Nostalgia Challenge 2026 !!

A

angus40

Supporting Member
Do we as a collective have the fortitude to change .With all you talented folks across all Christmas forums I
had a thought . Why not do a retro theme for 2026 . Bring back Bing Crosby , Burl Ives , peanuts and the gang etc !

Those were the days of creativity which seams lost today .
Maybe i'm just getting old , but this could revitalize this hobby .

I haven't done a display for the past 4 years but intend on doing a retro 1950's - 1970's theme for 2026 .

You'll shoot your eye out !

Just a thought .

........
 
You are on to something there. We are working on the 2026 show (gluten for punishment, I guess) and have two nights where we are doing nothing but "oldies". Mostly from the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

If more of us want to do this, we can share sequences and really do a big show.
 
I think that would be awesome, I hate the new stuff anyway.

I grew up listening to the old crooner music. My mom had to the old stuff on nearly all day long. Dad would come home after work and everything went Country. So, I know most of the old orchestral and Country too.
 
I'm up for that challenge!

Perry Como – It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
Dean Martin – Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Brenda Lee – Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
The Ronettes – Sleigh Ride
Andy Williams – Happy Holiday / The Holiday Season
Andy Williams – It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Elvis Presley – If Every Day Was Like Christmas
Dean Martin – Silver Bells
Nat King Cole – Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
Burl Ives – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Gene Autry – Up on the Housetop
Johnny Mathis – Sleigh Ride
Bing Crosby – White Christmas
Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
Frank Sinatra – The Christmas Waltz
Frank Sinatra – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Andy Williams – The First Noel
Nat King Cole – O Holy Night
Andy Williams – Away in a Manger
 
I would be willing to go along for the ride on this one. I currently have 4 of those songs playing and 2 of the for the past 10 years.
The kids love to sing along with the Oldies. They also sing along with Frosty and the Chipmunks.
 
That is the direction I am leaning towards for 2026 since I wanna do a static/animated show. My wife wants to create a candy land. So I am looking at more traditional songs.
 
I already have Burl Ives and a Frank Sinatra. I need to do a Gene Autry, Brenda Lee. I’m looking forward to this. And of course Charlie Brown and Linus.
 
And don't ignore the Harry Simeone Choir's "The Little Drummer Boy". It came out almost 70 years ago... that's two generations ago....
 
Missed this thread somehow.

We mostly use uptempo/rock type stuff but I have a few slower ones. A few years back I added "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" by Casting Crowns which is now one of my favorite sequences of them all. The other slower one I do is "Thank God it's Christmas" by Queen... not from the era you're talking about but it's 40 years old now so it might be classic lol.

Closest thing I do to that era is "We Need a Little Christmas" by Johnny Mathis. Although I love stuff from that era and I listen to it all frequently.
 
When I was a teen, I recorded a bunch of Christmas music off the radio. I would pop that cassette in every year for many years later. Among the songs, was this amazingly cheesy (in the best way) version of Rudolf, all instrumental other than "la-la" vocals. I always assumed it was by Ray Coniff Singers as they did stuff like that but could never find it.

Well it turns out it wasn't Ray, it was Lawrence Welk (who my dad loved). And Welk put out at least two different recordings of this song, so you have to find the right one. But I finally identified it a few years back.

I've considered using it in the display but not sure how much it would connect with today's audiences. Sure brings back the nostalgia for me though... (miss you, Dad...)

 
I've still got a tape I made off an AM radio of a station here in the Twin Cities back in about 1965. It was recorded at 1-7/8 ips using my dad's old half-track, mono Revere tape recorder. That machine is long gone so to listen to it, I recorded the tape at 3-3/4 ips into Audacity and then used the speed setting to cut it back to 50%. It sounded just like I remembered it 60 years ago....
 
My cousin sent me a this like 3 or 4 years back: It's a recording of an old reel tape from the early 70s from Kmart, complete with announcements between songs to shoppers.

