I’ve Been Thinking . . . About Christmas Movies

Harry Chapin began a song with “Remember when the music Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire. . . .”  Now, I’m not old enough to remember those times, but I remember my parents and grandparents and their contemporaries talking about them.

Families would gather around the single wooden box in their homes each week at the regularly scheduled time to listen to their favorite programs: “Sam Spade,” “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” “Dragnet,” “Green Hornet,” “Gunsmoke,” and more.

Eventually, the wooden boxes housed picture tubes and many of those programs made the transition to TV.  Just as with the radio, the programs were scheduled on a weekly basis, and again, families gathered around the wooden box for their favorite program.

As I was growing up, you could find me in front of one of those wooden boxes waiting for my favorite programs.  We had three choices: ABC, NBC, or CBS.  If we wanted to watch two shows at the same time – too bad!  Black & white picture and no remote – we had to get out of our seat and walk to the TV to change the channel.

Leading up to Christmas, we were treated to Christmas specials and movies.  Bob Hope, Andy Williams, and others.  Christmas movies: Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas,” and again in “Bells of St. Mary’s,” “Christmas in Connecticut,” and a few more.  We didn’t have many to choose from, unlike the barrage from the Hallmark Channel and other streaming services today.  But the fascination was there.

Watching a Christmas movie last night caused me to consider which movies I thought were best.  The selections grow each year.  I also have seen attempts online to identify the X-number of best Christmas movies.  Here’s one list that counts down their top 30 of all time.  Since I agree with their top three – albeit in a different order – I’ll use it.

1. Titles that cause me not to even consider them simply based on the titles:
   1. “Tokyo Godfathers”
   1. “Black Christmas,” which is a Christmas horror movie.

• Titles I’m simply not familiar with (which I think means something!) and I’m unable to comment on:
  • “Remember the Night,” for example.

• Titles that I either haven’t seen, or don’t remember seeing (again, probably means something):
  • “Gremlins,” for example.

• Titles that are sort of a twisted humor if you’re in that kind of mood:
  • “Bad Santa” (Billy Bob Thornton!), 
  • “The Nightmare Before Elm Street,” 
  • “Scrooged.”

• Titles that are worth the time if you have the time: 
  • “Love Actually,” “Christmas In Connecticut,”
  • “The Shop Around the Corner” (with Jimmy Stewart; and this was later remade as “You’ve Got Mail” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan).

• Titles you should see at some point:
  • “The Santa Clause” (with Tim Allen; and I would add “The Santa Clause 2”)
  • “The Polar Express,” particularly if you have young children,
  • “The Christmas Chronicles,”
  • “Klaus” was a very pleasant surprise,
  • “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” (though I prefer the version with Jim Carrey as the Grinch, and be sure to hang around at the end for Faith Hill’s rendition of “Where Are You Christmas”; I also enjoyed the 2018 animated version with some well-known actors voicing the various characters, Keenan Allen in particular).

• Titles you simply must see:
  • “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (Cousin Eddie emptying the black water tank in his RV, the next door neighbors, just so much), https://youtu.be/BeskbiJjCXI        
  • “White Christmas” (how can you not watch Bing Crosby crooning the song that has been covered by so many others and receive so much play time during the build-up to Christmas?!)
    • A funny anecdote – we had dinner with friends the other night and they told us about a Christmas when their daughter was in fifth grade.  Our friend and his daughter were driving home from church during a blizzard and were finding it impossible to make it up the unplowed streets.  After several attempts from different starting points, they finally made it home, but their daughter was crying.  Our friend asked why she was crying and she said she was sorry – her class had wished for a “white Christmas,” and now she would never do it again!  The power of youthful wishes!
  • “Home Alone” (surely you’ve seen it),
  • “A Charlie Brown Christmas” – you need to hear Linus’s description of the meaning of Christmas, see Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, and enjoy Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack.  https://youtu.be/KXmGLJ0S1Bs

