Christmas Movies

 

Every year I try to write a Christmas blog.  This is my contribution for 2023.

Do you watch Christmas Movies? Do you like them?  Are you sick of them yet?

My friend and I have been watching several recently, probably looking for something different in them.  Most of them are your average rom com but taking place at Christmas time.  You know the typical story: a young, and very attractive, man and woman with different backgrounds come together in (name the town or city) and overcoming their difference, fall in love and (supposedly) live happily ever after.  Someone suggested that they could all be generated by AI with only the names and locales being changed.  The other type is the many variations of A Christmas Carol wherein a person embittered about Christmas is transformed during the period of the movie to become a Christmas loving, loving person.  In this genre the original Christmas Carol tale is told, with very little variations, with a different leading many playing Ebenezer Scrooge.  My recent examples include Patrick Stewart and Albert Finney, with the Finney one being made as a musical. The third type is stories about the origins of Santa Claus, like the one we saw last night called ‘The Boy who made Christmas’.  My personal favourite Christmas movie, though, is The Polar Express which is at least unique (so far).  So, there you have it, the plot of every Christmas movie you will see this month.

While we were watching another Christmas movie last night, I realized what was missing.  Nowhere in any of these movies was their any reference to the real Christmas story.  You know, the one about the Jewish baby who was born in Bethlehem who went on to become the most influential man in the western world.  I’m sure all Christians and many others of other faiths are at least familiar with this happening.  Don’t confuse this event with the biblical movies of the 1950s where a Hollywood star of the day, with blue eyes and blond hair, would play Jesus or some other biblical character.  I don’t mean a movie necessarily about the actual journey to Bethlehem and the birth (although a movie about this, told honestly by middles eastern actors could be compelling), but a mention or acknowledgement of why we celebrate Christmas, rather than a pagan celebration of the shortest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere).  Some depiction of the religious significance of Christmas (and I don’t mean praying that you’ll get what you really want as a Christmas present), even if the rest of the movie is about romance, Santa Claus or redemption.

We are losing, if we have not already lost, the real significance of Christmas.  You know something is wrong when seemingly the only measure of the “success” of Christmas was how much merchandise was sold or how may Christmas sales were held.  Wouldn’t it be nice if Christmas success were measured by the number of people who attended a Christmas church service or the number of people who discovered the biblical Christmas story. 

Hallmark has done us no favours by propagating the banal offering that we now take for granted at Christmas.

“The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.”
  - H. L. Mencken