While the Christmas season is a lot of things to a lot of people, in our house, it’s all about movies. You see, my hubby is a huge film buff. In our house, the Academy Awards is an event, and with so many of the Oscar contenders being released during the holidays, we spend a good portion of this time in the theaters.

And when we’re not doing that, our family has several holiday favorites on DVD that we try to fit into our festivities every year.

Here are my top five favorites. I’m curious to know if any of them match yours:

5) It’s A Wonderful Life is my hubby’s favorite, and I have to admit, the dialogue is great.

“Say, Violet, that’s some dress.”

“This old thing? Why, I only wear it when I don’t care how I look!”

Gotta love that line. And no matter how many times I see the movie, I still tear up when Clarence gets his wings.

4) The Homecoming was the pilot to the Walton’s TV show, and anyone over 40 will tell you how huge that series was. For years, families across the world said goodnight to each other by throwing in the line, “Goodnight John Boy!”

I think for us, the movie is sentimental because of the old TV show. Set during the Depression, it also give us cause to feel grateful for the simple things we have, to be thankful, because we know from our parents that times really were that tough back then.

3) A Christmas Carol blends my two first loves: Christmas and creepy movies. As a kid, I grew up with Night Gallery, Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, so having a Christmas movie with ghosts and chains was always right up my alley. My only debate that remains is which version I like the best. There have been so many, and to this day, I still can’t decide. I only know I DON’T like the musical. Scary ghost movies and Oliver-style music just don’t mix.

2) Charlie Brown’s Christmas is my second most-favorite show for two reasons. One, because I grew up with it. (Heck, is there anyone on the planet that didn’t?) So it brings me fond memories of childhood to watch the show every year.

But the other reason I love this show so much is because my son fell in love with it as a toddler and absolutely beat the video to death. We were still watching it in May, and in fact, I think we’re on our second copy. So now, not only does the movie bring back my own childhood, it brings me back to the days when my now pre-teen son was a cute adorable toddler who would point to the screen wide-eyed and scream, “Snoopy!!” (sniff sniff)

1) But my most favorite holiday movie of all is about a BB gun. But not just any BB gun, “An official Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time.”

If I could live in another era, it would have been the 40′s, and A Christmas Story epitomizes everything I adore about it. I love the music, the sense of community, how simple life seemed back then. People still believed in things that were honest and good. And though I didn’t come along until 20 years later, I remember Christmas parades and window displays at Woolworths, and the smelly, stinky department store santas.

So tell me, what are your favorite holiday films? Did any of mine make your list? And what do you have that I’m missing?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Lori Borrill. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.