It happens every year, starting around the first of September. I find myself wondering if I will do it again, if there are any I should order online that I can't rent anymore, and whether I will really watch them all. My collection of Christmas movies has grown from the occasional addition to a hodgepodge of favorite hits we own to a larger life plan. It has developed into a need to see them all so that this Christmas (yes, this Christmas) my life will change and I will get a new perspective and things will be different.

Last year was the first year that I put the list into Excel, which I used so that I could sort the columns of what I own, what I've already watched, and what I need to look for at the store. I've already dug out the last printout and reviewed what I watched and didn't and thought about why. I know why some movies don't get watched. They don't change me. Or, to be more precise, they don't make me feel better after I've watched them. There are also different movies I watch for different reasons.

The season officially starts with Thanksgiving, though I have been known to watch Home for the Holidays the weekend before, and it ends at midnight Christmas Day. Home for the Holidays is a sick and twisted movie which so reminds me of my own family that it has become a substitute. I don't have to visit my side of the family at all, just watch the movie. The experience begins the minute I hear the music in the first scene with Holly Hunter restoring a painting before she finds out she's fired and kisses her skuzzy boss. Her life is falling apart, her daughter is growing up too fast, and she has to spend the holiday with her parents reliving all of the old images and dreams of herself. I am in the room when Robert Downey, Jr. spills the turkey on their sister's lap. Then we are all dancing around the dining room in a sea of Polaroid moments and dressing (or stuffing, I can't tell which). Later, there is a moment of escaping with a plate of food and a glass of wine in the kitchen, with Holly hugging her brother, that I cherish because it somehow says that this is all there is and it sucks but I love you and God I hope we can get through Christmas too.

I am there with her on the airplane at the end of the movie, drinking orange juice with the vulnerable hope of falling in love; waiting to see if there will be a totally new beginning out of all the hurt - and there is. There has to be, I know it. She and I flash back to childhood, where we are watching a big jet roar overhead and listening to a jazz tune, back in wonder at the world.

The sadness of another Thanksgiving movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, used to bother me. Now I have watched it enough so that I grasp its hidden meaning. This has made me more like Steve Martin's character, who lets go of the fake image of himself to just be, and that means letting someone else (in this case John Candy) into his life. I have a couple of friends like this, who I don't call at Christmas time, but should. The broken-down, burned up car is mine. There is nothing left after the trip home, only a weird connection to another human being, some sense of being alive and frail and hopeful. It is me and Steve Martin coming home together that Thanksgiving day with Candy in tow because we can't bear not to have him with us even though he's a pain in the ass.

To get through the lineup between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I make a pact to watch one a night. Numerically, I'll have to double up some days, but I never do except at the end. There are 38 movies on my list and I know instinctively which ones will drop off. The Holiday Inn and White Christmas provide songs that we still sing in the car, so that we spontaneously burst out with renditions of "snow. snoW. snOW, sNOW, SNOW!" Though I love Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, the chances of their getting watched this year are nil. They have to compete with a lot of other movies. All of these have memorable lines that get used year round, like "It's all part of the experience, Clark" and "what a tremendous waste of resources this was" and "Scrape 'em off, Claire" (Christmas Vacation and Scrooged).

The newest addition to the collection is The Family Man. The phrase "This is not my life" resonates with me as we both reject what we have around us, wanting a life and an image of ourselves with lots of money and excitement, where we can go around singing opera and eating veal medallions and doing whatever we want while still working 80 hours a week as a big cheese. At the end, though, I am sitting with Nicolas Cage in the chair in the bedroom in the middle of the night, loving my life and wanting all of it, however tacky and full of compromises. Later, when it seems that it was all a dream, I yell across the airport gate to Tea Leoni that I've seen our life together and it is beautiful and that we can walk away from it or make it happen starting right now. For them, it does start right then and if I just had the right attitude or if I just watch the right combination of Christmas movies it will start right now for me too.

My favorite movie is Christmas Vacation, which I have seen so often that it mimics itself in my mind and I almost don't need to watch because it is so ever-present in my life. Still, I do, saving it for at least the week before Christmas. The jazz song "Christmas Comes One Time Each Year" plays as Chevy Chase and I sit in the attic watching old family movies and reminiscing about the past. There is jazz and home movies in Home for the Holidays too. There is a lot of good jazz in these films It makes me want to pull out the video of home movies my sister had made, but the Neil Young soundtrack gets a bit depressing after a while.

I build everything up in my mind too, Sparky. Like him, I believe that Christmas is a time for resolving petty family differences and that everything will be better this year. Instead, I find myself staying away from the family, spending hours on some image of Christmas like putting up 100,000 imported Italian twinkle lights. Facing the family, the chaos of dogs and messes and relatives and the whole procession of Christmas-induced rituals, we are at the end of our rope. It seems easier if everyone would just go home. Unlike Sparky, I would let everybody leave.

