Christmas ads time

Okay. From my youth, there are two big ads (and a third *class* of ads) that I remember.

Ad 1:



(CH CH CH CHIA! Man, I remember loving those ads 'cos when they came on tv, you knew Christmas was on the way. Also, it's just such a goofy thing.)

Ad 2:



Those two ads are forever wedded in my mind as the "you know Christmas is coming" ads. And yeah, they kind of represent the rather-dumb but widely-available things that you could buy people as a gift, especially if it was someone you didn't know all that well (your wife's Aunt Clara, or your teenaged nephew, or your sister's new boyfriend...)

The third class of ads, I can't quickly find an example, but people of a certain age will remember them: the "compilation album" ads, where there was an album (usually records, but later you could also get 8-tracks or even cassettes) of Christmas music by "various artists" and they'd usually be advertised some time around Hallowe'en (or even before) because of the old "Allow six to eight weeks for delivery" (Man. Given two-day deliveries and the like....times really have changed since the late 70s and early 80s). And they'd play tiny snippets of the music to advertise it....my mother tells me that when I was *very* small (I don't remember this) I once complained about one of those ads because "they don't play enough of the song!" but of course, that's the point - to make you want to buy it.

I dunno. As a kid I remember these ads even more clearly than toy ads. Maybe toys weren't advertised as much? Or maybe toy ads changed from year to year but Chia Pet sprang eternal, and so you knew the return of it and The Clapper means Christmas was coming?

At some point the Christmas car ads started. I don't know when, but I don't remember them being a thing when I was a kid. But the idea that you buy your lover a car - or a car as a family present - is a fairly recent development.

I suppose in SOME circumstances it MIGHT make sense: you need a new car, maybe you can convince your kids to forgo requesting lots of toys because "we are having a Family Christmas and this is our present" (I still would have been disappointed.)

(And yes, that's a thing: I remember my uncle's family doing a no-presents Christmas one year and putting the money they would have spent towards a necessary life-saving surgery for one of their cats. Honestly, as a kid, I would have been FAR FAR FAR more willing to forgo any presents to save a cat's life than I would for a stupid new car. And my mom and dad arranged - with my uncle's blessing - to send some small token presents (we didn't normally exchange) to the kids so they'd have SOMETHING to open)

But yeah. I know people gripe about the commercialization of Christmas and I am normally not that on-board with griping but the idea of dropping five or six figures on a brand new car as a way of expressing joy and gratitude over Christ's birth seems a bit odd to me, but whatever.

(Same with what I call the "WTH? ads" - the ads for perfume or watches, mostly, that are like tiny expressionist films or that have no linear narrative and are just a series of unrelated images. Again, it's an expensive item, usually....)

I suppose because I grew up in a frugal family and during a time of general belt-tightening for most, I tend to think of Christmas presents as "some small pleasurable thing or perhaps something you actually need" instead of some big, "let's impress the other person" show. (Or maybe it's because I never knew *genuine* want - yes, we had cars that ran well, even if they were older and not fancy; I never wanted for food or basic clothing or anything like that)

But I do find the car ads a bit weird because I can only imagine they originate from an alternate universe where people either have infinite money or where things like cars are as cheap as turtlenecks are in our world.

(I also remember a couple years my family did what used to be called "the $100 Christmas," where you strove to spend no more than that on the ENTIRE celebration - so that included the tree and decorations, the meal, the gifts. The idea was you made as many gifts as possible, or arranged for "experiences" like "I will teach you, my niece, to knit." The idea then was the rest of what you WOULD have spent, but did not, was donated to your church or a charity. I think the church we belonged to did a program where they pooled the money and used it to provide food-baskets for people who otherwise would not have had decent food for Christmas.

I also know my parents "cheated" a little in that my brother and I got one nice gift that was ostensibly from Santa, but since we were like 13 and 8 at the time, we kind of knew that it wasn't Santa.

And the funny thing? I don't remember ever feeling resentful or cheated about it; I actually remember it being rather fun in the challenge of trying to figure out inexpensive gifts or things you could make. I know one year my dad got a batch of his favorite cookies, baked by me, and I could sew at that point so I think I made my mom an apron? Maybe? And now I wonder if I enjoyed those particularly because it took the pressure off - being a kid with very limited allowance, no after-school job, and few ways to get money to buy presents other than saving allowance up for MONTHS or asking my parents....so being able to make something and knowing the expectation was "we won't have bought presents" took some pressure off me. Heh. How you do anything is how you do everything and I guess I haven't changed that much over the years)

But there's a new batch of "get a car for Christmas" ads out there, that are maybe even a little more selfish than the "buy a car for the entire family!" ads....there are several but I saw the Six Million Dollar Man action-figure one this morning.

The way these ads work is this:

The toy (in either stop-motion animation or more likely some kind of computer wizardry made to look like it) comes out, and talks about how excited you were as a kid to get that toy, and how great your holiday was that year. And then the toy implies that if you buy yourself a new car, you will recapture some of the joy and happiness and excitement you had.

And I can't tell if the ad is so slyly tongue-in-cheek I'm not seeing the irony, or if it's really that cynical.

Because I know as a tired old adult that a new car (with the attendant bump in insurance payments, and having to learn a new dashboard, and worrying about someone "dooring" it in a parking lot until you get those first few scratches) doesn't carry the same unalloyed joy as being six and having a new toy at Christmas. Heck, I can't think of so very many things (I mean literal things*) as an adult that would.

I mean, a lot of people write about how we all have "holes in our souls" and I think that's true. But I also doubt anyone's "hole" is car-shaped. Oh, I can see being *happy* about a new car - especially if your old one is unreliable and has many repairs that need to be done on it and it's somehow easy to afford the new car (like if someone gave it to you) but I also can't see someone having quite the same excitement and joy as a little kid gets over the toy that they wanted more than anything.

I remember being that kid. And I remember that happiness. And I think maybe sometimes adulthood knocks some of that capacity for happiness like that out of you: getting a manuscript accepted is great, but...you will likely have revisions and then there's also the proofs to be dealt with and there's a long, long wait until it comes out in print.  And playing piano makes me happy, but it takes work to keep it up, and sometimes my hands hurt, and some days I'm clumsy and can't play well...

(*most of the things that would give me great joy aren't things - finding somehow a couple extra hours a day to knit and read and play piano and do the stuff I want to do; learning that there is a new and successful cure for the various illnesses people I care about are suffering from; having my own minor health issues (hives and hypertension) magically go away; making a good new close-to-me friend who shares some of my interests so I have someone to go hiking with or go to the yarn shop with....)

I don't know. I think my happiness as an adult is smaller and quieter, and less "thing focused" than it was as a kid. Decorating the tree Friday evening made me happy. The thought of coming home today at lunch and not having to go back out (except maybe to run some errands) makes me happy. Getting into bed early on a night so I can read makes me happy - but it's not the same happiness I felt in 1975 or so when I got the Fisher-Price Castle Playset for Christmas. I'm not even sure that same happiness is accessible to me any more....