Health & Fitness
Return of the Christmas Stories. What's Your Favorite?
Sentimental, scary, warm and cozy, reminders of childhood and what's best in all of us. There's a Christmas story for everyone.
One of the things I enjoy most about the Christmas season is the chance to revisit all the great Christmas stories.
I’ve read A Christmas Carol, again. Try reading that out loud some time. It’s a downright frightening ghost story. If Dickens hadn't written it, Stephen King would have. My favorite film adaptation is the 1951 Alistair version, but Bill Murray’s Scrooged has a special place in my heart. Carol Kane’s Ghost of Christmas Present packs a punch. Really!
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I can’t let a year go by without seeing A Christmas Story. I grew up in Indiana, owned a Red Ryder BB gun, and read liberally from the work of Jean Shepherd. Watching that movie comes close to reliving my childhood. Although the two cities have taken very different paths, there was a time when Hammond and Indianapolis weren’t all that different.
For something completely different, I always try to find Miracle on 34thStreet and The Bishop’s Wife. Natalie Wood’s version of Miracle beautifully captures not only what it means to have faith in people, it also reveals a moment in America’s post-war experience that required a nation to believe in the ordinary miracles of love and friendship as way of restoring our faith in humanity itself.
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The Bishop’s Wife is one of those delightful Hollywood fantasies that invite a suspension of disbelief that modern film will no longer dare. An angel named Dudley? Come on. And self-knowledge that lets us sort out what’s really important in a world where importance and self-aggrandizement are so easily mixed up? Too corny. No one will go to see it.
And then there’s Big Crosby and Danny Kaye in White Christmas. This film has possibly the goofiest dialog ever written, as well as several musical numbers that have almost no relationship to any holiday, let alone Christmas. But when the Old Man is surprised by the men of his Division, it’s hard not to feel a little sentimental.
Something I’ve noticed about my own taste in Christmas stories is that none of them are especially contemporary. The newest one I’ve mentioned here is Scrooged and that was released in 1988. Is it just me? What’s your favorite Christmas story/movie/television show? Do they still make good ones? I’m always looking to add to my collection.