This is another one where I’m not 100 percent certain where the inspiration came from. It’s another Siegel City story (although the last of those for a while, until 2021, to be precise), and once again I’ve branched out from Other People’s Heroes into new characters. I think it’s one of those stories that came to me, Jeopardy-style, in the form of a question: what if a crook found out when the superheroes in his city were having their Christmas party? How could he take advantage of that? And who would stop him? It’s shorter than a lot of my other Christmas tales, but I like it.
And hey, one more time, three cheers for the artwork of Jacob Bascle! You may remember him from such books as literally every Siegel City story, as well as his professional comic book design and lettering. Check him out on Facebook or visit his online portfolio!
Roast your chestnuts and deck your halls, folks! It’s time once again for Playing Favorites, the Geek Punditry recurring feature in which I ask my pals on social media for categories of some kind of storytelling and I talk about my favorites in those categories. This time around I’m Playing Favorites with Christmas stories. Last week, in part one of this feature that will go down in history with the works of Charles Dickens, Frank Capra, and Quincey Magoo, I talked about some of my favorite Christmas comedies, my favorite Christmas horror movies, my favorite Christmas stories from a preexisting IP, and my favorite songs written specifically for a Christmas movie. This week we’re cracking open the suggestions and looking at a few more different categories. So cinch up your comically-oversized black leather belt! Just like Santa Claus when you leave out an assortment of cookies on Christmas Eve, it’s time to Play Favorites!
Rankin and Bass
Duane Hower asked me for my favorite Rankin and Bass Christmas special. This is a toughie, guys. Rankin and Bass is the studio that I think is most associated with Christmas, the people that gave us Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and that weird Smokey the Bear movie that nobody ever remembers. They branched out to other holidays as well, with Here Comes Peter Cottontail and the Halloween epic Mad Monster Party. They even lent Rudolph to other holidays with Rudolph’s Shiny New Year and Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July. They made their own version of The Hobbit, and in the 80s they gave us afterschool masterpieces such as Thundercats and Silverhawks. What I’m getting at here is…well…I really like the works of Rankin and Bass. So picking a singular favorite would be nearly impossible.
This is what Christmas looked like when we were kids.
The good news is, it’s my dang column and I don’t need to limit myself to just one choice if I don’t want to. I think we can all agree that the best-known and most-beloved of the Rankin and Bass catalog are the best-known and most-beloved for a reason: Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Each of these took a legendary song and extrapolated an entire world based on it. Rudolph’s special created whole new characters that have become a welcome addition to any Christmas village such as Yukon Cornelius, Bumble the Abominable Snowman, and Hermey the Elf (who wants to be a dentist). From Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town we have the Burgermeister Meisterburger – the most fun Yuletide villain since King Herod – and a worthy origin story for the character at the center of the Rankin and Bass universe. And while I don’t know if anyone would argue that Frosty’s arch-enemy Professor Hinkle is as iconic as those others, everybody loves that cartoon and will gladly watch it every year.
Having said all that, let me talk a little bit about some of the other Rankin and Bass specials that may not be as iconic, but that I still enjoy. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, an adaptation of the novel by L. Frank Baum that gives Santa a more fantastic origin than most, and which I am an avowed fan of due to its (tenuous but real) connection to the universe of Baum’s Oz novels, which I’ve mentioned before I really enjoy. And just as last week I marked “The Snow Miser Song/The Heat Miser Song” from The Year Without a Santa Claus as one of the best pieces of music composed for a Christmas film, I also love the special as a whole. Like many a superhero franchise, with Santa’s origin out of the way Rankin and Bass were free to just tell a charming story with the character, expand his world, and keep the magic alive.
“Ten bucks if you eat the yellow snowball, Young Santa.”
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas is another one I deeply enjoy. A VERY loose adaptation of the poem by Clement Clarke Moore, in this half-hour an entire city is in danger of being put on Santa’s naughty list because of one anonymous citizen who wrote a letter to the newspaper claiming that Santa is a fraud. You’ve got to wonder why the editor actually chose to run that letter in the first place, or at the very least why he failed to include the disclaimer that the letter only represents the opinion of its writer and not necessarily the opinions of the newspaper, the town, or the National Football League, but at that point the damage was done and it’s up to a clockmaker and his mouse buddy to fix it. If you haven’t watched this one in a while give it a spin this year – I promise when the special’s featured song begins you’ll recognize it.
