From the Community: Classic holiday films need update.
Every year, the holidays present us with an interesting paradox. We celebrate a year by watching the same time-cherished, tearjerking, heart-warming film classics and TV specials that we watched the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that,
It’s like “Groundhog Day” — but in late December.
For Thanksgiving, there’s “A Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving” in which the lovable loser serves the gang jellybeans, pretzel sticks, popcorn, and a slice of toast as the meal. It’s an enduring lesson about the meaning of the holiday.
For more mature audiences, the feast of Thanksgiving films is a bit sparse. From 1987, “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” set at Thanksgiving time, is likely the reigning champion, and at 30 years old, is a somewhat timeless dramedy that has lost none of its charm. There’s one or two other “classic” Thanksgiving films, including 1991’s “Dutch” or the JodieFoster directed “Home for the Holidays.”
Ang Lee’s 1997 film “The Ice Storm” is set at Thanksgiving, has a blisteringly unflinching (but funny) look at family dynamics in the mid-1970s, boasts an all-star cast, and is joylessly concluded with a tragedy that will make you want to eat the rest of the pumpkin pie.
The list of Christmas films or TV specials or cartoon reindeer is no different. There’s any number of animated and CGI-rendered snowmen and Santas for parents to cue up in Netflix. The Smurfs, Garfield, and essentially every Disney character stand ready. There’s even “A B.C. Christmas Special” based on the Johnny Hart comic strip. Cavemen and Santa Claus.
The phrase “Christmas special” is not made whole without either mentioning 1964’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or 1965’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” For decades, these two short films have provided us with now-classic references and reflections about our unique qualities and the temptation to avoid over-commercialization.
Adults tend to focus more on Bill Murray’s “Scrooged,” maybe the “Home Alone” series, every version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” (though the 1953 Alistair Sim version is clearly the best), “It’s a Wonderful Life” (though that’s technically a New Year’s film), and, of course, 24 hours of “A Christmas Story.”
All of these films and TV specials have one thing in common, other than their holiday setting. They’re old. Most of these films or specials were classic 20 years ago. Since then, there’s been a steady decline in additional classics added to the catalog of holiday favorites. This is not, however, an entirely bad thing.
So, the bigger question is: What does it tell us that younger generations don’t have more contemporary holiday classics to watch?
Part of the reason why our holiday viewings haven’t grown any new antlers yet is likely because films about the holidays have largely fallen out of favor in Hollywood. Yet, Hollywood is a business that only responds to the market demographics, and they do their homework too.
As traditional family values continue to evolve, moving away from the holiday norms that certainly baby boomers and now Gen-Xers have grown up with, perhaps what we’re watching is more about what we’d rather catch up on — rather than what we’ve already seen.