“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” and “Frosty the Snowman” are holiday cartoon classics that used to be the biggest, most funnest — yes, I said funnest, because that is what kids would say — nights of the year while I was growing up.

My parents would make a huge night of each episode, and they would have root beer floats, popcorn, or if we were really lucky, my mom would make cookies or Chex mix.

The whole family would gather around and watch because, hey, that is the only time of the year your three channels would be showing those classics.

Today with cable those days of waiting for that big night have been replaced with 24 hours of holiday shows. You can see Rudolph on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. You not only can see them on those four days, but you can see them at 2 o’ clock, 3 o’ clock, 7 o’clock, and once more at 11 o’clock just in case you missed them the other 67 times they are now on.

The movie “The Christmas Story,” which you know is now a cult classic, has a small boy trying to get a Red Ryder BB gun only to be told, “You will shoot your eye out.” That classic is on, I believe, TBS or TNT on one day for 24 hours straight. Yikes!

I miss the simpler times when you had to watch the show on that one particular night. It forced you to make a family night.

It gave you no other choices.

I know I may not be hip or with the ever-changing, all-media-all-the-time times, but slowing it down now and then is good.

It was cool when “The Wizard of Oz” was only on TV once a year, or when watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” meant that the family was going to all stop and be together for one night.

In our current mass media living, it is amazing if we can all be in the same room and not on a different electronically controlled device. I have witnessed in my own home where one person is watching TV, the other is on a laptop and the third is texting a friend.

When I was growing up, we had one TV with three channels, one rotary phone and the closest thing we had to a computer was the game “Battleship” with the sounds of a sinking battleship.

Maybe we all need to make it easier on ourselves and get back to the basics.

This holiday season maybe the best gift we can give is our time.

Would it be so bad if we had a family night?

What would happen if we all turned off our cell phones, computers, televisions and just played board games one night?

Would the world stop turning if we all slowed down and just introduced ourselves again to our own families?

Just a thought.

Tribune Publisher Scott Schmeltzer’s column appears every Thursday.