Of course I am not going to forget It's a Wonderful Life, which is as much a part of my Christmas as anything. I watch it through the movie Christmas Vacation, where the son is sitting in front of the TV the afternoon all of the in-laws arrive, with the door bell gonging one octave lower and lower until it seems the moment will burst.

With Jimmy Stewart, though, I get to fall in love with Donna Reed and lasso the moon, even while watching all of the dreams for my life go by the wayside until I feel that I've made nothing of my time on earth and am better off jumping off the bridge. Where is Clarence? I hear bells ringing and look for him at the local mall. At the end, when there's a blizzard and the money's missing, I want my friends and family to come rushing around me, slapping backs and shaking hands, making me feel that I'm loved and part of something larger than myself and that, like George Bailey, I prevented our little suburb from becoming Pottersville. Jimmy Stewart, Nicholas Cage, and I emerge after these movies with a wonderful appreciation of our lives just as they are.

As I read through my list, I know why each stands out. There is The Bishop's Wife which we bought in curiosity after years of watching The Preacher's Wife, Cary Grant and Loretta Young help me see how my unhappiness affects my wife. David Niven and I have spent so many years fighting to get to the top, only to realize in our midlife crises that things aren't working out at all like we planned. These movies bring up my feelings of being out of balance. I want to fast forward to the end and see everybody happy and back together again. I am reminded that the miracles of angels happen right around us. I see the boys choir rising as Cary directs them, calling them in from the street with a strange sense of longing. I want to rush in and sing with them, and my chest swells up and my eyes water every time I watch this part. At the end of these two movies, when cathedrals are built or not built, I want to stand in the pews singing and clapping and halleluyahing with Whitney Houston.

Scrooged is another favorite. Bill Murray and I look back at our lives. We are lying in front of the TV on Christmas eve, while mom goes out, because dad didn't get us any presents except meat. I confess that I too was a childhood TV addict and some of my favorite memories are also from TV. I miss the time I didn't spend with my brother. I miss Claire and I can see now how I put my own needs and the needs of the show first. In the middle of the live broadcast of A Christmas Carol, I want to stop the show too and talk and cry and wonder what it all means, remembering that the true spirit of Christmas is not watching television (which I'm doing), but being connected with the people I love and care about. I want to call people I haven't talked to in a long time.

Scrooged, like The Preacher's Wife, has the heartbreak of watching children that are hurt but finally get love and healing. Whether it is the little boy who hasn't spoken in six years since he saw his father killed and says "God Bless Us Everyone" or the way Whitney and her husband get the little boy back from the foster home so he can have a real home with their son, I choke up every time. It makes me want to give more to children's charities, to go out and get presents for the kids in my neighborhood who I know don't have everything they need.

There are some movies that have snuck up on me, that I didn't realize were Christmas movies until I'd watched them a time or two. While You Were Sleeping is one of these. I watch Sandra Bullock's little orange globe spinning when she was a child, filled with the dreams of foreign travel fueled by her father's stories, but realize we're both stuck in the city with dead end jobs and no visas in our passports. I love the family that claims her when she rescues their son, Peter Gallagher, who is knocked unconscious after being mugged at the subway. They invite her into their Christmas and there is a stocking with her name on it and a present for her and I want to be part of it. I fall in love with Sandra, it's true. I want to help Bill Pullman tell his father that he doesn't want to run the family business any more, but to make furniture, which he really loves. I feel the courage coming on that I too will do what I really want to do with my life.

Jimmy Stewart's The Shop Around the Corner is something I saw as a musical in Abingdon, Virginia then found on tape and it turns out is the predecessor to You've Got Mail. I can feel the antagonism and sexual tension towards Margaret Sullavan, the hurt Jimmy feels towards his betrayed boss, and the whirl of Christmas-time romance.

I like the new version of Miracle on 34th Street, but when I think back about the scenes which mean something to me it is the old version of Miracle on 34th Street which I remember most. When Santa speaks Dutch to the little girl who lost her family and was just been adopted from overseas, I ache and find myself believing and wanting for Santa and God to speak to me too. When Edmund Gwen gets admitted to the mental hospital because he's lost hope and deliberately fails a mental test, I'm just as depressed at the state of the world and how people don't get what I am all about. I am not sure what to think when little Natalie Wood holds out for her dream house and its actually there in the suburbs on the ride home Christmas Day. It is wonderful and just like she imagined it to be and makes you want to believe in your dreams, but I'm not sure that I could put up with the commute.

