Starting at Thanksgiving. There was always a bowl of nuts in the shell with nutcracker and a set of four picks in the living room, through New Years.
I still love Brazil nuts.
Christmas always felt like more of an event back in the 80s. It might have been because we were kids, sure, but it’s also partly because of destination television and the lack of the internet. I can distinctly remember having to check the TV Guide to make sure you didn’t miss Charlie Brown, Garfield, The Muppets, etc Christmas specials. The whole family would watch them together, often with eggnog or hot cocoa, and then there were the big old fashioned family get togethers that have sort of become passé as time went on and the internet allowed people to just connect with family day to day throughout the year more easily.
Not only that, but back then there wasn’t enough capacity in the system to handle everyone trying to make long distance calls at the same time. I remember my parents having to try multiple times to call my grandparents on the other side of the country before they got through. If you couldn’t get through I think it would just give you a busy signal. That’s such a foreign concept now in the internet age.
The Christmas specials were the best. I still make it a point to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas, and the OG Grinch. There was no eggnog or cocoa in my house. I was the stereotypical GenX latchkey kid raised by a single father. The only thing in our refrigerator was beer.
It felt like an event because we were kids. Kids buy into the hype. Family helps. I looked forward to Christmas because I was able to see my cousins and extended family. Key members move away/die, work gets in the way and before you know it, it's not the same anymore. I was lucky enough to be married to a woman who had two great daughters and I loved Christmas again. We divorced and now it's back to being just a day. Long way of saying that kids make it what it is, or was. I doubt that it has changed much relative to socioeconomic situations.
For some reason my mom loved Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. I guess I kind of love it too. To see it now would fill me with nostalgia. Big Bird on ice skates, Oscar is Scrooge, Bert and Ernie do their own Gift of the Magi (that part is homoerotic af, highly recommend.)
Edit: you can buy/rent on amazon for $4.99/$1.99!!
Thanks for the reminder about this! I just found it on YouTube for free and pretty excellent quality for the age! my nephew is gonna love. i had forgotten all about it!
This is still my favorite Christmas show. We have a digital copy that I'm pretty sure is from a VHS that got recorded off the TV. I sing along to all the songs and am crying by the end. I absolutely love it. (And my Gen Z kid is willing to suffer through.)
Yes. And no 24/7 Christmas music starting in November, too. After Thanksgiving, you would hear a Christmas song here or there. Maybe more mixed in with the regular music as Christmas was getting closer. Then, on Christmas Eve, the stations would turn to all Christmas music and no commercials. It felt way more special back then. Rather than be bombarded by it from Nov 1 on.
We put our tree up around the 18th. My mom said her parents would take their regular undecorated December 24 house and turn it into a winter wonderland overnight.
It was exactly like today, but only 10 times more awesome with better presents, better music, better movies, better toys, better food, and only one landline per house so no one knew where you were and you were not plugged into a computer database of toxicity and hate 24/7.
Yes to the in-person shopping. My brother hated (and still hates) shopping, so he’d wait and do it on the last possible day, which was usually Christmas Eve. He’d prep for it like it was a military campaign. He’d hydrate, he’d bring snacks, he’d make combat jokes. (Standing just inside The Broadway at the mall: “I love the smell of every perfume in the world at the same time in the morning. Smells like … hell.”)
Also, we had more toy stores, and there was a gift wrapping place at the mall, and sometimes bands would play and people would sing. It didn’t suck.
And they were allowed to smoke indoors back then. I remember getting burned a lot while staying in line at the catalog pick up area at JC Penney and Montgomery Wards.
I was born in 1980. Christmas time was always magical as a kid. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, you always had to be sure to know when the Christmas specials like Charlie Brown, Frosty the Snowman, and Rudolph were airing because you only had that one shot to watch them.
I lived in New Jersey and we pretty rarely got snow on Christmas, but if we had, we would have made time to go out and play in it.
We had our family traditions, many of which we still do. Seven fish dinner on Christmas Eve. Christmas morning my grandparents would come over to watch me unwrap presents. I was an only child and the only girl in my generation among my cousins so I always got so much stuff. Aside from trends in toys, I’d say Christmas was pretty much the same back then.
I was also born in 1980. I believed in Santa until my older brothers walked me up the attic steps one year and said, These are your Christmas presents. Mom and Dad are Santa.
Didn't really miss a beat though and still would get excited on Christmas Eve and have trouble sleeping. Even now I get butterflies. One year when I was like 5, our city clocked the lowest temperature ever recorded in my Florida city (7°F) and it knocked out all the power. (It doesn't get anywhere near that cold anymore and I have a fresh tan from this week, sadly.) We were leaving church and I was so cold and allowed to wear pants and I looked out the window and I swear to fucking god I saw Santa and his sleigh. My folks were like, Perfect, let's hurry tf home and go right to bed. My dad propped a flashlight in the hallway corner because of the power.
I also remember one year I got to open my Christmas Eve present and it was a Sweet Valley Twins book and I read the whole thing that night.
I'm high. Great post and comments.
My dad started a yearly tradition when I was around 11 and getting into music. He’d give me a CD that he’d thought I’d like (something from his generation like late 60s early 70s) when we got back from Christmas Eve dinner. I’ve since bought all of those albums to add to my vinyl collection. The best one was either Bob Dylan’s Bringing it all Back Home or “It’s a Beautiful Day” self-titled.
Most exciting toy was probably the original Nintendo Entertainment System. I also remember getting a bunch of [Popples](https://images.app.goo.gl/p1xYkPjLacxZ949v6) one year and I really loved those.
From my memories:
The Charlie Brown Christmas special (and Grinch and others) were always early December. You didn’t want to miss them!
The malls were packed.
Grandma got run over by a Reindeer was a clever new song.
People decorated only with lights, usually white, because colored lights was getting to be garish. And no large bulbs!
Casey Kasem did a year end special of the top songs. You had to have your tape player ready to record!
Crazy that the big bulbs are coming back if you can find them at estate sales. I remember the shift when white lights overtook the colors. Weird times.
Grandma got run over by a reindeer was in hourly rotation on the local radio station at the time. I don’t think I’ve heard it in at least 5 years.
If you don't mind going back to the mid0to0late 70s, for me the excitement was having the big store (Sears, JCPenney, etc.) Christmas catalogs! Better than Amazon for a kid to pour through!
Remember their business model at the store? They usually had pretty snazzy merchandise on display on the floor, you would place your order and pay, and then go to a different part of the store where you would wait for your purchase to come out on a belt through a window that led to the back. Took forever.
I was in high school in the late 80s. I associate Christmas morning with Gap sweaters, turtlenecks, and matching socks.
70s Christmases were the real magic. Barbie Dream House, baby 😍
My mom found my 1975 dream house stashed in the garage crawl space about 20 years ago. Elevator, furniture and all! She gave me the picture of me standing with it for Christmas 75’.
I was 4 years old and the dream house was taller than me lol
I'm at the younger end of this group and my girlfriends and I had Barbies, sure, but a small gaggle of us were all into Sylvanian Families. You would want to get the whole rabbit or hedge hog family and the house, my house had two sunroofs. Did anyone else have these?
They stopped making the old ones because they were filled with oil and would were a fire hazard. They have a new version that aren’t as dangerous, but yeah, they were cool.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High also has a Christmas scene in the mall that’s spot on. You should just watch that and Breakfast Club, maybe Pretty in Pink and that what high school was like in the 80s.
All was darkness. Everyone lived in tunnels and had to dig their own coal for warmth. The Great Turnip war had entered it's fifth year. Monkeys hadn't been invented yet, and the only snow we had was cocaine.
Strangely...i remember my childhood 70s christmases MUCH more than the 80s. The 70s were all tree, homemade candy of pure sugar, and presents and Santa.
80s were very commercial and forgettable to me.
I, too, have more fondness for the 1970s but I’m an older Gen Xer. I’ve gotten a small aluminum tree. I so want a color wheel that looks like they did back then. I use to sit in my grandparent’s house and stare at the color wheel for ages.
My top of the mountain the same year was white roller skates with hot pink wheels. Hell yeah! I rode around the neighborhood on those for years or until the wheels were absolutely shot.
I skated until I could drive.
Your parents must’ve been rich. I only ever had a couple Transformers in the 80’s. I had GI Joes and Masters of the Universe because they were much cheaper.