Rankin and Bass also did a few religious specials in addition to all the secular ones. Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey isn’t really anything to write home about (it’s really Rudolph plus Bambi times Jesus, and Don Bluth did a much better job telling essentially the same story for Disney in Small One), but I have a fondness for their version of The Little Drummer Boy, and it’s certainly worth putting into your Christmas rotation.
Claymation
Amber Foret wanted to know my favorite Claymation Christmas films. I’m not sure if she, too, was thinking of Rankin and Bass, but I’m going to treat it as a separate category, because they’re two different things. While both are examples of stop motion animation, Rankin and Bass used puppets made of wood or metal with real fabric clothing and the like, whereas “Claymation” specifically refers to stop motion created using malleable substances like plasticine. Aardman Animation, creators of the Wallace and Gromit cartoons and Chicken Run films, use the clay technique. I know that a lot of people don’t really care about the difference, but I’m going to differentiate them for two very important reasons.
1: I’m a pedantic son of a bitch that way.
2: It gives me another category.
And there are two Claymation projects that rise to the top. The first, from 1987, is Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas Celebration. Vinton – who actually trademarked the term “Claymation” for his own studio – became prominent in the 80s for his work in animation, particularly the California Raisins commercials. In this half-hour special a pair of dinosaurs, Rex and Herb, host a presentation of classic Christmas carols, all while the gluttonous Herb tries to discover the true meaning of the word “wassail.” It’s a great special, with several segments having a bizarre, surreal quality to them. Many, such as the “Carol of the Bells” number, are really funny. Others, like “Joy to the World,” use different techniques to do animation that looks very different than you’d expect. And their rendition of “Oh Christmas Tree” is simply lovely. The special also includes the California Raisins with their legendary rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and a jazzy version of “We Three Kings” that still springs immediately to my mind whenever I hear the song.
Christmas: Bringing together carnivores and herbivores since 65,000,000 B.C.
The other Claymation special I want to talk about is a British production from 1999: Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire. Robbie is the son of a very, very famous reindeer (some may even call him the most famous reindeer of all) who, trapped in his dad’s shadow, is trying to make a name for himself. His goal is to become Santa’s navigator, thanks to a nose that has a built-in GPS function, but the only way he’s going to pull it off is by conquering some rather malevolent rivals in the Reindeer Games. Although not an Aardman production, this special is full of the weird, dry British humor that makes me love Aardman, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and the like. There were also two sequels to the special, Legend of the Lost Tribe and Close Encounters of the Herd Kind. The first one is the best, but all three are worth watching. Do your best to find the original British versions, though, rather than the American versions where the voices were all re-dubbed by the likes of Ben Stiller and Brittney Spears. Nothing against them, but come on – if you’ve got Jane Horrocks, Mark Gatiss, and Rhys Ifans doing the voices, why the hell would you replace them?
You know it’s brilliant because they don’t even need to specify which award it won.
A Christmas Without a Lesson
Rene Gauthreaux decided to make things hard on me by asking the biggest stumper of the bunch: my favorite Christmas movie where no one learns a lesson.
Project ALF.
Because y’see, by now he had ALREADY learned that you shouldn’t eat cats.
This one is tough, guys, because the essence of Christmas is redemption. If you think back to the religious meaning of the holiday, it’s baked right into the story. Even if you ignore that, the vast majority of truly great Christmas stories involve somebody finding a way to make peace with their past and embrace their future – A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, Violent Night, and so forth. So picking a Christmas movie where no lesson is learned, let alone a really GOOD such film, is a rather gargantuan task. I thought hard about this one. I wracked my brain. I even went to Letterboxd and scoured over my list of every Christmas movie I’ve ever watched. (What, you mean you don’t have one?)
Finally, I came to the conclusion that the best lesson-free Christmas movie ever made is the wonderfully bizarre Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. This 2010 film from Finland is about a research team and a family that get embroiled in a task to capture the most dangerous game there is, a unique species that is prized by hunters for its strange properties and remarkable abilities, and which are terribly dangerous, but utterly indispensable at the holidays. I don’t want to say too much more, because if you haven’t seen it I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but the movie is really funny, totally messed-up, and absolutely not to show the kids if you’re just trying to get them to stop watching Santa Buddies for the 900th time. But if you like weird, you don’t mind little gore, and you can handle a movie with tongue planted firmly in its cheek, Rare Exports is worth checking out.
