I lurve me some Christmas-time.
No, really. For me, it’s not about being super religious or anything like that (after all, I did start my campaign last week on Facebook to “put the Chris in Christmas”). It’s not about attempting to trample over a few kids or a couple parents in order to get the latest and greatest gift for someone, as I can do that any other time of the year (that’s right back to school sales, I’m looking at you). It’s not even about enjoying that bit of cold snap in the air. I may be a fan of cold weather, but living in the mountains of the south is more than enough for me, especially with the local weather as of late (I don’t need 20 degree weather with negative degree wind chill factors, 30 degree weather is more than plenty for me kthnxbye).
For me, Christmas is about the movies that I watch.
I don’t do a lot of rituals in the traditional sense of the word regarding movies. Normally, I’m pretty free-form in regards to what I do throughout the year-regular readers of MasterChugs Theater can attest to that. I attempt to watch nothing but horror movies in October. But when December rolls around, every weekend leading up to December 25th is a Christmas movie.
The first movie of the month is either National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or Scrooged. You can’t go wrong with either movie, and besides, who doesn’t like being hit over the head with a toaster? Well, other than recipients of memberships in the jelly of the month club, that is.
The second movie usually has to be squeezed in for me, thanks to last minute shopping from me and any other plans that arise with friends. No matter what though, it’s Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, regular or MST3K flavor. You can’t go wrong with either one. The movie is complete and total unbridled insanity. The genius of the people on the Satellite of Love simply make it controlled chaos.
The final cinematic calvacade is one that I encounter with my family. When I visit my family, things tend to get crazy: there’s baking, me physically assaulting my younger brother, last minute wrapping of presents, me verbally assaulting my younger brother, Christmas services and then the traditional attempt to see how quickly I can put my younger brother out of business in a game of Monopoly.
However, due to my mother’s insistence, we somehow always find time to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol. This is clearly a selfish reasoning on her part. I must be subjected to puppets prancing about and the monstrous singing voice of Michael Caine? I demand more cookies, posthaste! To me, my snickerdoodles!
Luckily, this brings us around to the final movie that’s viewed: A Christmas Story. I took a look at it last year, so go clicky on the linky to see my thoughts about the movie. Suffice to say, I love that film with my entire heart and soul. The odd thing, though, is that even though I own the movie on Blu-Ray and dvd, and my family owns it on dvd, we always watch the TNT/TBS 24 hour marathon of it. Perhaps one day I’ll watch it in its intended format.
So there you are, a peek into the life of Chug during the month of December. By the way, the “putting the Chris in Christmas” campaign is going pretty well. The next step: putting the Chris in your mom.