I CAN'T STAND YOU EXCEPT WHEN I LOVE YOU

Lets see how good you really are...! Can you tell what the following all have in common...?

Barack Obama....George Clooney...Jerry Seinfeld...Stephen Spielberg...Regis Philbin...David Letterman...Jay Leno... Madonna...Paul McCartney...Billy Crystal....Charlie Rose....Tony Bennett .... Diane Keaton...Robin Williams...Betty White.

That last one may have given it away. They're all over 50. OMG, being that creepy creaky old in our young young America? What's going on here?

Here's something else that's going on. Our annual Christmastime TV specials are all over 50 as well. It's A Wonderful Life...A Christmas Story...A Charlie Brown Christmas...Frosty the Snowman... Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer...The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. The stuff they've been making in the last few years are cute, clever and computerized; but they lack endearing staying power.

So, my friends, what does this tell us? For one thing, we're living longer to enjoy old classics longer. But not only the oldsters but the youngsters. They're enjoying them too. Oh sure youth gravitates to youth, and you've got the young rappers and zombies to satisfy you. But by gosh, the same audiences that tap to rap and zombies also end up watching the old stuff every Christmastime.

Why?

Having been a youngster as well as an oldster, here's what I think. Christmastime -- like Fourth of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving -- smacks of the traditional. the classic. the timeless. And so suddenly being new and cutting-edge isn't so vital. In fact it doesn't seem to have any place here. These holidays are the times when wrinkles, gray hair, and canes simply do not come between us. These are the happy times we're all sorta one at heart. A very nice if rare moment in our national life.

So cue George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life and Charlies Brown in A Charlie Brown Christmas so we can all gather round together. To really be together.