If there IS a lesson to learn here, it’s probably about that hat.
Christmas Fantasy
Kylie Wells hit me with another toughie: my favorite Christmas fantasy. You wouldn’t think this one would be too difficult, as by rights almost any Christmas story that recognizes the reality behind Santa or Rudolph would inherently count as fantasy, but Kylie specified that she was talking about the sort of “high fantasy” that inhabits the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, and once you apply that filter the list gets much shorter. People have tried to tackle this very specific subgenre several times, and to be honest, most of the efforts have kind of fallen flat. The best one that comes to mind is the Rankin and Bass adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, but I’ve written about that a lot this month, so I don’t want to go back to that well again.
For some reason, the magic of Christmas and the magic of high fantasy just don’t mix very well. In fact, a lot of the efforts are laughable – the 2014 film The Christmas Dragon was actually spoofed in the most recent season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Then a few years ago, while looking for a Christmas movie with my wife, my father, my sister, and her kids, we stumbled upon the 2018 Italian film Legend of the Christmas Witch. When I say this movie is bad…guys, I think it may be safe to call this the Troll 2 of Christmas movies. In fact, although it is not my pick to answer Kylie’s question, I’m gonna recommend you all go and watch this movie just to see for yourself how amazingly, wonderfully bad it is. Every so often Erin, Heather and I talk about seeing if it’s still streaming anywhere (I just checked – as of this writing it’s on FreeVee, Tubi TV, and the Roku Channel) and watching it again with someone else who has not yet had the pleasure. In fact, I’m just going to quote my own review of the film I wrote at the time to give you a taste of what you’re in for:
“At one point in this movie the witch’s boyfriend has to take off his dinosaur mask so he can tell her students to steal a bunch of toy bicycles to ride into the mountains while he distracts the dragonfly drones, and if that doesn’t make you want to watch it I don’t even know what to tell you.”
You have been warned.
Seriously, this is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Watch it twice.
But for an actual good movie that embraces the elements of fantasy, the best example I can think of is Hogfather, the 2006 miniseries that adapts the late, great Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel of the same name. If you’ve never read a Discworld book you’re missing out – it’s a fantasy series that brilliantly satirizes not only the tropes of fantasy, but also modern culture, with different aspects targeted by the different books. Hogfather isn’t TECHNICALLY a Christmas movie, as Christmas doesn’t exist on the Disc, but it’s about their equivalent: Hogswatch, a holiday in which the good children of the Disc are visited by the Hogfather…except this year, the Hogfather is missing, the entire fabric of belief on the Disc is in jeopardy, and the only person who can possibly save Hogswatch (and the world) is Death. No, like literally, Death. The Grim Reaper. Guy with the scythe. The big “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!” He’s the guy who’s gotta save the world.
Him and his granddaughter.
Anyway, it’s a great book and a great miniseries, and damned if I can think of a better fantasy movie for the Christmas season.
I AM HERE TO SAVE THE HOLIDAYS AND DRINK EGG NOG. AND I AM ALL OUT OF EGG NOG.
Atypical Christmas
We’re going to wrap things up by talking about the category I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for. Jon McCarthy wanted to know my favorite “atypical” Christmas movie (Jon, by the way, is an awesome comic book writer and creator of the comics Endangered and Comic Book Trivia. His newest comic, a New Orleans-based horror one-shot called Loup Garou, was released just this past Wednesday, and you should all run out to your local comic shop and buy a copy, or demand they order one for you if they foolishly failed to have one in stock.) Liese Aucoin, similarly, asked about my favorite “Non-Christmas Christmas Stories, other than Die Hard.” (Liese, to the best of my knowledge, has not written any comic books about werewolves in New Orleans.)
Since I think Jon and Liese are basically asking the same thing, I’m going to combine my answer, especially since it gives me a chance to tackle the greatest Christmas controversy since “Who spiked the egg nog?” Namely: what exactly constitutes a Christmas movie? Die Hard, of course, is the originator of this particular meme, when it became popular among a certain part of the population to call it their “favorite Christmas movie” ironically, as it’s an action movie SET at Christmas, but doesn’t really have the usual trappings of Yuletide cheer. Since then, people have stacked up dozens of movies that fit the same criteria: a Christmas setting, but not really a Christmasy story: films in this category include (but are not limited to) Lethal Weapon, Batman Returns, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Rambo.