Some movies I keep on the list, but watch only if they happen to be on the tube and the movie I've scheduled for that night doesn't do it for me. There is a lot of mental scheduling that goes on. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Jingle All the Way is not all that redeeming, although I recognize my desire to buy love with things and that I am sometimes so busy at work that I don't make enough time for the kids and end up regretting it. The videos of The Nutcracker and The Magic Flute do not come close to the memories of live performances seen during the season which made me want to buy them in the first place, though there is certainly lots of transformation in them.

I waited a while before seeing the new version of The Grinch. I've always loved the cartoon, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I wish I could be little Cindy Lou Who, knowing in her heart that Christmas is not things, but Spirit. The new version is a little too violent for my taste. So is The Nightmare Before Christmas, which my wife loves but gives me the creeps. You'll have to explain what this movie is about, since I can't watch it long enough to get the message. We're considering adding Edward Scissorhands to the list, if only for the snow scenes. There is plenty of change, longing, and misunderstanding in it and the scene at the end in the bedroom when you find out what happened over the years really gets to me. Thinking about cartoons, I'm a big fan of Claymations and every other year we dig out our taped copy (complete with commercials) of the California Raisins singing Christmas carols. A Charlie Brown Christmas always hits me in the pit of my stomach with the loneliness of the piano music and the pitiful, scrawny Christmas tree.

It may seem ironic that I own both Home Alone and Home Alone 2 - Lost in New York, yet not getting 3 or 4 because I am a purist for McCauley Culkin. "Keep the change, you filthy animal" and "I don't think so" and half a dozen other lines are part of the way my family talks and this is an important coming-of-age movie. I feel a little immature when the only people I can get to watch these with me are neighborhood kids under age 10. Still, there is a certain poignancy to waking up and finding that the family you wished was dead is actually gone and you are left alone. Growing up the oldest of six kids, this is not an unfamiliar thought.

There are others on the list which may surprise you. For me, Jim Varney's Ernest Saves Christmas is a real tear jerker. Like the teenage runaway, I keep pulling magic nothings out of Santa's bag, hoping that it will be the thing I want most in life. We still sing the "Please and Thank You" song at our house. It is me choosing not to be the real Santa because I'm getting my big job doing something else. It is the angst of not being able to live up to the idea of being Santa, but finally coming around and believing, which gets me.

There's a similar theme in the made-for-TV movie In the Nick of Time, where Lloyd Bridges comes down from the North Pole looking for the next Santa. In this, I am the sad and depressed reporter who thinks Christmas is a crock, but for the sake of the kids tries anyway to save the rec center from demolition by corrupt politicians. I too am angry at Santa and God, until I finally open the present from my wife, a pair of warm Christmas socks that I could never unwrap since she died. Then I am agreeing to be the next Santa, without knowing how or why the miracle happens, but it has.

The same story line is in The Santa Clause and The Santa Clause 2, which show me my unwillingness to accept what is, that we are all Santa. My failure to believe is turned around, especially when the mom and step-dad get the presents they always loved from childhood, "sucking them into his delusion." Sometimes it feels like I too keep getting fatter and fatter for no apparent reason. There are a lot of mini-dramas in these movies which I identify with; from an image of Christmas with my dad after my mom and he were first divorced, with him trying so hard, to the son wanting to keep Christmas spirit alive all year round.

The actress who does the best job of keeping it alive all year is Rebecca Harrell as the little girl in Prancer. I am with her singing Christmas songs in July, believing in the reindeer that suddenly appears on the road and bringing it home to nurse it back to health. I would mail her money to buy grain if she asked. This is a torn-apart family, with a widower father played by Sam Elliott who is gruff and can't make ends meet on the family farm. It is the change in him which moves me most. His anger and irritability and his inability to cope are mine. He is willing to let go of the one thing he loves most, his daughter, because he thinks he can't give her what she needs. After all the excitement, we both realize that it's the love of our children which is most important, along with the magic of believing in reindeer.

There are some movies that we love in their own right, like Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck and Chevy Chase's Funny Farm. The betrayal and misadventures are all mine. I am in love with Stanwyck from the moment I see her through the eyes of the sailor rescued from a raft in the Pacific who is sent to spend Christmas at a real old fashioned home in the country. I don't want to marry for money or convenience or to get out of a jam. I want the passion and power and tumult of their kind of love. Uncle Felix and I are old friends and I want him to come cook for me. Chevy Chase gives me my dream as a writer with an idyllic setting and a big advance. It is, again, the chaos and not living up to images of myself; and I love the scene where the whole town is skating around on a Norman Rockwell set pretending that everything is perfect this Christmas when it's not, just so they can sell the damned house.

