Flashback to Christmas 1985: A Totally Rad Holiday Season
Let’s set the scene. It’s December 25th, 1985. Your TV is only 27 inches wide, but it weighs 300 pounds. You’ve just unwrapped a brand-new Nintendo Entertainment System, your older sibling is blasting "We Built This City" by Starship, and you’re wearing your favorite neon windbreaker while sipping hot cocoa from a Garfield mug.
Christmas 1985 wasn’t just a holiday — it was a whole vibe.
🕹️ Gifts That Ruled the Tree
If you were lucky enough to be a kid in '85, you remember what was under the tree:
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Nintendo NES had just launched in North America. It didn’t matter if your TV had terrible reception — Mario and Luigi were coming to your living room.
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Teddy Ruxpin was the creepy-yet-magical animatronic bear reading you bedtime stories.
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Transformers and G.I. Joe were dominating toy aisles.
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Cabbage Patch Kids were still a must-have — and parents were still brawling in toy stores over them.
Kids wrote their letters to Santa by hand (probably on Lisa Frank stationery), and the wish lists were filled with action figures, boom boxes, and maybe even a pair of Reebok Pumps.
📺 What We Watched While the Ham Cooked
There were only a handful of channels, but Christmas TV in 1985 was gold:
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"A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" aired on network TV — no streaming, no DVR. If you missed it, tough luck until next year.
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"Back to the Future" had hit theaters just months earlier and was already a cultural force.
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Sitcoms like The Cosby Show, Family Ties, and Cheers were at their peak — and often featured special holiday episodes.
🏈 NFL on Christmas? Not Quite Yet…
Unlike today, where we get NFL tripleheaders on Christmas Day, the NFL actually didn’t schedule any games on Christmas in 1985. In fact, the league often avoided Christmas altogether back then.
Why? The NFL typically steered clear of playing on Christmas Day due to viewership concerns and respect for family time. When Christmas fell on a Sunday (like it did in 1983), games were pushed to Monday. It wouldn’t be until decades later that the league fully embraced the idea of holiday football as a viewing tradition.
So, in 1985, fans had to wait until the weekend for their football fix — but they didn’t mind, because the Chicago Bears were dominating the NFL and on their way to an iconic Super Bowl win the following January.
🎶 The Soundtrack of Christmas '85
Here’s what was playing on the radio (and cassette players) that December:
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"Last Christmas" by Wham! — still brand new and already a holiday classic.
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"Do They Know It’s Christmas?" by Band Aid — a carryover hit from the year before, raising awareness for famine in Ethiopia.
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"Say You, Say Me" by Lionel Richie — the #1 song in America.
🎁 The Magic of Christmas 1985
Christmas in 1985 wasn’t about curated Instagram moments or Amazon wishlists. It was about waiting all year to open that one gift, watching your favorite holiday special live, and enjoying a slower, more analog kind of joy.
It was the kind of Christmas where the lights twinkled a little brighter, the music felt warmer, and everyone was just happy to be together — especially if they were holding a Game Boy and wearing acid-wash jeans.
So here’s to remembering a simpler time, when your biggest concern was whether your Walkman had fresh batteries.
Merry Christmas, retro lovers. Long live '85.