Merry Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

It's Christmas time, and that means it's a time when so many traditions are upheld.  One thing my family does every year is to watch a number of movies.  'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation' is chief among them for my Mum and for my Brother.  For me personally I always mark this time of year with a Harry Potter marathon - I know they're not strictly Christmas movies but there are Christmas scenes in most of them and they are always on TV at this time of year so I know I'm not alone in doing that.  'Christmas Carol: The Movie' the 2001 animated film adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, starring Kate Winslet as the voice of Belle and Simon Callow as Charles Dickens and Ebenezer Scrooge is one of my favourite adaptations of the classic.

Surprisingly some of the movies people most associate with Christmas were not that appealing to me.  I have seen 'Miracle On 34th Street' the 1994 adaptation with Mara Wilson and Richard Attenborough, I've also seen one of the older adaptations but I don't know which, regardless both were movies that I watched once out of curiosity but I didn't return to as there was no appeal.  Likewise, the 'Santa Clause' movie and its sequels are movies that I'll watch if they're on but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch them.

For me Christmas is marked more by music more than anything though.  I remember as a kid every year on Christmas week we would buy a TV Guide, it was the one time of year we actually bought the magazine, we would each spend time reading through the schedule and mark out what we wanted to watch.  Today of course there are Electronic Programme Guides that come with TVs and Set Top Boxes for Sky and Freeview etc which doesn't feel the same if I am honest.  I remember we would mark each show we wanted to see on TV and there would always be the search for those that were traditional for us to watch, the one that stands out most of all is 'The Snowman', a 26 minute animated film created in 1982 about a snowman that would melt your heart.  The most memorable scene from the whole thing is a music performance by Peter Auty called 'Walking in the Air' - a song that would later be covered by a young Aled Jones three years later in 1985 and go on to be ubiquitous in the UK at Christmas for a time.

There was one more thing we would see on TV every year which became synonymous with the holiday season but you couldn't predict when it would air, although in later years they did advertise a time to see it - the Coca Cola advert, 'Holidays Are Coming' which would first air around November and every year the first time you heard it you knew Christmas was upon us.  They tried replacing it in later years with a different advert containing polar bears but they weren't well received.  Personally I don't know why they didn't just keep both, nevertheless the original returned to public applause.  When I was a kid, the city I lived in actually reproduced the advert working with Coca Cola they had full scale articulated lorries that drove through the town, with the Christmas lights throughout the town set to come on as they passed through, I remember as a kid watching the parade and wondering how it was done.  The experience was magical, and for me this time of year was always filled with magic, but this year has been an odd one. 

This season is what you make of it, you can fall so easily into cynicism, to become disillusioned by consumerism and the focus on material possessions and wealth.  For some of us though we try to remember the happiness and the moments of joy that made this time of year magical, we eat, drink, and be merry.  The festive feeling hasn't yet come over me this year, and given that it is now Christmas Eve that's unusual for me.  I'll still partake in the tradition and do all that I can to enjoy myself but I think this might be the first Christmas for me that really doesn't feel like Christmas at all - I hope this isn't a pattern.

With all that said, Merry Christmas!