That 1990s Christmas was not so very long ago

In pre-Internet days, there was a certain joy in tracking things down

The Thursday New York Times ran a piece about young women wearing their mothers’ “vintage” clothing — from the 1990s.

Vintage? Clothes from the ’90s are now considered vintage? Well, Merry Christmas to you, too, New York Times! Geesh. Nothing like making people feel ancient during the holiday season.

They have a point, though. The ’90s may seem recent to those of us of a certain age, but we are more than 20 years removed from that decade.

And that decade was the last before what we now see as the Internet era. The tech craze was just launching in the middle of the decade — remember dial-up connections? — and it was long before smart phones and social media.

“These kids today,” as I like to say, have it too easy in many ways. They do not know the challenge and the fun of finding things without looking them up online.

Which brings us to the subject of this Christmas column.

In 1994 or ’95, not long after my mom died, I heard on the radio a song that made me think of my dad.

I don’t think I had heard the song since the original aired on the last Bing Crosby Christmas special in 1977, right after my dad died.

It is a popular holiday classic now, but not so much then: Bing Crosby and David Bowie’s duet of “Little Drummer Boy.”

Dad, who sang in clubs to make a little extra money before the war, loved Bing Crosby. He would regularly croon Crosby tunes around the house, including “White Christmas.”

This pairing of his generation with mine fascinated and moved me, and I became obsessed with finding a CD of the recording.

I went to Best Buy. They had sections for Christmas music, Bing Crosby music and David Bowie music. Where to start? The two greats did only one song together, so the best bet was a Christmas compilation album — but there were so many.

My friends Sheri and Jacques Arnold happened to be shopping in the store that day, and I told them what I was looking for and why it meant so much.

They went off to do their shopping and I kept digging through the massive Christmas music bin, reading the titles on the backs of dozens of compilation CDs.

No luck.

Giving up, I checked the Bing and Bowie sections. No luck there, either.

Saddened, I headed toward the door. Suddenly, a gentleman approached me with a CD in his hand. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

He handed me the compilation CD, and sure, enough, on the back, among the songs listed: “Little Drummer Boy/ Peace on Earth” — Bing Crosby and David Bowie.

“I heard you telling your friends you were looking for it,” the man said, adding that he found it in yet another CD bin in another part of the store. “My name is Skip. Merry Christmas.”

I wished Skip a Merry Christmas, bought the CD, and played the song for the first of many times, right there in the store parking lot.

After I wrote a column about my little “Christmas Miracle,” a kind reader brought me a video of the duet, so then I could watch as well as listen.

It would take about three seconds to find the song with a Google search, but where is the joy in that?

Merry Christmas.