I’ve been seeing all over the internet that people are saying they want to have a 90s Christmas, by which they seem to mean a traditional, nostalgic, family-centered, budget-friendly, warm-feeling holiday.
Obviously, the 90s were far from perfect, but I understand this sentiment. I think it speaks to how many are craving (Christian) values of faith and family and a groundedness in something much deeper than secular culture and rampant materialism can provide.
Have you seen this trend? What are your thoughts on it? What was your favorite thing about 90s Christmases (assuming you were alive then)?
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I’ve seen that trend too, and what strikes me isn’t just the nostalgia, it’s how specific the memories are. A 90s Christmas had its own soundtrack and rituals: the same handful of movies playing on TV every year, the big animated specials, the Christmas albums everybody seemed to own. You didn’t choose from a thousand options; you just watched whatever was on, and somehow that made it feel shared.
My favorite part of Christmas back then was exactly that: the “event” of things. Waiting all week for a particular movie night because you couldn’t stream it later. Recording Christmas songs off the radio. Even flipping through those thick toy catalogs felt like a tradition in itself, whether you actually got anything from them or not.
So yes, I’ve noticed the trend, and I think part of the appeal is that a 90s Christmas had a kind of collective culture around it. Everyone watched the same things, listened to the same songs, and had that same feeling of, “Oh yep… it’s officially Christmas now.” It made the season feel big and shared in a way that’s hard to recreate today.
You’re so right. I remember how fun it was to wait for the radio station to play our favorite Christmas songs. We even had a game of guessing which Christmas song would be the first-played of the season.
Technology and our fast-paced world has changed so much of these traditions. I wonder how we can recapture that wonder, that magic of the holiday season that so often involved friends and family in a meaningful way?
Most people near here don’t understand that “Christmas” is a word referring specifically to the date of birth of Jesus Christ. In a certain sense, there is never going to be another Christmas, unless you believe in reincarnation, which I guess is an interesting concept, I’ve definitely met sorta strange hippy the dye and glass beads people who think that Jesus was a real “god”, but only in those inverted quote marks, and that the reason he was able to preform miracles was that he had evolved through many different lifetimes over reincarnation history.
By that view, Christmas happens many times, but not predictably by astronomical reckoning, and not every year for the named individual. This new age eastern view also believes that everyone reincarnates, so actually any time a person whose karma has caused him to be as powerful as to walk on water, multiple loaves and fishes, etc is born it’s a “Christmas Day”.
Don’t sweat it. I’m not getting an expensive anything this year, and won’t be able to afford to give an expensive anything, either.