I Liked Scrooge Better Before: 3 Christmas Movies I Hate
I’m not a big fan of Christmas. It requires me to take time off work and venture into the cold to waste time with people I don’t like, and who don’t like me back.
I’ve felt this way as long as I can remember.
As a teenager, I’d start having mini-anxiety attacks around June, anticipating the annual ritual:
Getting dragged to my aunt’s house, where even the toilet seats had “Santa” covers, and a fading twenty-year-old Johnny Mathis Christmas TV special played in an endless loop.
Every year, that side of the family insisted that we all “have fun” by playing games.
Every year, they dusted off the Trivial Pursuit board.
Every year, I won.
(“How can you NOT know the names of The Beatles?! Again?!“)
Every year, they pouted, then whispered behind my back that I was “weird.”
Especially after I pointed out that their quaint “Victorian Christmas” figurines had likely been, in real life, spreading communicable diseases with strange names to vitamin-deficient child prostitutes.
In one of her innumerable memoirs, Shirley MacLaine says the trouble with going to therapy is that you go home for the holidays and instantly realize to your horror that no one else in your family has gone to therapy.
Or, in my case, read a book.
Years later, my aunt confessed that she’d hated “having” to host these yearly get-togethers as much as I’d dreaded attending them.
And here I’d thought that part of being a grown-up meant you could more or less get out of doing things you didn’t want to do.
That’s how I’ve approached my adulthood, anyway.
So these days our Christmases, such as they are, involve one fairly hasty meal with bits of my husband’s family — my own relatives being now either safely dead or estranged.
Our house is poinsettia- and tree-free on account of our cat.
Besides exchanging gifts with my husband and devouring too much Costco panettone, the holiday season isn’t that much different than the rest of the year.
Our Christmas movies are The Hebrew Hammer (see below) and Die Hard, which we watch between Food Network marathons, during that no-man’s land between the 25th and the 1st.
I avoid what may be the most popular of all the Christmas movies, though — partly for what I’ll pompously call “ideological” reasons and partly because I grew up watching two of them in heavy rotation anyhow.
The first one I’m writing about, I more or less lived.
My husband and I disagree about very few things, but one of them is the relative merits of A Christmas Story.
Maybe it’s a “guy thing,” but I can’t fathom the affection so many people have for this movie.
Yes, I realize it is nostalgic without being sentimental, which is an almost impossible feat to pull off.
The trouble is, the mother and father in the film push all my buttons. (See, “therapy,” above.)
I spent the first 20 year of my life trapped in a tiny apartment with a bellicose stepfather whose idees fixes were always broken, and a too-nice mother who wouldn’t or couldn’t tell him off.
So I certainly can’t spare another 90 more minutes being cajoled into agreeing that that situation is somehow hilarious and heartwarming and “Christmas-y.”
I might as well just glue plastic holly around my TV and put on Hostel.
I actually have an adverse physical reaction to A Christmas Story, including rapid heartbeat and shortness of breath (and temper).
It should come with a warning label: May cause you to WANT to poke your eyes out.
A Christmas Story was filmed partly in Canada, but so is pretty much every other movie. I like to keep it really patriotic by rewatching the Trailer Park Boys Christmas special instead, the title of which I can’t write here.
[Language and content WARNING:]
Yes, I admit it:
Every time Clarence gets his wings, I cry.
But I cry at the end of every movie, and by “every movie,” I mean Galaxy Quest.
Proof that received wisdom is 99% wrong:
Frank Capra gets a bad rap as a shallow sentimentalist who produced little more than “Capra-corn.” In truth, his films are almost as relentlessly, corrosively cynical as Billy Wilder’s.
The difference is, Capra tended to tack on over-the-top happy endings, the conclusion of It’s a Wonderful Life simply being the most familiar to millions — due to a paperwork glitch.
But I know I’m not the only one who thinks the message of It’s a Wonderful Life is just awful.