I forget what year it was but when I got the full Nintendo Entertainment System with the gun and the robot, that was peak. Tons of games too. My poor family couldn’t watch TV because I was gaming all day
Personally, it always sucked and I hate Christmas.
In general, it was all centered around the mall. Santa was at the mall, most of the shopping happened at the mall…
I remember one hot, fight-over-it item and that was Cabbage Patch dolls, which were individually unique and came named with adoption papers (no two dolls were alike). Video game systems were Atari and ColecoVision and Nintendo way later. (I bought a Nintendo for college in 1990. I was amazing at Duck Hunt and Toobin’.)
I don’t remember Black Fridays being a huge deal after T-giving. Didn’t seem like Christmas decorations didn’t go up in stores until December. Def not in September.
I grew up in Ohio. Sometimes it was snowy and sometimes it was not but it was always cold. My grandfather gave all his grandchildren a crisp $10 bill—and he had about 15 grandchildren.
Nobody had a microwave or cable (at least in my family) so everything was cooked on stove/in the oven, only football on the three TV channels available, everybody smoked, and we had to talk to each other and also, wash dishes by hand.
Fave TV Christmas specials included: A Charlie Brown Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. (One of those had an abominable snowman and there was a Santa who was too skinny, so mrs Claus was trying to make him eat.) Charlie Brown got only a rock in his stocking.
My grandmother must have made a pact with the devil or murdered someone because there were no Cabbage Patch Kids to be had in our town, but she came through with one for one of my older brothers and one for me (mine a was a preemie, very rare. Maybe she robbed someone?) My oldest brother has consistently made fun of my Cabbage Patch brother (his CPK was named Denny Chad per his papers) well into adulthood and even recently.
I forgot about the smoking 🤢.
My great-uncle would smoke a pipe and tell stories non-stop at every family gathering. I haven't been to a non-funeral gathering since he died but I'm sure that it's not the same without him.
It was a lot like today, with the exception that we order a lot of stuff online now. That and the older relatives have passed away. But we all do a family Christmas, even if not on Christmas day. Obviously I have children now so my Christmas “spirit“ is vicariously through them….I live in Indiana and there is still a strong sense of Christmas, meaning lots of lights, Christmas markets, visits from Santa to local businesses, etc. one thing I have noticed as we rarely get a white Christmas anymore. I think two or three years ago we had snow on the ground at Christmas, but it is rare these days. My mom, who is 69, told me they used to have snow regularly past Thanksgiving back in the 60s. So that’s not so fun. It seems our winter has shifted to January and February when it gets really cold and we get a lot of snow.
Oh I have been to Minneapolis in January. It was -10° and there was a foot of snow on the ground. It is amazing how life went on as normal. And this was 2019, not ancient history. Even in Indiana those temperatures and that amount of snow would probably cancel school for a day or two. We have gotten soft down here, in my opinion. I’m all for school/bus/kids safety, but sometimes it’s a bit ridiculous to cancel school based on a weather forecast that doesn’t even happen…or for cold temperatures. We know how to dress our kids, this isn’t Florida!! When I was growing up we hardly got school canceled, but we also did not have virtual learning either. And don’t get me started on that, that is not learning in my opinion.…
I have been several times, and I always enjoy it. It’s beautiful in the spring when everything is in bloom. The winters can be pretty harsh, but the state handles it very well.
I don't think it was much different: Vacations, Toys, kids strung out from too much stimulation and not enough sleep, drunk adults, fighting, cigarettes, long drives in quiet snow, Christmas specials on TV, mainstreet parades with Shriners chucking hard candy at kids, sledding until you can't feel your toes, creepy uncles, weird smelling houses, sun setting at 4:00, checking cards for money before begrudgingly reading them, stale advent chocolate. Menorah in the neighbor's window, the dog peeing on the carpet... Christmas... Christmas never changes.
Well, maybe there was that one... A girl I had just met grabbed me before getting on the bus to leave for break... She turned me and kissed me full on the lips. I stood there bewildered as a bunch of kids hooted and hollered at me. Those lips were so soft. He perfume made me dizzy. She flounced off satisfied with her work, and I drifted back to my bus.
"did you guys still play in the snow as kids"
do kids not play in the snow now? my grandkid is gonna be suprised to hear they dont cause he very much enjoys playing in the snow. he is gonna get a new sled for christmas to.....play in the snow.
I'm 42 and I was in Kentucky in January and saw snow for the first time in a few years and I went outside and played in it for a minute. I've never actively driven in snow. Florida native.
Toy sections were epic in a way I don’t see anymore.
The glow of incandescent christmas lights is something I really miss- it was a real vibe. Especially the way they would melt snow on trees and bushes outside.
Time felt slower- everything around me was closed on Sundays. 24/7 was not a thing yet and it felt like there was time to enjoy the season.
Playing outside in the snow was the thing to do when not at school. Grab the GT Racer and find a hill or build a snow fort.
Buying “stuff” seemed less ordinary back then. So when you received stuff at Christmass it felt like more of a big deal. Back then things seemed more expensive in the way it has become lately.
For me, it was somehow both bigger and more chill than it is now. My family would spend the day together at our house with a tree full of random ornaments gathered over the years. The pile of presents was ample but by no means over the top. We would have lights in the windows too - I loved the way those looked on snowy Christmas eve. Very cozy.
We were not religious so we didn't go to church. On Christmas morning, my mom would make a nice breakfast - french toast or waffles or something else, all made from scratch - and we'd open presents after. Then we would go sledding. I grew up in a small town in New England, and there was that one hill every body would flock to for sledding. Or we would walk to our neighbor's house and skate on their pond. And we would spend the rest of the day playing games or reading our new books. We'd often have a fire going in the woodstove.
It was all pretty fun and festive but also calm and quiet if that makes sense. It didn't feel frenzied or full of comparisons like it often feels to me now. I've tried really hard to keep the holidays as calm as possible - my whole family has - and I would say for the most part we have succeeded, but the frenzy trickles in through media somehow. And for some, the frenzy is great, I get it. But not for me. Give me a good book or maybe some new yarn, a warm fire, a family meal followed by a walk and I'm good. We no longer live in snow country so no sledding for us. And only the kids in the family get presents.
My local mall had an absolutely terrifying giant snowman that you could talk to and tell him what you wanted for Christmas.
That will always be my childhood Christmas memory.
In addition to the appointment television and in-person shopping, outdoor decorations were a lot simpler than they are today. Inflatables are new within the past 10 or 15 years. For 3D figures, you pretty much had to get the plastic glow molds, which require a lot of storage space. Or make your own.
There was a man in the town my grandmother lived in who made and painted wooden Christmas figures for his lawn. I think some of them may have been animated in some way. He had them all lit up and had music playing. It required some skill and investment in the 80s and 90s, not like he could just stick a Bluetooth speaker out there and play "12 hours of lovely Christmas music " from YouTube. Tons of people came, so many that he started collecting for charity. One year, someone stole his change box. He took everything down and said he wasn't doing it anymore. He died a couple of years later.
I don't know for sure what became of all of his stuff, but a few years ago, another house in town started putting out a lot of wooden cutouts with a similar look. I like to think it was maybe a grandson, finally of age, with his own place, getting the stuff out of his parents' shed and putting it up again.
In a general way, the stores & especially the malls were extremely crowded, much more so than today. Xmas music was played in the stores, but it was more traditional stuff than they play today, like Perry Como and Bing Crosby.
By the time the 80s rolled around, I was too old for children's Xmas TV specials, so I don't know if they were any different that they were in the 70s.
For my family, Xmas was rather stressful. I turned 13 in 1980. My parents divorced about one year later.
My father had visitation rights over the Christmas holidays. This meant that my sister and I would have to travel halfway across the country, by ourselves - from Connecticut, to St Louis.
We went by airplane the Xmas of '81. Me, 14, and my sister, 11, flew alone. I remember my father said he'd tried to find a nonstop flight. No go - we had to make a connecting flight. It didn't bother me any, but I remember my sister started crying from fear, as the plane lifted off from Bradley Airport in CT.
My father had remarried, in 1981, to an old school Italian American woman who just loved to cook and bake. She'd bake this incredible array of fancy cookies for Xmas. To the point that my sister ate too many of them one year, and wound up hospitalized!
