Last night I put up the Christmas tree at my parents’ house. Since that’s the kind of thing that puts you in a Christmasey mood right quick, when the tinsel was strung and the ornaments hung I put in my copy of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and sat down to watch it.

And of course I enjoyed it, as I always do. I love watching Rudolph and Charlie Brown and the Grinch, and I love being able to watch them whenever I feel like it.

But I also miss the days before everybody had everything on video tape and then DVD. There was an added fun about watching these various Christmas specials when they were on TV exactly one time a year, and if you missed them you were screwed until the next December. Watching the major specials was a huge event when you only had one opportunity each winter.

Further, with the specials only being on one time each year, when you sat down to look at Rudolph’s adventures with Yukon Cornelius and the Bumble, you knew all your friends were doing the same thing. When you watched Linus tell Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about, you knew that kids and adults all over were doing the very same thing at the very same time. It was exciting, that feeling of being part of such a pervasive ritual.

But nowadays you can listen to Boris Karloff tell you the story of the Grinch whenever you like as many times as you like. The specials still air, of course, but because everybody has them on home video it isn’t particularly important to actually see the shows at the time they’re broadcast. Now while you settle into the couch to watch Frosty the Snowman, you enjoy it, but there’s none of that sense of a shared experience. Who knows what anyone else is doing; you’re watching the cartoon when you feel like it, and all the other merrymakers will watch it when they feel like it.

I’m glad to have my own copies of all these shows I love. On balance, I’ve come out ahead by being able to have them at hand and ready to go whenever I want. But just a little bit of magic was lost when we all stopped watching them together.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• A Charlie Brown Christmas
• Give The Simpsons Its Due
• I Hope Books Still Exist