That’s why, in the last scene, George looks at his friends with terror. He’s happy to be alive, but he’s disillusioned, wised up in just the worst way. He finally knows the world as it really is, what his friends are capable of, the dark potential coiled in each of them. (…)
Simply put, George has been cursed with knowledge, shown the truth of the world — seen hidden things. It’s the sort of vision that makes a person go insane.
My objections are more, well, “objectivist.” Thwarted architect George Bailey is the anti-Roark.
As elucidated by Michael Graham:
Smart, ambitious George gets stuck at the modest Building and Loan back in Hickville when his brother marries into a cushy corporate gig and his father dies. After years of dreaming of going off to college, traveling the world and becoming a top engineer or architect, his life is spent scraping by, and helping others do the same.
Somehow the movie — like the Occupiers of today — tries to turn that into a virtue. Despite his wife and kids, George turns down $20,000 a year so he won’t have to work for that “evil banker,” Mr. Potter.
Occupy Bedford Falls!
Indeed. Loyalty to one’s home town is one of those human traits that baffle me. Why does an accident of longitude and latitude inspire your undying passion?
(Batman, I’m looking at you…)
George Bailey should’ve told everybody to drop dead and gone off on the adventures he’d been dreaming about since childhood.
The story of America is the story of hundreds of thousands of individuals who waved farewell forever to their loser, backward families in the Old Country and struck out on their own in the New World.
(And if he was bound and determined to stay in Boringtown, the very least he could do was fix the damn knob on the staircase.)
There is has to be a debate as to who the true villain of this film is: Potter or Uncle Billy.
But hey, at least I’m not this uptight Protestant guy:
I have to say that there are too many negative things in It’s a Wonderful Life—things like the language, the sexual content and the worldview—for me to be able to enjoy it as fully as I should be able to enjoy any movie I watch for pleasure.
He doesn’t approve of all the cigarette smoking, either!
Wow, what a Scrooge…
A Christmas Carol (1951) is one of the finest British movies ever made, and Alastair Sim’s performance in the title role is one for the ages.
But again, the message is dreadful.
If you can’t afford all those kids, stop having them, Cratchit. You’re lucky you have a job.
Yes, Scrooge’s first employer, Fezziwig, threw lavish Christmas parties every year — and went out of business.
As for those “prisons and workhouses,” Scrooge has been “paying his fair share” to keep these horrific (and, not incidentally, state-run institutions) operational:
“I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die,” the man continues.
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides — excuse me — I don’t know that.”
“But you might know it,” observed the gentleman.
“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”
Progressives live in the past. Their irrational railings against “right to work” legislation and so forth continue to have traction because the spectacle of poverty in Dickens’ time is broadcast into our homes every December.
Today, no one who works indoors needs a union. Factors that kept people poor, sickly and helpless in Victorian times — restricted access to education, a rigid class system, human filth literally flowing through the streets — have been ameliorated in the (Anglo-Saxon) West, thanks in part to Dickens’ own literary exposes.
However, Dickens’ valorization of the true poor blinds many to the fact that for the most part, today’s “poor” are the rich Jesus warned us about: lazy, entitled, selfish, caring only about their immediate gratification.
There are “poor” people in my city who, unlike me, have multiple cell phones, satellite TV and a couple of cars; thanks to generous benefits and tax breaks, their disposable income is higher than mine.
In Dickens’ era, they might have been sentenced to walk “the Treadmill” to earn their keep. Frankly, given the sheer size of them, such a fate might do our “poor” folks some good.
So, yes: I liked Scrooge better before.
Now if you’ll excuse me, Die Hard is on again.
Yippee-ki-yay!
[Language warning:]
****
Related from Kathy Shaidle:
Well, at least I’m right beside you on “Die Hard”, Kathy. It remains my kick-off-movie-of-choice for Christmas viewing.
Have you seen “The Ref”? Even though it’s got Spacey in it, it occurs to me it might be up your street!
Those are both my favorite Christmas movies, although if forced to pick, I’d say The Ref is first.
