Project: watch all the holiday movies

To this day, whenever I hear Mr. Brightside by The Killers, I think about that scene from The Holiday when a distraught Amanda Woods (Cameron Diaz) drinks wine, rage dances and totally butchers the song.

Holidays movies are a tradition with many singles and families alike. We pour a lot of feelings into our experiences of films and some of them hold a significant place in our hearts.

I bet you know what I’m going to say next and, yes, The Holiday is one of those films for me. It’s so cute.

The Muppets: Letters to Santa is another one.

So, there’s this phenomenon that only some people are aware of. It happens on social media, but it also happens in everyday life. The thing about pop culture is that you don’t have to actually participate in what’s hot because if you’re a listener (like me) somebody or everybody will just tell you all about whatever happened/is happening in Star Wars, The Walking Dead, The Bible (all things I’ve never read or seen) to the point that you never have to spend any time seeing or reading them because you already know all the basics. Since you’ve already heard everything about all of them, you never spend any time on them because why bother?

So, Saturday night, (yes, while watching The Holiday,) I started to think about my favourite holiday movies.

An impromptu and unscientific Twitter poll after midnight that night and a follow up question on Facebook Sunday morning yielded the following results.

• Home Alone
• Elf – 4 votes
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• Die Hard
• Harry Potter
• Muppets Christmas Carol
• A Christmas Carol
• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – 2 votes
• You’ve Got Mail
• Polar Express
• Love Actually
• A Christmas Story – 2 votes
• Bad Santa
• Jingle All The Way
• The Gathering
• Scrooged
• Muppet Family Christmas
• The Holiday (not me, Allison!)
• The Sound of Music
• Miracle on 34th Street – 2 votes
• Meet Me In St. Louis
• White Christmas
• Charlie Brown Christmas
• Gremlins
• Frosty the Snowman
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• The Family Man
• One Magic Christmas
• The Art of Skiing (good one, Rachel!)

There were a few I’d never heard of and some I’d seen years ago. I’d expected to hear more about Love Actually, since that’s one that people seem to always talk about. It’s also one of Kevin’s favourites. (A Christmas Story was his #1.)

So, here’s the plan: watch all the holiday movies. Let me know if there are any that have been missed!