This may get me on Santa’s naughty list, but I honestly can’t remember whether I watched “The Homecoming: A Christmas Story” when CBS first aired it on December 19, 1971.

Since my mother is an antique collector and regales everyone with tales of growing up during “hard times,” and since many of my ancestors came from Virginia, it’s certainly PLAUSIBLE that I got in on the ground floor of Earl Hamner Jr.’s heartwarming classic about the Great Depression.

(Granted, being old enough to have been ELIGIBLE for watching that premiere, I also struggle to remember having written the previous paragraph...