Transformation through Christmas Movies

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).

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