Favorite Christmas Movies

Christmas is about overkill. Everything tied to the holiday is overdone, but I love it. What a catharsis Christmas can be. We do benefit when we step out of what is normal and pretend a bit. At Christmas there is a great way to escape the humdrum of life. Its the Christmas movie. There are more Christmas movies than one can imagine. Many are sappy, most are formula, but some are enthralling to watch. There is even a TV channel in the U.S. that runs Christmas movies non stop, 24 hours a day every day in November and December.

Forget the bad ones, the too predictable or familiar ones. Today I will give you a few recommendations for best Christmas movies to watch this holiday season. Most of them are older films, made in a more innocent age. Innocent ages produce good innocent films, as in the Christmas genre. One of the best is the showcase of Irving Berlin songs called, Holiday Inn.  It's a classic 1942 film that is not dated. Those who love music will love the songs and elaborate dance numbers of Holiday Inn. On of the greatest Christmas crooners of all time, Bing Crosby is one of the stars of Holiday Inn. Holiday Inn was so good that 12 years later another Christmas movie based on Irving Berlin songs, 'White Christmas,' was made. That one is also a classic Christmas musical.

Who can forget James Stewart's portrayal of George Bailey in 'It's A Wonderful Life'? The movie was a low budget flop at the box office, but its themes of caring, thoughtfulness and sacrifice, along with the George's silly guardian angel, touches the heart and soul of everyone. Most critics consider It's A Wonderful Life the best Christmas movie of all time But 'Miracle on 34th Street' (1947) is another classic, a cute story of a small child who learns that there is a Santa Claus and that the real Santa is far better than the abstraction we hear about every Christmas season.
The Charles Dickens classic Christmas story, Scrooge has been made into a movie countless times, but the best adaptation of Charles Dickens' legendary tale is the black and white 1951 feature about nasty miser Ebenezer Scrooge. Alastair Sim  is the perfect Scrooge who's visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future and learns it's never too late to stop behaving like Hillary Clinton and to stop Bah Humbugging life.

If you hate Christmas and all the traditions with it, especially that fat guy in the Santa suit, there is also a Christmas film for you. It's Billy Bob Thornton's drunken Santa Claus, a thieving department store Santa he is with a crazy elf sidekick.  It's Nasty deviancy into the Yuletide season for Christmas haters and everybody who likes to laugh.

Then there are the animated Christmas cartoons. Try the 1965 'It's a Charlie Brown Christmas', which brings to life the great Charles Schultz 'Peanuts' comic strip characters, the 1965 island of misfit toys in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer' with Burl Ives singing badly off key but in an enchanting way. But my favorite Christmas animated cartoon is the Boris Karloff narrated (Yes, the Frankenstein guy) animated special 'The Grinch That Stole Christmas'. It's a great adaptation of the Dr. Seuss fable about a cave dwelling sourpuss grinch trying to ruin the holidays for all the Who people who live down the mountain in Whoville.

There are so many more great Christmas films, but I leave you with the campiest and most amusing of all, the 1964 'Santa Claus Captues the Martians'. Here's the premise....Martian children complain about not celebrating Christmas. So their parents do what any self-respecting extraterrestrials would. They kidnap the jolly old elf. This is so bad it's great. I suspect it is the Christmas season's campiest classic. As they say on Mars, Ho Ho Ho to all the Christmas movie favorites..