What do the Beatles and B.C. Family Day have in common?

MONDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — What do B.C. Family Day and the Beatles have in common, you might ask.

More than at first blush. For one thing, today is Family Day, that new stat we’re still getting used to, though certainly pleased to have a break in the middle of February.

And Sunday was the 50th anniversary of the night the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, in living black and white. CBS ran a big special on it last night, and you really missed something if you didn’t see it.

With John Lennon and George Harrison gone, the anniversary isn’t quite what it could have been, but it’s still exciting. Those of us who were alive back then will never forget the way the media and teenaged girls went crazy after the Fab Four landed at the airport in New York.

We won’t forget watching them be silly during their interviews, and the sight of them singing and playing All My Loving, Till There Was You, She Loves You, I Saw Her Standing There and I Want to Hold Your Hand on the Sullivan show.

Our parents thought the Beatles were going to ruin us. The girls would all be driven into lives of disrepute, the boys were letting their hair grow long, like animals.

Family Day, too, came with dire warnings. Some worried about the expense and the loss of productivity. Emergency workers would have to be paid more. Did we really need another stat? Discomfort with change.

Well, it’s come and soon gone for another year and the world is intact. Just as it was when the Beatles got back on their plane and headed home.