Sunday, December 8, 2019

Christmas Nostalgia

Being an old geezer (okay, well at least half an hold geezer), it sometimes takes a while for the feeling of Christmas to kick in. And I'm not talking about the good feeling of doing good things for other people. Yeah, I know that that should be the focus, and I do try to do that. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the feeling of looking forward to getting fun stuff and getting time off of school/work for a while while you enjoy it. But there are a few things that can instantly trigger nostalgia about Christmas. Maybe they're weird, but whatever. Here they are in chronological order:

  • Music from whatever records we listened to as kids. I think Perry Como and Bing Crosby or something.
  • Certain types of cookies and chocolate candy, although I can't put my finger on exactly what
  • In theory, old-style Transformers would do this. But I haven't seen one in a long time.
  • Mega Man 3. This was probably my most-anticipated Christmas present ever, and something about the pre-Christmas-morning vibe made me think I wasn't going to get it. But I did! The music from this game is just epicly legendarily awesome.
  • Mentos. The smell/taste of these are directly tied to playing Mega Man 3 at Christmas time, because that's when I first had them.
  • Bomberman 64. There was one Christmas when Nintendo didn't have any good new games out, so I got the closest thing I could find to Mario 64 (as far as I could tell). The superhappy Green Garden music feels especially Christmasy, although the snowy White Mountain music does too.
  • Metroid Prime. I was skeptical about whether you could make a good first-person Metroid game, but they did it! The quiet music from Phendrana Drifts (the snowy area) is especially wintery.
And... nothing else comes to mind. I guess the older you get, the more the seasons blur together, and I guess once you can buy your own stuff you don't rely on Christmas in quite the same way for cool stuff and experiences. But that's okay, because there's usually enough nostalgia in the above things to keep me going.

Bonus question: 
Since "Phendana" is a completely made-up word, why didn't they just spell it with an F?

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