Comparing Past Decembers
There have been plenty of memorable Decembers over the years with Christmas and New Year's in the mix. Let's see which one were the best....
December 1983 vs. December 1993 vs. December 2003
Winner: 1983--Easy choice here as 1993 was weak and 2003 was horrific. The first Christmas I remember was 1983 and recall it being the one year we put the Christmas tree up in a different spot in the parents' living room. And while I only remember one gift I got that year, it was a big one...the complete set of McDonald's pens featuring Ronald McDonald, Cheeseburger, Hamburglar, Big Mac, and Grimace. New Year's was a bigger deal that year, however, as we picked up Irish Setter "Luke" from Albert Lea, a dog who stayed with us until his passing in December 1992. It was also my first memory of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, with special guest Culture Club singing their new hit "Karma Chameleon" which I loved then and still do, despite how uncool it now seems to be to say you were a fan of Culture Club.
December 1984 vs. December 1994 vs. December 2004
Winner: 1994--Close call between '84 and '94 here (2004 certainly wasn't a contender with Dick Clark having a stroke and not being able to do the New Year's countdown) but 1994 edges it out because of all the new country CDs I got for Christmas back on my first year as the owner of a CD player and what I consider country music's best year.
December 1985 vs. December 1995 vs. December 2005
Winner: 1985--Three solid contenders here but 1985 wins the series due to Christmas being on a Wednesday and giving me my first 16-day Christmas break, complete with new episodes of "MacGyver" and "The Fall Guy" to enjoy during my break. It was my first year of baseball cards so I got a few baseball card-related gifts that Christmas for the first time. I was also right on the precipice of early 1986 "Monsters" book obsession, reading the first couple in late 1985 before the fascination busted wide open very early into the new year.
December 1986 vs. December 1996 vs. December 2006
Winner: 1986--Three solid contenders last round and three flawed contenders this round. But 1986 easily wins by default as I got a bunch of new baseball card sets this year along with a plastic pinball machine game that was a nice way to pass time and got a lot of use until one of the legs broke off. In addition, Christmas was just a lot more fun at age 9 than it was at 19 or 29.
December 1987 vs. December 1997 vs. December 2007
Winner: 1997--This Christmas was a decidedly mixed bag as on December 26, 1997, I got my wisdom teeth removed, which was not exactly great for holiday season morale, but the discomfort from the oral surgery was easily surpassed by my most consequential Christmas gift of all-time, the Minnesota blue book, which featured precinct-level returns for the entire state of Minnesota from the 1996 election. During my downtime after the surgery, I gathered and arranged data from Minnesota towns and townships into neat little charts, a tradition I've been following every election cycle since. It never ceases to be exciting and fun, and I have my free-of-charge gift from Christmas 1997 to thank for it.
December 1988 vs. December 1998 vs. December 2008
Winner: 1988--This wasn't a spectacular Christmas and New Year's but I do have memories of my family visiting an aunt in southeast Minnesota the weekend before Christmas. My most memorable gift was the battery-powered Capsela toy with gears contained in plastic bubbles that connect together like tinker toys, which I had gotten a taste of in the fifth-grade classroom. I also remember watching the "Little House on the Prairie" Christmas special on Christmas Eve and the final episode of "Simon and Simon" on New Year's Eve.
December 1989 vs. December 1999 vs. December 2009
Winner: 1989--I have three really great choices here but there's no way I can choose anything other than the classic holiday season of 1989, the season where the epic MacGyver Christmas episode aired, and where I began my now 26-year tradition of watching it every Christmas Eve. Beyond that, it was also the Christmas I got my own Nintendo along with the game that remains my favorite after all these years, Super Mario Bros. 2. There was also some excitement about transitioning to a new a decade come New Year's, which was particularly prescient since 1990 ended up being the most consequential year of my childhood.