The Ref is on my list actually. Just never got around to it, and baffled that it isn’t in heavy rotation in December.
You are wrong—dead wrong—about It’s a Wonderful Life.
While the title is bitterly ironic—it’s a play on the old bravado line, “It’s a great life, if you don’t weaken,” which got people cynically through the Depression—it is a celebration of the unsung heroes of any civilized society.
We’ll leave aside that it is, in effect, a re-telling of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with Clarence the would-be angel filling in for all three Christmas ghosts. It is a celebration—as Mr. Roberts also was—of the more quiet heroism of the people who do not get a chance to be the war heroes or the Big Successes, but who shoulder responsibilities they did not ask for or want and persevere.
“George Bailey” is a symbolic name. There used to be a phrase, back when the movie was made; “Let George do it,” which basically meant “let someone else take on the job.” George Bailey is the “George” who gets stuck with the task of saving the entire town; Mr. Bailey is the town’s bailee, a legal term which means someone who is the unpaid keeper, the holder of responsibility.
It’s a Wonderful Life shows that the world is not fair; that people get stuck with responsibilities they do not want; that misfortune or error will often harm the worthy and advantage the wealthy—but that it is possible, with personal kindness and responsibility, to ameliorate these things.
Buzzsaw,
I am glad I read this article so that I had a chance to read your reply. I didn’t know _any_ of that. Thank you.
I think of the quote, don’t remember who, which goes “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation”. Most of us don’t get a chance to live through epic times, and to take a large role in shaping those times. Or at least we don’t we think we do/can. Yet I remember as a plebe (freshman) that my squad leader (senior) was the person who most impacted the quality of my life. That squad leader was very low on the totem pole in the big scheme, but in my life he loomed large.
These days, epic times are upon us, or are very very close. We may all get a chance to be heroic, in unanticipated and perhaps unwanted ways. Our actions may affect only a few, or perhaps more than a few, but heroism will be called for nonetheless.
Thank you.
I would urge people to, first, read George Orwell’s essay “Charles Dickens”—a fascinating, if slightly long, read. Orwell, the would-be socialist, is troubled by Dickens’ non-political solution to social ills, that people should simply “be better”—but grudgingly and unwillingly recognizes that in the end this may be the only solution possible.
Capra was very much a 20th-century American cinematic Charles Dickens; in his films American Madness, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe, and It’s a Wonderful Life, it is repentance, not political solutions, that he proposes. Capra should be watched in company with Preston Sturges: Sturges’ films Christmas in July, The Great McGinty, Sullivan’s Travels (the source for the Coen Brothers’ film title O Brother, Where Art Thou?), and Hail the Conquering Hero are also corrosive and cynical—yet deeply compassionate—looks at American social flaws and humbug, suffused with a great love for our sprawling and flawed society.
In a sense, It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Roberts, and Hail the Conquering Hero are all part of a just-postwar American genre—the genre of recognizing that there are “war heroes” who are not the conventional heroes who received medals. These films should be seen along with the superb film The Best Years of Our Lives, which chronicles the difficulties of postwar adjustment experienced by several returned soldiers.
I have to agree with you my friend. America is just as much about decent,honest men working hard and doing the right thing to help themselves, their family and their community as it is about leaving your town and making it big. It’s a story not of well known heroes, or big CEO’s but instead of a small town man working hard, feeding his family, being generous, and living all the values that America and Christianity both stand for.
Agree. Decent people making decent choices in hard circumstances. Ms. Shaidle went on about how awful her family was/is. I get that; she doesn’t have people to care about/for. Some of us do have people we want taken care of and when the massive freak accident or stroke or whatever strikes, our lives are changed for the worse forever … but being decent people, we do what needs doing. Non-Objectivist? To be sure. Objectivism didn’t look nearly so shiny once I had children; at that point, Christianity made much more sense. My 4-person nuclear family would all be dead if I had chosen to get out of Dodge instead of doing what needs doing. I almost jumped off the bridge, but got pulled back, kinda like George. No one will ever know my name but I am an effing hero. I am George Bailey. There are lots more of us out there, too. Quiet people quietly keeping the world from whirling apart. I’m sorry Ms. Shaidle’s family whirled apart; I’m sorry she’s bitter. But she’s still wrong.
