Saturday, November 28, 2009

And so it begins - the Christmas movie marathon

My mom has a little addiction. It really only kicks in for about a month every year, but like any addiction it causes tension between the members of my family. When she is indulging in her little habit, we can hardly stand to stay in the same room.

My mom is addicted to Christmas movies.

I can't say when it first started, but I guess there were signs all along. We always watched more than our fair share of Christmas movies in our house - one of my mom's favorites is "Miracle on 34th Street." She likes the original and the remake. So most years we would watch a few Christmas movies each season and the classic Christmas cartoons such as "Frosty the Snowman" that air most years.

Things really escalated one year when she discovered the wishlist feature on Tivo. With the feature, you can program in a keyword and Tivo will automatically record any movie or TV show that has that word in the description or the title. I used it with keywords such as U2 or Joseph Fiennes, one of my favorite actors. But my mom one holiday season programmed in Christmas and hundreds of movies and shows popped up over the month.

For anyone who doesn't know, Christmas movies become a staple in the month of December on Lifetime and the Hallmark channel. And the Christmas movies start in force the day after Thanksgiving. So far this weekend my has watched "Secret Santa" starring Jennie Garth about a journalist who shows up in a small town to find out who has been giving out miraculous gifts anonymously and "Comfort and Joy" starring Nancy McKeon (Jo from "Fact of Life") in what is sort of a rip off of "The Family Man." The main character is a career woman who wakes up from a car accident with no career and a ready-built family. She also has a few more movies set to tape including "A Dog Named Christmas" and "The 12 Men of Christmas"

The worst Christmas movies are the ones that have sequels. There is one batch of movies that stars Kathy Ireland as the daughter of Santa Claus who comes to earth to make one nasty family believe in Christmas again. Most of the movies are usually super cheesy and not very well acted or written. But my mom gets a kick out of them so in the holiday spirit we indulge her addiction a little every year.

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