almost done with the holiday season. i don't mean that to sound like relief. it isn't. i love this time of year and i appreciate those few days before christmas when friends, family member, and co-workers are a bit more generous in their behavior and become almost giddy with pleasure.  as a friend said at work this week it felt like everyday was friday.

i agree.  but when my attention turns toward christmas films i am a bit nonplussed.  there are so many of them!  all variations upon the themes of redemption and miracle works.  i haven't a favorite christmas film at all.  oh sure, tell me not to love bob clark's a christmas story [1983] and i'd have to spit in your eye.  it is a very funny, lovely movie.  but i didn't see it back in the early '80s.  i saw it when it became a staple of TV.

other films, like the animated TV shorts produced by rankin and bass in the 1960s and '70s, things like rudolph the red-nosed reindeer [1964] and frosty the snowman [1969], are holiday specials i grew up with and adore.  there are other TV shows and movies too that i love.  but for this year, i had no favorite movies that i turned to and/or looked forward to watching as a rite of passage of the most wonderful time of the year.

is it aging?  i doubt it.  most likely it is the plain fact that nearly everything is available at the touch of your fingertips.  if i want to watch a holiday special in july, well hell, i simply need to type it in to my online streaming device.  and voila!  timeliness is absent.  that sense of wonder and awe regarding watching a piece of holiday fiction at the time of the holidays ain't there.  because that holiday fiction is always there via the DVD or streaming.

i'm not bitching about this phenomena [too much].  i dig the fact that i can look up halloween shit all thru the year.  in fact, i looked up a few halloween videos via online streaming a few days before christmas.  call it a perversion on my part.  i love halloween and halloween imagery.  then there is something lost when it is all available at your fingertips.  the whole universe is there waiting for discovery.  and yet, i find when the seasons change i used to seek out films appropriate to that particular time of year.  i don't no more.  i don't have a favorite christmas movie for the most wonderful time of the year.  i watched several holiday films this past month.  my favorites were the kind of TV soap opera produced for the HALLMARK CHANNEL centered usually with an attractive single woman -- sometime a single mom -- who finds love and romance rather reluctantly.  but with the help of santa or some other christmas miracle saves the day, or the town, or the dance, or herself, and finds her true love.  there are a shitload of these movies and the HALLMARK CHANNEL began to broadcast them right after halloween.  and yes, i like these movies.  i really do.

what does that say about me?  perhaps i am an older dude that is becoming softer with age.  perhaps i have seen the rankin and bass specials and bob clark's movie so many times i can almost close my eyes and play them in my head.  perhaps i am getting too cynical about the holiday season [nah!].  there is always next year for rediscovery of these films we hold most dear for this most wonderful time of the year.