Before I begin discussing Christmas movies, I just want to give a shout out to the 25 Days of Christmas Movies podcast by my friends Alexis and Megan, which can be found here, and here, and even here. They even have a live show at the Pit Underground on Monday December 17th at 6:00, check it out!
Christmas time brings with it a few distinctive things: office parties, excessive lights, sugar cookies, and movies (and also family and charity and good will towards men and blah blah blah). There’s nothing like a good Christmas movie. But only if it’s around Christmas time. Watching them in July is both cheating and oddly depressing because you know you’re nowhere near that season.
Non-Christmas Christmas Movies
I just want to give a shout out to some favorite movies that take place on Christmas but aren’t Christmas movies. Apparently this is a debate that has already been exhausted for many of my friends. I’ll just throw in my two cents, though. Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. Nor is Go or Gremlins. I’m a fan of all of them, though. And only two out of three end with a line approximating, “So, what are we doing for New Years?”
Non-Moive Christmas Movies
I also need to mention A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (the original cartoon – there is not now nor has there ever been a need for any more). I watch both of these every year as I trim my Christmas tree. It’s a ritual fit for a child. Somehow Christmas gives me a pass.
Love Actually
I’ve only watched this movie once and I remember enjoying it as the basic movie that it is. I’m only mentioning it because it comes up in so many other people’s discussions of Christmas movies and I enjoy the debate about how much this movie actually sucks. Check out the Jezebel article here and this Cosmo article. It’s worth a watch just to watch Andrew Lincoln’s sign bit so you can appreciate all the parodies it’s spawned.
Scrooged
I watched this in its entirety for the first time in a long time this past week with my girlfriend. Scrooged is the prototypical movie you catch ten minutes of on cable. But beginning to end, it’s really great. Of all the Christmas Carol reboots (and there are many – I think every sitcom in the nineties had one) this has got to rank at least in the top five. I remember reading a Bill Murray interview where he said that his favorite two scripts, pre-Rushmore, were Groundhog Day and this. David Johanson and Carol Kane are awesome. The ghost of Christmas future is appropriately terrifying. And I was moved by the scene where he finds one of the homeless men from the shelter frozen to death (I know it’s odd to note that I was moved by a dead homeless man but the gravity is undercut by how trippy the scene is and the funny smile frozen on his face).
A quick google search about it unearthed this Ringer article where Murray tells Roger Ebert that Scrooged was worth more than one star and all the screaming was Richard Donner’s idea. But still, watch this one again.
It’s a Wonderful Life
I only knew this movie as the standard cheesy Christmas movie. They did jokes about it in Cheers and I believe it was playing on the TV in Gremlins. This is another movie in the canon of films that have been so embedded in our culture that you can understand the reference to the source material without ever having seen the movie (The Godfather and Casablanca are a couple of examples). This is where all the guardian angels showing you what if you were never born come from.
This movie is a classic but you really have to sit through a lot of non-Christmas stuff before you get to Clarence the guardian angel at the end. I wasn’t expecting that. It was good, though. Mostly I’m just happy that I get this Dana Carvey SNL sketch and it’s crazy satisfying to see Mr. Potter get his ass kicked.
Elf
I wasn’t sold on this movie for a while. Will Ferrell just seemed to juvenile in it. Obviously that’s the premise but it’s also my point. I just happened to catch it on a plane once and I realized it was great. It’s not in the rotation for tree trimming. That’s an honored position.
And Peter Dinklage, as always, is amazing.
Home Alone
I think I was thirteen when I saw this which is the last gasp of having the fantasy of a kid winning in a plot against the adults. So, this movie worked like a charm on me. As an adult, I appreciate that side plot with Old Man Marley. I also love the fact that in 1990, Joe Pesci was in Goodfellas and Home Alone. I also thoroughly enjoy all of the articles exploring the realities of the Tom and Jerry-like injuries inflicted upon the Wet Bandits. Here’s one. Here’s another. (Spoiler alert: in the real world Kevin McCallister would be a murderer.)
A Christmas Story
Above I said never watch a Christmas movie when it’s not Christmas. Well, I’m pretty sure I saw this one for the first time in the spring. I loved it. 24 Hours of a Christmas Story on TNT is one of my favorite things about Christmas (no joke). It may have just been welcome white noise to distract from a stressful holiday with my parents but I still love the movie.
I read about the writer Jean Shepherd and what a legend he was. His late night radio show was hugely popular in New York in the fifties. He was also, by many accounts, a dick. He was a self-centered, bitter man who abandoned his family and spent the last years of his life raging against The Wonder Years for stealing his comedic persona. I’ve got to be honest, though. He has a point.
The ending might be racist (“might be” = “is” – but it’s not bad for a movie from the early eighties about the forties) but the second to last shot of the parents next to the tree looking out the window at the snow falling always gets to me. So does Ralph’s last line. “The greatest Christmas present I ever received or would ever receive…” It’s true. Those childhood Christmas presents are amazing in a way that no gift ever can be again.
So there’s my Christmas movie round up. I don’t watch any of the Netflix or Hallmark movies about princes or Christmas shoes. I have enough here. But while we’re on the subject, why do we only have movies for Christmas? Is it just part of the commercialization of the holiday? Or do the themes of belief and hope just resonate that deeply with us?
That’s a cheesy way to end this post, perfectly fitting for a Christmas movie.
