Day 14: Christmas Movies and Shows

 Hello Interwebs!

Today (which is really yesterday due to some scheduling conflicts and the fact that I like sleep) is all about the movies and shows that I like and recommend for the holiday season. 

First up we have the animated classics. 

• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966): if you're going to watch this classic tale of the Grinch who dislikes the Whos in Whoville and Christmas before getting the fastest redemption arc in history watch the original which is narrated by Boris Karloff. 
  
  
  
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: a lovely Halloween meets Christmas story all done in claymation. This is a Halloween and a Christmas movie and can be enjoyed from October through New Years (and Disney's Haunted Mansion Holiday confirms this belief). 
  
  
  
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: classic Christmas movie done with puppets. I have a build-a-bear Clarisse and the polka dot elephant toy from this movie in my Christmas decorations and although I love this classic, I really dislike a lot of the characters including Santa. 
  
  
  
• Frosty the Snowman: also an animated classic. I actually really like the villain in this and recommend it for fun hijinks. 
  
  
  
• Santa Claus is Coming to Town: another puppet classic. This tells the origin story of Santa Claus and other Christmas traditions such as stockings, Christmas trees, and why Santa looks the way he does. It's a cute story narrated and sung by Fred Astaire. 
  
  
  
• The Year Without a Santa Claus: this is my brother's favorite Christmas movie. This is about Santa who upon being sick and not believing there is any Christmas spirit left decides to cancel Christmas so his wife and a pair of elves and a jaded young boy decide to prove otherwise. Heat and Snow Miser are the absolute best characters of the Christmas season. 
  
  
  
• The Muppet Christmas Carol: this is a mix of live-action and puppets and Michael Caine is the absolute best Scrooge out there. I love absolutely anything muppet related. 
  
  
  

Next we have the horror classics, because I'm me and I love horror and the campier the better. 

• Krampus: this is about a boy who after a bad Christmas experience ends up summoning this anti-Santa demon. This is not a great movie by any means but I love it still. 
  
  
  
• Black Christmas: this is specifically the 2006 version. This takes place on Christmas Eve where a homicidal maniac goes home to what is now a sorority house and kills the sorority girls. 
  
  
  

Then we have just live-action Christmas movies which I think most people would enjoy. 

• Noelle: this is a Disney+ movie starring Anna Kendrick as Santa's daughter Noelle who goes on an adventure to find her brother when he takes off after he inherits being Santa after their father dies. It's super cheesy and super cute. 
  
  
  
• A Christmas Prince series: a Netflix movie series about an American journalist and a European prince who meet at Christmas time and this follows their love story up to the birth of their baby. 
  
  
  
• Home Alone: especially the original two. The original two are about a kid named Kevin who is left at home in the first one and ends up in New York while the rest of his family is in Florida and thwarts a pair of bumbling burglars. Home Alone 3 while also not terrible is not as good and not a Christmas movie. The new one on Disney+, Home Sweet Home Alone is trash and aside from a very hilarious cameo from a character from the original movies is not worth watching. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Jingle All the Way: this is about a dad having an adventure while trying to get his son the hottest gift of the season. As someone who was a kid during the whole Tickle Me Elmo thing in the 1990s, this speaks to my soul in a very strange way.
  
  
  
• The Santa Clause: the original movie si the best one it is about a divorced dad named Scott Calvin who puts on the Santa suit after Santa falls off his roof and becomes the new Santa. The second movie is about him looking for Mrs. Santa. The third one is trash and has a jealous Jack Frost and I don't really remember what plot it had...if any. 
  
  
  
• Love Actually: controversial pic as this movie hasn't aged particularly well but it's about a bunch of interconnected people with interconnected stories finding love in various ways around the holidays. The best storyline in this one is the one involving Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson.
  
  
  
• A Christmas Carol: there are a million of these starring a multitude of actors and are my dad's favorites and he owns every version of it. His favorites are the one from 11984 starring George C Scott as Scrooge, the 1999 version with Patrick Stewart, and his absolute favorite is the one from 1938 with Reginald Owen. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Miracle on 34th Street: both the original starring Edmund Gwenn as Santa and Natalie Wood as Susan as well as the remake with Richard Attenborough and Mara Wilson as Susan are wonderful. It's about an old man trying to prove he's Santa with the help of a skeptical young girl and her equally skeptical single mother. 
  
  
  
• It's a Wonderful Life: a Christmas Classic and my mom's favorite. This is about a man named George Bailey who through a series of events finds that he's made a difference in so many lives simply by being alive. 
  
  
  
• Bundle of Joy: this is a movie starring Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds about a young woman who accidentally ends up with a baby for Christmas and falls in love with the son of the owner of the Department store where she works. 
  
  
  
• The Nutcracker: this is any movie version of George Balanchine's ballet. I did ballet as a child and one of my favorite things to do when I have some extra cash is to go see the Oregon Ballet Theater's production in Portland, especially with my mom. This picture is from the exact version I had on VHS as a kid. 
  
  
  
• White Christmas: my absolute favorite classic. This is about an entertainment team who end up in Vermont for Christmas on a whim and put on a show with a pair of sisters to help out their former Army CO. This movie has absolutely the best music of any Christmas movie. 
  
  
  
• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation: And this is my all time favorite Christmas movie. This is about the Griswold family and their comedic trials during the Christmas season with their eccentric family. 
  
  
  

Finally we have the shows I enjoy around Christmas. All of them are baking shows and I maintain that baking is the best and most cozy thing to watch around Christmastime. 

• The Great British Baking Show Holidays: this is the holiday edition of the best baking show in which they bring back previous fan favorite contestants for a singular holiday themed episode with holiday themed challenges. 
  
  
  
• Nailed It Holiday: this is about amateur (and disastrous) bakers who have to recreate Pinterest style desserts in very Pinterest fail kind of ways. This show is hilarious and the Christmas theme makes it better. 
  
  
  
• Baking It: this is one we recently found and is a series of holiday themed baking challenges which are judged by a panel of grannies. It was hilarious and sweet and the grannies stole the show. 
  
  
  

So that's what I'm watching and enjoying this holiday season. Hope you find something in here that you enjoyed. 

Today's Funko Pop was Dr. Finkelstein in his little wheelchair with his little brain exposed. I love the little details on him. Ones I still hope to find in here is the duck toy, Santa of course, and Santa Jack. Although I kind of thing the Easter Bunny would be funny too. 

I'm still working my way through The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer which I'm still enjoying even though I'm never going to be a huge fan of the enemies to lovers trope and it does rely a lot on miscommunication to drive the plot forward. 

Happy Belated Bookmas Day 14!

Richelle