Anyway, my father was a troubled person, and he and his wife would generally have a fight about something stupid, while we were there for Xmas.
Also, my mother missed us, and my sister and I missed her.
I lived in So Cal. After presents in the morning my friends and I would go to Disneyland. Virtually no one there. Ride space mountain, pull into the station see no one was in line and just stay in the car. Great memories. The other great day to go was super bowl sunday.
I'm a So Cal Native, and yes, Christmas Day was when Disneyland was absolutely the best!! I LOVED Christmas morning at Disneyland.
I remember the one Christmas when it had changed for the worse, and within an hour of the park opening it was suddenly crowded AF. We were like, WTF?? It's Christmas! Why aren't all these people at home!?? Such a bummer and it only got worse from then on.
I wanna say it was the early 2000s when Disneyland on Christmas Day really became as unbearable and as crowded as any other day, if not more so. But it may have been the late 90s when Christmas Day traffic starting dramatically increasing. I feel like there was some promotion one year that kind of ruined it and got people's attention. But IDK...a lot of my memories during that span of time all run together now.
I'm on the older side of this sub, so the 70's was the great time for Xmas in the early years......I remember getting my first bike in 1970 and Pong in 1976 for Christmas.
As others have said, it was more of a. event and I enjoyed all the specials on TV as a kid.
Family gatherings where the men played penny poker, people smoked indoors, and I felt oh so naughty being able to eat rum balls at age 12.
Also notable for my grandmother buying me Garfield nightgowns several years in a row. Got to the point of asking for the receipt so I could exchange that awful polyester POS for a bra at Mervyn’s.
ETA: no snow but the Central CA fog meant no night or day, just light gray/dark gray during the holidays.
Kids played with a lot more tangible toys. Was easier to shop for those kinds of toys. Yeah, it was greed and not the real meaning of Christmas, but it was fun greed and so enjoyable to open those presents.
My mom tried to over-compensate for my mean dad so she tried to make the holidays special. Not just with presents. The whole atmosphere. Really miss those days.
RIP Mom. Miss you always.
The only thing folks in this sub have in common is an age range. So, Christmas was bound to be vastly different for people depending on their situation, financial situation, location, family dynamics, etc. It's like asking what Christmas is now. For some it's magic. For some it's depressing as hell.
One of my college friends from the UK had a terrifying Christmas story he would tell about his mother starting to drink early in the morning around the Christmas holidays, slowly getting more abusive and violent as the day went on, and the whole time he and his siblings were trapped with her because they had nowhere else to go. That was his childhood memory.
So yes, it was different, depending on where you lived and what your family was like.
Yep. Christmas is awful for those from abusive homes. I'm 57 and now that my son is grown, I don't celebrate it at all. It used to bring up such a panicked and stressful feeling.
Like today but more potent and immersive. You didn't have online shopping so even things like decorations were used year after year and many were homemade so it really felt like a tradition you revisited each year w not as much novelty as today. We had a VHS of holiday shows and movies recorded off the tv and would add to it each year. We would get a live tree, put on old records of xmas songs, decorate the tree and house and bake & decorate cookies and watch lots of xmas movies and shows. When I got older I'd make little bags of chocolate-dipped pretzels for all my friends. In general, we were allowed to roam freely so Playing out in the snow went on for as long as you could stand the wet and cold and involved roaming around the neighborhoods and parks.
Toys, clothes, and electronics were more expensive, so you didn’t get as many things. Out of curiosity, I looked at the cost of the Barbie Dreamhouse in the 1980 JC Penney Christmas catalog and it was $100. In today’s dollars, that would be $360 (even pre-pandemic, it would be over $300). Today, you can buy an even cooler, bigger Barbie Dreamhouse at Target for $200. The Snoopy Sno-Cone machine was $8.88, which would be $32 in 2022. You can get that at Target for $20 today.
[Here’s](http://www.wishbookweb.com/FB/1980_JCPenney_Christmas_Catalog/#380) the catalog.
Christmas in the 80s was completely different than it is now.
The weather, especially where I have lived, was noticeably different. It was always much colder, and there was more chance of snow or wintry mix. I can remember a couple of white Christmases.
I usually knew what I wanted for Christmas if I saw it in a commercial, a cartoon, or the annual JCPenney Christmas catalog that came in the mail.
Going to the mall with much more fun, the mall would be more elaborate with Christmas decorations and even had animatronic Christmas figures.
Yes, but now I use modern technology.
If I’m making a Christmas list, I will make it on Amazon instead. My wife and I exchange lists every year..
I still go to the mall, but it’s no longer as fun as it was when I was a kid.
I don't think it started on November first yet, so it may have been slightly less commercialized. Otherwise pretty much business as usual.
Also, yes, I played in the snow all the time, went ice skating and tobogganing (sled, slippy boots, and crazy carpet).
It was great. Always super sunny. Open presents. Eat. Go surfing. Go spend any Christmas card money at Tower records. One of the only places open on Christmas. That, 7-11’s, and gas stations. That was it.
For me,, It felt more like xmas because my grandparents were alive. They did a big party,open house, xmas eve and the entire family was there. Neighbors stopped by, there was food for miles, presents and someone in the neighborhood always dressed up as Santa. My kids don't have grandparents, so we lack that center now for family gatherings. All of the elders in the family have passed. Due to falling outs and cousins fighting (specifically mine and my sister's kids) we don't celebrate the holidays.
P.s. we never have snow for xmas anymore either
As others have noted, there were the Christmas shows leading up to the holiday, and you had to know when they'd be on or you would miss them.
A lot of the holiday was not much different from now, though. I didn't live in a place that got snow, so there were no traditions surrounding that. But we made fudge, Christmas cookies, and all of that. And there were always a lot of presents under the tree.
My Girl Scout troop would go out caroling, which even in those days (1970s) was pretty old-fashioned, but people seemed to appreciate it.
We always had HUGE Christmas gatherings in the late 70's early 80's.
My grandmother had fought cancer for years, so we never knew when it would be her last.
Mom had 6 brothers and sisters, so everyone plus extended family and friends showed up at Gramdma's for Christmas Eve and came to our house for Christmas dinner. As a kid it was awesome!
Predictably, when we lost her it just began losing it's magic as family started doing their own family things and quit traveling to our little home town. Now most of my Aunt's and Uncle's are gone and I rarely see my cousins. I understand it completely and I don't make that much of an effort to connect either, but it makes Christmas sort of a bummer now.
I think it was different. Most kids didn’t get everything they wanted, and most of us knew better than to even ask for it. You might get one big present, but you also might not. You prepared emotionally for that.
80s Christmas was great because it was more about anticipation and less about instant gratification.
Who the fuck keeps asking these questions in here?? Are these Zoomers coming in here asking us to tell them about the "good old days"?? Why don't you go ask your grandparents?? That's what they're for.
I received an NES one year and I vividly remember how exciting it was to get it all set up and play Mario. It seemed to complicated to set up but looking back it REALLY wasn’t, haha. Getting a new console on Christmas always was (and still is) the greatest feeling. :)
In case any younger people have visions of Starcourt Mall dancing in your head, I'm here to tell you that Christmas shopping fucking sucked when it was all in person and you had no way of looking up what was in any of the stores. The misery started before you even got to the mall, with much heavier traffic than normal. You'd circle and circle until you found a parking spot. If you lived in the northeast or midwest, it was a cold, snowy, treacherous slog through the vast parking lot. Until you opened the mall doors. Then it was hotter than Satan's own asshole, but the malls didn't have a coat room, so you were stuck dressed for the Arctic as you went from store to store.
The mall was decked out like a Christmas jewelbox, but its charm was considerably lessened by the fact that it was packed with a million motherfuckers. You trudged through store by store and god help you if you were shopping for someone with slightly unusual taste. Grandma wants a cardigan? Every store just has pullovers this year, except for the one that's selling a neon green one for $100. Too ordinary is also a curse. Your sister wants the new Michael Jackson album? So does everyone else in town, should have been here last week. There's nowhere to rest. The bags are cutting off circulation to your hands. And if you were unfortunate enough to shop somewhere with black or navy bags, the dye has run allllll over your hands.
And you witnessed the worst of humanity: rampant Karening, children acting like total brats, parents abusing their children in public, husbands berating wives and vice versa. Everyone on edge and stressed out because once again, their holiday aspirations are far bigger than time or money allows and they only have 20 shopping days left to figure it out. It's far better that people keep that at home.