This has become a surprisingly delicate subject, with some people who get violently angry when you suggest one of these films counts as a Christmas movie. (Ironically, in this instance they are behaving more like Martin Riggs from Lethal Weapon than Bob Crachit.) On the other hand, sometimes the people who are in favor of such movies are so obnoxiously smug about it that it can be embarrassing to admit you agree with them lest you be considered a douche by association.
So let me settle this once and for all. First of all: watch whatever you want, whenever you want, and who the hell cares if somebody else agrees with you if something is a Christmas movie or not? Gatekeeping is stupid, life is too short, so enjoy yourself.
Second: I’m going to explain what I PERSONALLY think makes for a Christmas movie, something I outlined in more detail a few years ago, but I have to stress that this is MY criteria. Go ahead and create your own. Doesn’t upset me in the slightest.
For me to count something as a Christmas movie it needs to fit any TWO of the following THREE criteria:
It must take place PRIMARILY during the Christmas season. (Movies with only one scene set at Christmas, like Toy Story or Star Trek: Generations don’t count.)
It must feature a traditional Christmas character in a prominent role. (Santa Claus, Rudolph, the Grinch, Ernest P. Worrell, Jesus…y’know, the usual.)
It must include a traditional Christmas theme such as family, love, fear (that “ghost stories” thing I mentioned last week) or, of course, redemption.
So by my criteria, of COURSE Die Hard counts as a Christmas movie, as it meets criteria #1 and #3. (It’s about the redemption of John McClain and the real hero of the film, Sgt. Al Powell.)
Each of these films meet two out of the three criteria, and are therefore equally Christmasy. It’s just science, people.
All right, all that out of the way, what am I picking as my FAVORITE atypical Christmas movies? With Die Hard removed from the equation and taken as a given? Well, there are still several others to choose from. Sure, I like Lethal Weapon and Batman Returns and Iron Man 3 (I honestly think it’s underrated in the Marvel Cinematic Universe pantheon), but I don’t often work those into my Christmas rotation. One movie I DO like watching this time of year? Well obviously it’s the one about that cheerful guy in the red suit with the power to fly all around the world. I’m talkin’ 2019’s Shazam!
The bubble gum even kinda makes it look like he has a very shiny nose.
Based on the DC Comic, we’re treated to the story of young Billy Batson (played by Asher Angel), a foster kid who has been bouncing from one home to another for years in a quest to find his birth mother, whom he was separated from as a small child. He’s recently been placed in a new home when an encounter with an ancient wizard gives him the power to transform into the world’s mightest mortal, Shazam (with his adult form played to perfection by Zachary Levi). The movie is set at Christmastime – the final battle, in fact, takes place at a Christmas festival – so it meets criteria #1. And family is one of the major themes of great Christmas stories, so this film lands criteria #3, telling a truly touching story about “found families,” and how the bonds that forge a true family are based not on blood, but on love. It’s a sweet, exciting movie that I sincerely enjoy. Hell, may be the only person out there who liked the sequel – although admittedly, not as much as the first one.
Wow, guys, I have gone on for a WHILE on this one, but hopefully I’ve given you all some movies to check out in the last ten days until Christmas. I know I’m going to be diving into at least some of these films before Santa drops by on Christmas Eve. Thanks to everyone who gave me a suggestion – once again, it was a lot of fun. And I’ll see you again next time I decide to Play Favorites!
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. You know what else you should watch this December? The Rocketeer. It’s not a Christmas movie, Blake just doesn’t think it gets enough love.
Yeah, I know what I said with “Lucky Penny” – I was branching out and writing Siegel City stories that weren’t part of the main cast of Other People’s Heroes, but I hadn’t left them behind ENTIRELY. This story stars Josh Corwood, alias Copycat, the main character of OPH, and it was written while I was working on what would turn out to be my last attempt at a direct sequel to Other People’s Heroes. Even now, though, I was linking to other stories. There are elements of this story that tie in directly to The Pyrite War, my novel of Siegel City’s Golden Age (which doesn’t feature Josh at all), and other things that would come back years later when I began working on the serial story Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars(in which Josh is a significant character, but in a supporting role). That’s why this ends with a little bit of a sequel hook – it was in reference to a story that I was planning, but never quite told. It still happened, though, in that long gap between OPH and Little Stars. Maybe I’ll tell it some day.
By now you should know that I love a good ghost story. I hope you agree that this is one.
