Tale of the tape

Author's note: Wrote this one before Christmas. Is it too late (early?) to post a Christmas column? Survey says: Nah.

At one time, Christmas was all about the VCR. My preservation-obsessed mother would tape Christmas specials as they aired, and watching them every year became a tradition, as is the case with many around the holidays. The difference with us was that, instead of waiting until these specials were broadcast on traditional airwaves, we’d pop in our tape and blow through all the Swiffer and Burger King commercials with impunity. This was the height of technological wonder.

Now it’s all about my hard drive. But I’ll get to that.

Nostalgia is a big part of the holidays, and lately I’ve been feeling nostalgic about my old VCR. What a beast this thing was. A sleek silver and black that looked futuristic at the time, it was one of those old-school tanks that loaded from the top and made a satisfying metallic clink sound when you snapped the tape into place. It was about the size of a basketball court and sucked more power than a particle accelerator, but it was reliable and indestructible. You could toss it in front of a bus and just the bus would break.

Many a Christmas was passed in front of that tank, and while video viewing methods have become sleeker and prettier, there’s something to be said for old videotapes. The picture was often grainy and had lines of snow running across it, the colors faded with time, and the beginning of the tape always looked and sounded warbly, like it was being played for an underwater audience of Aquamen. But darnit, it had character. Plus it was all we had. These whippersnappers today don’t know even know what they’ve got.

What’s odd is that when I watch some of these same Christmas specials today, I’m always a bit surprised that there isn’t a little video skip here, a patch of missing audio there. I watched that tape so many damn times I memorized the imperfections of the format itself, so when I sit down as an adult and flip on “Frosty the Snowman,” it’s almost jarring when Santa goes into his speech about Christmas snow and doesn’t sound like he has a mouthful of golf balls.

Younger fans of older media formats are increasingly common; they’ve popularized vinyl to a degree that has sparked a mini-Renaissance. Talk to a young vinyl collector and they’ll tell you about the warm sound quality, the rich bass, the expansive cover art suitable for framing. They’re onto something there.

By contrast, there’s no reason I or anyone else should be nostalgic about VCRs and VHS tapes. The performance is not superior in any way to DVDs or BluRays. Pure, unadulterated nostalgia is the format’s only redeeming factor, which means Millennials and post-Millennials, the same ones who resurrected vinyl, will almost surely let videocassettes die. Nobody tosses in a weathered tape of “Goodfellas” and says, “Look, look at the way you can barely make out the expression on Joe Pesci’s face! See how all the reds are bleeding together? This is epic!”

And yet.

A few years ago I set about on a mission: Scour the internet in search of all the Christmas specials that were on that ancient tape, download them, and renew my love for those old shows with a digital collection that won’t deteriorate over time. Amazingly, I found them all, many tucked away on obscure European video-streaming sites, hidden amidst clips of mustachioed street performers and mimes riding elephants. To download them I utilized technology that sits in a kind of ethical gray area; for that reason, I’ll not divulge my methods, lest I get a knock on my door from the producers of “A Garfield Christmas.” In my imagination they’re a pair of eight-foot-tall goliaths wielding baseball bats.

The digital versions of these Christmas shows fall into two categories -- the ones with pristine quality, and the ones that look like twice-warmed-over crap.

The pristine ones are a delight, of course. They sparkle with a newness not seen since they originally aired, likely sometime during the Cretaceous period. The crappy ones, though, are crappy in a very specific way.

Someone grabbed them off a VHS tape. It’s obvious. All the hallmarks are there: the intermittent line of snow that creeps along the bottom of the picture, a slight and occasional lurch in the video. Audio recorded in a tackle box. The works.

You’d think that would ruin my enjoyment, but on the contrary, it’s really quite charming. I’m sure a younger person, spoiled on digital riches, would find it headache-inducing, like trying to read a blog entry on a faded rag of papyrus. For me, the hisses and pops are a time machine, delivering me into a boys’ body, hunched forward with his finger on the fast-forward button to blow through Arby’s ads.

As the saying goes, “Everything old is new again.” In this case, the opposite is also true -- everything new is old again. And that’s part of what makes Christmas special. Time twists and contorts, until the memories of past decades live side-by-side with the here and now; Santa swoops in at the end of “Frosty” and saves the day for the 32nd time, and yet the familiar beats are somehow still fresh. They’re small things, these TV shows made for kids, but it’s the small things that matter. If the quality more closely resembles that of the old VHS tape -- now collecting mold in a basement -- that’s fitting. It speaks to the boy who still lives somewhere inside this cranky old fart’s heart.

Analog video may not have the hip allure of vinyl records, but it’s just as warm. This time of year, warmth is exactly what’s needed.