This is going to make me sound like a terrible person, but hear me out. Can we just take all the Christmas (and really, any holiday) programming and give it it’s own channel? There is a channel that is entirely nothing but a recording of a log burning in a fireplace.
Let’s just take that channel and fill it with fifty slots of Miracle on 34th Street, maybe thirty runs of It’s a Wonderful Life, throw some Grinch in there and finish off with a dozen runs of all those old claymation Rudolph cartoons. Finish the week off with that same fireplace and some light Christmas jazz and then repeat it ad infinitum.
I mean, look. People love Christmas, and lots of people love Christmas television. But holy crap, I’m pretty sure the things I just named are the only shows every television channel will ever run. My grandmother will watch It’s a Wonderful Life every single time it’s on, every year — and has done so for as long as I can remember. She has probably put more hours into that and Miracle on 34th Street than I have sunk into World of Warcraft, of which I stopped counting after 1400.
It’s not even so much that they’re Christmas related that annoys me. It’s that any other thing I watch that winds up being stupid is done and gone with the credits of whatever it was. But these things? Every year it’s months of stupid, stupid endings that people simply adore, and because there’s nothing else anybody wants to watch the cycle continues. No, judge-man, he isn’t Santa. He is an old dude suffering from some kind of delusions and you’re legally saying he is a man that hangs around children and breaks into their houses to ply them with gifts.
Holiday programming is literally the one time of year where I’ll willingly accepting watching hockey or football. I’m not a sports guy. I used to be a soccer guy in the sense that I was very, very good at stopping the ball from getting inside my net. Then I blew my knee out, and then did it again before it had time to heal and ended my future career. I’ll still occasionally watch soccer, but I couldn’t give less of a damn about any other sport. Yet once a year either hockey or football is like a sweet, sweet relief. It’s like networks realize there are people out there that really hate holiday television and fill their hours with the two sports where you’re most like to see angry dudes beat each other up.
So that’s why I’m saying we take all the holiday programming, stick it on one channel, and here’s the kicker: We give it away for free. You got a television? You get all of it, all on one channel. Every other channel keeps airing its regularly scheduled programming. I don’t need to miss Castle because Charlie Brown needs to learn the meaning of Christmas or whatever, again. If there is a Hell, when I die there’s a good chance I’ll be high-fiving the Devil. Soon thereafter I’ll sit down in a room, turn the television on and be stuck with a million channels all airing nothing but holiday programming.
I won’t make it a week before trying to repent.
It’s a short one this week, folks. It’s another skip week for a lot of shows, and I’ll let you all in on a little secret. Most of my ideas come from something I watch in a television show. A character will say something, or a scene will be shot a certain way and I’ll go ‘Oh MAN. This is just like the time Kirk and Picard duked it out with lightsabers in the Thunderdome!’ and boom, article. But I digress. So, what is up, world? Do you guys dislike the television during the holidays? I’d like to know I’m not alone.
Better yet, do you love holiday programming? Specifically Christmas programming? Do you watch those movies and television shows, and can articulate why you do it without uttering the word ‘festive’? I would love to hear from you.
No Comments