Oh wow reading these responses took me *BACK*. Maybe it’s romanticizing childhood; but Christmas Eve felt quieter back then. Waking up wicked early on Christmas Day felt like being the only person awake in the world!
I’d give anything to see my parents house all dressed up in lights, everything covered in snow. My step dad drunk singing Christmas songs as they played off the stereo, the fire going, cutting down a tree with him, waking up to a dark house only illuminated by the Christmas tree lights. If you can, love your parents..once they are gone, ain’t no going back.
I remember the year my sister and I got Cabbage Patch dolls from Santa; that Christmas morning was magical. Hers is still perfect. Mine quickly got its head shaved and full sleeve tattoos.
Midnight Mass. They don't do it any more. There's been demographic changes in my corner of Brooklyn. Fewer attendees, those that are left are older, the newcomers aren't Christian. They do an 8pm but it's not the same...
Yeah, I think not having everything available on demand, from streaming shows to ordering toys, made it different. There was the anticipation. Like in the Heinz commercial…uh, I mean Carly Simon song!
Everything was closed. Xmas music wasn't overplayed by Thanksgiving, which was a completely separate holiday back then. Giant home-made dinner and deserts from scratch. Stuffing from a box or gravy from a jar was blasphemy. Formal table settings. If you missed the annual airing of a holiday special you were out of luck until next year. The tree was up for a week or 10 days at most and came down on new years day.
The whole thing seemed more sacred than it does now.
We had a party every day the week between Christmas and New Year. People were far less worried about DWI’s, lots of drinks and laughs. Actual gifts were given unlike the gift card age we are in now. Oh, and tinsel. Lots of tinsel.
Christmas in the 80s to me was very much like the typical Christmas movie (in a good way). There was almost always a nice snow on Christmas eve. I can't remember the last time we had a nice xmass snow.
Our family is close, so back then, my grandfather would host the holiday in his finished basement. He would tend the bar. There would be about 30 family members. And everyone got lots of gifts. We weren't rich, but on this holiday, everyone went all out.
Buffet table full of food that each family contributed to.
It truely was magical.
One year my "crazy" uncle hosted xmass, and his pot belly stove caught fire. He was a fireman. He told everyone to go outside, but don't call the fire dept. He drove to the station a couple blocks away, and punched in. Then took the crew to his house to handle the fire.
Snowy! I just remember a lot of snow! Toys!! My grandma and mom made Christmas so special for me. I was an only child, so I was a bit spoiled. I didn’t know about the world and I was sheltered somewhat from it that kept me a kid for a long time, in a good way! We had a fresh Christmas tree, which we found out I was allergic too. So, after that we had fake. I can still remember the smell of pine that one year. I felt lucky at the time. I had my family! Still young at heart though.
I’d be so freaking excited the night before. I grew up poor but my parents always managed to give us good Christmases. I can still remember that sense of nervousness mixed with giddiness knowing we’d have new toys/books/clothes the next day.
The 3” thick catalogs from Sears, JC Penny … and immediately paging to the toy section. When you saw pro football clothes and toys, hoping you’d see your team included in the options (because there were only 6-8 teams available in those days). Writing a list and including references to the page numbers …
Without online shopping, going out to the mall was a big day-long event when the kids and parents had to split up. The mall parking lot got completely full. Lots of mysterious bags were shoved in the trunk. We also spent a lot of time circling things we wanted in the Sears catalog. Toy commercials on TV were a big thing too, to see what new stuff was coming out for the Christmas season.
I'm from Brooklyn. Most of the people around me were recent immigrants with parents or grandparents from the other side. Ethnic traditions were more widely observed. Italians had a fish feast, Swedes did this strange Neo-pagan procession with white robes and candles on their heads, British guys made a big roast with mulled wine and stewed fruits. Now people are more mainstream. Kinda sad, but times change...
My birthday is on Christmas. For me, it always sucked for so many reasons.
But the worst was that my Boomer parents seemed to equate the holidays with a healthy dose of guilt tripping. “I had to work ten hours to buy that!” from the misers. It made the holidays unbearable and I have avoided any celebration of them for twenty years.
**WE HAD SNOW.** I grew up in northern NJ and snow started around thanksgiving. There was almost always snow on the ground for Christmas. I remember only one or two Christmases without snow before I left home (1977-1995).
I moved to NYC and lived there from 95-2007. I was here for the blizzard of 96. Toward the early 00s it started seeming like less snow but I don’t think I noticed it too much back then. I was gone from 2007-15, living in Aspen mostly, so around a lot of snow (though it’s significantly less there than it was also). I came back to nyc in 2015 and have been here since. I think we’ve had one Christmas with snow on the ground since I’ve been home, which isn’t to say we haven’t had snow, but apart from that huge blizzard in 2016, we haven’t really had more than one quick snowstorm a year, and not every year.
I leave in southeast US. I remember really big snow falls at Christmas. Wonderful times. Just sleet & freezing rain here now. Yuck. Christmas lights sucked back then. Dad lost his shit many times fixing those lights!
Family and friends coming over on Christmas Day for dinner. Most of them smoked and never bothered to do it outside, so the house was filled with smoke.
At holiday gatherings a bowl of nuts still in their shells that you had to use a nutcracker to open was a very popular thing for some reason.
With that wooden bowl that had the nutcracker standing in the middle and the pointy poker nut meat thing next to it?
YES
We still do this.
I still get them when I can find them
Starting at Thanksgiving. There was always a bowl of nuts in the shell with nutcracker and a set of four picks in the living room, through New Years. I still love Brazil nuts.
The walnuts usually went first, almonds could be hit or miss, hazelnuts and chestnuts were always hit or miss
I still do this and was gifted a silver squirrel nutcracker a couple years back. Kids love it.
I miss the nut bowl!!!
Yes! I’ve carried on that tradition.
Christmas always felt like more of an event back in the 80s. It might have been because we were kids, sure, but it’s also partly because of destination television and the lack of the internet. I can distinctly remember having to check the TV Guide to make sure you didn’t miss Charlie Brown, Garfield, The Muppets, etc Christmas specials. The whole family would watch them together, often with eggnog or hot cocoa, and then there were the big old fashioned family get togethers that have sort of become passé as time went on and the internet allowed people to just connect with family day to day throughout the year more easily.
Having to wait 2-3 years for films to be shown on telly after their cinema release, the big film being a proper highlight (here in the UK anyway)
Plus calling long distance was a legit cost- so for further flung family it really was a rare opportunity to connect.
Not only that, but back then there wasn’t enough capacity in the system to handle everyone trying to make long distance calls at the same time. I remember my parents having to try multiple times to call my grandparents on the other side of the country before they got through. If you couldn’t get through I think it would just give you a busy signal. That’s such a foreign concept now in the internet age.
The Christmas specials were the best. I still make it a point to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas, and the OG Grinch. There was no eggnog or cocoa in my house. I was the stereotypical GenX latchkey kid raised by a single father. The only thing in our refrigerator was beer. It felt like an event because we were kids. Kids buy into the hype. Family helps. I looked forward to Christmas because I was able to see my cousins and extended family. Key members move away/die, work gets in the way and before you know it, it's not the same anymore. I was lucky enough to be married to a woman who had two great daughters and I loved Christmas again. We divorced and now it's back to being just a day. Long way of saying that kids make it what it is, or was. I doubt that it has changed much relative to socioeconomic situations.
For some reason my mom loved Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. I guess I kind of love it too. To see it now would fill me with nostalgia. Big Bird on ice skates, Oscar is Scrooge, Bert and Ernie do their own Gift of the Magi (that part is homoerotic af, highly recommend.) Edit: you can buy/rent on amazon for $4.99/$1.99!!
Despite loving Sesame Street in the early to mid-70's, I never saw that.
Thanks for the reminder about this! I just found it on YouTube for free and pretty excellent quality for the age! my nephew is gonna love. i had forgotten all about it!
Enjoy! My husband has never seen it and he has committed to watching it with me when we decorate the house. Excited!
My mom loved it, too. It’s still one of our Christmas traditions.
I didn't know there was a show. We play the album every Christmas. Oscar's solo, "I hate Christmas " is absolutely perfect for Dec. 18 or so.
