Thanksgiving

“It's Christmas Eve. It's-it's the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we-we-we smile a little easier, we-w-w-we-we-we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year we are the people that we always hoped we would be.”

Frank Cross (Bill Murray) – Scrooged


The other day I saw a commercial on TV. There was a car in the middle of a blue nowhere, surrounded by nothing but fake Christmas trees. Big, fluffy snowflakes fall from the heavens. The color scheme is magnficent. The blue is so soft it’s like someone reimagined it. There is music over the scene: a choir, singing holdiay music. A group of people approach the car, wearing colorful robes. They are not in a circle but the they surround the car, a gleeclub of raindrops. Their mouths are open, singing loudly, strongly, ebulliently. They are celebrating the season. They are selling that car. The Christmas season is upon us.

It doesn’t take a nation of savvy consumers to recognize that this commercial is an monumental shoveling of bullshit. It attempts to manufacture excitement about the purchase of an automobile and tie it into the Spirit of Christmas. It’s a misguided ploy at best and a cynical one at worst. Buying a car might elicit such a response, especially if you love cars, as might the receiving of one but the showrooms are never that beautifully blue and if a choir of angels ever accompanied the purchase of, well, anything, I would hightail it the hell out of that dealership.

This is one example of many such cynical commercials and from time to time I find myself wondering about the people behind these commercials. I wonder where they began and how they came to find themselves in a position to create such commercials. This is futile, of course, but when these judgemental urges hit I always bring myself back to earth by remembering that integirty is slippery, there by the grace of G-d go I, and cliffs don’t always make themselves known until it’s too late. It’s pretty easy to get annoyed by the commercial cynicism of the season.

That said: I love Christmas. I love everything about it. I love the lights, the music, the department store windows, the lighting of the tree in Rockefeller Center, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the eggnog, the Christmas trees, the ornaments, the garlands, the presents, the alcoholic cousin… you get the idea. It’s one of the nicest holiday times a year, from Black Friday all the way up to the last minute shoppers on Christmas even combing the Dollar Stores buying last minute stocking stuffers for their kids. It’s can get ugly, and if you watch the news it may seem like it’s entirely undignified, but if you take a break from it all and walk around you really do notice that outside of ourselves, we are a little nice to each other, we do smile a little easier and the holiday season does provide us with the opportunity to be the people we hoped we’d become or be the people we’d like to be. Maybe it’s the pomp and circumstance of the season, maybe it’s the holiday commericals, television episodes, television specials, and holiday films we watch, maybe the 18 years of holiday breaks we went to as school never leave our bodies or our psyches. Whatever it is and no matter how much stress the holidays provide, the holidays are and opportunity to be our better selves. And if it takes that much more work to find those selves in the midst of all the crap then, as my father and mother used to say, life ain’t fair. And if you don’t believe me, consider the alternative.

So in honor of the holidays and the better people we can all be, I’m dedicating this blog to holiday films. This will not be a countdown of the greatest holiday films of all times. Lists like that are arbitrary and limiting. Some of the films I’ll review will be commercially crass. Some will be cynical as hell. Some will be dishonest on the verge of hateful. But all are films I’ve seen over the years and contain a kernal of some truth about the season. And in the spirit of that season – and given that movies, films, pictures are a reflection of our best and worst selves – I will try to take the best these films have to offer and try to honor the best part of ourselves.

Tomorrow: The Family Stone