Christmas movie musing

This Christmas season started off kind of slow for me, in that I only just got the tree up and my shopping is way behind. But one thing that has gone right is that my wife and I have watched a number of Christmas movies over the last few weekends.

• Home Alone
• Die Hard
• The Ref
• All I Want For Christmas (1991)
• A Christmas Story
• Christmas Vacation
• A Christmas Carol (with George C. Scott)
• Christmas in Connecticut
• Holiday Inn
• White Christmas
• Scrooged

We still have a list of movies and specials we want to watch from our DVD collection:

• Miracle on 34th Street (the original)
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (both versions)
• Elf
• Eloise at Christmastime
• It’s a Wonderful Life
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• Christmas Comes to Willow Creek
• Frosty the Snowman
• Shrek the Halls

The remarkable thing is that we may actually get to most of our collection this year, at the rate we’re going. (I don’t own Gremlins, though. I probably should.) We never get through even a small portion of our Christmas movie collection, but this year it’s been movie after movie every weekend. And it’s great.

I usually have White Christmas on in the background while I put up the tree, and today was no exception. It definitely plays well in the background because I know it so well, but the downside is I miss all the dancing. By the time the movie’s over, I’m usually in the middle of working on lights and that’s when I have to pop in something else. This year however, I had help fluffing the branches and was able to get the tree assembly and the lights (which are separate) finished before the movie was over.

I’m a sucker for a good Christmas movie. But then, the whole season is wonderful to me. (More so when it snows. Still waiting for a good snowfall here.) Growing up, my mother would start playing Christmas music in September or October, and for us the season was an extended one. Obviously we still got to enjoy fall for its own sake, and it’s not like Christmas decorations were up on Halloween, but the decorations went up fairly early and the tree was always up right after Thanksgiving, as close as could be helped.

One of my favorite things growing up was watching Christmas specials on tape. We had a tape at home with all the classics on it, recorded off TV. (I never saw several scenes from Rudolph until I was much older. They used to cut it to ribbons to fit it in a half hour slot.) My grandmother had a similar tape, which decayed because she had the bad habit of storing her tapes on top of the TV.

It’s weird to look back on so many of these movies and specials now as an adult, with fresh eyes. And even weirder to wonder what the next generation will think of them. Christmas really makes you feel the years, but in a good way if you’ve been blessed.