Oh – and another shout out to Jacob Bascle, once again nailing it with the cover art for this story. Check him out on Facebook or visit his online portfolio!
This one will take a teeny bit of explanation. In 2011, after I finished writing “Lucky Penny,” I apparently had another burst of creativity. An idea came to me that I liked so much that, even if I had already written the story for that year, I simply had to put to (digital) paper before I lost it. Oh sure, I could have put it aside and waited to debut it the next Christmas, but that isn’t really in the spirit of my little project.
“Stowaway” is a different kind of story for me. I don’t often write period pieces, and I certainly don’t attempt to write in period style, but I did the best I could here. This is one of those stories where, if I did what I wanted, the reader will actually have a better handle on what’s going on than our narrator. I like stories like that.
By 2011, it had become clear that the story of mine that resonated most strongly with people was the novel Other People’s Heroes, which is all well and good. I like that story. I’m proud of it. But several efforts at writing a sequel had fallen flat for one reason or another. Eventually, I thought that rather than continuing that story, it would be better to try to branch out and tell new stories in the same world – new heroes, new characters, even new timelines. I could still bring in the characters from OPH if the occasion was there, but it was a big universe. Why limit myself? The Christmas story “Lucky Penny,” set in the Siegel City Universe’s version of Las Vegas, was my first attempt at this, and it’s served me well since then.
Big thanks to Jacob Bascle, comic book designer and letterer supreme, for the cover art used not only for “Lucky Penny,” but for every Siegel City story to date. You’ll see more of his work in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, feel free to check him out on Facebook or visit his online portfolio!
This may well be the first time I’ve ever written a story inspired by a word. I heard something called “toyetic” and discovered it was an actual industry term, used to describe a character design that is amenable to selling toys. Well hell, if it was a real word, I thought it should be used a little bit.
Even before I had a child of my own, I wrote a lot of stories that featured children in one way or another. As I go back and look at them again as a father, they hit differently. My son is the same age now as Lucas is when this story begins (but not ends – this was the Christmas story with the longest time-frame until the novella Santa’s Odyssey ate up over a year), and as I mentally place him into the story, it gives me feels I didn’t expect. I also…I hate to sound like I’m bragging, but I really like this one. One of my favorite filmmakers, Adam Green (of the Hatchet franchise) contends that it takes artists of any type about seven years of distance before they can look at something they’ve created and see it the way the audience does instead of just seeing the flaws that all creative types obsess over. I think he’s got a point. I don’t think I’ve actually read this story since I first presented it 13 years ago, and damned if I don’t think it’s actually pretty good.
This is another story from the world of The Curtain, by the way. It’s easy to pick out which stories belong to my two ongoing universes. The Siegel City stories are about superheroes. Curtain stories are about monsters.
I didn’t remember this story very well when I sat down to edit it for this project, then it came back to me in a sort of rush. This was inspired by my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, Erin. Erin is from Pittsburgh, and we did the long distance thing for quite a while before we got married. This story came about because we had a very similar conversation during one of her visits to New Orleans – she’s the one who likes to have adventures and explore, I’m the one who gets serious anxiety if he doesn’t know exactly where he is and where he’s going. We’re still that way. Although unlike certain characters in this story, I like to think I’m mature enough to recognize that life should probably be lived somewhere in between the two extremes.
Without spoiling anything, this is an example of my favorite subgenre of Christmas story.
This story has two sources of inspiration. The first was an article I read about a real town called “North Pole” (although not in Wyoming) and how it gets bombarded with letters to Santa Claus every year. The other was a song. Music is a powerful thing, and Christmas music especially so, and I’ve always loved MercyMe’s beautiful song “Joseph’s Lullaby.” That was in my head when I wrote this story. I am particularly proud of this one.
Ah, Christmas. My favorite time of year. The time of lights and tinsel, candy canes and egg nog, and most relevant to this blog, movies and stories. I love Christmas in general, but perhaps my favorite thing about it is the surfeit of wonderful stories set around the season, which I indulge in almost to the exclusion of everything else between Thanksgiving and the 25th of December. The thing is, most of my favorite movies and books are evergreen. I can watch Back to the Future in June, I can read Ender’s Game on St. Patrick’s Day, and nothing feels wrong about it. But a great Christmas story just doesn’t feel right unless I’m consuming it sometime after Santa rides in the Macy’s parade and some time before that ball drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. So in this window, I have to take in a LOT of stuff.