Thank you for not jumping.
Agreed. The world looked a lot different to me when I was 30 than when I was 20. And, I learned the hard way that, even if you yourself are an island, others whom you deeply care about will occasionally stumble and need a helping hand.
Most people in life, or at least so it appears to me, have a definite sense that they know exactly what is wrong with the world, and if only their philosophy could be made universal law, we could create a heaven on Earth. My philosophy is that life cannot be made perfect, only optimal, and we have to be willing and able to change tack when events call for it. A car which only steers to the left or the right will, sooner or later, end up in the ditch on the side of the road.
Of course, this idea is not original or remarkable, but the more people realize it, the better off we will be. In that vein, I have often thought that I would like to see the story of “It’s a Wonderful Life” retold, but this time from the perspective of Mr. Potter. Clarence would show him what Bedford Falls would have been like without his diligence to the bottom line: a defunct, depressing landscape of shuttered factories and storefronts inhabited by the old and infirm, and the dregs of society left behind when those with better prospects moved away, the latter preying upon the former.
Balance is the key to life. We need both the George Baileys and the Henry F. Potters to make this world function.
Sorry, but a Christmas Story is simply the funniest movie ever made.
Perhaps it’s because the old man is my old man (hard as nails on the outside; soft as butter on the inside) that I can relate to the humor. The mother is equally hilarious. And how many of us don’t have at least one Aunt Clara in the family? I was perpetually seven years old to my crazy Aunt Joan.
I love Darren McGavin and his portrayal of the father was perfect, as far as I’m concerned. I always loved his work. But the more I watch “A Christmas Story”, the more impressed I am with Melinda Dillon as the mom. She says more with a glance than many actors/actresses can say in an extended soliloquy.
Jean Shepherd’s book, “In God We Trust – All Others Pay Cash”, which inspired the movie, is an interesting and funny read. Shepherd reminds me of Garrison Keillor at his very best, and without any of the suffocating self-righteousness.
As a bit of trivia, Peter Billingsley (“Ralphie”) still works in show business. Most recently, he can be spotted in a small bit in the first “Iron Man” movie, playing a scientist/engineer type who gets yelled at by Jeff Bridges’ character for not being as bright as Tony Stark.
Interesting about “Ralphie.” Think we’ve got the Iron Man DVD around here someplace. I missed him because I’ve seen it. There are many a funny movie to this day that I will watch more than once (the original Longest Yard and Animal House are two that come to mind). But none of them come remotely close to making me laugh over and over throughout the entire movie like A Christmas Story.
I agree with you about Melinda Dillon – she was equally superb. I thought everyone was perfectly cast, from the teacher, to the Christmas tree guy, to the Santa Claus at the mall. The background shrieks of the mothers make me hysterically laugh to this day.
A Christmas Story is the one movie no matter how many times I’ve watch it (and we’re probably approaching 20-30 times by now), I laugh at the same parts every time. Maybe I’ve got issues, but the old man and the lamp when ‘mother’ breaks it remind me of me and my wife in some of our more inane battles over the years.
You used all the glue on purpose…
Dude who played the original Ralphie was on Cake Boss this season, where he had the next bunch of great bakers build a bunch of cakes designed on themes from “A Christmas Story” and then present them to the cast of a Broadway play he’s trying to put together based on the movie. The leg lamp featured in most of the flopped cakes. The cakes without fail were disastrous but the idea of Ralphie and the Old Man and the hounds next door performing in a musical is bemusing.
I was looking for a DVD of A Christmas Story this afternoon, seeing as I gave my family’s VHS version away, seeing as we no longer have a VCR (which, my husband just reminded me, stands for Video Cassette Recorder).
