movies at Christmas

 I've written about a number of my favorites before - It's a Wonderful Life, and The Bishop's Wife, and Elf, and now Home Alone. And I watch these (and more - I also like both the older versions of Little Women, though I prefer the version with Kate Hepburn as Jo, and Miracle on 34th Street (the 1947 one), though that's arguably as much a Thanksgiving movie as a Christmas one, and the first time I ever saw it as a kid was when it was televised at Thanksgiving). 

I like them in part because they are familiar. I know the plots, you can sometimes recognize some of the minor characters (or even not so minor: it's kind of funny that Monty Wooley is the irascible but redeemable professor in The Bishop's Wife and the unrepentant curmudgeon in The Man Who Came To Dinner). And the dialog is familiar. 

(One day recently I quoted the "subscription to a jelly-of-the month club" to someone at work over us getting fundamentally a coupon in place of a Christmas bonus* and she got the reference and laughed)

(*to be fair: we got generous raises this year but one always *hopes*)

But part of the reason is: they're familiar enough, I've seen them enough times (some are on heavy repeat through December, I think I have seen at least part of Home Alone five times this year alone) that I can dip into them whenever I run across them and I know what's going on. They're mostly pleasant background noise at this point - in a way, for a livealone like me, it's like having the rest of the family in the room but you're not interacting with them - like, you're maybe reading a book while your parents play cards, or your grandma is rocking your baby sibling to sleep and your cousins are playing their own game. They're THERE, they're just not needing you at the moment). And weirdly, yeah, a familiar movie going on the tv does make me feel less alone, even if I am paying almost zero attention to it - I confess I've graded with movies like that on, or done class prepwork, or proofread stuff. 

And yet: barring some dumb "Christmas in July" thing (which I have NEVER gone in for), this is the only time of year you see them! So in another way they might be like distant relatives: they're out there, living their lives, but you only see them at Christmas. 

And I admit, there are some I can't watch any more or decided aren't for me. Scrooged is way too slapstick and in a lot of places it has aged quite badly (a pity, as I generally like Bill Murray), and there's an old Republic movie from the 40s called "It Happened on Fifth Avenue" and the McKeever character is just too annoying to me for some reason. And the National Lampoon Christmas Vacation I can only take in small doses, especially knowing what a miserable guy Chevy Chase apparently is to work with)