Christmas At The Movies

'Tis the season to enjoy a slew of Christmas-themed movies. Hallmark has become a holiday juggernaut with their singular brand of schlocky but watchable TV movies. I kid you not, the plot of one movie on the schedule today included the phrase "plans to buy her own plane are thwarted when she inherits a reindeer farm." As compelling as that description is, much better Christmas movies have hit theaters in the pas few decades. Here are some of the best. 

Best Christmas Movie That is Not Actually About Christmas: Home Alone. A childhood fantasy: left alone, eating pizza and ice cream, jumping on the bed. But Kevin McCallister grows up quickly when he realizes the Wet Bandits are out to rob their family’s suburban Chicago McMansion. It's his house. He has to defend it. The foley artist should have won an award for the sound of Marv tumbling down the icy steps. 

Best Christmas Movie That is Not A Movie: Peter, Paul and Mary, the Holiday Concert. A tradition if there ever was one. The concert features a range of holiday songs (“Light One Candle” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” among them) and classic folk tunes. Every year when I rewatch this, I dream of sitting down with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary for lively conversation and figgy pudding.

Best Overall Christmas Movie: Miracle on 34^th Street, 1994. Richard Attenborough is the perfect Santa. Elizabeth Perkins and Dylan McDermott are the perfect couple. And Mara Wilson is the cutest adult in a little kid’s body. She’s “trying to limit her intake of sugar.” Something a child has never said. 

Best Christmas Movie That Instills Jealousy: The Santa Claus. Your dad is Santa. You get to ride in the sleigh to deliver presents, with a puppy in your lap? Sign me up. What happened to the technology that that can manufacture something that looks like an ordinary CD player but is actually a cookie dispenser? Let's get our best minds on that. CD's are a thing of the past anyway. Might as well have them spit out cookies.

Best 'Just Go With It' Christmas Movie: Love Actually. Is the plausibility questionable? Sure. Are a few of the dozens of interconnected storylines just filler? Yes. But it doesn’t matter. As popular as Love Actually is, it should be given more credit for featuring a few incredibly understated performances. Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman and Bill Nighy to name a few. Hugh Grant dances to The Pointer Sisters, just get on board.

Best Underrated  Christmas Movie: The Family Stone. This ensemble dramedy was mostly passed over when it was released but it remains a must watch in my book. The slow reveal of Diane Keaton’s heartbreaking performance and the unraveling of Dermot Mulroney and Sarah Jessica Parker’s forced relationship is told with both humor and heart. No family is perfect, the Stone family reminds us of that.

Best You May Not Have Seen This Christmas Movie But You Should: Prancer. A young girl discovers an injured reindeer in the woods and is convinced that he belongs to Santa. Convincing others is not as easy. Cloris Leachman plays the grouchy neighbor. She spooked me but I loved it.

On Relevance

My connection to Peter, Paul and Mary goes back as far as I can remember – er, almost remember. We all have a few very distinct childhood memories that are not actually our memories. Rather, we have heard the story so many times that we convince ourselves that we do, in fact, remember the moment. One of mine is a Peter, Paul and Mary memory. At the end of a concert in 1990, Mary blew me a kiss goodnight. How I wish I could actually remember that moment. I was pretty tuckered out. I had been sleeping (my earliest experience with theater snoozies) and I don’t remember the kiss. But I do have a memory of the days and weeks following the concert. I wanted to be Mary Travers. I distinctly recall belting “Leaving On A Jet Plane” out in the backyard. Probably not fully understanding the lyrics, but understanding just enough to feel the power of the song. 

Fast forward to my college years and a very specific thought popped into my head, “I am definitely the only person in this lecture hall getting pumped for the Zoology 100 final by listening to Peter, Paul and Mary on my iPod.” Those other kids did not know what they were missing. 

Though I was not around for their peak in the 1960’s, I was lucky enough to grow up listening to their music and attending their concerts. It will not surprise you that I literally jumped at the chance to see Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey perform together at Hoyt Sherman Place. In fact, I arrived so early at Hoyt Sherman to buy tickets that the employee thought I was there for a meeting with a department head. 

Yarrow and Stookey, both 80 years old, may not be the baby-faced youngsters they were in the early 60s when they broke onto the Greenwich Village scene, but even with less hair on their heads they can still sing, play the guitar and command the attention of a sold out crowd. The concert, filled with their biggest hits, was truly a celebration. 

The energy in the theater was palpable from the very first strains of "Weave Me the Sunshine." When again will we have the opportunity to come together to celebrate and carry on the legacy of Peter, Paul and Mary and share our appreciation for them in person? The concert may have had some rambling interludes and the stage just didn’t feel quite whole without Travers’ powerful alto but the concert was a much-needed confirmation of the importance of music as an agent of change. Songs such as “Deportee,” “This Land is Your Land” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” feel equally appropriate as a glimpse into the past as they do a call for a brighter future. These songs should be songs of times gone by, but, instead, they are almost more relevant today. Joining with 1,200 people on that rainy December evening to accompany Yarrow and Stookey on “Leaving On A Jet Plane” and “If I Had a Hammer” was life affirming. Folk music reminds us that no matter how different we are, we share more than we realize. We can grow, we can change, we can make the world a better place. Music will bring us together and show us the way.