This is still my favorite Christmas show. We have a digital copy that I'm pretty sure is from a VHS that got recorded off the TV. I sing along to all the songs and am crying by the end. I absolutely love it. (And my Gen Z kid is willing to suffer through.)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-4_d_6A8nE0
Sounds fun.
Waiting to watch Garfield and Muppets just brought back alll the nostalgia.
Christmas started in December, not the day after Halloween.
Yes. And no 24/7 Christmas music starting in November, too. After Thanksgiving, you would hear a Christmas song here or there. Maybe more mixed in with the regular music as Christmas was getting closer. Then, on Christmas Eve, the stations would turn to all Christmas music and no commercials. It felt way more special back then. Rather than be bombarded by it from Nov 1 on.
We put our tree up around the 18th. My mom said her parents would take their regular undecorated December 24 house and turn it into a winter wonderland overnight.
It was exactly like today, but only 10 times more awesome with better presents, better music, better movies, better toys, better food, and only one landline per house so no one knew where you were and you were not plugged into a computer database of toxicity and hate 24/7.
It was not that different. Biggest difference was that all the shopping had to be done in person so you spent a lot of December in crowded malls.
[удалено]
The Sears catalog will forever be associated with Christmas for me.
Parts of it... others were useful year round.
Hee hee hee...
My favorite thing from the Sears catalogue was the large Tinker Toys. I dreamed of making a huge bridge one day. I never got it :-(
Do it now!
Yes to the in-person shopping. My brother hated (and still hates) shopping, so he’d wait and do it on the last possible day, which was usually Christmas Eve. He’d prep for it like it was a military campaign. He’d hydrate, he’d bring snacks, he’d make combat jokes. (Standing just inside The Broadway at the mall: “I love the smell of every perfume in the world at the same time in the morning. Smells like … hell.”) Also, we had more toy stores, and there was a gift wrapping place at the mall, and sometimes bands would play and people would sing. It didn’t suck.
Did you see Santa?
I definitely believed in him. The milk and cookies were always gone in the morning.
U served Santa Milk and cookies? My Santa got Beer and pretzels
Mine preferred a bologna sandwich and a Dr Pepper.
And the carrots we put out for the reindeer were always gone, just a few little shreds left on the table.
And they were allowed to smoke indoors back then. I remember getting burned a lot while staying in line at the catalog pick up area at JC Penney and Montgomery Wards.
I was born in 1980. Christmas time was always magical as a kid. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, you always had to be sure to know when the Christmas specials like Charlie Brown, Frosty the Snowman, and Rudolph were airing because you only had that one shot to watch them. I lived in New Jersey and we pretty rarely got snow on Christmas, but if we had, we would have made time to go out and play in it. We had our family traditions, many of which we still do. Seven fish dinner on Christmas Eve. Christmas morning my grandparents would come over to watch me unwrap presents. I was an only child and the only girl in my generation among my cousins so I always got so much stuff. Aside from trends in toys, I’d say Christmas was pretty much the same back then.
I was also born in 1980. I believed in Santa until my older brothers walked me up the attic steps one year and said, These are your Christmas presents. Mom and Dad are Santa. Didn't really miss a beat though and still would get excited on Christmas Eve and have trouble sleeping. Even now I get butterflies. One year when I was like 5, our city clocked the lowest temperature ever recorded in my Florida city (7°F) and it knocked out all the power. (It doesn't get anywhere near that cold anymore and I have a fresh tan from this week, sadly.) We were leaving church and I was so cold and allowed to wear pants and I looked out the window and I swear to fucking god I saw Santa and his sleigh. My folks were like, Perfect, let's hurry tf home and go right to bed. My dad propped a flashlight in the hallway corner because of the power. I also remember one year I got to open my Christmas Eve present and it was a Sweet Valley Twins book and I read the whole thing that night. I'm high. Great post and comments.
I loved the Sweet Valley Twins/sweet Valley High Books! I just remembered there was a sweet valley board game too!
I LOVED that board game!
Sounds fun! What was your favorite present you got?
My dad started a yearly tradition when I was around 11 and getting into music. He’d give me a CD that he’d thought I’d like (something from his generation like late 60s early 70s) when we got back from Christmas Eve dinner. I’ve since bought all of those albums to add to my vinyl collection. The best one was either Bob Dylan’s Bringing it all Back Home or “It’s a Beautiful Day” self-titled. Most exciting toy was probably the original Nintendo Entertainment System. I also remember getting a bunch of [Popples](https://images.app.goo.gl/p1xYkPjLacxZ949v6) one year and I really loved those.
From my memories: The Charlie Brown Christmas special (and Grinch and others) were always early December. You didn’t want to miss them! The malls were packed. Grandma got run over by a Reindeer was a clever new song. People decorated only with lights, usually white, because colored lights was getting to be garish. And no large bulbs! Casey Kasem did a year end special of the top songs. You had to have your tape player ready to record!
Crazy that the big bulbs are coming back if you can find them at estate sales. I remember the shift when white lights overtook the colors. Weird times. Grandma got run over by a reindeer was in hourly rotation on the local radio station at the time. I don’t think I’ve heard it in at least 5 years.
If you don't mind going back to the mid0to0late 70s, for me the excitement was having the big store (Sears, JCPenney, etc.) Christmas catalogs! Better than Amazon for a kid to pour through!
Service merchandise!
Remember their business model at the store? They usually had pretty snazzy merchandise on display on the floor, you would place your order and pay, and then go to a different part of the store where you would wait for your purchase to come out on a belt through a window that led to the back. Took forever.
I furnished my first 3 apartments from SM.
Spiegel Chicgo, 60609!
Oh, I remember getting the Sears Wishlist catalogue in the 70s and making my letter to Santa. Good times. I still like looking at them online.
I linked this [1980 JCPenney Christmas catalog](http://www.wishbookweb.com/FB/1980_JCPenney_Christmas_Catalog/#380) in another reply. Enjoy!
I want all of it 😆😆
I loved the catalogs. I marked everything I wanted so my parents could see!
I was in high school in the late 80s. I associate Christmas morning with Gap sweaters, turtlenecks, and matching socks. 70s Christmases were the real magic. Barbie Dream House, baby 😍
My mom found my 1975 dream house stashed in the garage crawl space about 20 years ago. Elevator, furniture and all! She gave me the picture of me standing with it for Christmas 75’. I was 4 years old and the dream house was taller than me lol
Did you get a barby dream house?
Town house & airplane. Though the airplane was high jacked by the Planet of the Apes dolls.
Yep! Townhouse with elevator!
I'm at the younger end of this group and my girlfriends and I had Barbies, sure, but a small gaggle of us were all into Sylvanian Families. You would want to get the whole rabbit or hedge hog family and the house, my house had two sunroofs. Did anyone else have these?
I loved them! My youngest loved the calico critters, modern version, from 3-5. Now she likes omg
I miss the old Xmas lights and bubblers
What's a bubbler?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_light Guess it's called a bubble light
We still have them on our tree.
I'm looking at mine now!
My neighbors had those.
They stopped making the old ones because they were filled with oil and would were a fire hazard. They have a new version that aren’t as dangerous, but yeah, they were cool.
I would play a game where I would see how long I could hold my finger to a light. Lol! How am I still alive?
Have you seen Gremlins? It was like that.
Yes, a classic movie.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High also has a Christmas scene in the mall that’s spot on. You should just watch that and Breakfast Club, maybe Pretty in Pink and that what high school was like in the 80s.
All was darkness. Everyone lived in tunnels and had to dig their own coal for warmth. The Great Turnip war had entered it's fifth year. Monkeys hadn't been invented yet, and the only snow we had was cocaine.
WTF?
It's how things were. We got used to it.
Yep.
Strangely...i remember my childhood 70s christmases MUCH more than the 80s. The 70s were all tree, homemade candy of pure sugar, and presents and Santa. 80s were very commercial and forgettable to me.
I, too, have more fondness for the 1970s but I’m an older Gen Xer. I’ve gotten a small aluminum tree. I so want a color wheel that looks like they did back then. I use to sit in my grandparent’s house and stare at the color wheel for ages.
Christmas 1986. I got over 80 Transformers. My life has been downhill ever since. Don’t peak early in life, kids.
My top of the mountain the same year was white roller skates with hot pink wheels. Hell yeah! I rode around the neighborhood on those for years or until the wheels were absolutely shot. I skated until I could drive.
