Skip to main content

Addicted to Christmas Movies!


Scrooge.  Grinch.  Charlie Brown.  Anything with Dean Cain.  I’m addicted to Christmas movies.

Everything I am I learned from them.

I love the simplicity of the genre.  It’s not rocket science; it’s not calculus.  It’s enchanting, harmless escapism.  Its childlike innocence and a cup of hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows all rolled into one happy ending.

What is there not to love?

Miracles happen in Christmas movies at an inversely proportional rate than at any other time of the year.  It reinforces our belief in humankind – the need for hearth and home, honor and fair play, humor and happiness. We get to laugh at ourselves.  We find redemption through a myriad of vicarious, familiar experiences. Everyone ends up happy. 

I identify with people who make fools of themselves but learn to laugh at their shortcomings.  People lose their way but rediscover their true selves and the right paths. Good always wins in fair play.  Loneliness hurts more than vulnerability and risk.

I love that they are an integral part of our culture. It’s the power of story, the Christmas genre we have come to expect. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the de rigueur Rudolph or Grinch, Scrooge or George Bailey.  Christmas without a Charlie Brown Special or two? How would Hallmark, Lifetime, or the UP Channels fill their lineups if they didn’t have the hundreds of catalogued Christmas Romances to show during November and December? 

Totally un-American.

We wrap up in our Snuggies and settle in every evening during the holiday months to watch all our old faves and the thousands of offshoots and variations that have borrowed their plots. Who cares that Scrooge has morphed into a woman, a child, or a dog?  What is important is that we know that in the end, everyone and everything will be resolved.

I watch Christmas movies for their magic, their enchantment, their subtle morality.  I love them, plain and simple, because they make me feel good
Labels:

Comments

  1. Lea PhelpsJanuary 20, 2014 at 9:35 AM

    My favorite has to be A Christmas Story. I love Christmas for what it really is......Love.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Raquel Martina MartinezJanuary 20, 2014 at 11:09 AM

    Thanks, Lea. I have so many favorites.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Breastday to Me!

I gave myself a very special birthday present this year – I had surgery. Before you think it was to increase, decrease, or “lift” something, let me tell you it was not cosmetic (though I could probably use a few nips and tucks at my age; the infinite number of creams I buy OTC are not working their promised magic). About four or five months ago, I discovered a hard lump about the size of a large marble in my left armpit.  I had been feeling small pangs of pain in my left chest for several months, but I figured it was just my turn to dance with heart disease.  Everyone in my immediate family is diabetic and suffers from strokes or heart attacks, so I thought – here we go; my turn. I was going to tell my internist about the pangs during my next visit, so imagine my surprise when I discovered the lump. The Drama Queen in me immediately manifested herself – cancer, I thought.  I have cancer. I searched some more and found that the texture on the left side of my left breast felt diffe
9 comments
Read more

Dating Challenged

I stink at dating – always have.   I sputter.   I hyperventilate.   I fail miserably every time. I blame a pathetically underdeveloped gene that got little use before I married in my early twenties, then atrophied, gathering dust and rust, until I became single again in my fifties.   I decided to use this defect to my advantage when I needed to do some investigative reporting a few years back.   While on a newspaper writing assignment on Boomer-aged dating, I sacrificed my dignity and my vanity for the sake of the story (and I got several). Thank goodness, HoneyBunch saved me from all this when we married.  (He comes up with the best dates.) I’ve decided I will “show you mine if you show me yours.”   I will swap dating horror stories with you, but you have to promise to play along. The trick here is to tell about your worst date in 25 words or less.   You must keep it clean and you cannot name names. Our little contest will run only this week and before my next blogger posting.   Me
8 comments
Read more

The Girl Who Eats Canned Spinach

I went to a Catholic elementary school run by strict Belgian nuns, and we could not leave the cafeteria until we ate everything served on our food tray. Once a week, they served warmed, canned spinach with our meal. The spinach tasted nothing like the way my grandmother made it, but I ate it. I gulped it down in three or four bites and it amazed my table mates. I told them we ate it at home so I was used to the taste. Now, my real problem began the day I ate the spinach off my friends’ trays so we could go play outside. As soon as the nun monitoring the cafeteria turned her back, my friends ate something off my tray I didn’t want, and I ate their serving of spinach. I only did it for two of my table mates, but the word spread.   On the next Spinach Day, kids followed me to my table.   I was suddenly very popular, and as soon as the nun marched off to the other end of the cafeteria, my friends and an army of others who only knew me as The Girl Who Eats Spinach, begged me to take
8 comments
Read more