Hi, and “Merry Christmas” - “Happy Holidays” to you and Yours!
For the last five years or so, we have enjoyed watching the “Polar Express” on Christmas eve. It really seems to fit the bill for a Christmas movie - especially for this 67 year old train nut. For once, a digital movie portrays trains fairly realistically.
Christmas Day always calls for “A Christmas Story”, which really brings back my childhood in Chicago. Of course my favorite part is the department store displays with the Lionel trains running around.
My wife and I go to my mother in laws every Christmas Eve for her annual Christmas party. When we get home we always watch Christmas Vacation and have a few drinks, it’s something we have done since the movie first came out. My wife is a Christmas movie freak, right now she is watching Family Man. We are out visiting family every Christmas day so we don’y watch any movies. Usually where ever we are there is usually a football or basketball game on though.
I like the one, can’t think of the name right now but it’s where Freddie Kruger is after all the people in Atlanta’s passenger terminals on Christmas Eve.
If that’s not on, and it rarely is… we like It’s A Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart.
We have to watch the polar express as well, but as to Xmas day, the first part is opening presents, lunchtime is devoted to breakfast, and until dark, we play as vociferously as possible with our presents.
Hands down, A Christmas Story! I lived it. My Dad would never let me have a BB gun. He always said, “You’ll shoot your eye out”! LOL. I remember the 12th floor at Hudsons at Christmas, the window displays, and the lines to see santa. I remember my brother and I chasing each other around the Christmas tree lot, while my Dad dickered with the guy for some Charlie Brown tree. That movie was spot on, for the little details of that era. Does anyone remember the Western Auto Christmas Toy Catalog? My Dad used to bring one home, and we would circle stuff we wanted.
Father Ted, Father Dougall McGuire, and Father Jack Hacket in “A Christmassy Ted.” From the Irish Comedy series in the late 90’s, Father Ted.
One of the most hilarious exchanges in the production, when the various priests from two or three parishes oddly find themselves in a department store’s lingerie section, and they desperately try to find their way out in the maze of counters and displays, is when the rather daft and thick Dougall comes up behind one of the other parish’s priests, with a puzzled look on his face, and asks:
"What’s goin’ on then?
“We’re tryin’ tuh get out of this lingerie department before someone sees us.”
Well, so far this year, we’ve watched “A Very Venture Christmas” (The Venture Brothers), “A Christmassy Ted” (Father Ted), and a few of the Dr. Who Christmas episodes. And I caught “A Christmas Story” on the CBC affiliate across the border the other night.
We still have “A Blackadder Christmas” (Blackadder) and “Nan’s Christmas Carol” (The Catherine Tate Show) and “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” (Chuck Jones’ animated version) to watch this year.
The one that I miss is Dave Foley’s “The True Meaning of Christmas Specials’” from a few years ago on CBC. Gotta love a Christmas special that features El Vez (the Mexican Elvis)…
I’m learning a lot from these posts - didn’t expect many of the answers.
In Christmas story, the grade school is exactly like Brentano public school I went to in Chicago from '50 to '58 (K-8th). The houses and alleys were similar, and the winter dress was all too familiar. I did get my first BB gun when I was 11, but could only shoot it in the basement or when we went to southern Illiniois (Anna).
My craving was for that first Lionel train (had Marx), and I ended up buying it myself with paper route money - at Western Tire & Auto.
A Christmas Story is enjoyed every year with a house full of friends as a tradition. I am always surprised at how quietly everyone sits and watches even though we’ve seen it many times over the years. It brings back memories for all of us I guess. This year not everyone could make it on the same night, so we ended up doing it twice this year. No one wanted to miss the tradition.[(-D]
The Polar Express is a must see every year. I have an 18" subwoofer that goes down to 16Hz. That Berkshire and my subwoofer were made for each other.[~]
Actually, I didn’t much care for POLAR EXPRESS when it first came out, but it’s really grown on me the past couple of years, so it’s a ‘definite’ for a Christmas movie, now. And A CHRISTMAS STORY is an absolute joyous ‘must’ at my house. And if you think the movie is funny, read the original stories by Jean Shepherd (IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH)–they’re roll on the floor hilarious.
But for movies that really put me in the Christmas mood, I’ve got three favorites: REMEMBER THE NIGHT(very sweet and lovely), CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT (funny and romantic–containing a classic scene between Barbara Stanwyck and a Flap-jack) and the side-splittingly hilarious THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER in which Monty Wooley tears up the place as the Ultimate Christmas Guest From Hell.
Christmas Vacation on Christmas Eve… i have a running thread with my son on Facebook with nothing but our favorite quotes from the movie. A Christmas Story on Christmas Day. I actually set the same thing up with my son one Christmas and he got his first BB gun. Good memories… he is 26 this year, got married and expecting our first grandchild!