Christmas is being taken advantage of. Along with all the extra activities;
shopping, baking, cooking, cleaning, gift wrapping, photo taking, party going,
concert watching, house decorating we are also subjected to a new form of
torture. Really really bad Christmas
movies!
As an adult without children you might not notice this
influx of horrendous viewing entertainment, you have the option of switching
the channel to something less barfy.
However, with children, you usually end up giving in to watching
Treehouse or Disney Jr. instead of watching something cool like Dexter or
Downton Abbey. I spent an agonizing 93
minutes getting stuck watching a movie about a talking reindeer called “Blizzard”
the night before last. We originally
turned it on because it was directed by LeVar Burton. For those of my readers who are NOT geeks, he
played the character Geordi La Forge off
of the Star Trek Next Generation Series.
He was also responsible for Reading Rainbow (a show I loved as a
kid). Anyhow when I was looking at the
info available through my satellite provider while browsing movies I thought we’d
give it a shot. Within about 20 seconds
I knew I had made a mistake; but NO I couldn’t pick a new movie. Apparently 20 seconds is all it takes before
your 2 and 3 year old children are hooked and you are now trapped.
I had decided it would be fun to watch one Christmas movie
with my kids per night as a sort of lead up to the actual day. I unfortunately am thinking that I should
have stuck to something more fun, something like jumping in my frozen lake or
cleaning the grout in my kitchen tiles with a toothbrush. I am totally interested in starting our own
brand of Christmas traditions but I’m pretty sure that this isn’t going to be
it.
It’s funny what we perceive as a bad Christmas movie. When we were kids there were quite a few
movies that came out each year and because we didn’t have DVD’s or I guess it
would be the VHS recordings of these films, you had to make sure you were
watching them when they were airing.
Last year, when looking for stocking stuffers, I came across a trio pack
of DVD’s that had some of the Christmas classics that I remembered from my
childhood and we bought them. They were
the “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and “Frosty
the Snowman,” animated films all from the 60’s.
This year when we were decorating the tree I came across these movies in
one of my many Rubbermaid Christmas totes.
After we were finished our decorating I stuck them into the player to watch
them. My husband was disgusted. He was looking at the screen with an unpleasantly
confused look on his face and asked “Why the hell are we watching this?” I was stunned. I could not believe that he had never seen
these films. From an objective point of
view they are pretty terrible. It’s
however with glossed over sentimentality that these movies are amazing. I sat and watched them thinking they were
brilliant. I think I’m going to have to
make it my mission to ensure that “Blizzard” doesn’t get put on that reminiscence
list for my own kids.
With that being said “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “A
Christmas Story,” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” need to be played again and
again, year after year. My husband wants
to have a few picks too. I know he’s
already listed one that I’m not so sure I’m ready for; “Home Alone.” There are two reasons that I’m not quite sure
this is a good idea. For one, I don’t
think it’s really a good idea to implant any unnecessary ideas into their heads
at this age. The second is because there
are 4 sequels to the movie. There is
even a new one coming out this year. All
of these second, third, fourth and yes fifth versions of the movie look beyond
terrible. It might be a landslide I
cannot dam once it’s started.
For now I’ll stick to the safe movies and work on coming up
with a new family custom. Maybe if I
give the kids their own toothbrushes they can help me with the grout??
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