Christmas has always been much more about music than movies for me. My favourite moment of the holiday season is standing in church on Christmas Eve and belting carols at the top of my lungs. I love trying to find new music to include on my Christmas playlist. I will cry when I hear "Silent Night" for the first time each year. And "White Christmas." And "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." And Christmas hasn't truly begun until I've heard Band Aid.
I've never seen A Christmas Story. I'm pretty sure I've never watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas in its entirety. I first saw A Charlie Brown Christmas as an adult. And I watched Home Alone for the first time last year (and it wasn't even any good THERE I SAID IT).
No, I didn't live under a rock as a child. No, I didn't have fanatically religious parents who only let me read my bible/make animal sacrifices in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I just seemed to gravitate toward really obscure Christmas movies when I was a kid. Excepting The Muppet Christmas Carol, of course. That always has and always will be a classic, and if Robin the Frog as Tiny Tim doesn't make you cry, you are made of stone, and we probably shouldn't be friends.
In a recent fit of maudlin nostalgia, I took to Youtube to see if I could find some of the Christmas movies I once loved, most of whose names I didn't even know. And, much to my surprise and great joy, there they were, in all their low-quality glory! So naturally, I re-watched them all. Seeing these movies for the first time in almost twenty years completely transported me back to being a kid in December and all the excitement, simplicity, and wonder that the season involved.
I honestly think this is one of the loveliest, most touching Christmas songs ever written. If you don't have tears running down your neck right now, there's something wrong with you.
And so I share them with you.
The Night Before Christmas (1968)
Since this movie predates me by almost twenty years, I have no idea how it even got on my radar, but my dad recorded it off TV one day and that VHS was in heavy rotation, let me tell you. The movie is a fictionalized account of the events that inspired Clement Moore to write The Night Before Christmas. It opens with Moore leaving for a short business trip a few weeks before Christmas and promising to bring a special present back for each of his children. The requisite doll and candy are requested by his unimpressive, not-main-character-worthy children, but Charity, his eldest daughter who has impossibly long eyelashes given the fact that mascara hasn't been invented yet, asks for a book. Moore departs, and Charity almost immediately starts to cough and feel cold, which we all know is a sign of imminent tragedy. Sure enough, Charity's gone and contracted pneumonia, WAY TO GO CHARITY. Moore rushes home to find his daughter delirious and near death. In an attempt to soothe her during her fevered ravings, he begins to pen a story to read to her. And thus The Night Before Christmas came to be. Charity ultimately recovers and all is well, God bless us, every one.
This movie was clearly subtitled: "The Heaviest Christmas Story Ever Told." Why I was not disturbed by watching a little girl only a few years older than me almost succumb to an easily contracted infection is beyond me. It likely had something to do with the fact that I was completed enamored of Charity's flouncy blonde curls. Or that stringing popcorn to decorate your tree was the most ingenious thing I'd ever seen. Regardless, I loved the aesthetic of this movie, and it very likely spawned my ultimate obsession with the nineteenth century. It also made the Christmas when I was bedridden with pneumonia (and pink eye. Christmas 1995: worst. Christmas. ever.) seem ridiculously romantic.
A Family Circus Christmas (1979)
Another rip-roaring comedy that centres on hallucinatory fantasies and characters' mortality! While decorating their tree, The Family (do they have a surname? Likely not.) discovers that their tree topper, a star made by their paternal grandfather, has gone missing. That night, Jeffy, the second youngest son, dreams that he asks Santa to bring Granddad, who now "lives in Heaven," home for Christmas. When The Mom learns that this is Jeffy's Christmas wish, she tries to explain to him that it's beyond even Santa's powers to bring someone back from the dead, but Jeffy will hear none of it. Later that night, Jeffy is visited by the ghost of Granddad (who is eerily mute and transparent, but who is always accompanied by groovy jazz music), who shows him where he can find the star. TAKE THAT, MOM. The family restores the star to its rightful place atop the tree, and joy and happiness reign.
I really have no idea why this movie had such appeal for me, and this one is particularly touching for me now that my paternal grandfather, whom I also called Granddad, has passed away. Maybe it was because the star topper reminded me of the one my grandparents used to have on their tree. Children aren't particularly discriminatory in their affections. Oh, and the Family's pet dog is named Barfy. There's that, too.
The American Ballet Theatre and Mikhail Baryshnikov's The Nutcracker (1977)
Another film that predates me by a decade, another main character who is tripping balls. Obviously, The Nutcracker isn't an obscure Christmas work, but I was particularly obsessed with this adaptation. In case you had no childhood and/or were raised by wolves, The Nutcracker is set in Anytown, Western Europe in the 1800s. It opens on the Christmas Eve party of the Stahlbaum family, whose guests include the local magician/resident weirdo Herr Drosselmeyer. Drosselmeyer gives the Stahlbaums' daughter Clara a terrifying looking nutcracker as a Christmas present, and when her idiot brother manages to break it immediately after she receives it, Clara is heartbroken. In the middle of the night, long after the party has ended, she sneaks downstairs to check on her nutcracker, which has been placed in the parlour for safekeeping.
Then shit gets weird.
The Stahlbaum home is clearly dealing with a major infestation, and, once downstairs, Clara is attacked by the house's mouse population. Which is disturbingly life sized. Her nutcracker comes to life to protect her, and, after defeating the mice, transforms into a beautiful, human prince. In a series of acid-induced hallucinations fantastical dreams, the prince takes Clara to the Land of the Sweets, where they are entertained by its magical inhabitants and crowned King and Queen. Clara awakens back in her home and stares wistfully at the snow falling outside her window, leaving us to wonder was it all a dream...?
Yes, it obviously was, Clara. Let's stop lying to ourselves. You are clearly a 25-year old woman. And if a strange man in very tight pants shows up in your house in the middle of the night and offers to take you to his "Land of the Sweets," RUN, GIRL. Even if he does look like this:
A side note: How did I never know that the Nutcracker Prince, alias the Mikhail Baryshnikov, is Aleksandr Petrovsky from Sex and the City? Not being a ballet aficionado, Baryshnikov has always just been a faceless name to me. But now he's a face, too. Oh, is he ever. Here's one more in the spirit of giving:
As a child, this movie was the epitome of all things beautiful for me. The costumes looked like they were made of candy and the music was exhilarating. I wanted to be Clara and have my handsome prince whisk me away to fairy land in the middle of the night. I wanted the tutu to be a staple of my wardrobe. I wanted to be effortlessly graceful. I wanted orchestral accompaniment to follow me everywhere I went. Come to think of it, I still want all those things. And seeing the Nutcracker in New York City remains on my bucket list to this day. I also felt a personal connection to The Nutcracker when I was little, because my mom and I used to see a local production of it every Christmas. In fact, I once had the opportunity to star as one of the humanoid mice that attacks Clara in the first act. But because I could barely get through watching that scene without hyperventilating with fear, I figured I'd save myself years of therapy and wisely declined.
So there they are - the Christmas movies that you've probably never heard of that sum up my childhood. Watch and enjoy, and may your days be merry and bright.
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