Christmas Spirit No More?

I had a conversation earlier this week and it seems like the spirit of Christmas is dying.

Every year I try to get my son (who is 6) to sit down and watch the classic Christmas shows with me.  I get so excited when I see Rudolph showing up on TV and can’t wait to sit there and watch it.  When I try to get my son to sit there with me he gets bored within minutes and wants to flip the channel to Spongebob or some other Nickelodeon show.

And I have to blame the networks, on some level, for this. 

Years ago, when I was growing up there was only three major networks.  If you wanted to watch any shows you were stuck between those networks and didn’t have much else on.  The Christmas shows only appeared on these channels.  And all the shows were made in the ’60′s.  The early ’80′s we didn’t have any new holiday shows to choose from.

Now fast forward to today.  There are dozens on channels out there that creates there own programming.  I have nothing against this, but the problem is that we have over saturation.  ABC Family does the 25 days of Christmas and shows a huge amount of Christmas related shows.  The quality of all these shows aren’t the best, but they do have to fill up a lot of air time with holiday shows.  ABC Family also likes to make their own movies too.  I don’t really want to see some weak storylined movie with some C-list actor in it.  Kids have too much Christmas stuff to choose from and pay less attention to what we grew up with.

The second reason kids don’t like the classics is because of technology.

Nowadays, kids have all these computer generated movies, HD television, and video games.  They have too much technology out there.

Who wants to sit there for 30 minutes and watch some hand created standard definition movie that doesn’t have explosions, silly voices, or where the story ends before the commercial break. 

The third reason is availability.

Growing up, we didn’t have VCRs and if you missed a show on TV – you missed it!  Now you can buy all the Christmas shows on DVD and watch them anytime you want.  This takes away from the anticipation of waiting for that one night a year that your favorite holiday show is on.

If my son doesn’t get to appreciate these shows, what will happen to them in the future?  Will the major networks eventually stop showing them and they will only become a memory to those who grew up with them?