25Christmas preparation can be a very stressful time. There are gifts to buy, cards to mail, and the arrival of family to prepare for. As always, movies come through to help us relieve some of our holiday-induced stress. As you cross things off of your to-do list, why not take a couple of hours and enjoy a few of the best Christmas day movies ever made.
Turbo Man wasn’t even a real toy, but after watching “Jingle All the Way,” I still wanted one. It’s fun to see Arnold Schwarzenegger play an everyday dad just trying to manage a demanding job and make his son happy. It just makes me wish my city put on the kind of Christmas parade that’s in this movie. You know, the kind where the parade characters have fully functional jet packs.
If you’re a 90’s kid, “Home Alone” is a given on your Christmas day movie list. Any kid watching this movie (even if they’re an only child) will instantly be terrified their parents will forget them before flying away on an overseas holiday vacation. If this did happen, you’d like to think you’d fend for yourself as well as Kevin (played by Macaulay Culkin) does in the movie.
One of the funniest movie series of all time goes Christmas in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” It turns out the Griswold’s don’t have to be traveling somewhere to make us laugh. It’s the typical holiday frustrations we can all relate to that makes this movie hilarious. Instead of visiting relatives elsewhere, everyone comes to them, including everyone’s favorite cousin, Eddie (played by Randy Quaid), who pulls up in, what else, but an RV? In a house full of family with Christmas in full swing, it’s just a matter of time before crazy, hilarious antics ensue.
No Christmas day movie list would be complete without “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The Christmas season is the time of year when we reflect on all we have to be thankful for. No other Christmas movie reminds us of this quite like this one. The extremely likeable main character, George Bailey (played by James Stewart), shows us even people who seemingly have it all can forget what is most important in life.
Usually when I’m flipping through the TV guide in search of the Christmas music channel on Christmas Eve, I see the “A Christmas Story” marathon on TBS and turn that on instead because something about it just makes the holiday complete. It takes viewers back to the simple life of 1940s America where the biggest concern of young Ralphie (played by Peter Billingsley) is getting the revered Red Ryder B.B. gun. This Christmas day movie is a must-watch because it reminds us what being a kid was like during the Christmas season.