I’ve been on this planet, barreling around the sun for nearly six decades.

My people, the so-called Generation-X, were the last to experience the low-tech, analog world, and the first to experience the explosion of digital technology and its pervasive encroachment on everyday life.

As a member of this gap-bridging generation, I can say, without a doubt, that technology ruined Christmas.

At least part of it. And it’s not the simple rose-colored glasses of childhood memories. It really did ruin it.

Recently, through the magic of the Roku streaming service, my wife and I watched “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” (1970), starring the voices of Mickey Rooney, Keenan Wynn and Fred Astaire, all of whom I remember very well.

My generation also experienced the overlap between the Golden Age of Hollywood, and the (somewhat lesser) modern era. When you remember watching a movie in a theater, featuring Olivia Newton-John dancing with good old Gene Kelly (“Xanadu,” 1980), you can say you witnessed something.

I well remember the event television of late-November and December, in the 1970s and ’80s.

You’d get your bath, get in your jammies, grab a blanket and sit on the floor in front of the TV. Your mom might give you a glass of milk and a couple of Christmas cookies to munch on. The anticipation was a delicious as the cookies.

A brief series of commercials (“c’mon, let’s get to it!”), then the colorful, spinning “CBS Special Presentation” logo would come on, and you knew it was gonna be great.

The 1970s Christmas special all-star lineup, all of them produced between 1965 and 1976, and they all became classics, included:

“A Charlie Brown Christmas”; “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”; any of the Rankin-Bass produced stop-motion classics, like “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”; “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, “A Year Without a Santa Claus”; the cartoon “Frosty the Snowman”, narrated by the great Jimmy Durante; “The Little Drummer Boy” (I always hated when the lamb got killed. It was many years before I understood the religious symbolism.) Even the goofy “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year”, and the pointless “Frosty’s Winter Wonderland”, among others. You knew it’d be the main topic of conversation at school the next day, and we loved them all.

CBS held the rights to all these Christmas specials back then, so they were all preceded by the same CBS “special presentation” broadcast bumper, which through association became part of the magic of the whole. At least for this Gen-Xer.

They really knew how to do it, then; especially Rankin-Bass.

In the 1960s and ’70s, variety shows were ubiquitous. A little song and dance; a few corny or lightly “off-color” skits and jokes. A few shows I personally remember watching were Carol Burnett; Steubenville’s own Dean Martin; Flip Wilson; Sonny and Cher.

These shows all had their cheesy fun during the year, but in December, these variety shows all contributed to the magic of Christmas, with either a Christmas-themed show, or, if the show was really popular, its own special broadcast extravaganza, pre-empting the regular shows.

Sometimes, they teamed up — superstars like Martin and Frank Sinatra, great friends in real life, would put on Christmas specials featuring their families.

These shows were events unto themselves; you’d sit down with your own family and enjoy the festive songs and skits.

They can be found on the Internet, now; on YouTube, many of them. You can watch them whenever you like … and that’s the problem. They’re not special anymore.

That nostalgic feeling of tradition is gone. The spirit. As cliched as it sounds, I do feel sorry for the kids now. They’ll never know or understand that warm, glowing, Christmasy feeling these shows brought us.

Everything like that now is humdrum. It’s not special.

Truly, the huge eruption of home video in the 1980s and 1990s is what ruined the Christmas special, early on.

The moment you could buy the VHS tape of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,”or for that matter record it, and watch it any time of the year; when you could plunk in and watch “Rudolph” on the Fourth of July, well, it just wasn’t as much fun anymore.

The Christmas magic was gone. That part of it, anyway.

They’re still on network TV, mostly, the cartoons I mean, broadcast at this time of year, but it’s just not the same. It’s not the event it used to be. And now, unless you have Apple TV streaming, you can’t watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” for example, at all.

Well, you can still find it on YouTube, at any time. Which isn’t better.

When the only way you could see these wonderful shows was that once-a-year television broadcast, it really meant something. Now it doesn’t.

At least to this Gen-Xer.

Other than that, Merry Christmas to all, and may your beloved Christmas traditions never fade.

(Denham is a resident of Weirton)