Keskustelujen arkisto

I usually spend the Christmas holidays with friends in Denmark and/or Sweden, so I've experienced some version of the "From All of Us to All of You" tradition.
I've never seen people stopping everything to watch the show and remaining silent while it runs. But on the day when it is shown, the friends I'm visiting usually do have the TV tuned to it in the background of whatever we're up to.

I don't think this is off topic. Kalle Anka is swedish for Donald Duck and Donald Duck is a Disney Comics Character so this is still Disney Comics Related.

Sounds like the American tradition of showing A Charlie Brown Christmas and Mickey's Christmas Carol every year. Though, without all the intensity. :)

Quote from user: WBSounds like the American tradition of showing A Charlie Brown Christmas and Mickey's Christmas Carol every year. Though, without all the intensity. :)
If only Mickey's Christmas Carol got half the respect in the U.S.A. that Kalle Anka apparently gets. *sigh*

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=73638CE73CB96A44

EDIT: Like WB said, this isn't too unlike how we Americans used to all tune in to A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life, etc. Once upon a year, those specials were really SPECIAL in that you had one chance a year to catch them, and most people did. Large ads were taken out in TV Guide telling folks when their favorite shows were airing, and I remember taping notes to the TV when I was a kid so I didn't miss them!

I think the advent of DVD and the DVR has all but killed off the shared experience of everyone watching the same Christmas show at the same time. I always make time for my favorites each year, but I couldn't tell you when they aired... as I own most of my favorites on DVD and watch at my leisure.

So thinking about this a little more, I think it's *wonderful* that such a large percentage of people tune in at the same time for something that's come to mean so much for so many. That's where pop culture is born. And with entertainment becoming increasingly fragmented, specialized and on-demand... it's becoming a rarity these days for people to have these group experiences.

The fact that we didn't have Disney-shows on tv each week (or daily) made these once-a-year moments really rare.
I think I remember the first show that was aired and I sat infront of the tv each year, until I had my own family (!) and suddenly was the chef in the kitchen.
My kids and grandchildren line-up in the couch, though - so the tradition continues, while I roast the DUCK and the flæskesteg and the thick brown gravy, the rødkål and what-ever...

But then again, I can make my own "From all of us to all of you" at any time and love to sit with my grandchildren watching "Cars" or "Snow White" whenever I want!
I only had a chance in a year, when I was their age...

A great x-mas and holidays to all of you!

A week after the 2009 broadcast of "Kalle Anka", I've found this thread, and I have to make a post about it.
The author of the article is mostly right. The tradition might seem bizarre to non-Swedes. I'm also the only one in my family, who still follows the tradition these days, but then, I'm also the one in my family, who's most into watching cartoons in general. (I'm twentyfive years old, but I'm a strong advocate of the idea, that cartoons [and especially old cartoons from the 1930s, the 1940s or the 1950s] aren't made for children only.)
Jeremy Stahl notes, that the cartoons shown are dated, and some of the dubbing is "random". Yes, that's true of course, but that's a part of the charm of the show, as most of it has been the same for fifty years. I wouldn't accept such a clumsy dubbing work on a new cartoon, but this is a tradition, that's twice as old as I am, so I cut it a big piece of slack. And that's why so many of us love it. We recognize what we see and hear in the special, and we know what will happen next. Some people, who aren't that into traditions, find the show boring because it's almost the same every year. But hey, it's their loss.
He's also right about how it could become a tradition, as American cartoons were very rare on Swedish TV back in the day, and we only had two channels until 1987 (and most of us couldn't watch the new channels anyway for many years after they had started). During the 1970s, SVT rather showed children's shows from Eastern Europe, because they preferred the Communist Block to the "capitalist" USA. When the 1980s came, things improved a little, as Disney shorts were shown regularly, but between 1989 and 1991, there were suddenly two years, when they stopped showing Disney shorts regularly again. (But when Disney came back to SVT in 1991, they also started showing then recent TV shows like "Winnie the Pooh" and "Duck Tales", so I forgive them.)
But even during those dark years, when Disney was absent from TV on every other day of the year, that one sacred hour on Christmas Eve has always been there. Today's children, who have grown up with VCR, DVD and several channels on TV dedicated just to kids, might not grow up to cherish the tradition as much as their parents (and maybe even grandparents) did. But yes, "Kalle Anka" is safe for now and for many years to come, and I personally don't want to see the day, when this tradition stops.

I cannot understand why anyone would think it "bizarre" to have such a tradition. Humans are "wired" to do what their predecessors did, because "what they did-must have worked (e.g. allowed them to survive to the age of procreation). So they do what their ancestors did because it worked (must be good), and to pay homage/respect to them. We Jews still have cleanliness and dietary rules (that were designed to promote better health, but no longer apply to daily life (we have refrigerators, so there is virtually no danger of catching trichinosis from pork harbouring deadly bacteria in warm temperatures). Yet we still adhere to those old ways. Why is watching cartoons on a given day, at a given hour, because our parents did it, and we did it as a child, any different?
Humans get comfort in remembering and reliving the joy they got from given past activities.
I would guess that Swedes living overseas put a DVD of that programme on their TVs at the exact hour in their local time. I am sure that many people value that tradition just as much as remembering the birthday of some Middle-Eastern man from 2,000 years before, who was said to have been God come down to Earth to die for their sins.