Nostalgic but bad

The holiday season is all about memories - some good and some bad - and this seems to be the one time of year when people are feverishly busy trying to recreate their childhood (how else could you explain the sudden popularity of aluminum trees?). Something that brings up warm fuzzies to you might just look like schlocky garbage to someone else, but that's life. So we have added a new DVD for the holidays that has little if any artistic merit, but is sure to conjure up waves of nostalgia in anyone who was born after 1965. Christmas Television Favorites sucks you in with "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" - one of the best cartoons you can find - and then piles on 4 cheesy stop-action animation specials done by Rankin and Bass: "The Year Without a Santa Claus", "Rudolph's Shiny New Year", "Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July" and "Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey" (I have never even heard of that last one). The set is then topped off with two cartoon specials: "Frosty's Winter Wonderland" and "'Twas the Night Before Christmas". It may have been 35 years since you've seen some of these productions, but they will definitely take you back to your childhood, back to those crazy days before cable television and VCRs when you gladly lapped up whatever the big 3 networks had to offer. Ah, memories.....