Holiday Affair is another classic and Robert Mitchum and I stay in our dead end jobs long enough so that we can earn the money we need to go do what we love, which is to build sailboats. There is no way I can resist pitching in to secretly buy the electric train set which Janet Leigh can't afford to buy her son. Invited to dinner, we confess our undying love for her in front of her fiancé and her parents and make a terrible mess of it, but at least we're honest about how we feel.

Like Chevy Chase and Bill Murray, Steve Martin makes it onto my Christmas list twice with Mixed Nuts. The world is falling apart. We're being evicted. It doesn't seem like Christmas because its 80 degrees and a sunny, coastal California day. With Steve, I learn that I am not that good with people. This movie has a murderer on the loose and Madeline Kahn gets trapped in an elevator playing toy instruments and has to pee really bad. There is a wonderful falling in love scene in the bathroom. There is a suicide attempt where Steve talks a doped up Santa down from a roof. Santa climbs up there because he really wants to be a wall artist, but can't afford to get his own wall. I am talked down too, realizing that it's not quite Christmas yet and that miracles can still happen. Maybe that's why I watch all these movies, madly in procession until Christmas, hoping that the miracle can still happen and that if I watch them all it might happen to me too. It also explains my unwillingness to watch them the day after.

I'm not sure why I identify with Michael Keaton in Jack Frost, which my wife thinks is depressing and I think fills a void. A musician, he doesn't spend enough time with his family and gets killed in an accident, so he wakes up as a snow man and returns to see them at Christmas. If you can't change before you die, do it after – that's the message. I ache for his not appreciating his family when he had them and for his having to finally let them go so that they can move on with their lives. What kind of life would he have as a snow man anyway?

In last year's rush to find additions to my collection, I picked up Santa Who? with Leslie Neilson and Heidi's Christmas with Burl Ives, the former for full price and the latter as a $5.99 DVD at a local supermarket. "What are you doing?" my wife asks. What if there is a message in these movies that I'd miss?

It turns out that Santa Who? is another glitzy, frantic, but heartwarming story. It starts out with a kid in an orphanage whose father doesn't have time to visit him, who writes Santa a letter (that gets lost until 20 years later) that all he wants for Christmas is a family that loves him. As a grown up, Steven Eckholdt doesn't believe in Santa and doesn't have room in his life for kids either. That is until Santa falls from his sleigh and can't remember who he is and it's Steven's job to do a news story about him and find out. We both find out in the movie that the hurts of childhood can end and that we can let people into our lives if we start believing.

Heidi's Christmas is a little schlocky, I admit. Burl Ives loses his sight and is lost on the mountain and left for dead. I shouldn't tell you, but I will since the chance of you buying this movie is slim, that he's cared for by a madman who can't hear, who lost his own way in life and chose the mountain instead. They both make it out alive. The real transformation comes for Heidi's friend's father, a businessman who never spends enough time with his kid because he's too busy working. Heidi travels with them to New York City, where the dad finds out what's most important in life and it's not owning hotels and arguing with a love-crazed French chef. There is a businessman in Ernest Saves Christmas too. When his secret wish for snow on Christmas eve comes true, he cancels the Big Deal so that everybody can spend time with their families. The people who go to work in Christmas Vacation don't seem to get much done either as the holidays get closer. Instead of going to work, we should all just save ourselves the pain and take time off, so we can watch Christmas movies and become human again.

This may be the year that I finish watching Jason Robards in The Christmas Wife, a movie I picked up two Christmases ago when my flight was delayed and I was feeling lonely at the airport. There is one movie I am looking for this Christmas called Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd that I haven't seen since it was released. It's not technically a Christmas movie, but apparently Aykroyd dresses up as Santa, steals food at a party, and gets arrested and the plot promises transformation.

I just saw Gods and Generals on DVD and there are several Christmas scenes in it that I didn't expect. In a Fredericksburg home that's changes hands several times during the war, a sad Stonewall Jackson sits in a parlor with Robert E. Lee listening to Christmas carols. Stonewall hasn't even seen his newborn daughter yet and is befriended by a little girl who points out ornaments she's made on the tree and gives him a hug. There's Irish music and dancing outdoors for the troops too, with an undecorated tree. In the midst of all that suffering, the need for Christmas seems greater and Stonewall is transformed into a more human character, crying bitterly when he learns that the little girl died of scarlet fever.

When I look back at the list of movies I've collected and think about those which I really want to watch this year, they all have something to do with transformation. I want these actors and actresses to make my mistakes for me, to show me the way out, to teach me what's important, and to give me that feeling of absolute joy in being alive that for some reason gets lost until Christmas rolls around again. My compulsion to watch them must mean something.

If you see any terrific and life-changing Christmas movies that I've forgotten, please let me know. Maybe the next one will do it all for me. I've seen Love Actually, but have yet to see Elf or Bad Santa. I've got to go to the movies. Christmas is coming.