To You and Yours

It happens earlier every year, and it is impossible to avoid unless one makes a concerted effort to recluse oneself from public life in any form after mid-September. It lurks around corners and in back aisles, surreptitiously overtaking the pumpkin porn in what should be the back-to-school retail display. It’s easy enough to look away from that first glance, to dismiss the affront and stick to the clearance racks where you can maybe still find mismatched bathing suit parts and short sleeved shirts when it’s 80 degrees out in early October. We can run, we can hide, but only for so long before that inevitable day when someone breaks the seal and opens the floodgates by uttering the greeting that sets the world on tilt: “happy holidays!”

It happened to me over a week ago, seriously. Hand to God it was October 4^th. The hell?  

I try not to let my inborn anti commercialist tendencies damper my love of the holiday season, especially now that we’ve moved past the tedious stress of pretense and can use the lure of big gifts as bribes for good grades/behavior/hygiene like Jesus intended (just kidding mom!) (and Jesus). 

I was irritated, though, to be happy holidayed in the first week of October.  I tucked that irritation away in the deep, dark recesses of my addled brain while focusing on Other Things this month. And then on the very day that these Other Things came to a surreptitious climax, I found myself convalescing on the couch at 3pm with nothing to do but click through the channels.

Pieces of April  before Katie Holmes became creepy by association, (see also Go)

Quite possibly the best Thanksgiving movie ever made. If you have not seen this movie, do yourself and the universe and watch it immediately.

I got to thinking about holiday movies, which are my favorite. FAVORITE! There are so many great ones, even more shitty ones, and no end to the joy that I can find when flipping through the ol’ cable machine.

Faves? Oh, I gots faves.  But I can’t remember them unless they’re on the teevee, ya know? I mean you’ve got your classics that shock no one:  It’s a Wonderful Life,  A Christmas Story, The Grinch, etc. And you’ve got your new classics that are equally universal, like Love, Actually and Elf. But I love the seemingly lesser known flicks that maybe don’t make top billing, like Home for the Holidays , The Preacher’s Wife, Edward Scissorhands, While You Were Sleeping, and The Family Stone. Honorable New Year’s Eve mention has to go to The Holiday, Rent, and of course When Harry Met Sally.

Ah, the movies. I love me some movies. What are your faves?

And may I please be the first (if you’re lucky) to wish you and yours...

(I’m sorry, I’m totally going to do it. Close the window if you can’t handle the truth)

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!