in town by themselves, not have to lock their doors, sit in cars by themselves, and not have to worry about bad guys because they didn't have any back then.

As far as television censorship goes... hey, at least television censorship was DECENT back in those days. There actually used to be the little code thingamadoody, it was called, "Practices and Standards", it set up the foundation of what you could and couldn't do on television. Yeah, Lucy's pregnancy and Elvis' gyrating hips may have been a bit much, and so was having married couples in separate beds (that, of which, was phased out by the 60s)... fast-forward to today, however, and it's like nobody actually even works at the FCC, and Practices and Standards practically don't exist anymore, because look at all the stuff that's on TV today? As I've said before, adult cartoons in particular always intentionally push the envelope farther than others normally would do to see just how far they can go in what they can get away with.

I'm not saying older decades didn't have their problems either (I'm well aware that most of the wholesome images that TV offered in the 60s were to take people's minds off the war in Vietnam), but I don't get why people try to dissect them, pick out the negative things that did happen, and use them as an example of, "Oh, see? Looks like the 50s or 60s weren't so idealic after all" to justify that the old days were just as bad as our world is today. Once again, there are a LOT of older people in my life (I was a late bloomer), and they always talk about things that were mentioned above: not having to lock doors, being able to leave windows open, kids could play outside and walk around town without adult supervision, kids respecting their elders and addressing them as, "Sir" or, "Ma'am", buglars, intruders, robbers, rapists, other such people weren't even concerns because they were so few and far between... now tell me, is our world today ANYTHING like that? Heck, my middle school had security guards before security guards in schools became a norm.

And yes, every generation has an Eddie Haskell. I went to school with an Eddie Haskell when I was in high school. There will always be Eddie Haskells.

 

[D'Snowth]

I think I know what I want for Christmas this year...

A tuba phone!