This week I’m Playing Favorites with Christmas. I asked my friends on social media to suggest different categories relating to Christmas movies, books, TV shows, etc., and like I did with horror movies at Halloween, this week I’m going to examine these categories and talk about some of my favorites in each one. And if you’ve got suggestions for more categories – drop ‘em in the comments! There’s still a few movie nights left before Christmas!
“They said this one is about the Donnor Party. I hope it’s good, I love reindeer.”
Christmas Comedies
Lew Beitz is going to kick us off this week by asking for some of my favorite Christmas comedies. A lot of great Christmas movies have funny parts, of course, and I think the trifecta that most people will turn to when asked this question are – in order of release – A Christmas Story (1983), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989), and Home Alone (1990).
In A Christmas Story, Bob Clark blended together several semi-autobiographical short stories by Jean Shepherd (who narrates the story) and turned out a timeless movie that captures the essence of childhood at Christmas while still being unceasingly funny. There can be no doubting the iconic status of a movie that has turned a plastic lamp shaped like a woman’s leg in fishnet stockings into a traditional Christmas decoration.
Christmas Vacation is the third and greatest of the Vacation films, about a dad (played by Chevy Chase) who desperately tries to recreate the magic of his youth for his own family, but struggles against a more cynical age. This is not only the best Vacation film, but the best movie Chevy Chase ever made. It was SO good that afterwards a federal judge ruled he was legally prohibited from being funny for the next 20 years. The ban was lifted in 2009, and Chase joined the cast of the show Community.
Home Alone has Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern getting hit in the face with paint cans.
So those, I think, are the big three. But I don’t just want to leave you with the obvious answers, so I’m giving an honorable mention to another beloved Christmas comedy, the 1988 epic Ernest Saves Christmas. I am an unabashed fan of Jim Varney and his Ernest P. Worrell character (go ahead, try to abash me, I dare ya), and this is possibly the purest expression of what Ernest was. Sure, at this point he had already gone to camp, but in that film he was sort of a sweet-hearted, simple agent of chaos in a relatively realistic world. This is the movie where the Ernestverse really started to spiral into screwball comedy. In this film, Ernest is a cab driver that falls in with a guy who tells him he’s Santa Claus. He’s about to retire and needs to find the man who’s been chosen to take his place, an actor on a kids’ TV show, before it’s time for his Christmas Eve run. There’s some wacky stuff with a pair of elves and reindeer caught up in a shipping mishap, but that’s not the real draw of this movie. Seeing the golden, childlike heart of Ernest as he does his best to help Santa is one of the best reasons to love this character, even as he presents us with his funniest film. Choosing a favorite Ernest movie, frankly, is like trying to select a single rose petal as the most beautiful, but there you are.
And if you prefer your Christmas movies with a religious connotation, you’ve got the father, the sons, and the holy ghost right here.
Christmas Songs From Movies
Rachel Ricks has asked me for some of my favorite songs written specifically for a Christmas movie, differentiating them (I assume) from those pre-existing songs that are incorporated into holiday classics, like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and “Human Centipede.”
Again, I’ll mention the most iconic example first, then talk about some others. The most famous – and arguably the best – Christmas song ever written for a movie is probably “White Christmas,” written for the 1942 film Holiday Inn and then used as the title and centerpiece number for the semi-remake of the movie as White Christmas in 1954. It’s a lovely song that I’m sure many people today don’t even realize was from a movie, and those that do know its cinematic origin probably misattribute it to the later, more famous film.
It’s not my personal favorite, though. Two other songs edge it out. For pure fun, you can’t beat “The Snow Miser Song/The Heat Miser Song” from 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus. In this Rankin and Bass classic, as you know, Mrs. Claus has to entreat these two thermally-opposed brothers to cooperate with one another in a convoluted plot to save Christmas. They both eventually agree, but not before performing this absolute banger of a musical number about how awesome they each are compared to their brother and how much better it is when Christmas is cold or hot, depending on which one of them is singing at the time. (The Snow Miser happens to be correct, by the way.) Even though neither song is particularly Christmasy (except for the lines where the brothers proclaim themselves Mr. White Christmas or Mr. Green Christmas, respectively), it’s so catchy and so much fun to sing along to that it’s become a staple on my Christmas playlist.
If you’re Team Heat Miser, you’re just wrong.
