Christmas Movies

Rake suggested this post. Christmastime lasts about a month and is a time when many people are drawn back to religion and experience a renewal of generous feelings toward others.  The length of the holiday and the emotions evoked make Christmas a part of numerous movies. Some movies center on the theme, either embracing the story of the birth of Jesus, the existence of Santa Claus, or both. Some find a comic holiday angle, or, at least in the case of Santa Claus, satirize it.

I don't have childhood memories of Christmas and movies. I think Mom may have taken us to see "Come to the Stable", when I was 8 or 9, but going to Catholic school, I got enough religion and did not seek it at the movies. Literary classics on the screen seemed like just more school.  The annual Amahl opera on TV bored me senseless, though I never watched more than the first few minutes. By the time animated Christmas fare came along I was too old to be interested.

Scrooge in the Christmas Carol is the classic literary embodiment of a miserably selfish person opened to love by the spirit of Christmas. Many such classics of literature, including stories for children, have been made into Christmas movies. As parents, we watch these with our children, delicately explaining the stories, balancing fact and fantasy.

I love movies about people who hide their hurt inside and then come to realize there are other people who hurt even more, who they decide to reach out to help, and thereby end up helping themselves too. This theme is perfectly at home in a Christmas movie. "It's a Wonderful Life" has become a Christmas staple on TV. Though not a purely Christmas movie, the climactic community generosity perfectly summarizes the message of the entire movie and fully embodies the personal Christmas spirit of giving. Another film where Christmas comes as an appropriately climactic part, though this time in a sad way, is the wonderfully nostalgic "Meet Me in St. Louis", in which Judy Garland introduced the song, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas".

Christmas episodes usually appear about a week ahead of the holiday on television series.  I just watched a particularly good one called "So-Called Angels", from the 1994 short lived but very good family and teen series, "My So-Called Life".  (Too many intelligently written TV series have never made it beyond one year, or two at the most, which could be the theme for another blog post).

The funniest Christmas movie has to be the TBS marathon subject, "A Christmas Story". I crack up every time I see it and I can remember almost every scene. I'll be watching it again this year.

How about sharing your Christmas movie memories and musings?

Close Encounter

For 32 years I went without watching "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".  One reason for avoiding the movie is the sci-fi genre has only limited appeal to me.  I'm not sure why that is.  I guess I find the realities of science so fascinating and expansive that making up supposedly more fantastic stuff seems a waste of time.  Like many things in life it is a matter of degree.  If the fiction is not too far out, it has more appeal.  I like "Fahrenheit 451", maybe because it is more political science fiction, and it is not that far out.  I liked "E. T.", because, like Fahrenheit, it was also very personal in its relationship with the characters, and because the alien was so appealing and made such a deep cross-cultural connection with Elliot.  "The Day the Earth Stood Still" appealed to me because the alien seemed to be the embodiment of what my Catholic school was teaching me about Jesus, which was ironic since the Church found the movie "morally objectionable in part for all", apparently because the alien was able to resurrect himself.

"Close Encounters" had no viable political message, personal relationships or cross-cultural connections.  All it seemed to have was blockbuster pretense, including excessive length, and state of the art (for then) special effects.  Production values (and budget) were high, but the story written by Spielberg was drivel, the acting was mediocre at best and the direction was hackneyed.  Not having watched the movie when it first came out limits my ability to measure it with the test of time, but the effects are obviously now old hat, the production values are the norm for any Hollywood big budget movie and the acting and direction are still poor.

My favorite line is when Richard Dreyfuss and his female companion have breached the 350 square mile evacuation zone set up by the government, by taking the station wagon off road, careening over embankments and through barricades across open country on dirt roads with no buildings or human being in sight, and then come upon a distant view of the Devil's Tower, and Dreyfuss, contemplating proceeding to the Tower, suddenly turns practical and says, "Let's get some gas and get down there."