I love this movie too! The teacher, BTW, is a Toronto actor called Tedde Moore, the daughter of Mavor Moore, a Canadian writer, producer, actor, and critic. A lot of this movie was shot in Toronto; I’m not sure what street Ralphie’s house was on, but it was in a typical, snowy TO neighbourhood. Like others here, I laugh my head off every time I watch this film, and never tire of the tongue-on-metal scene, the kid-brother-lurch in his padded snow suit, the dogs eating the turkey, Ralphie getting his “eye” shot out by the Red Ryder BB Gun, etc.
From about 13 to 18 years old, I listened to Jean Shepherd almost every weeknight, until moving to NY. Another friend once said to me, “Your father IS Shepherd’s old man.”
Of course I love A Christmas Story. But even it doesn’t quite match the versions Shep read over the air.
I know. Christmas Story kills me every time. It is hell. It’s supposed to be hell. There is nothing saccharine or ideallic about the lives of Ralphie or his little brother but that’s because it’s the story as told by Ralphie. What little boy of Ralphie’s age ever sees his life, or parents as perfect, sweet or good?
And my favorite part still has to be the mom dressing the little brother up to go outside. “Randy lay like a slug. It was his only defense.”
BTW, two neglected Christmas films are the Humphrey Bogart/Peter Ustinov/Aldo Ray film We’re No Angels, and the superb Stalag 17.
We’re No Angels is one of my favorate movies.
It exemplifes the sprit of the season with prison braeks, larceny and the judicuous use of murder to spread christmas cheer. A under rated family classic.
Besides, where do you hear Humphrey Bogart and Aldo Ray sing.
I love Humphrey Bogart, especially in We’re No Angels.
I stopped reading this when you quoted Shirley MacLaine. Whatever you may think of her acting “talents” she has certainly always been one of the most wacked out celebrities in Hollywood.
But apparently what some people got out of therapy and 12-step groups in the 1990s they are now getting from the general public via internet “blogging.”
I would wish you a “Merry Christmas,” but it sounds like you are determined not to have one.
Traditions and Christmas movies like “It’s A Wonderful Life”, “Miracle on 34th Street”, “Scrooge”, and “A Christmas Story” give people comfort and joy once a year.
But if you are determined not to share in that comfort and joy, that is just sad.
In the spirit of the season, let me say what I like about Ms. Shaidle’s writing:
It is remarkably, antiseptically free of self-doubt.
Agreed: Shaidle is easily PJM’s worst writer and her resort to Bah-Humbuggery is the laziest trick in the book of would-be misanthropes. Heck, I’m an athiest but even I love — and celebrate — Christmas.
I find Shaidle’s writing to be very refreshing. I don’t want to hear some writer’s self-doubts – I want an honest opinion without the writer cluttering it up with equivocations or with kowtowing to the politically correct shibboleths of the day.
Those who don’t like Kathy Shaidle’s writing probably wouldn’t like our blog either. Nobody is forcing them to read it!
> Nobody is forcing them to read it!
Anyone who writes for a living is going to receive some negative feedback at some point. Deal with it.
I’m not sure I can keep reading you if you diss Christmas Story.
I read Kathy Shaidle even though I’m not much into movies, pop culture, and so forth. I’ve seen that movie and don’t have a strong feeling about it one way or another.
I’m very much a hard-news junkie and a hard-news blogger, and reading Shaidle’s columns helps to clue me in about aspects of life that I wouldn’t otherwise be familiar with. The news I track is so intensely dark and grim that it’s important to take a break from it every now and again.
I can understand why you hate/dislike Christmas and the season. I have relatives who feel the same, because they had horrid experiences at that time of year.
But you are clearly wrong about The Christmas Story. Especially the clogged electrical outlet bringing such drama to plugging in the Christmas Tree and the Amazing Award! It is a kind story, too. Sorry you can’t like it, Kathy.
It isn’t Christmas that bothers me (except for the generally bad behavior I see on the roads and in stores). It’s winter. Too many people, especially older folks, either get hurt on the ice or in other accidents, or sicken and die this time of year.