But my absolute favorite Christmas song originally written for a movie is “Silver Bells.” This song made its debut in 1951 in the Bob Hope movie The Lemon Drop Kid, about a silver-tongued con artist (Hope, naturally) who winds up owing a massive gambling debt to a gangster and has to come up with a contrived scheme to pay it back by Christmas Eve. The movie is charming and deserves a place with the other great films of its era, but never seems to be mentioned alongside the likes of White Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, or Miracle on 34th Street.
“Children laughing, people passing, something something joke, about the shape of my nose…”
As far as WHY I love that song so much…odd as it may sound, I love it because it feels to me like a love letter to New York. The song mentions “city sidewalks” without ever specifying the city, but New York is where much of the film is set and it’s where Hope is wandering when he sings the song. I’ve never really been to New York. (Spent a night in a hotel there once when a flight was canceled, but all I saw was the airport, the hotel, and the shuttle in-between so I don’t count that.) Despite that, though, decades of cultural osmosis has indelibly given me a vision of New York in December as being the most Christmasy city in the world. God knows the city has its problems, but the movies have done a truly magical job of painting it as the place to be for the holidays. It’s the setting for Miracle on 34th Street, Home Alone 2, Elf, and plenty of other classics. From the Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving to the tree lighting in Rockefeller Center to the Times Square ball drop on New Year’s Eve, there is an intangible yuletide magic associated with New York City that this song captures perfectly. Frankly, if I ever DO go to New York, I hope it’s NOT at Christmas, because I’m pretty sure that the reality would fall very short of the snowglobe fantasy I’ve built up in my mind, in which “Silver Bells” is the background music.
Christmas IPs
Adam Santino asked about my favorite Christmas movies based on a pre-existing intellectual property, such as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special. To clarify, for the sake of anyone unfamiliar with the term, Adam is basically asking for my favorite films based on an established brand that happened to have a Christmas-themed special or installment. Christmas Vacation, as I’ve already mentioned, is the gold standard, but there are a lot of possibilities to choose from here, and I think the correct answer is obvious.
Project ALF.
That’s right, the running gag didn’t end on Halloween.
No, but seriously, it will not surprise anyone to find out I’m a devotee of the classics: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Disney shorts like Pluto’s Christmas Tree, and the epic Star Wars Holiday Special. But there are two productions that immediately spring to mind, and they’re both courtesy of the Jim Henson people. The Muppets and their cousins at Sesame Street have each shared the joy of Christmas with us many, many times, but for my money there’s nothing finer than 1992’s A Muppet Christmas Carol. The first major Muppet production after the death of Jim Henson was something of a risk for the studio. Nobody was really sure if the magic would still be there without the man who gave his soul to Kermit the Frog. But the results were remarkable: by casting Michael Caine as Scrooge (as perhaps my favorite Ebenezer Scrooge of all time) and having Gonzo the Great stand in as Charles Dickens to serve as the narrator, they managed to make a film that is not only one of the most textually-faithful adaptations of Charles Dickens’s novel out there, but is still full of the humor, music, and heart that make the Muppets so special. It’s such a shame that Disney has lost the plot on these characters, because one need look no farther than this movie to see just how much potential the Muppets have, how much the Muppets matter, and how perfect they can be.
The other film that comes to mind is from 1978: Christmas Eve on Sesame Street. In this special, Big Bird is horrified when Oscar the Grouch tells him there’s no way Santa can fit down the little chimneys in the apartments on Sesame Street, and Big Bird sets out on a quest to figure out how Santa can do his job. There are a few subplots as well, with Cookie Monster struggling to write a letter to Santa and Bert and Ernie doing their own charming twist on The Gift of the Magi, but it’s the main plot that sets this special apart.
It is said that, when Sesame Street was being developed, the idea was that Big Bird would play the part of the naive younger sibling, while Oscar would be the grumpy older sibling with a bit of an attitude. (Not relevant to this story, but Grover was intended to be the neglected middle child, and DANG does that make things make sense.) The dynamic between Big Bird and Oscar is wonderfully authentic, a fact made even more impressive when you remember that the late Caroll Spinney was the performer for both characters. Near the end, when Big Bird has gone missing due to his Santaquest, Maria (played by Sonia Manzano) lays into Oscar in a way that’s less like the mother figure she would eventually become and more like a big sister angry at someone picking on her little brother. It’s her performance in this special that I think explains why she was the first crush for a hell of a lot of viewers (and, if we’re being honest here, of Oscar himself). Finally, the special features Sesame Street’s lovely holiday anthem “Keep Christmas With You” performed by Bob McGrath, a scene that has even more resonance since his passing last year.