December 1990 vs. December 2000 vs. December 2010
Winner: 1990--There was some trepidation in the air during the holiday season of 1990 as my dad was out of work and had been for months, but he got a job early in 1991. Still, it was a sparser Christmas than usual, although my mom was able to get her hands on a discount copy of the Nintendo game "Bubble Bobble", a childhood favorite, and my dad had scored some pair of cross country skis at an auction. It was a snowier-than-average winter so they got some use in the months ahead. I also remember cashing in on some free meal tickets at the Elks Club in Albert Lea my dad won somewhere the Friday before the Christmas, where I had some of the best burritos I ever recall having. It wasn't a perfect December, but it happened in those formative years where the memories tend to shine brightest even decades later.
December 1991 vs. December 2001 vs. December 2011
Winner: 1991--Once again a childhood holiday season kicks the butt of its competition. Christmas was on a Wednesday this year meaning a 2 1/2-week Christmas break, in this case the first where I was allowed to stay home alone. I got a cross-section of favorable gifts including the final entries of my baseball card and Nintendo collections, as well as the maiden voyages for a new obsession with an atlas an almanac, the almanac providing me county returns from the 1984 and 1988 Presidential elections, setting the template for my lifelong obsession with regional politics. There was one major dark side to December 1991 though....it was the end of MacGyver on Monday nights. The series finale and a "lost episode" were still hanging out there for 1992, but MacGyver was replaced on the Monday evening schedule at the end of the month, which was certainly a wet blanket that kept me from enjoying the holiday season as much as I would have.
December 1992 vs. December 2002 vs. December 2012
Winner: 2012--Yikes. Two horrific choices and one that wins by default. Most second place choices and even some third place options in other groupings would have topped this one but since neither my dog nor my grandpa died in 2012 as they did in the other two years, it stands out as the pick of the litter in this bunch. I was still crunching election data from Obama's re-election win in 2012 but beyond that my memories of the year are pretty sparse.
We still have five more months to get through on this little exercise. There are some gems left but I expect more nondescript entries for dead-of-winter months like January and February moving forward.
December 1983 vs. December 1993 vs. December 2003
Winner: 1983--Easy choice here as 1993 was weak and 2003 was horrific. The first Christmas I remember was 1983 and recall it being the one year we put the Christmas tree up in a different spot in the parents' living room. And while I only remember one gift I got that year, it was a big one...the complete set of McDonald's pens featuring Ronald McDonald, Cheeseburger, Hamburglar, Big Mac, and Grimace. New Year's was a bigger deal that year, however, as we picked up Irish Setter "Luke" from Albert Lea, a dog who stayed with us until his passing in December 1992. It was also my first memory of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, with special guest Culture Club singing their new hit "Karma Chameleon" which I loved then and still do, despite how uncool it now seems to be to say you were a fan of Culture Club.
December 1984 vs. December 1994 vs. December 2004
Winner: 1994--Close call between '84 and '94 here (2004 certainly wasn't a contender with Dick Clark having a stroke and not being able to do the New Year's countdown) but 1994 edges it out because of all the new country CDs I got for Christmas back on my first year as the owner of a CD player and what I consider country music's best year.
December 1985 vs. December 1995 vs. December 2005
Winner: 1985--Three solid contenders here but 1985 wins the series due to Christmas being on a Wednesday and giving me my first 16-day Christmas break, complete with new episodes of "MacGyver" and "The Fall Guy" to enjoy during my break. It was my first year of baseball cards so I got a few baseball card-related gifts that Christmas for the first time. I was also right on the precipice of early 1986 "Monsters" book obsession, reading the first couple in late 1985 before the fascination busted wide open very early into the new year.
December 1986 vs. December 1996 vs. December 2006
Winner: 1986--Three solid contenders last round and three flawed contenders this round. But 1986 easily wins by default as I got a bunch of new baseball card sets this year along with a plastic pinball machine game that was a nice way to pass time and got a lot of use until one of the legs broke off. In addition, Christmas was just a lot more fun at age 9 than it was at 19 or 29.