It's loaded with tons of instrumental Christmas music, mostly from the 50s and 60s. In the comments you can find the name and artist of many of the tracks.

Every year since then I've put it on in the house as we're doing something Christmassy like baking cookies or what not.

 
tfischer said:
When I was a teen, I recorded a bunch of Christmas music off the radio. I would pop that cassette in every year for many years later. Among the songs, was this amazingly cheesy (in the best way) version of Rudolf, all instrumental other than "la-la" vocals. I always assumed it was by Ray Coniff Singers as they did stuff like that but could never find it.

Well it turns out it wasn't Ray, it was Lawrence Welk (who my dad loved). And Welk put out at least two different recordings of this song, so you have to find the right one. But I finally identified it a few years back.

I've considered using it in the display but not sure how much it would connect with today's audiences. Sure brings back the nostalgia for me though... (miss you, Dad...)

Click to expand...
Y'all bringing back all kinds of memories! Every Saturday night was "The Lawrence Welk Show" then "Carol Burnett" and somewhere in there was "Red Skelton Show". Laugh like crazy and never heard a four letter word.

They had a piece of furniture with a TV tube in the Middle and record player on one end and a AM/FM Radio with a slot to store a few LP Albums, (Lawrence Welk and Tijuana Brass to name a few,) on the other and speakers in the front on each end. When the tv stopped working you would pull tubes out and take them down to the drug store and plug them into a store display box to find out if they were bad and the right size. Replacement tubes were stored underneath the top shelf. This piece of furniture is still in their old house, Minus the tv tube, that my Baby sister now lives in.

It was my Mother that gave me my Christmas Bug. Our whole was transformed at Christmas time. I did what I could at the time to do Christmas lights on the house and in the yard. Making trees with strings of incandescent lights and part of a fence top rail stubbed into the ground. Me and dad bent a full, or close to full, top rail pipe into a circle using a pine tree. Me on one side and him on the other until we bent it into a circle. Don't remember how we held it together but we had a circle. It became a wreath for the front of the house with a 5 point star in the middle. The star was wire then white lights on the wire. Chicken wire or fence wrapped around the pipe with fresh cedar or pine stuck in the chicken wire and covered with multi colored lights. I miss this simple time. I could go on and on but I'll stop here.

I'll be 64 soon and Dad has been gone for almost 20 years now, and yeah, I miss him.

Sorry, I just had a flashback.
 
Circa 3rd grade,if we were lucky, my brother and I (he was 5 years older) could convince our dad to rip himself away from Lawrence Welk and drive us 30 miles to the roller skating rink. Dad loved that type of music... he'd have it on in the car and as I got older we'd 'argue' about why we couldn't have a rock/pop music station on instead. He'd make fun of 'my' music and how he couldn't understand the lyrics. "His" music just seemed old-fashioned to me.

What I wouldn't give for a long car-ride to nowhere, listening to 'his' music today. He passed in 1995 at age 63. 31 years now. Dang. I was 25 and just getting over my 'know it all cocky kid' stage and realizing maybe he did know a thing or two after all.

Dad always made sure we had a nice looking exterior Christmas display. C9's along the roofline and around the big living room window. In my baby book at age 2, my mom wrote about how I couldn't wait to have the outside Christmas lights on each night, which was done manually by flipping the outside stoop light switch.

At one point I suggested we get a Santa blow mold. Dad declared "no Santas in our display". I was puzzled, didn't know he had a problem with Santa. He went on to explain... we lived right across the street from our Church, which had their Nativity set up facing our house. He didn't want it to look like we were the "secular side" in contrast to the church (he also didn't want a competing Nativity). Snowmen, lights, candy canes, most everything else were fair game.

Was lucky enough to have Mom until 2017. I went back and put up the lights there every year until about 2015, when she was mostly living with my brother or I. She had a massive stroke on Easter morning, never spoke again and passed a few days later.

Memories... as we get older sometimes they are sad yet fun to remember.
 
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