Rob Perez
Beyond Reason
Personally, I think it’s the length of the Christmas season that makes us a little bit crazy. Unofficially, Christmas lights go up the day after Halloween while the grocery store I frequent offers eggnog alongside the Halloween candy. (I wish I were kidding.) Officially, the Christmas season starts the day after Thanksgiving and goes until New Year’s Day. We now know the Christmas season is an ultra-marathon.
With this much time spent on one theme, it’s natural that people will inevitably run out of legitimate things to discuss and move on to debating the undebatable. That’s why some people talk about Christmas movies.
Many people with too much time on their hands actually debate the definition of a Christmas movie. Some people believe a Christmas movie must have – above all – the Christmas spirit. Thus, they say, “Die Hard” (1988) cannot be a Christmas movie because Christmas is just a setting, not a theme. A Christmas movie, they argue, needs to be about Christmas itself: Do you believe in Christmas? Can you save (the spirit of) Christmas? Etc.
Listen to me. People making this argument can see they have many more weeks of Christmas ahead of them and now they’re just killing time by trying to get a rise out of you. Also, the spiked eggnog is strong this year. Don’t take the bait.
Let’s clarify the definition of a Christmas movie. An action film needs action. A rom-com needs a dash of rom and a pinch of com. Sports movies need sport. Christmas pics need Christmas. A classic Christmas pic will be watched again and again – ad infinitum.
(One brief aside: There is a little-known law that requires a journalist at my paygrade mentioning Christmas movies to comment on the Hallmark Christmas Movie wherein a big city career girl reluctantly returns to the small town she grew up in and finds and/or saves the Christmas spirit – and true love. The Hallmark Christmas movie does not qualify as a Christmas movie because no one watches these films multiple times unless they’ve lost the remote, their self-respect, or both.)
As for legitimate Christmas films…
I’ve only seen “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) in its entirety twenty times but I’ve seen bits and pieces a thousand times. How many times have you seen “Home Alone” (1990)? I’m probably in the ballpark of fifty. I enjoyed “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989) the first twenty-five times I saw it. If I walk through the room and “A Christmas Story” (1983) is on, I don’t break stride; hence, I’ve only seen it nine times. “Elf” (2003): 15-20 views. “Die Hard” (1988): 35 times; “The Muppet Christmas Carol” (1992): 15 times. “Love Actually” (2003) and Scrooged (1988) are high double digits.
A few years back I bought the classic, old-school, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (1966) with Boris Karloff. I make the family watch it three times a year whether they want to or not.
I come from a film background so I have spent a significant portion of my life studying films, watching and rewatching certain films dozens of times – on purpose. The key difference is that I rewatch Christmas classics inadvertently. I sometimes worry about the long-term impact of inadvertent rewatching. Fifty-plus viewings of a thing will change a man.
When I’m on my last lap, taking inventory of the life I’ve lived–reliving the things I’ve done, the fish I’ve eaten, the people I’ve loved – I half expect the stroll down memory lane to be populated from the ultra-marathons of Christmas movies past: George Bailey, suffered from tinnitus; Kevin McCallister, the forgotten; shoeless John McClane; Clark Griswold, the optimist; Ralphie Parker, nearsighted, Buddy the Elf, tall; Ebenezer, rich; and, of course, the Grinch who stole.
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