The magic of Christmas is best expressed through the power of felt.
Christmas Horror
We’re gonna wrap up Part One of the yuletide “Playing Favorites” column with a suggestion from my wife Erin, who (staying 100 percent on brand) wants to know about my favorite Christmas horror movies. I know that a lot of traditionalists don’t care for scary movies at Christmas, but I think that’s a bit short sighted. The truth is, there is a long tradition of horror taking place at Christmastime, a tradition that goes back much, much farther than even the era of cinema. Before Halloween really took off, weaving creepy yarns next to the fire at Christmas was a longstanding tradition. It’s the reason the song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” includes the line “There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.” And lest we forget, the most famous Christmas novel of all time is about a miserable bastard who is tormented by ghosts until he accepts the fact that he is, in fact, a miserable bastard and swears to get his act together.
All that said, I love a good scary story at Christmas – but I do have my limits. I like ghost stories. I like monsters. But I’m not as big a fan of human monsters at Christmas, and what I’m getting at here is that I’m not really fond of Christmas slasher movies. They’re a whole subgenre that I respect for its place in the canon, but the likes of Silent Night, Deadly Night or Black Christmas aren’t really my cup of tea. I like my Christmas stories with a shot of hope and redemption, and you don’t really get that with the bleaker kinds of horror movies. No, my Christmas horror movies have to offer at least a chance at a happy ending, which is why the greatest of them all is obviously Gremlins. Supposedly Chris Columbus’s original script for the 1984 classic was much darker and more violent than what was put on screen, and while I think that darker version of the story may be interesting, I’m really quite glad they changed focus before the cameras rolled. The movie nicely balances the adorable (Gizmo) with the abominable (all of his Gremlin offspring) in a way that has plenty of jumpscares and just a teeny dash of gore, but at the same time, isn’t so terrifying that I couldn’t show it to my 13-year-old niece. It’s also really funny, which is never a bad thing.
Maybe I spoke too soon about my favorite Christmas song.
The other horror movie that comes to mind this time of year is more recent, 2015’s Krampus. Directed by Michael Dougherty, who also co-wrote it, the film features a family very much at odds with one another: an obnoxious brother-in-law, a pair of bully cousins, a judgmental and overbearing aunt, until finally young Max (played by Emjay Anthony) loses his Christmas spirit and wishes them all away. That night a horrible blizzard cuts the power and traps the family in the house…and then the fun begins.
Dougherty is also the writer and director of the phenomenal Halloween anthology Trick ‘r Treat, which is implied to take place in the same cinematic universe as Krampus, and he brings the same sensibility to the project. Just like Trick ‘r Treat, the evil forces come after characters who have violated the spirit of the holiday and are – in one way or another – due some sort of karmic punishment. Unlike the Halloween film, though (and far more in keeping with Christmas) even the worst characters in Krampus have moments where they show that maybe they’re not irredeemable after all. The ending is a bit of a mind screw and there’s some debate as to what it actually means, although an official graphic novel tie-in Dougherty contributes to gives a bit of information that seems to support the slightly optimistic interpretation of the movie’s finale.
Pictured: optimism.
Whew, that’s plenty of Christmas goodness for you guys to seek out, and we’re just getting started! I’ve got several other suggestions that I just don’t have room for this week, so come back next Friday and look for some more of your categories in Playing Favorites With Christmas Part Two! And if you’ve got a suggestion of your own, there’s still time! Drop it in the comments right here, or on whatever social media post you followed to get here!
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He is desperately awaiting the suggestion that allows him to discuss 1982’s Christmas Comes to Pac-Land,so we’re begging you, don’t give him that chance.
Oooh! Unlike yesterday’s story, I actually do remember where the concept for “Circle” came from! It was close the day before Thanksgiving and I was making a pumpkin pie, but I had to run to the store for a few of the ingredients. It was one of those situations where you don’t get a cart but…well, basically I just used what happened to me and turned only slightly fictionalized it for the first scene in this story.
One thing I didn’t remember, though, is that the characters from The Beginnershow up again in this story, which means that “Circle,” too, takes place in the world of the Curtain.
Blake M. Petit 