Your Top -->5<-- Favorite Christmas/Holiday Movies

[FoolKiller]

1) It's A Wonderful Life
2) Holiday Inn
3) Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
4) A Christmas Story
5) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Notable mentions: Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary's, White Christmas, The Shop Around the Corner, Christmas in Connecticut, and Scrooged.



And I refuse to ever give the Jim Carrey version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas any kind of positive mention other than the fact that it was funny. It changed the point of the story. The Dr. Seuss book and the cartoon have The Grinch being someone who was cruel for the sake of being cruel.

The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be that his head wasn't screwed on quite right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

And in the end he changes because he learns the true spirit of Christmas.

And what happened then...?
Well...in Who-ville they say
That the Grinch's small heart
Grew three sizes that day!
And the minute his heart didn't feel quite so tight,
He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light
And he brought back the toys! And the food for the feast!
And he...

...HE HIMSELF...!
The Grinch carved the roast beast!

But in the live-action movie the story gets drug out with a backstory to explain that The Grinch was picked on as a little kid. No longer is The Grinch an antagonist, he becomes the protagonist and we feel sorry for him, while the biggest bully of The Grinch's childhood grew up to be mayor of Who-ville (and a far site worse than the mayor from Horton Hears a Who). In the end, even after The Grinch learns his Christmas lesson, the mayor, played by the awesome Jefferey Tambor, continues his antagonistic ways.

And the final product is not a story of a generally grumpy person who has his heart changed by the spirit of Christmas, but a story about bullying. It is one thing to take some artistic license to add detail to a children's story for a full-length film, it is another thing to change the nature of the main character and the meaning of the story. Heck it practically take the Christmas message out of a Christmas story.

So, for this reason that movie will never hold a place in my holiday favorites, even if my daughter does think it is hilarious.

 

[Lucas]

I'm going to be honest. These are all the Christmas movies I can come up with.

1 - Home Alone
2 - Home Alone 2
3 - Jingle All the Way