Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Christmas Tradition In Need!!

I have a beef.  I am NOT impressed.  This is serious.

Christmas is being taken advantage of.   Along with all the extra activities; shopping, baking, cooking, cleaning, gift wrapping, photo taking, party going, concert watching, house decorating we are also subjected to a new form of torture.  Really really bad Christmas movies!

As an adult without children you might not notice this influx of horrendous viewing entertainment, you have the option of switching the channel to something less barfy.  However, with children, you usually end up giving in to watching Treehouse or Disney Jr. instead of watching something cool like Dexter or Downton Abbey.  I spent an agonizing 93 minutes getting stuck watching a movie about a talking reindeer called “Blizzard” the night before last.  We originally turned it on because it was directed by LeVar Burton.  For those of my readers who are NOT geeks, he played the character Geordi  La Forge off of the Star Trek Next Generation Series.  He was also responsible for Reading Rainbow (a show I loved as a kid).  Anyhow when I was looking at the info available through my satellite provider while browsing movies I thought we’d give it a shot.  Within about 20 seconds I knew I had made a mistake; but NO I couldn’t pick a new movie.  Apparently 20 seconds is all it takes before your 2 and 3 year old children are hooked and you are now trapped.

I had decided it would be fun to watch one Christmas movie with my kids per night as a sort of lead up to the actual day.  I unfortunately am thinking that I should have stuck to something more fun, something like jumping in my frozen lake or cleaning the grout in my kitchen tiles with a toothbrush.  I am totally interested in starting our own brand of Christmas traditions but I’m pretty sure that this isn’t going to be it.

It’s funny what we perceive as a bad Christmas movie.  When we were kids there were quite a few movies that came out each year and because we didn’t have DVD’s or I guess it would be the VHS recordings of these films, you had to make sure you were watching them when they were airing.  Last year, when looking for stocking stuffers, I came across a trio pack of DVD’s that had some of the Christmas classics that I remembered from my childhood and we bought them.  They were the “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” and “Frosty the Snowman,” animated films all from the 60’s.  This year when we were decorating the tree I came across these movies in one of my many Rubbermaid Christmas totes.  After we were finished our decorating I stuck them into the player to watch them.  My husband was disgusted.  He was looking at the screen with an unpleasantly confused look on his face and asked “Why the hell are we watching this?”  I was stunned.  I could not believe that he had never seen these films.  From an objective point of view they are pretty terrible.  It’s however with glossed over sentimentality that these movies are amazing.  I sat and watched them thinking they were brilliant.  I think I’m going to have to make it my mission to ensure that “Blizzard” doesn’t get put on that reminiscence list for my own kids. 

With that being said “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “A Christmas Story,” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” need to be played again and again, year after year.  My husband wants to have a few picks too.  I know he’s already listed one that I’m not so sure I’m ready for; “Home Alone.”  There are two reasons that I’m not quite sure this is a good idea.  For one, I don’t think it’s really a good idea to implant any unnecessary ideas into their heads at this age.  The second is because there are 4 sequels to the movie.   There is even a new one coming out this year.  All of these second, third, fourth and yes fifth versions of the movie look beyond terrible.  It might be a landslide I cannot dam once it’s started. 

For now I’ll stick to the safe movies and work on coming up with a new family custom.  Maybe if I give the kids their own toothbrushes they can help me with the grout?? 

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