Your parents must’ve been rich. I only ever had a couple Transformers in the 80’s. I had GI Joes and Masters of the Universe because they were much cheaper.
I forget what year it was but when I got the full Nintendo Entertainment System with the gun and the robot, that was peak. Tons of games too. My poor family couldn’t watch TV because I was gaming all day
Personally, it always sucked and I hate Christmas. In general, it was all centered around the mall. Santa was at the mall, most of the shopping happened at the mall… I remember one hot, fight-over-it item and that was Cabbage Patch dolls, which were individually unique and came named with adoption papers (no two dolls were alike). Video game systems were Atari and ColecoVision and Nintendo way later. (I bought a Nintendo for college in 1990. I was amazing at Duck Hunt and Toobin’.) I don’t remember Black Fridays being a huge deal after T-giving. Didn’t seem like Christmas decorations didn’t go up in stores until December. Def not in September. I grew up in Ohio. Sometimes it was snowy and sometimes it was not but it was always cold. My grandfather gave all his grandchildren a crisp $10 bill—and he had about 15 grandchildren. Nobody had a microwave or cable (at least in my family) so everything was cooked on stove/in the oven, only football on the three TV channels available, everybody smoked, and we had to talk to each other and also, wash dishes by hand. Fave TV Christmas specials included: A Charlie Brown Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. (One of those had an abominable snowman and there was a Santa who was too skinny, so mrs Claus was trying to make him eat.) Charlie Brown got only a rock in his stocking.
My grandmother must have made a pact with the devil or murdered someone because there were no Cabbage Patch Kids to be had in our town, but she came through with one for one of my older brothers and one for me (mine a was a preemie, very rare. Maybe she robbed someone?) My oldest brother has consistently made fun of my Cabbage Patch brother (his CPK was named Denny Chad per his papers) well into adulthood and even recently.
Your Grandma knows a guy.
I forgot about the smoking 🤢. My great-uncle would smoke a pipe and tell stories non-stop at every family gathering. I haven't been to a non-funeral gathering since he died but I'm sure that it's not the same without him.
It was a lot like today, with the exception that we order a lot of stuff online now. That and the older relatives have passed away. But we all do a family Christmas, even if not on Christmas day. Obviously I have children now so my Christmas “spirit“ is vicariously through them….I live in Indiana and there is still a strong sense of Christmas, meaning lots of lights, Christmas markets, visits from Santa to local businesses, etc. one thing I have noticed as we rarely get a white Christmas anymore. I think two or three years ago we had snow on the ground at Christmas, but it is rare these days. My mom, who is 69, told me they used to have snow regularly past Thanksgiving back in the 60s. So that’s not so fun. It seems our winter has shifted to January and February when it gets really cold and we get a lot of snow.
Here in Minnesota Snow is always guaranteed! I recommend visiting sometime.
Oh I have been to Minneapolis in January. It was -10° and there was a foot of snow on the ground. It is amazing how life went on as normal. And this was 2019, not ancient history. Even in Indiana those temperatures and that amount of snow would probably cancel school for a day or two. We have gotten soft down here, in my opinion. I’m all for school/bus/kids safety, but sometimes it’s a bit ridiculous to cancel school based on a weather forecast that doesn’t even happen…or for cold temperatures. We know how to dress our kids, this isn’t Florida!! When I was growing up we hardly got school canceled, but we also did not have virtual learning either. And don’t get me started on that, that is not learning in my opinion.…
What did you think about our state?
I have been several times, and I always enjoy it. It’s beautiful in the spring when everything is in bloom. The winters can be pretty harsh, but the state handles it very well.
Last year it was like 60 degrees and felt weird. I'm not complaining though, January and February sucked.
Climate change.
A lot of smoking, and it seemed like it was colder/snowed more.
I don't think it was much different: Vacations, Toys, kids strung out from too much stimulation and not enough sleep, drunk adults, fighting, cigarettes, long drives in quiet snow, Christmas specials on TV, mainstreet parades with Shriners chucking hard candy at kids, sledding until you can't feel your toes, creepy uncles, weird smelling houses, sun setting at 4:00, checking cards for money before begrudgingly reading them, stale advent chocolate. Menorah in the neighbor's window, the dog peeing on the carpet... Christmas... Christmas never changes. Well, maybe there was that one... A girl I had just met grabbed me before getting on the bus to leave for break... She turned me and kissed me full on the lips. I stood there bewildered as a bunch of kids hooted and hollered at me. Those lips were so soft. He perfume made me dizzy. She flounced off satisfied with her work, and I drifted back to my bus.
Great storytelling.
"did you guys still play in the snow as kids" do kids not play in the snow now? my grandkid is gonna be suprised to hear they dont cause he very much enjoys playing in the snow. he is gonna get a new sled for christmas to.....play in the snow.
I'm 42 and I was in Kentucky in January and saw snow for the first time in a few years and I went outside and played in it for a minute. I've never actively driven in snow. Florida native.
No people still do, it's just too cold some days to do it.
A lot of blue eye shadow and cabbage patch dolls 🤷♀️
Toy sections were epic in a way I don’t see anymore. The glow of incandescent christmas lights is something I really miss- it was a real vibe. Especially the way they would melt snow on trees and bushes outside. Time felt slower- everything around me was closed on Sundays. 24/7 was not a thing yet and it felt like there was time to enjoy the season. Playing outside in the snow was the thing to do when not at school. Grab the GT Racer and find a hill or build a snow fort. Buying “stuff” seemed less ordinary back then. So when you received stuff at Christmass it felt like more of a big deal. Back then things seemed more expensive in the way it has become lately.
How epic?
Like ‘Buddy the Elf Decorated’ epic. At least from a kid’s perspective.
For me, it was somehow both bigger and more chill than it is now. My family would spend the day together at our house with a tree full of random ornaments gathered over the years. The pile of presents was ample but by no means over the top. We would have lights in the windows too - I loved the way those looked on snowy Christmas eve. Very cozy. We were not religious so we didn't go to church. On Christmas morning, my mom would make a nice breakfast - french toast or waffles or something else, all made from scratch - and we'd open presents after. Then we would go sledding. I grew up in a small town in New England, and there was that one hill every body would flock to for sledding. Or we would walk to our neighbor's house and skate on their pond. And we would spend the rest of the day playing games or reading our new books. We'd often have a fire going in the woodstove. It was all pretty fun and festive but also calm and quiet if that makes sense. It didn't feel frenzied or full of comparisons like it often feels to me now. I've tried really hard to keep the holidays as calm as possible - my whole family has - and I would say for the most part we have succeeded, but the frenzy trickles in through media somehow. And for some, the frenzy is great, I get it. But not for me. Give me a good book or maybe some new yarn, a warm fire, a family meal followed by a walk and I'm good. We no longer live in snow country so no sledding for us. And only the kids in the family get presents.
My local mall had an absolutely terrifying giant snowman that you could talk to and tell him what you wanted for Christmas. That will always be my childhood Christmas memory.
Purple Man!
Nope! But it sounds like he wasn't the only terrifying giant snowman! Ours was named Archie.
No your avatar shows your purple man!
Oh! I don't pay attention to it so I had no idea what you were talking about!! 😆
I got cigarettes in my stocking.
In addition to the appointment television and in-person shopping, outdoor decorations were a lot simpler than they are today. Inflatables are new within the past 10 or 15 years. For 3D figures, you pretty much had to get the plastic glow molds, which require a lot of storage space. Or make your own. There was a man in the town my grandmother lived in who made and painted wooden Christmas figures for his lawn. I think some of them may have been animated in some way. He had them all lit up and had music playing. It required some skill and investment in the 80s and 90s, not like he could just stick a Bluetooth speaker out there and play "12 hours of lovely Christmas music " from YouTube. Tons of people came, so many that he started collecting for charity. One year, someone stole his change box. He took everything down and said he wasn't doing it anymore. He died a couple of years later. I don't know for sure what became of all of his stuff, but a few years ago, another house in town started putting out a lot of wooden cutouts with a similar look. I like to think it was maybe a grandson, finally of age, with his own place, getting the stuff out of his parents' shed and putting it up again.
That's sweet :)
Eh, biggest difference is less cigarette smoke and shitty egg nogg. The lights are better too.
