In December I watch Christmas movies I have not seen before while revisiting classics important to me. There are untold numbers of Christmas movies including a slew of animated ones, many of which are outstanding. My favorite this year was Shaun the Sheep: A Flight Before Christmas. Shaun realizes how puny his Christmas stocking is after spying a bigger one hung elsewhere. Shaun seeks a larger stocking. Complications ensue. Shaun the Sheep movies range from very good to wonderful. See what you think.

Many of the films seem autobiographical and in some way are coming-of-age movies. The one I saw this year features a young artist who has squelched his artistic dreams. He works in his family’s fish store as the neighborhood prepares for the feast of the seven fishes in the movie entitled—wait for it—The Feast of the Seven Fishes. On a blind date he meets a waspy, repressed Ivy Leaguer. Sparks fly causing complications to ensue. Italian-born nonna does not want a non-Catholic around, and blondie’s family doesn’t want her consorting with a garlic eater. Will things work out? Will young love blossom? This is one of those independent movies that surprise me. An excellent script, splendid acting, good production values, and I assume little box office. Go watch it. Learn how to argue over bacalao’s preparation.

What seems to me a new category of Christmas films asks us to sympathize with characters who are rolling in money. Case in point: Holiday in the Wild. Son leaves for college. Father decides it is now time to end his marriage. Mother goes off to Africa on a luxury safari. She meets Rob Lowe. Complications ensue. This might be worth it if you want to see baby elephants being saved or glimpses of a New York City apartment the likes of which you couldn’t afford in your most extravagant dreams.

At Christmastime, hunky guys are everywhere — at least in movies that do not feature children. Would you be surprised if the viewers skewed female for these movies? In The Noel Diaries, the hunk is a bestselling author who has found out at Christmastime that his estranged mother has died. He cleans out the longtime family house, which — surprise, surprise — contains family secrets. After standing across the street for a while, a young woman knocks on the door and says her mother once lived there. Complications ensue. And, yes, sparks fly. This was better than average. It is worth watching sipping a good cup of cocoa with melting full-size marshmallows.

Some Christmas movies center on children; some on adults where kids are not evident; and some on families. In the family category this year was Candy Cane Lane, starring Eddie Murphy and Tracee Ellis Ross. They live with their children on a street where neighbors are competitive to see who can have the most ostentatious outside Christmas display. This year a valuable prize offered by a local news station is at stake in addition to mere bragging rights. The movie also features a fallen elf who is trying to get back into Santa’s good graces. The complications that ensue center on that most annoying of Christmas songs, The Twelve Days of Christmas, which is not quite as annoying as Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall. (A twelve-year-old boy sang all of Bottles as I drove him and others to a tennis tournament. My Christmas wish is that someday, somehow, I will be rewarded for not inflicting abuse on the child, although I fantasized about it during the ride.) Even though Candy Cane Lane featured Twelve Days, I still enjoyed the movie. It had a wonderful, often surprising cast. The movie also brought a smile to my face because of tubas. The musically obsessed son in the movie plays the tuba, which his father mocks.  It reminded me of an event almost fifty years ago when a Christmas concert with hundreds of tubas of different sizes — and only tubas — took place around the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. The spouse and I headed off to what we thought was going to be a little-attended event. We were wrong. We could not get near the Plaza because of the crowds and did not see a single tubist (tubaist?). But from a block away, we heard them. It was a marvelous, wondrous sound. Christmas music (which did not include The Twelve Days) had a fresh life when played by an all-tuba orchestra. The tuba concerts have continued. If you are in New York at the right time, go listen. Of course, in the movie Eddie Murphy comes to appreciate the tuba playing of his son.

Another Christmas movie genre centers on a Santa Claus, often real or maybe real, who is at least quirky and may even be offensive or outrageous but ends up teaching positive life lessons. In The Christmas Chronicles the younger sister sets out to video Santa on Christmas eve, which, of course, she does. Her cynical brother joins in her chase of St. Nick, played wonderfully by Kurt Russell in what is now my second favorite role of his after the classic Overboard. Complications ensue, including a crash landing, loose reindeer in downtown Chicago, the loss of the sackful of toys, and a Chicago blues Christmas song. But a warning: All the movie is not in English; some of it is in elvish. My debate now is whether to watch The Christmas Chronicles II this week or save it until next year.

After all these new to me movies, I decided to return to the one that I have seen many more times than any other, Miracle on 34^th Street. (See “It’s a Miracle” posted on this blog December 6, 2021.) To my surprise, I came across a version of it I had not seen before. It was an adaptation for television made eight years after the movie. Its impressive cast included Thomas Mitchell, Terese Wright, Macdonald Carey, Sandy Descher, and Hans Conried. It is half the length of the film, and it changes a few plot points, but much of the dialog comes straight from the movie including these words from Kris Kringle: “Christmas is not a day. It is a state of mind.” And that is the message of many of the Christmas movies I have watched.

Religious themes might appear peripherally—a Christmas carol, a church service, a creche—but Jesus is almost never the focus of the movie. Instead, many –most — of the films are about the loss and, dare I say it, the resurrection of the Christmas spirit. A central character is often cranky, is a cynic or a pessimist who has experienced some loss—a marriage, a parent, a spouse. In the course of the movie, the unhappy ones change as they see a future with positive possibilities; they (re)gain a sense of wonder; they spread sunshine; they see a glass half full. They feel again the Christmas spirit. Of course, these movies are predictable. Who cares? It’s always nice to see happy endings.