It is the week of Christmas. Things are starting to get a little hectic around here. We have our extremely fake, blue-tinseled, non-organic, non-eco-friendly, pre-lit tree up. A string of Chrismas lights are aglow along the door frame. Our house is full of Christmas cheer. There are some presents under the tree-though not to be opened till Christmas Day! I even made two batches of Nutmeg Cookies. We ate some, they were very tasty, and we didn’t get high.
But did you know that Christmas time is full of danger and horrifying TV specials???!
This post over at The Stir claims some classic Christmas specials, such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and A Christmas Story (among others), are too scary for today’s kids. What??! I heartily disagree, as does just about everyone who commented on said article. Even my 6-year-old disagrees! We’ve been on a steady loop of Rudolph/Frosty/Santa Claus is Coming to Town and all other classic Christmas movie/TV specials. She even announced to me: “I am 6 years old and I AM NOT AFRAID! Not of the Abominable, not of anything!!!!”
I’ll admit that some of those old movies are a bit weird, but whatever! Let the kids watch the Christmas specials! They don’t even compare to what’s on your basic news channel these days! Maybe we all need to relax a bit, eh?
How did it get to the point where the Yukon Cornelius toy from “Rudolph”, in an effort to be ‘politically correct’, ended up brandishing a knife instead of the original revolver as portrayed in the movie? If we’re talking about being politically correct, is a knife so much better than a gun?
Why do we have such a culture of fear, especially in regard to children? How did it get to the point where we can’t (or won’t) let our kids do anything (like playing outside by themselves, for instance) for fear of something awful happening to them?
What happened to just letting kids be kids?