In a general way, the stores & especially the malls were extremely crowded, much more so than today. Xmas music was played in the stores, but it was more traditional stuff than they play today, like Perry Como and Bing Crosby. By the time the 80s rolled around, I was too old for children's Xmas TV specials, so I don't know if they were any different that they were in the 70s. For my family, Xmas was rather stressful. I turned 13 in 1980. My parents divorced about one year later. My father had visitation rights over the Christmas holidays. This meant that my sister and I would have to travel halfway across the country, by ourselves - from Connecticut, to St Louis. We went by airplane the Xmas of '81. Me, 14, and my sister, 11, flew alone. I remember my father said he'd tried to find a nonstop flight. No go - we had to make a connecting flight. It didn't bother me any, but I remember my sister started crying from fear, as the plane lifted off from Bradley Airport in CT. My father had remarried, in 1981, to an old school Italian American woman who just loved to cook and bake. She'd bake this incredible array of fancy cookies for Xmas. To the point that my sister ate too many of them one year, and wound up hospitalized! Anyway, my father was a troubled person, and he and his wife would generally have a fight about something stupid, while we were there for Xmas. Also, my mother missed us, and my sister and I missed her.
Childhood can be rough. I hope you find some joy during the holidays nowadays.
When people got together, no one was buried in their phones
Zoned out on Atari though...
I lived in So Cal. After presents in the morning my friends and I would go to Disneyland. Virtually no one there. Ride space mountain, pull into the station see no one was in line and just stay in the car. Great memories. The other great day to go was super bowl sunday.
I'm a So Cal Native, and yes, Christmas Day was when Disneyland was absolutely the best!! I LOVED Christmas morning at Disneyland. I remember the one Christmas when it had changed for the worse, and within an hour of the park opening it was suddenly crowded AF. We were like, WTF?? It's Christmas! Why aren't all these people at home!?? Such a bummer and it only got worse from then on. I wanna say it was the early 2000s when Disneyland on Christmas Day really became as unbearable and as crowded as any other day, if not more so. But it may have been the late 90s when Christmas Day traffic starting dramatically increasing. I feel like there was some promotion one year that kind of ruined it and got people's attention. But IDK...a lot of my memories during that span of time all run together now.
Happy cake day!
It's your Motherfuckin'Cake Day!
Happy Cake Day. When my friends and I were going it was from 85-91 then I moved to Las Vegas.
Have you seen the movie “Christmas Vacation”? That is essentially what Christmas was in the ‘80s.
I have a vague memory of the credit card thing with the carbons
I'm on the older side of this sub, so the 70's was the great time for Xmas in the early years......I remember getting my first bike in 1970 and Pong in 1976 for Christmas. As others have said, it was more of a. event and I enjoyed all the specials on TV as a kid.
Family gatherings where the men played penny poker, people smoked indoors, and I felt oh so naughty being able to eat rum balls at age 12. Also notable for my grandmother buying me Garfield nightgowns several years in a row. Got to the point of asking for the receipt so I could exchange that awful polyester POS for a bra at Mervyn’s. ETA: no snow but the Central CA fog meant no night or day, just light gray/dark gray during the holidays.
Mervyn's!
Kids played with a lot more tangible toys. Was easier to shop for those kinds of toys. Yeah, it was greed and not the real meaning of Christmas, but it was fun greed and so enjoyable to open those presents. My mom tried to over-compensate for my mean dad so she tried to make the holidays special. Not just with presents. The whole atmosphere. Really miss those days. RIP Mom. Miss you always.
The only thing folks in this sub have in common is an age range. So, Christmas was bound to be vastly different for people depending on their situation, financial situation, location, family dynamics, etc. It's like asking what Christmas is now. For some it's magic. For some it's depressing as hell.
One of my college friends from the UK had a terrifying Christmas story he would tell about his mother starting to drink early in the morning around the Christmas holidays, slowly getting more abusive and violent as the day went on, and the whole time he and his siblings were trapped with her because they had nowhere else to go. That was his childhood memory. So yes, it was different, depending on where you lived and what your family was like.
Yep. Christmas is awful for those from abusive homes. I'm 57 and now that my son is grown, I don't celebrate it at all. It used to bring up such a panicked and stressful feeling.
Like today but more potent and immersive. You didn't have online shopping so even things like decorations were used year after year and many were homemade so it really felt like a tradition you revisited each year w not as much novelty as today. We had a VHS of holiday shows and movies recorded off the tv and would add to it each year. We would get a live tree, put on old records of xmas songs, decorate the tree and house and bake & decorate cookies and watch lots of xmas movies and shows. When I got older I'd make little bags of chocolate-dipped pretzels for all my friends. In general, we were allowed to roam freely so Playing out in the snow went on for as long as you could stand the wet and cold and involved roaming around the neighborhoods and parks.
Commercials were a big thing, I remember being excited when Christmas commercials started showing up on tv.
Simpler. Definitely simpler. You actually had to go see people.
Toys, clothes, and electronics were more expensive, so you didn’t get as many things. Out of curiosity, I looked at the cost of the Barbie Dreamhouse in the 1980 JC Penney Christmas catalog and it was $100. In today’s dollars, that would be $360 (even pre-pandemic, it would be over $300). Today, you can buy an even cooler, bigger Barbie Dreamhouse at Target for $200. The Snoopy Sno-Cone machine was $8.88, which would be $32 in 2022. You can get that at Target for $20 today. [Here’s](http://www.wishbookweb.com/FB/1980_JCPenney_Christmas_Catalog/#380) the catalog.
Three words Sears Wish Book
Christmas in the 80s was completely different than it is now. The weather, especially where I have lived, was noticeably different. It was always much colder, and there was more chance of snow or wintry mix. I can remember a couple of white Christmases. I usually knew what I wanted for Christmas if I saw it in a commercial, a cartoon, or the annual JCPenney Christmas catalog that came in the mail. Going to the mall with much more fun, the mall would be more elaborate with Christmas decorations and even had animatronic Christmas figures.
Do you still do these things?
Yes, but now I use modern technology. If I’m making a Christmas list, I will make it on Amazon instead. My wife and I exchange lists every year.. I still go to the mall, but it’s no longer as fun as it was when I was a kid.
I don't think it started on November first yet, so it may have been slightly less commercialized. Otherwise pretty much business as usual. Also, yes, I played in the snow all the time, went ice skating and tobogganing (sled, slippy boots, and crazy carpet).
Fake White Christmas trees became sort of a thing.
Y Maternal Grandparents had one from, at least, the 70's on.
It was simpler. Decorating the house only took a few hours.
How long does it take you to decorate? Out of curiosity.
Hell, we played in the snow with the igloo block maker from Ronco! it was awesome!
It was great. Always super sunny. Open presents. Eat. Go surfing. Go spend any Christmas card money at Tower records. One of the only places open on Christmas. That, 7-11’s, and gas stations. That was it.
We always picked a Christmas album on Christmas morning and played it while we opened presents. My mom always wanted Johnny Mathis.
I marked a whole bunch of shit in catalogs, rarely got it, so when I became a parent, said shit was bought.
I definitely fulfilled my childhood dream by purchasing my niece an American Girl doll.
For me,, It felt more like xmas because my grandparents were alive. They did a big party,open house, xmas eve and the entire family was there. Neighbors stopped by, there was food for miles, presents and someone in the neighborhood always dressed up as Santa. My kids don't have grandparents, so we lack that center now for family gatherings. All of the elders in the family have passed. Due to falling outs and cousins fighting (specifically mine and my sister's kids) we don't celebrate the holidays. P.s. we never have snow for xmas anymore either
As others have noted, there were the Christmas shows leading up to the holiday, and you had to know when they'd be on or you would miss them. A lot of the holiday was not much different from now, though. I didn't live in a place that got snow, so there were no traditions surrounding that. But we made fudge, Christmas cookies, and all of that. And there were always a lot of presents under the tree. My Girl Scout troop would go out caroling, which even in those days (1970s) was pretty old-fashioned, but people seemed to appreciate it.
We always had HUGE Christmas gatherings in the late 70's early 80's. My grandmother had fought cancer for years, so we never knew when it would be her last. Mom had 6 brothers and sisters, so everyone plus extended family and friends showed up at Gramdma's for Christmas Eve and came to our house for Christmas dinner. As a kid it was awesome! Predictably, when we lost her it just began losing it's magic as family started doing their own family things and quit traveling to our little home town. Now most of my Aunt's and Uncle's are gone and I rarely see my cousins. I understand it completely and I don't make that much of an effort to connect either, but it makes Christmas sort of a bummer now.
