12 Nights of Christmas Movies

So, although I went through a rabidly anti-Christmas phase during my sad, single, post-college days—you know, those first couple years when you realize that in the real world, no one is compelled to have meals with you, much less cook for you; paying your own rent, bills & utilities totally sucks; and that your parents were right about everything….especially the bit about brushing and flossing, since paying for your own fillings sucks even more than paying for your own gas, electricity, car repairs put together –anyway, since then, I’ve managed to put Christmas back into my heart (no thanks to the mystery Good Housekeeping subscription some good elf out there ordered for me…).

I love a lot of things about Christmas—the lights on houses (even the ones that look like the Christmas fairy vomited colored filaments all over the house); the cookies (baking them….eating them…baking more….you didn’t think I was done, did you?); putting up and trimming the tree (see picture); even some of the music (though I draw the line at Thanksgiving. No Xmas songs before Thanksgiving, thankyouverymuch)!

Of course I love getting together with family and friends and feasting together (i.e. drinking together) during the holidays, too. But one of the best parts of Christmas is surely the Christmas movies!

Now don’t get me wrong, not all Christmas movies are created equal. For this reason, I have put together my list of The Best Christmas Movies Ever. Now, you may note some glaring omissions that would surely show up on other people’s lists, most notably  It’s A Wonderful Life. This is because I hate It’s a Wonderful Life. I hate Jimmy Stewart. I hate the plot. I hate how it makes me bawl like a baby at the end, because it’s really a crappy movie that doesn’t deserve my emotional investment. OK, that was harsh. I realize, for many of you it’s a standby of the holidays. But do we really have to believe that if it weren’t for good old Jimmy, the town would turn into one big brothel and the girl would turn into a dusty, spinster librarian (as if that were such a bad fate anyway!  Instead she gets to warm Jimmy’s sheets every night and slave in the house with those annoying kids? Gee, what a bargain).

Donna Reed as the spinster (i.e. sad & lonely) librarian.

But this post is not about crapping on other people’s faves. Don’t yuck on someone else’s yum, as one of my co-workers likes to say. Let’s focus on the positive here, people! If you haven’t watched these, give them a spin this year. They will put even the biggest Grinch in the Christmas mood.

12. While You Were Sleeping (1995)

Bill Pullman: He's so dreamy!

I love this movie, despite being oh-so-90s, maybe even because it’s so 90s. Sandra Bullock is a singleton in Chicago who gets a family for Christmas when she saves a handsome lawyer who is knocked on the rail tracks of the El. Everyone assumes she is his fiancée (of course!) due to a misunderstanding, which is quite convenient as she has been in love with him at a distance for ages. Things spiral out of control as the misunderstandings pile up and Lucy (Bullock’s character) falls in love with the lawyer’s brother (played by the oh-so-dreamy Bill Pullman, lol). It’s funny, festive, very very silly, and includes a Christmas tree breaking through a window: “‘Nature of claim: Christmas tree through window.’ How am I gonna put that on my insurance claim?”

11. Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

Ok, so you might say this is not a holiday movie. I say it is: it starts at Christmas and ends at Christmas, so isn’t that all that really matters? Drinking, smoking, flirting & shagging—along with a lot of swearing in between. Nothing like good old fashioned English holiday cheer! Best of all, when you feel you’ve really had a quite a bit too many cookies, eggnog and helpings of turkey, just remember what Daniel Cleaver says about his vision of the ideal woman: “I like a woman with an arse you can park a bike in and balance a pint of beer on.”

10. Love, Actually (2003)

This movie should be on everyone’s list. We’ve already established, who doesn’t want a British holiday? I mean, they are so cute with saying “Happy Christmas” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and I bet a handful of them even know who St. Stephen was, and why we have a Christmas song about him…In any case, despite some quite sad moments, especially in Laura Linney’s story line (WTF man!? Why????! Too sad! I object!), it’s quite a funny movie. I mean, just getting to watch Hugh Grant dancing like a maniac should be worth it….

Laura Linney's character almost gets it on with Mr.
Hunk, only ruin the moment & miss out on love, actually! Boo!

9. Elf (2003)

Elf stars Will Ferrell as a human brought up by Christmas elves, who learns one year that he is not, in fact, an elf by birth. He goes out in search of his biological father, who turns out to be a total Scrooge. He ruins children’s books—how worse can he be!? While I cringe during some scenes (like those where Buddy the elf puts maple syrup all over spaghetti, covers it in fudge & marshmallows, and then begins to cram it all in his mouth), for the most part, it’s pretty cute. And Zoe Deschanel is in it. With a shower scene! Great perk...

8. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

A classic! Need I say more? Ok, I will. Even though it’s overtly religious and Charlie Brown has got to be the biggest dork in the world, I still get a little choked up when he decides to choose the sad little tree-branch of a tree from the Christmas tree lot. And the music, of course. What says Christmas more clearly?

7. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)

Another classic. The animation, the rhymes….Could a single Who down in Whoville resist? I think not!

6. Home Alone (1990)

The cast alone is great: Catherine O’Hara, Joe Pesci, John Candy…all hilarious. Macaulay Culkin when he was still cute instead of just weird-looking. It’s the literalization of every kid’s fantasy/nightmare: getting to be home alone, utterly unsupervised, able to eat all the ice cream you fancy and trash your older brother’s sacred bedroom. And who can forget that fake gangster flick gag?: “I’m gonna give you till the count of 10 to get your ugly, yellow, no-good keister off my property, before I pump your guts fulla lead! 1….2….10!”

5. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

Another family classic that I include at #5 mostly because of the claymation. It’s really neat! You kind of wish they still did stuff like that on network TV for the holidays. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that this film pretty f-ed up. Santa and Mrs. Claus call each other “Papa” and “Mama” (seems somehow incestuous); the reindeer are super mean to Rudolph, even his Dad  and Santa make it clear that he is a pestilence on their existence due to his unnatural nose; the outcast elf, Hermey, is run out of Christmastown merely for wanting to be a dentist; and the whole movie is saturated with 60s era misogyny (Donner, for example, tells his wife and Clarice that they should stay home and not go looking for Rudolph with him—“That’s men’s work.”). All the same, it’s quite adorable and everyone ends up accepting Rudolph and Hermey after all…

4. Scrooged (1988)/ A Christmas Carol

In the updated version of the Dickens classic, set in the 80s in New York, Bill Murray is an exec at a TV network who gets “Scrooged”—he is visited by four ghosts who warn him to make amends. He only sees the bottom line but by the end of the film, like the Dickensian Scrooge, mends his ways and invites the spirit of Christmas into his heart. Bill Murray is hilarious, of course, especially when we see exactly how his character has decided to promote the network’s Christmas special—by threatening apocalypse if you don’t watch it! (This is meant to show us just how degenerate he is before he decides to make amends.) The film also has an amazing cameo-ish part by screen legend Robert Mitchum, who, as the rather eccentric network owner, demands more cat-centered television…

3. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)

Yuppies! They don't understand Christmas at all.

One of my family’s all-time favorite Christmas movies….! The film documents one family’s preparations for the holidays, from driving to a forest to get their Christmas tree only to realize they didn’t bring a saw, to covering the entire house with enough lights to drain the whole city’s power grid, to decorating a tree that turns out to have a squirrel in it, to carving a turkey that looks perfect on the outside, but is nothing but smoke and tendon inside…On top of that, one of my favorite elements of the film is the yuppie 80s couple who live next door (the woman is played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus!) who sneer at the Griswold family through their chic sunglasses and silver jogging suits: “Why is the carpet all wet, Todd?” “I don’t know, Margo!”

2. A Christmas Story (1983)

“Fra-gi-le….Must be Italian!” “I think it says ‘fragile.'” Ah yes, who is not yet acquainted with A Christmas Story? The leg lamp; the Red Rider BB gun; “You’ll shoot your eye out!”; the tongue stuck to the pole in the school yard…classic moments in Christmas cinema! Filmed in the 80s, set in the 40s, funny, touching, and always self-aware, it’s probably the #1 family Christmas movie…

1. Bad Santa (2003)

And here we have my #1 Christmas movie! Definitely not a “family film,” and that’s probably what makes it such an amazing Christmas movie. What other Christmas film has the line, “Fuck me, Santa! Fuck me, Santa!”….and gets away with it? The film stars Billy Bob Thornton as a self-loathing alcoholic sex-addict who has a knack for cracking safes. He and his partner in crime, little person Marcus (Tony Cox, who is hilarious!), team up each Christmas as Santa and his Elf in malls across America to make some cool cash on Christmas Eve, once everyone’s gone home. This particular year, they have to contend with anxious mall managerBob Chipeska (John Ritter!) and his avaricious mall security manager Mac (Bernie Mac!). Need I say more? In the words of Willie (B.B.T): “I'm an eating, drinking, shitting, fucking Santy Claus.” ….and aren’t we all?

Merry Christmas!