December 1987 vs. December 1997 vs. December 2007
Winner: 1997--This Christmas was a decidedly mixed bag as on December 26, 1997, I got my wisdom teeth removed, which was not exactly great for holiday season morale, but the discomfort from the oral surgery was easily surpassed by my most consequential Christmas gift of all-time, the Minnesota blue book, which featured precinct-level returns for the entire state of Minnesota from the 1996 election. During my downtime after the surgery, I gathered and arranged data from Minnesota towns and townships into neat little charts, a tradition I've been following every election cycle since. It never ceases to be exciting and fun, and I have my free-of-charge gift from Christmas 1997 to thank for it.
December 1988 vs. December 1998 vs. December 2008
Winner: 1988--This wasn't a spectacular Christmas and New Year's but I do have memories of my family visiting an aunt in southeast Minnesota the weekend before Christmas. My most memorable gift was the battery-powered Capsela toy with gears contained in plastic bubbles that connect together like tinker toys, which I had gotten a taste of in the fifth-grade classroom. I also remember watching the "Little House on the Prairie" Christmas special on Christmas Eve and the final episode of "Simon and Simon" on New Year's Eve.
December 1989 vs. December 1999 vs. December 2009
Winner: 1989--I have three really great choices here but there's no way I can choose anything other than the classic holiday season of 1989, the season where the epic MacGyver Christmas episode aired, and where I began my now 26-year tradition of watching it every Christmas Eve. Beyond that, it was also the Christmas I got my own Nintendo along with the game that remains my favorite after all these years, Super Mario Bros. 2. There was also some excitement about transitioning to a new a decade come New Year's, which was particularly prescient since 1990 ended up being the most consequential year of my childhood.
December 1990 vs. December 2000 vs. December 2010
Winner: 1990--There was some trepidation in the air during the holiday season of 1990 as my dad was out of work and had been for months, but he got a job early in 1991. Still, it was a sparser Christmas than usual, although my mom was able to get her hands on a discount copy of the Nintendo game "Bubble Bobble", a childhood favorite, and my dad had scored some pair of cross country skis at an auction. It was a snowier-than-average winter so they got some use in the months ahead. I also remember cashing in on some free meal tickets at the Elks Club in Albert Lea my dad won somewhere the Friday before the Christmas, where I had some of the best burritos I ever recall having. It wasn't a perfect December, but it happened in those formative years where the memories tend to shine brightest even decades later.
December 1991 vs. December 2001 vs. December 2011
Winner: 1991--Once again a childhood holiday season kicks the butt of its competition. Christmas was on a Wednesday this year meaning a 2 1/2-week Christmas break, in this case the first where I was allowed to stay home alone. I got a cross-section of favorable gifts including the final entries of my baseball card and Nintendo collections, as well as the maiden voyages for a new obsession with an atlas an almanac, the almanac providing me county returns from the 1984 and 1988 Presidential elections, setting the template for my lifelong obsession with regional politics. There was one major dark side to December 1991 though....it was the end of MacGyver on Monday nights. The series finale and a "lost episode" were still hanging out there for 1992, but MacGyver was replaced on the Monday evening schedule at the end of the month, which was certainly a wet blanket that kept me from enjoying the holiday season as much as I would have.
December 1992 vs. December 2002 vs. December 2012
Winner: 2012--Yikes. Two horrific choices and one that wins by default. Most second place choices and even some third place options in other groupings would have topped this one but since neither my dog nor my grandpa died in 2012 as they did in the other two years, it stands out as the pick of the litter in this bunch. I was still crunching election data from Obama's re-election win in 2012 but beyond that my memories of the year are pretty sparse.
We still have five more months to get through on this little exercise. There are some gems left but I expect more nondescript entries for dead-of-winter months like January and February moving forward.
posted by Mark at 2:00 PM
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