Ironically – we have friends south of the equator who don’t like the December heat and humidity!
Ypur relatives are “safely dead or estranged” . . . I must say . . . well, I’m speechless. My own parents, grandparent, and brother are all dead, leaving me nothing left of the family of my birth. I miss them always, think of them every day, and thank them eternally for the love they gave me.
Either you must not have been loved as a child, or you are distorting yourself in an effort to be cynical. In any case, it’s a sad state of spirit. It comes across not as cool, but as pathetic.
I have never watched “A Christmas Story”, and I’ve always loathed “A Christmas Carol” (the latter like some ghastly Halloween story gone awry–and then there are other features I don’t care to mention which relegate it to my “do not watch” list.) oh well…
I much prefer the modern version “Scrooged” with Bill Murray to any older versions. Watch it once a year, every Thanksgiving, while the turkey’s cooking.
I couldn’t get through Shaidle’s anti-Christmas rant, mostly because what she’s complaining about has nothing to do with Christmas. Perhaps it was just a collection of self-indulgent snivelling that she had built up through the year, or perhaps her PoV is twisted by growing up trying to figure out Christian-themed movies. Whatever. It still comes across as clueless whining about her ignorant family-of-origin. Like, who cares? She’s old enough to know what Christmas is about, so why keep going on and on about what it isn’t?
You can’t cry at Clarence getting his wings and then damn the film! The whole point is to….oh forget it!
Look, I get the general Christmas bah-humbuggery of the article but sometimes you need to just take things for what they are. IAWL is a great movie. Stewart and Reid are fantastic. I respect your writing and have even bought one of your books but arguing for Pottersville (grab the money and run eh?) over “backward” Bedford Falls is all wrong on every conceivable level.
Totally agree with the “We’re No Angels” shout-out. The remake was rubbish though – one of De Niro’s few mistakes.
I have been a professional writer for my entire adulthood which is getting to be quite a long stretch and I have never imagined I am personally fascinating or that others would be quite so compelled by my life detritus. I suppose this is a psychological failing of mine.
Well said. But what is your favorite Christmas disappointment? Care to share? How (when and where) did Santa do you wrong? I think that’s the point of this cynical thread.
Another overlooked Christmas movie is “Trading Places” with Dan Ackroyd, Eddie Murphy, and Jamie Lee Curtis’ b00bies twice
Yeah. That’s a classic. Ho, ho, ho.
“I can see! I have legs!!”
Well, I’m definitely with you about A Christmas Story. I always hated it, and always will. It’s not funny, it’s not witty, and it gives no insight at all into children’s lives in the 1930s that I can see (whose mom had that kind of hairstyle in 1939?). So, yes, I can see why you’d skip it (wish I could).
My favorite Christmas movies include We’re No Angels (with Humphrey Bogart), Stalag 17, Scrooge (the musical; Albert Finney is my favorite Scrooge ever [he really brings out the theme of the story, which is redemption and forgiveness, the theme of Christmas itself, after all]), as well as Holiday Inn, Going My Way, Remember the Night, and, of course, White Christmas.
Those new movies you list are awful. I’ve never in my life seen Die Hard, nor Die Hard II, nor Die Hard XXXVIII either, and my life seems full in spite of that fact. Must be a girl thing.
Happy Holidays!
A Christmas Story is set in the early 1950s, not the 1930s. And, if a great movie is one that many can watch over and over, then A Christmas Story is “great”.
Actually, heathermc, the story was set in the late ’30s, early ’40s, which Wikipedia points out. I already knew this, however, because I was Ralphie’s age in the ’50s and the hairdos, clothing, and appliances weren’t from the ’50s.
Correction from my other post here. Though some scenes were definitely filmed in Toronto, Ralphie’s house and street were filmed in the Tremont section of Cleveland’s West Side (Wiki again).
