Every year on Thanksgiving, my dad hauls out his all-time favorite holiday albums: the Time-Life Treasury of Christmas discs, Nat King Cole's album The Christmas Song, and (his most recent favorite) Diana Krall's Christmas Songs. Sure, we're all driven mad by the repetition of these albums by the time Christmas arrives, but it is tradition that they begin their (heavy) rotation on Thanksgiving Day, and we don't mess with that.
Later on we'll all watch our usual holiday movies together (It's a Wonderful Life, The Homecoming, White Christmas), and I have a long-standing tradition with a friend in which we watch The Preacher's Wife (the one with Whitney Houston . . . what? It's very sweet!) every year. And though I might have outgrown this tradition now, as a kid I used to spend every New Year's Eve holding movie marathons with my parents.
What about you? Do you watch specific movies, like A Charlie Brown Christmas, every year? Does this Thanksgiving weekend begin the holiday season in your home like it does in mine?
Rocha.John Rocha
Benefit
Labour Of Love
i guess it's kind of sad but i don't have any holiday entertainment traditions. my family doesn't really go all out for the holidays so it's nothing out of the ordinary for me/us.
1Every year I burn a new Christmas CD with my favourites and any new songs that I like - I especially love Il Divo's version of O Holy Night, all of Mariah Carey's Christmas songs, and Destiny Child's Do You Hear What I Hear. We start playing them on December 1 while we put up the tree and decorations and then sporadically throughout December.
(And admittedly I have some on my iPod and listen to those too - what can I say, I'm a
Christmas freak!) My family usually makes sure to watch the Nativity episode of the Vicar of Dibley at least once - the final scenes always put me in the Christmas spirit! - as well as Love
Actually. And I love to watch A Season for Miracles on DVD; it's a cheesy Hallmark movie, Christmas is a time for cheesy Hallmark movies, heh.
2My dad has a mix CD of various covers of Christmas songs that he always plays.
And we always, ALWAYS watch It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street (the good one), Scrooge, aaaaaaand...Die Hard.
Seriously! What else gives one that same feeling of holiday cheer that watching John McClane blow away a bunch of Euro-trash terrorists does? And it DOES take place on Christmas Eve.
3I burn Christmas CDs (Now that what I call Christmas, Diana Krall's Christmas songs, Christmas with the Rat Packs, Celine Dion's These are the special times etc...) which are played time to time in December but are played all out in Chritmas.
As for movies, I like to watch animated movies I haven't seen yet during the Holidays, like Shreck, the Incredibles, Ice Age, Madagascar,etc. As for watching the same movies every year, there's The Sound of Music, My fair lady, The Wizard of Oz, Ever After. They are holiday movies but they ar the shown each year during this period.
As I'm living in Canada and our Thanksgiving being in October, our Holiday kicks off more in December.
4It's a bit unorthodox, but the last few years I have made sure to pop in the Christmas episode ("An Echolls Family Christmas") of Veronica Mars at some point during the holiday season. It's one of the best eps of the great series and definitely one of my favorites.
Now that we have a child, I'm going to try to start up some new traditions, but I'm not sure what yet. Maybe viewings of The Grinch and A Christmas Story.
5I always watch "Love Actually" around Christmastime!
6This is our fist Christmas as a married couple so we're starting new things! I have about 15 movies that we're going to watch the 15 days before Christmas [It'd be 25 but I can't think of 10 more]. I also burned a Christmas CD full of various Christmas songs that we will play when we put up the tree!
7three essential holiday films in my household:
Home Alone
8Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Pee Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special
(if you can call the 3rd one a film..I mean technically it is not, but it is important nonetheless)
9Every year my favorite Aunt comes into town and we have our annual Thanksgiving Day BYOD (Bring Your Own Dish) dinner. Of course I made peach cobbler. Then annual Black Friday shopping with my fav Aunt. Saturday is hair day. Sunday she heads back to VA.
10We watch 'A Christmas Story' every year.
11We watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation...it's not Christmas without it!
12The husband and I put the kids to bed on the 24th, wait until they are asleep, pour ourselves some cocktails, and then start wrapping presents while watching Bad Santa.
And then on Christmas morning we watch A Christmas Story on a continuous loop on TBS. And I tell my kids they are lucky because I could have bought them a bunny suit.