• Top three titles in my opinion from number three to number one:
  • “It’s a Wonderful Life”
    • As Phil Pirrrello wrote in the list’s description,” [It] became a Christmas staple, in large part because of its timeless story about the generosity of spirit and how easy it is to lose sight of it, even with Christmas around the corner. Jimmy Stewart delivers an all-timer performance as a fragile man who finds the true meaning of Christmas where it often resides: With those we love.”  I couldn’t agree more.
  • “Miracle on 34^th Street”
    • What’s not to like about this movie?  It even begins with the Macy’s parade.  We see from the opening scenes that we are dealing with a unique individual in the person of a guy who introduces himself as Kris Kringle.  He knocks on the door of a toy store to let the owner know that the reindeer in his window display are out of order.  Edmund Gwenn came to personify Santa Clause.
      • An interesting footnote about Gwenn is that his house in London, where he was born, was demolished during the bombing by the German Luftwaffe in World War II.
    • Again, I will turn to Phil Perrello’s notes on the movie:  “The most successful holiday films are those that re-capture what it’s like to be a kid again, and the original Miracle On 34th Street pulls this feeling off effortlessly. When a man claims to be the real Kris Kringle and gets institutionalized for it, a young attorney struggles to prove not only the man’s innocence, but that he is the genuine article. If there’s a better last reel of a holiday movie, we don’t want to know about it.
  • “A Christmas Carol”
    • I simply cannot think of a popular movie that exemplifies Christmas more than A Christmas Carol.  The number and variety of versions is testament to the popularity of this story, based on a short book by Charles Dickens.
      • The story is so archetypal that a biographical film – “The Man Who Invented Christmas” – has been made to tell the story of Dickens’ journey to write the novella.
    • My absolute favorite version – and many have been made – is the 1951 film starring Alistair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge.  Sim’s ability to convey the miserly, unfulfilling life of the “humbug” Scrooge, then transform into someone who is joyously determined to life the rest of his days light of heart is masterful.
    • None of the movies on my list is based on the birth of Christ, which I know is hard to believe.  It is the occasion the holiday is supposed to celebrate.  “A Christmas Carol,” though, excels in its ability to portray the “spirit” of Christmas (I can’t decide if my pun was intended).
      • Scrooge is effectively saved from his dispirited life as spirits from his past, present, and future illustrate what his life is missing.  He becomes a believer and pursues a life of joy through a life of helping his fellow man.  If Christmas could move each of us in that direction. . . .  As Tiny Tim says, “God bless us everyone.”

I recently read Tom Nichols’ Daily Newsletter in which he described a fitting ending to the personal meaning of “A Christmas Carol”:

I have come to love “A Christmas Carol” more over the years because, in its way, it scares me more as I get older. I no longer respond very much to the parts about Scrooge’s lost youth, his failed romance, or his casual cruelty. Instead, I shiver a bit more now at the appearance of Jacob Marley’s ghost (“Business? Mankind was my business!”) and Scrooge’s final plea to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, because they are about sin and a life’s redemption. Marley failed to repent and is doomed to walk the earth. Scrooge finally sees his name on a snowy tombstone and realizes that he, too, is damned. And yet, there is a chance. “Why show me this,” Scrooge cries out, “if I am past all hope?” Looking at the grave, he pleads with the specter before him. “Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”

It is an article of my faith as a Christian that we can all, through repentance and, as Scrooge vows, “an altered life” erase the record before us that seems set in stone. When I was young, that reckoning seemed far away. Now, like Scrooge himself, I am an older man, and the question seems a bit more pressing. And so, on Christmas Eve, I watch the scenes of Scrooge’s salvation with gratitude, rejoicing that we can all share in that same promise of renewal. I have not become “as good a man as the good old city knew,” but every year—every day, really—we all get the chance to try again. May your holiday, if you celebrate, be joyful and blessed. . . .

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!