So, Kathy, you’re not a family person, I take it. To me, Christmas has always been about magic, and family. The first Christmas memory I have is when I was a kid of three or four. It was back in the first house that I have any memory of. My parents had just set up the Christmas tree, and strung it in blue lights (which my mother always insisted upon, because that is what she had grown up with). I remember crawling under the that tree, and smelling the sap, and feeling cloaked in the magic of Christmas. I had the tree to myself. Everyone was off somewheres else. I sat under the boughs. Mesmerized.
Merry Christmas, everyone. Never let go.
Stalag 17 was a Christmas show? Sort of like the Diary of Anne Frank was a celebration of Hanukkah?
No, doc, Christmas was the day that the SS arrived to take Dunbar away for interrogation. You must be thinking of “The Trailer Park Goys”
The entire action of Stalag 17 takes place just before and during Christmas, 1944. The actual Christmas Eve barracks sequence is here.
My favorite is not a movie, actually. It was a TV special. “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol”.
While modern animation may be more technically sophisticated, I prefer the artistry found in Mr Macgoo. Also, great music, great writing, and a great performance by Jim Backus.
Mr. Magoo’s A Christmas Carol is fabulous. My favorite song can be seen
here.
It’s too bad. My family was and still is a lot of fun. We also play games of all kinds although in the latter years of my grandparents’ lives Call Your Partner Rook was a favorite because we could accommodate all 10 of us with two tables. Now, we getting ready to go out to have another Christmas with the family. Formal dinner tonight, presents tomorrow and crockpot soups with fruit, crackers, cheese and goodies to be browsed on all day while we all play games. We’ve always found that it was a great way to keep the generation gaps from dividing us. To each their own, I guess.
I’m sorry for you that you clearly had no family you enjoyed spending time with or felt close to.
As for the movies you list here, I do love A Christmas Story although I’ve never watched It’s a Wonderful Life and I’m indifferent to A Christmas Carol. I consider A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation and Die Hard to be pretty standard viewing every year although Die Hard has to wait until the kiddo is in bed.
I just watched Its A Wonderful Life for the first time last night. My reading of it is that George Bailey caused the financial crisis of 2008.
George Bailey did a lot more than that. He created Global Warming, as we can see when it stops snowing the instant he ceases to exist. In addition, he was the man who somehow prevented the oldest movie cliche of them all–that a gorgeous woman puts on glasses and becomes instantly invisible. Without George, even a knockout like Donna Reed is just a mousy, nonexistant thing with spectacles. Donna Reed doesn’t even NEED glasses in George’s world. Perhaps he discovered Beta Carotene?
Why are Objectivists always such joyless scolds?
At least we can agree that A Christmas Story is, at best, overrated. Give me Christmas Vacation any (and every) year.
“Donovan’s Reef” is best Christmas movie ever; the main story of racism and bigotry is just a vehicle to showcase the Nativity scene with Lee Marvin as one of the three wise men (as US President, along with King of Polynesia and Emperor of China) bringing the gifts to the Christ child is a tribute to the real meaning of Christmas;
Um, Merry Christmas.
Thanks for ranting about Luke hugging Darth Vader. The kids got their Dad the print for Father’s Day. That led to the comic book about Darth Vader as a dad. They got him that for Christmas. He loves it.
The oldest boys’ friend got his dad the Luke hugging Darth Vader print for Christmas, after seeing ours. The Dad loves it. He’s been on long business trips this year. This makes it feel like it’s all worth it, that his kid loves him, even when he’s far away.
Thank you.
Come. On. Who doesn’t cry at the end of Galaxy Quest?.
For me there’s only one must see Christmas movie, White Christmas. I never get tired of it and watch it in the middle of the year sometimes.
And after all these years, Vera Ellen still makes me breathe harder.
Vera Ellen in White Christmas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoyB8Ps2nmE
These are fightin’ words, I know, but Vera Ellen was the best female dancer I’ve ever seen. And so beautiful and sweet. I’m still in love with her.
And White Christmas is a just beautiful movie.