Mourning my Morning Ritual

Yesterday, the CW showed its last ever round of Saturday morning cartoons. All of the other network stations have stopped showing them already, making the outlier CW as the last one continuing this tradition. Now it is gone and no more children will have Saturday morning cartoons are part of their weekend ritual. This makes me very sad.

As far back as I can remember, I had Saturday morning cartoons. It wasn't something that was questioned. It was just a fact of life. Children spent their Saturday mornings in the living room, watching the continuation of various animation programs. Some of them were very adventurous. Some were silly. Some were just really bad ideas. Some were disappointing. Some were so intelligent and wonderful that they became a part of you for the rest of your life.

I would do my best to wake up as early as possible so I could catch as many cartoons as were shown. There was always an internal conflict about this, because on one hand, I wanted to sleep. On the other, the cartoons were important. Cartoons were the reward for making it through a school week. They were the time when children got to rule the television. They were compensation for the endless hours of boring sportsball that would follow them.

Now that is gone. It's so strange to think that it's gone. It feels wrong. I feel outraged by it, really. It makes me angry at the networks for betraying kids like this and angry at Cartoon Network and Nick for dropping the ball on being really good children's entertainment, for stifling the network cartoons. It's just one more peace of my childhood that is gone.

Rituals are important to humans. They keep us calm and they help us to be part of the culture around us. If we keep removing the rituals of childhood, what will that mean for these kids when they grow up? How will they relate to each other, to us? Animation on Saturday morning seems like such a small thing, but to me, and to many of those former children who experienced that, it isn't a small thing. I feel a great loss about this. I am mourning the passing of this ritual. A lot of people are. So clearly, it meant a lot to us. Now what will the children have?