The current raging debate in this forum about when to watch It’s a Wonderful Life prompts this probing investigative thread, which has probably been done to death in the past. But my memory is bad, so I’m doing it anyway.
Our order of the watch:
Christmas Vacation
A Christmas Story
A Midnight Clear
Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory”
Wegman’s Weimareiner Christmas/Grinch That Stole Christmas
A Christmas Carol (George C. Scott)
It’s a Wonderful Life
Miracle on 34th Street
The Nutcracker (Barishnykov, Gelsey Kirkland)
A Child’s Christmas in Wales
Christmas movie viewing always starts on Halloween with The Nightmare Before Christmas since the movie starts on Halloween and ends on Christmas.
Then it’s usually Miracle on 34th Street sometime before Thanksgiving becuase that movie starts around Thanksgiving and ends at Christmas.
All the rest wait until after Thanksgiving. So today I watched Die Hard which is, of course, set on Christmas Eve (and one of my favorite “any time” movies) and A Christmas Story. I’ll go through the rest of them throughout the season in no particular order.
A Christmas Story starts at 8:00pm on Christmas Eve and continues until I think 8:00pm on Christmas Day. The channel doesn’t change the whole time. I’m serious, we watch it all 12 times except when we sleep which isn’t much. So we’re weird, I guess.
ETA maybe I missed the point of the thread. I thought you meant the order you watch movies on Christmas Day. Don’t mind me. Carry on…
First, I watch A Christmas Story. Then I watch it again. Then I watch the first 8 minutes of Bad(der) Santa about 4 times before I finally watch the whole movie. Then I watch Trading Places. Rinse & repeat.
Day after Thanksgiving, *Chirstmas Vacation and Elf *(You forgot Elf). Watched repeatedly as we decorate the house. Then not much until *Polar Express *on Christmas Eve. And then, of course, 24 hours of A Christmas Story
I watch mine in the order in which they were made:
1901 - A Holiday Pageant at Home (Silent)
1905 - The Night Before Christmas (Edison silent)
1906 - A Winter Straw Ride (Edison silent)
1909 - A Trap for Santa (Biograph silent)
1910 - A Christmas Carol (Edison silent)
1912 - A Christmas Accident (Edison silent)
1913 - Old Scrooge (Silent, Seymour Hicks)
1914 - The Adventure of the Wrong Santa Claus (Edison silent)
1915 - Santa Claus Vs. Cupid a Christmas Story (Edison silent)
1923 - A Christmas Carol (Silent, Russell Thorndyke)
1925 - Santa Claus - A Fantasy Actually Filmed in Northern Alaska (silent)
1928 - The Toyshop (Tiffany silent)
1933 - The Night Before Christmas (Animated; Disney - Silly Symphony)
1935 - Scrooge (Seymour Hicks, Donald Calthrop)
1936 - Christmas Comes But Once A Year (Animated)
1938 - A Christmas Carol (Reginald Owen)
1939 - Peace On Earth (Animated; MGM - anti-war, destruction of man themes)
1940 - The Shop Around the Corner (Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullivan)
1942 - Holiday Inn (Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire)
1944 - Christmas Holiday (Deanna Durbin, Gene Kelly - Noir)
1944 - Going My Way (Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald)
1944 - I’ll Be Seeing You (Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple)
1944 - Meet Me In St. Louis (Judy Garland, Margaret O’Brien)
1946 - It’s a Wonderful Life (Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed)
1947 - Christmas Eve (George Raft, George Brent, Randolph Scott)
1947 - Miracle on 34th Street (Edmund Gwynn, Natalie Wood)
1947 - The Bishop’s Wife (Cary Grant, David Niven)
1948 - Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Animated)
1949 - Holiday Affair (Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh)
1949 - In The Good Old Summertime (Judy Garland, Van Johnson)
1949 - Little Women (June Allyson, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Margaret Sullivan)
1949 - Mr. Soft Touch (Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes)
1951 - A Christmas Carol (Alastair Sim)
1952 - Pluto’s Christmas Tree (Animated; Disney)
1952 - The Holly and the Ivy (Ralph Richardson, Celia Johnson)
1954 - White Christmas (Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye)
1959 - The Christmas Visitor (Animated)
1963 - Dinner for One (Freddie Frinton, May Warden)
1964 - Father Frost (Russian)
1964 - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (Rankin-Bass)
1965 - A Charlie Brown Christmas (Animated)
1966 - How The Grinch Stole Christmas (Animated)
1969 - Frosty the Snowman (Animated)
1970 - Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town (Rankin-Bass)
1970 - Scrooge (Albert Finney)
1979 - Kate Bush Christmas Special
1983 - A Christmas Story (Peter Billingsley, Darren McGavin, Melinda Dillon)
1984 - A Christmas Carol (George C Scott)
1988 - Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (Rowan Atkinson)
1988 - Scrooged (Bill Murray)
1993 - Nightmare Before Christmas (Animated)
1994 - Little Women (Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, Gabriel Byrne)
1999 - Christmas Carol (Patrick Stewart)
2003 - Love Actually (Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant)
2007 - Stuffed The Great British Christmas Dinner (Documentary)
2009 - A Christmas Carol (Jim Carrey)
2009 - BBC; The Catherine Tate Show - Nan’s Christmas Carol
During the week before Christmas, we will watch Trading Places and Die Hard in any order.
I will need to find a couple of hours to myself from 12/21 to 12/23 to watch **Love Actually **so I can alternately sob and revel with nobody to make fun of me.
Christmas Eve requires Christmas Vacation, followed by **A Christmas Story **(on DVD, please–not at the whim of TBS). The very last lying-in-bed must-watch will be **Holiday Inn **with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. It wouldn’t be Christmas without it!
why christmas eve i watch all the classics…
1: santa claus conquers the martians
2: Gremlins
3: a christmas story
4: christmas in pac-land (the pac-man tv series christmas special)
and finally before i go to bed: die hard