Christmas in the 1980s

Christmas in the 1980s is remembered as a time when toys went high tech, movies more liberally showed Christmas, music drifted away from solo singers to groups, and shopping at a mall was at its peak. 

In a way, it was a transitory time in moving Christmas from the days of offline magic before the explosion of the online Christmas. 

As the 1970s ended the world of media and technology began to move in a more 24-hour cycle. M-TV began and it ran around the clock. It powered a revolution in music by making music videos big and the technology used to listen to music quite small. 

Radios gave way to small cassette tape players called Walkmans. It was a portable music device using headphones instead of speakers. It transformed the world of popular music, making the experience more intimate and customizable. 

Portable audio also went larger as “boom boxes” came into fashion and married radio and cassette tapes into one unit capable of blasting sound in an entire room. 

What kind of Christmas music was heard through these devices?

The classic Christmas crooner sounds of previous decades gave way to super groups that took classic Christmas music to a new level. 

Mannheim Steamroller released a Fresh Aire Christmas in 1984 to rave reviews and incessant radio play. 

Popular groups such as Wham brought new Christmas ballads such as “Last Christmas”. And charity minded efforts such as BandAid released Do They Know It’s Christmas, featuring all-star line ups of musicians. 

~ Television and Movies ~

Christmas on screens changed in the 1980s, too. 

While black and white re-runs on TV still featured annual showings of It’s a Wonderful Life the new Christmas movies of the 80s both looked back and poked fun at Christmas in the past. 

A Christmas Story was a nostalgic look back at Christmas in the 1940s. 

George C. Scott made headlines for his USA-accent pulling off the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in a made-for-TV version of A Christmas Carol. 

Bill Murray traded his movie success from Ghostbusters in a modernized telling of Dickens in Scrooged. 

But one of the biggest hits of the 1980s came at the very end of the decade with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, starring Chevy Chase (still a quotable classic). 

For traditionalists, watching Rudolph, Charlie Brown and the Grinch meant waiting for network announcements of the one annual showing of these television Christmas specials from the 1960s. 

Later in the decade, as the VCR was mass produced and made cheap, people could buy recorded Christmas shows and movies for a home library they could build for on-demand viewing. 

How much did it cost to get a VCR? 

The average price back in 1980 was between $500 to $1000, which dropped in price each year before settling at around $200 by the end of decade. 

A typical VHS movie would be priced as high as $69 at the start of the decade before coming down to around $20-$30 by the late 80s. Home videos spawned a new industry in rentals and movie distribution. 

Buying movies wasn’t the only video trend. The home VCR also launched a revolution in making home movies as film movie cameras transitioned to video movie cameras in small portable sizes. The first portable units featured a camera wired to a recorder that would be slung on a hip by a strap over the shoulders. But soon the technology shrunk in size to a unit that could sit on the shoulder with a viewfinder that could adjust at eye level. In time, these cameras would reduce even further in size. 

~ Computer Technology ~

Computers and gaming really got their mass market appeal in the 1980s. 

Back in the 1970s a popular arcade game known as Pong was brought to the home television. That game and other television screen games gave way to the first gaming consoles, namely the Atari 2600 and Mattel’s Intellivision. 

The game consoles used cartridges with programmed electronics that could be purchased. Each cartridge was a game or a series of games used exclusively on the consoles they were designed for. 

The consoles originally were priced at around $400 but came down by the end of the decade to about $150. Game cartridges averaged $29 in price but could be had for as little as $5 on clearance racks. 

The early 80s craze over gaming consoles gave way to popular home computers launched around 1983-84 with the Apple II, the Commodore 64, and the Radio Shack TRS-80.

These home systems, originally priced in the thousands of dollars, not only advanced gaming but also provided real-world applications in the home to write, compute and organize data for the first time. 

By the end of the decade computers were wired via phone lines to networks, giving the first capabilities to connect virtually. 

Most often these networks were sponsored by companies such as Compuserve, Prodigy and other organizations that organized news, discussion groups and other features intended to bring distant people together online. It would all give way to the Internet in the 1990s.

Technology spurred innovation in a variety of industries in the 1980s. As noted above, how music was played expanded in the 1980s. Technology also revolutionized the field of photography, which had been a popular gift giving option at Christmas for more than a century by Eastman Kodak. 

In the 1980s cameras became smaller and more portable through the Disc camera. Polaroid offered more “instant” cameras with pictures that developed themselves within a minute. 

In the 1980s computer components found their way into toys in a bigger way. 

The Teddy Ruxpin toy could talk and move when it was first put under Christmas trees in 1983. Mattel offered a “Speak and Spell” toy that advanced learned through electronic voice puzzles. 

~ Christmas Trends in the 1980s ~

Each decade features some unique Christmas styling and the 1980s were no different. 

The flash, the neon, and the big hair of the 1980s all influenced Christmas decorations. Large bulbs on Christmas trees (all incandescent), fluffy strands of mylar garland, and themed Christmas ornaments from Hallmark were indeed trendy. So too were the kneeling Santa, Precious Moments figurines, and garland laced with electronic bells. 

Christmas cards were also trendy in the 1980s. The corporate and large pre-printed Christmas cards that screamed status in the 1970s gave way to personalized Christmas cards that featured photos and the annual family brag letter. With the Internet and electronic greetings still more than a decade away Christmas cards were still very popular in the 1980s. 

Real Christmas trees easily outsold artificial trees in the 1980s. While fake trees were gaining, especially in price, the lure of the aroma and the look of a real tree was still much preferred. 

Toy fads were the Rubik’s Cube, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Cabbage Patch Kids, Trivial Pursuit, Space Invaders, Laser Tag. Nintendo, and Game Boy.

~ Traditions Held Close ~

The 1980s might have seen a lot of innovation and change but it also stubbornly clung to Christmas traditions. 

By and large, Christmas music wasn’t heard on the radio until Thanksgiving Day at the earliest. Black Friday was a thing but early morning openings were not. Eggnog was only available in stores in December. 

Shopping was the Christmas recreational activity. Yes, movies, plays, and concerts were popular and events such as Christmas boutiques had their draw. But the main event before the main event usually involved shopping. 

Extended holiday hours were a thing – but at a more reasonable level. Stores could open as early as 8am and stay open late until 10pm. Malls likewise were open extended hours. They were also heavily decorated and frequently featured parking shuttles for those who had to park at long distances. 

Christmas caroling and seeing Christmas lights were favored activities. Exterior Christmas lights lacked the diversity of today’s offerings but could still be quite large and draw very big crowds. Entire neighborhoods were more inclined to decorate together.

Christmas traditions such as getting an orange in the toe of a stocking or a Book of Lifesavers in the Christmas stocking were common. Even kissing under the mistletoe seemed more prevalent in those days.  

The 1980s were a time of block buster movies and the period between Christmas and New Years was a time to go to the movies. Major releases at Christmastime included now-classic 1980s hits of 9-to-5, Tootsie, The Color Purple, Moonstruck, Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy and Good Morning Vietnam. 

In many ways, despite the relentless march of technology, Christmas of the 1980s were not in reality much different than Christmas of today.

One glaring difference is those days were, at least in America, a time of more “peace on Earth, goodwill towards men”, if only because the political climate was different and we lacked social media. Perhaps this is why Christmas of the 1980s carries so much nostalgia for people who lived through those times.