Christmas Movies I Can't Live Without...

 
I really love Christmas.  When I was very young my mother would stay up most of Christmas Eve night to build us elaborate, gorgeous gingerbread houses.  She would fill our homemade stockings always with some chocolate, always mixed nuts, and an apple and an orange.  Sometimes we would have little extras - a bottle of nail polish for me, a package of fishing lures for my brother.  Sometimes money was extra tight and our stockings with chocolate, nuts and fruit were enough.  

Santa tried very hard to get us the most important item we asked for.  We were pretty good kids, except to each other.  Santa didn't forget that come Christmas.  One year, pogo balls were all the rage.  Everybody who was anybody had one.  Remember them? 

Santa was having a hard time locating one.  He had elves looking everywhere for one; even in the next town.  It was thought to be hopeless, but finally one lone pogo ball remained at a local drugstore.  The packaging was severely damaged, but Santa thought up a fine little story about a klutzy elf that had fallen on it, and the little girl who opened it was so delighted in owning her very own pogo ball that she hardly noticed the packaging.  

Nothing was more fun than watching movies in those weeks leading up to Christmas.  Mom would pop a large bowl of popcorn and make us hot chocolate.  We would string the popcorn for the tree and sneak bites here and there, all the while listening and watching A Charlie Brown Christmas, Smurfs Christmas, Night Before Christmas, Glowworm Christmas, The Night They Saved Christmas, Berenstein Bears Christmas, Nestor the Long Eared Donkey, Emmit Otters Jug Band Christmas, Muppet Christmas Carol, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Rudolph, Frosty, Prancer, Santa Clause - The Movie, Home Alone 1 and 2, The Grinch (original),and countless others. 

I still treasure holiday movies.  Some are endearing and favored shows from all those years ago.  Others are newer, have new traditions associated with them, and always make me feel more holiday spirit.   This year, my husband's side of the family is all getting together right before Christmas to watch some favorites while we share popcorn and cocoa.  What a lovely new tradition, and even better, an incredible mix of people I adore spending my time with.  And of course I'll go to my parents' home and enjoy many of the same traditions that made Christmas so wonderful all those years ago.  I don't know how we'll decide which few movies to watch out of all of them, but no matter - there are still 21 other days on which to snuggle in and watch my favorites.  

Here is a list of the movies I still watch every holiday season. 

• Christmas with the Kranks
• The Holiday
• Love Actually
• White Christmas
• Holiday Inn
• Emmit Otter's Jug Band Christmas
• Meet Me in St. Louis
• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
• Fred Clause
• It's A Wonderful Life (Makes me CRY!)
• The Grinch (cartoon)
• By the Light of the Silvery Moon (more Thanksgivingish)
• Home Alone 1 and 2
• Annabelle's Wish 
• The Shop Around the Corner (1940)