13watch love actually and the family stone, my two favorites! Lots of Christmas Carols, my favorite albums are by Jewel and Johnny Mathis. Lots of baking too!
14These are the ones I like:
15National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Charlie Brown Christmas
Home Alone
Home Alone 2
Home for the Holidays
Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas
Mickey's Christmas Carol
How the grinch stole Christmas (cartoon)
The nightmare before Christmas
The Snowman
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (claymation)
Santa Clause is Coming to Town (claymation)
Yes, our Holiday Season starts Thanksgiving weekend as well.
16It starts with watching the Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving day, as soon as Santa arrives at Macy's we all applaud and cheer (me, hubby and our 4 children) and the children make their Christmas lists. We start decorating the weekend of Thanksgiving, we listen to all types of Christmas music right up until Christmas (and for me sometimes a few days after too). We have a bunch of Christmas movies as well, all the Santa Claus movies with Tim Allen, the classics like Rudolph, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, The Little Drummer Boy etc. and our 2 top favorites are Elf and The Polar Express.
when i was younger, we'd watch all the classics, i can't even remember them now. i do remember the ten commandments hahahaa!
17We get our Tree the Friday or Saturday (today) after Thanksgiving and decorate it and the house while listening to Charlie Brown Christmas and Mix Xmas cds. Closer to Christmas, we watch The Christmas Story, It's a Wonderful Life, the animated Frosty movies, the clay-mation Rudolph movie, and (on xmas eve) White Christmas. (I looove Christmas!)
18My family and I always watch this tape we have of the SNL Christmas Special...it has Martha Stewart Topless Christmas and Schweddy Balls on it!! And with my friends I watch Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story on Dec. 23. And then on Christmas Eve I always watch It's A Wonderful Life by myself and just take it in..it's my favorite movie ever and never fails to make me cry and think about my life.
19I burn my own Christmas CDs too and include them in the block of Christmas CDs in our jumbo CD changer to play on random. And new for this year, on my free 512MB microSD card I got for my Sansa Fuze I put all Christmas songs, so I'm keeping the card in there all season long. Usually we keep playing until Jan. 6, but I just found out the other week from the pastor at our church that technically we can keep going until Jan. 12 (I think that's the date he said?).
20The only family tradition around TV we have is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We watch it as we all cook together. Then the dog show comes on, and we all sort of watch that too though I don't think any of us actually wants too lol. Sometimes on Christmas we put on TBS for A Christmas Story in the background. By myself, I love to watch Christmas stuff in the next few weeks. I love movies like Elf, Miracle on 34th St, and the Charlie Brown movies. I also like to watch movies that are sort of holiday related, but not really, like someone mentioned Love Actually, or While You Were Sleeping. And I sometimes like to watch really lame Lifetime or ABC family Christmas movies.
21We don't really start getting ready for the holidays until December, but we start shopping after Thanksgiving. My sisters and I wake up super early on Black Friday to go shopping with my aunt and cousins.
During december, we listen to several holiday CDs that feature multiple musical artists like Celine Dion, Tony Bennett, Josh Groban, etc. and Mariah Carey's Christmas CD in particular. We also watch those famous Christmas movies by Rankin/Bass like...
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Rudolph's Shiny New Year
Frosty the Snowman
The Year Without a Santa Claus
and other ABC Family holiday movies like "The Christmas List" and "Three Days."
Most importantly, we watch "It's a Wonderful Life" every Christmas Eve.
22Oh yes, I also love to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thanksgiving morning.
I also love holiday films like The Polar Express, Miracle on 34th street (the 1994 version), Love Actually, Jack Frost, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas, etc.
23Oh and how could I forget Elf, The Santa Clause, and Home Alone 2? Those are good movies too.
24A Christmas Story, best holiday movie ever!
25Home for the Holidays is our must watch movie for Thanksgiving. By far the funniest holiday movie EVER.
Christmas.. A Christmas Story but Thanksgiving is all about Home for the Holidays.
Thanksgiving is truly for tv marathons.. like Twilight Zone or Seinfeld, or South Park or CSI.. which isn't exactly warm and fuzzy but beats the football room of men with their top button undone falling asleep from the tryptophan or over eating. Or the womens card game room.. so off to the other option..marathon TV and a quick dip into the Wii room with the kids to beat them at table tennis.
Christmas is a different story. Then you pull out its a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story and Elf.
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