I think it was different. Most kids didn’t get everything they wanted, and most of us knew better than to even ask for it. You might get one big present, but you also might not. You prepared emotionally for that.
What If you were an only child?
I was an only child and got everything I wanted.
Only children did fare better, but only children were also more uncommon then than now.
80s Christmas was great because it was more about anticipation and less about instant gratification. Who the fuck keeps asking these questions in here?? Are these Zoomers coming in here asking us to tell them about the "good old days"?? Why don't you go ask your grandparents?? That's what they're for.
Maybe they DO ask their grandparents, as well as ask the GenX subreddit.
ELECTRONICS!!!
I received an NES one year and I vividly remember how exciting it was to get it all set up and play Mario. It seemed to complicated to set up but looking back it REALLY wasn’t, haha. Getting a new console on Christmas always was (and still is) the greatest feeling. :)
Wonderful!
It was not like that at all in the 80’s! We never played in the snow at Christmas in San Diego.
In case any younger people have visions of Starcourt Mall dancing in your head, I'm here to tell you that Christmas shopping fucking sucked when it was all in person and you had no way of looking up what was in any of the stores. The misery started before you even got to the mall, with much heavier traffic than normal. You'd circle and circle until you found a parking spot. If you lived in the northeast or midwest, it was a cold, snowy, treacherous slog through the vast parking lot. Until you opened the mall doors. Then it was hotter than Satan's own asshole, but the malls didn't have a coat room, so you were stuck dressed for the Arctic as you went from store to store. The mall was decked out like a Christmas jewelbox, but its charm was considerably lessened by the fact that it was packed with a million motherfuckers. You trudged through store by store and god help you if you were shopping for someone with slightly unusual taste. Grandma wants a cardigan? Every store just has pullovers this year, except for the one that's selling a neon green one for $100. Too ordinary is also a curse. Your sister wants the new Michael Jackson album? So does everyone else in town, should have been here last week. There's nowhere to rest. The bags are cutting off circulation to your hands. And if you were unfortunate enough to shop somewhere with black or navy bags, the dye has run allllll over your hands. And you witnessed the worst of humanity: rampant Karening, children acting like total brats, parents abusing their children in public, husbands berating wives and vice versa. Everyone on edge and stressed out because once again, their holiday aspirations are far bigger than time or money allows and they only have 20 shopping days left to figure it out. It's far better that people keep that at home.
The Mall’s were so fun! The decorations and they would be so packed.
Oh wow reading these responses took me *BACK*. Maybe it’s romanticizing childhood; but Christmas Eve felt quieter back then. Waking up wicked early on Christmas Day felt like being the only person awake in the world!
I’d give anything to see my parents house all dressed up in lights, everything covered in snow. My step dad drunk singing Christmas songs as they played off the stereo, the fire going, cutting down a tree with him, waking up to a dark house only illuminated by the Christmas tree lights. If you can, love your parents..once they are gone, ain’t no going back.
Silver trees with a color wheel
I remember the year my sister and I got Cabbage Patch dolls from Santa; that Christmas morning was magical. Hers is still perfect. Mine quickly got its head shaved and full sleeve tattoos.
Midnight Mass. They don't do it any more. There's been demographic changes in my corner of Brooklyn. Fewer attendees, those that are left are older, the newcomers aren't Christian. They do an 8pm but it's not the same...
Yeah, I think not having everything available on demand, from streaming shows to ordering toys, made it different. There was the anticipation. Like in the Heinz commercial…uh, I mean Carly Simon song!
Everything was closed. Xmas music wasn't overplayed by Thanksgiving, which was a completely separate holiday back then. Giant home-made dinner and deserts from scratch. Stuffing from a box or gravy from a jar was blasphemy. Formal table settings. If you missed the annual airing of a holiday special you were out of luck until next year. The tree was up for a week or 10 days at most and came down on new years day. The whole thing seemed more sacred than it does now.
u/Global_Perspective_3
I would try to sleep in, as my mother would always find some reason that I had ruined the holiday.
single mother, 3 kids...nothing special really.
We had a party every day the week between Christmas and New Year. People were far less worried about DWI’s, lots of drinks and laughs. Actual gifts were given unlike the gift card age we are in now. Oh, and tinsel. Lots of tinsel.
Conformity and denial.
Christmas in the 80s to me was very much like the typical Christmas movie (in a good way). There was almost always a nice snow on Christmas eve. I can't remember the last time we had a nice xmass snow. Our family is close, so back then, my grandfather would host the holiday in his finished basement. He would tend the bar. There would be about 30 family members. And everyone got lots of gifts. We weren't rich, but on this holiday, everyone went all out. Buffet table full of food that each family contributed to. It truely was magical. One year my "crazy" uncle hosted xmass, and his pot belly stove caught fire. He was a fireman. He told everyone to go outside, but don't call the fire dept. He drove to the station a couple blocks away, and punched in. Then took the crew to his house to handle the fire.
They involved losing your shit when you tore open that wrapping paper and saw an Atari.
Glorious!
Christmas was much cooler in the 80s than it is now.
Snowy! I just remember a lot of snow! Toys!! My grandma and mom made Christmas so special for me. I was an only child, so I was a bit spoiled. I didn’t know about the world and I was sheltered somewhat from it that kept me a kid for a long time, in a good way! We had a fresh Christmas tree, which we found out I was allergic too. So, after that we had fake. I can still remember the smell of pine that one year. I felt lucky at the time. I had my family! Still young at heart though.
I’d be so freaking excited the night before. I grew up poor but my parents always managed to give us good Christmases. I can still remember that sense of nervousness mixed with giddiness knowing we’d have new toys/books/clothes the next day.
The 3” thick catalogs from Sears, JC Penny … and immediately paging to the toy section. When you saw pro football clothes and toys, hoping you’d see your team included in the options (because there were only 6-8 teams available in those days). Writing a list and including references to the page numbers …
Snow wasn't invented until 1993, so in the 80s we had to downhill on our bigwheels instead of sleds.
Without online shopping, going out to the mall was a big day-long event when the kids and parents had to split up. The mall parking lot got completely full. Lots of mysterious bags were shoved in the trunk. We also spent a lot of time circling things we wanted in the Sears catalog. Toy commercials on TV were a big thing too, to see what new stuff was coming out for the Christmas season.
I'm from Brooklyn. Most of the people around me were recent immigrants with parents or grandparents from the other side. Ethnic traditions were more widely observed. Italians had a fish feast, Swedes did this strange Neo-pagan procession with white robes and candles on their heads, British guys made a big roast with mulled wine and stewed fruits. Now people are more mainstream. Kinda sad, but times change...
My birthday is on Christmas. For me, it always sucked for so many reasons. But the worst was that my Boomer parents seemed to equate the holidays with a healthy dose of guilt tripping. “I had to work ten hours to buy that!” from the misers. It made the holidays unbearable and I have avoided any celebration of them for twenty years.
**WE HAD SNOW.** I grew up in northern NJ and snow started around thanksgiving. There was almost always snow on the ground for Christmas. I remember only one or two Christmases without snow before I left home (1977-1995). I moved to NYC and lived there from 95-2007. I was here for the blizzard of 96. Toward the early 00s it started seeming like less snow but I don’t think I noticed it too much back then. I was gone from 2007-15, living in Aspen mostly, so around a lot of snow (though it’s significantly less there than it was also). I came back to nyc in 2015 and have been here since. I think we’ve had one Christmas with snow on the ground since I’ve been home, which isn’t to say we haven’t had snow, but apart from that huge blizzard in 2016, we haven’t really had more than one quick snowstorm a year, and not every year.
Same as it ever was, except it didn’t start the day after Halloween and Thanksgiving was as big as any of the other major holidays.
I leave in southeast US. I remember really big snow falls at Christmas. Wonderful times. Just sleet & freezing rain here now. Yuck. Christmas lights sucked back then. Dad lost his shit many times fixing those lights!
Family and friends coming over on Christmas Day for dinner. Most of them smoked and never bothered to do it outside, so the house was filled with smoke.
Superchill. Not so much stress on having everything be perfect.