He's Mister Heat Miser, he's Mister Sun...

(Well, he is!)


My son is mesmerized by this guy from "The Year Without a Santa Claus," one of the animated Christmas movies from the late 60s/early 70s, with which I grew up. I can remember being a kid and looking forward to these movies being shown on television ONE TIME EACH during the holiday season. We didn't have VCRs then (I feel so old explaining this to my son), and we had to make a point of sitting down in our finished basement to watch the show from beginning to end. Now, of course, we have cable TV and the Family Channel is running these movies almost every night from now until Christmas. It's crazy fun. Or crazy annoying, depending on your take on things. For us, it's Fun with a capital F, or "F-U-N, fun!" as my sister would say.

I'd told my son about this movie when it was on the first time this season, and apparently he developed a real interest in the Miser Brothers from the film. I like to think it was my rendition of the Heat Miser's (and Snow Miser's) song that did it. I mean, how could any preschooler resist the silliness of Mommy's singing a new, weird song, complete with a little dance (don't ask) and obligatory trombone impression? It's intoxicating, I tell you. He also likes the funky dance I do to "Rubber Band Man," the song currently being used for an Office Max commercial. (I'd thought it was for Circuit City, but since this writing I've seen the commercial a billion times and paid attention.) Most of the time I'm too busy dancing and my son is too busy laughing to notice the name of the store!

Anyway, when "The Year Without a Santa Claus" was on the first time this season, I recorded it and then promptly lost it. I must have recorded something else over it. Then again, if I were the kind of person who labels her videocassettes, I might have been able to find it. Luckily it was on again, and I made a point of recording it for my son, who was pretty irritated that I'd gotten him all worked up about it the first time and then failed to deliver.

So today when my son returned from his dad's house, we sat down and watched the show together. Well, I watched as much as I had the patience for. But he loved it, and he rewound it a couple of times to watch the Miser Brothers dance and stomp around.

Tradition...adapting. ;-)