If you stepped out of your house in Lafayette, Crowley, New Iberia, or Lake Charles this morning you would not be walking into weather that feels like Christmas. It’s pretty darn foggy this morning. This is typical for Louisiana in December but it doesn’t feel much like Christmas, does it? It is a lot foggy, as they say in Breaux Bridge.
Well, this weekend it’s going to be cold and it’s going to be Christmas a few days later. It’s a great time of the year. And, compared to how we were feeling the past few years, it does look as if this year’s holiday season will be a lot more approachable in person for most people.
Now, at our house we have traditions. They don’t make a lot of sense even to us but by gosh they are important to the way the holiday season unfolds at my house. You probably have decorations that can only be placed in certain locations and lights that have to be strung in a certain way as well. Tradition, the peer pressure we feel from the dead, it’s alive and well at my house at Christmas.
For example, each year we will plan our daily lives around a 30-minute cartoon, Claymation, or musical special that takes us back to a time when there were no pandemics, political strife, or social media hatred. For those brief few moments, we can be a resident of the mythical place called Toyland. Once you pass its borders you can ne’er return again.
Many of these holiday specials do not follow the political correctness template of these present-day times. In fact, some of them are so old-fashioned in their innocent presentations that it just might require explaining to some of today’s kids exactly what was going on.
I mean, who in 2024 could sit by while a group of reindeer, including a reindeer coach, make fun of a deer with what amounts to a birth defect?
Nowhere in 2024 would it be okay to make fun of a boy who can’t speak or a dog that has a bit of an anxiety problem. No, these specials were created when America had compassion for those who needed to find their own way…