It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year After October! Happy Holidays, everyone — may they at least be as happy as they can be in this strangest of all years. We’re all going to assume that a change is coming, right? I mean, at this point, what else is there to do?
I think 2020 will have made you either very very excited for the Winter Festivities and cause you to cling to any sort of magic and joy you can, or at this point you’d have zero interest in feigning interest in anything and any mention of what the season used to (?) be all about will just make you angry. It is probably a bit depressing of a perspective, but if you find yourself feeling down, and you would actually like to get some of “the spirit” back, here are some recommendations for media (not just movies!) that might help you get into the seasonal mood, at least a little bit. Sure, it feels silly to celebrate anything when the world is falling apart, but we do all deserve a break, be it for a day or two of Christmas, or just ninety minutes it takes to watch a movie.
1. Christmas in Connecticut (1945), dir. Peter Godfrey
Christmas in Connecticut is probably my all-time favourite Christmas movie and it is great that at least one item on the list is Old Hollywood-related (because, I guess, this blog is supposed to be Old Hollywood-related), and to ease you into what is about to happen next, I’m putting it right at the top. I do watch Home Alone, Love, Actually, and Elf every year, but Christmas in Connecticut is the one that gets the “favourite” label. It is very funny, as in the jokes are good, and very ridiculous, as in the whole premise is wild, and it features great old-school acting. And I guess the fact that it is still pretty under appreciated and under watched position in the Christmas movie canon doesn’t hurt either, it somehow still feels like something new despite being significantly older than, say, Die Hard (by the way, aren’t you all just SO excited to have a is-Die Hard-a-Christmas-movie debate again? How fun! How. Very. Fun.).
The film stars Barbara Stanwyck as a sort of a Martha Stewart-esque homemaker guru who writes her own column in a magazine, in which she gives tips on how to run your house properly. She’s a perfect homemaker, a wonderful wife, a stellar mother. And quite a skilled liar, considering that, in real life, she is a New York City party girl who spends her nights at the clubs and her days in bed. And there is no Connecticut farmhouse, there is no husband, nor a baby in sight. But! The readers have no idea, they trust her to be this archetypal homemaker, a woman accomplished in what women are allowed to be accomplished in. Among her most devoted fans happens to be a soldier, an American hero coming back home. And what could be a nicer reward to a national hero than the opportunity to spend Christmas with the woman he admires so much? Barbara and her entourage have to quickly create the fantasy they made up and hilarity ensues.
It is a funny and fun film, Barbara is adorable, and I just find New England unbelievably charming. This is the aesthetic, guys. Sure, “some” ideas might be “dated”, sure, the romance might be a bit underdeveloped, but the silliness and Barbara’s comedic timing make up for it. I cannot wait to revisit it, to be honest, I kind of just want to put it on right now.
By the way, I realize there is a 1992 remake starring Dyan Cannon (!) and Kris Kristofferson (!!), directed by ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (!!!) and while it seems like a nightmare, I might actually finally watch it because I’m sure it’s bananas.
2. The Big Fat Quiz of the Year
This one is a Christmas tradition that is surely not unique to me (and my sister, who I share it with), but I wonder if it has already become widespread worldwide. The Big Fat Quiz of the Year is a seasonal British show that airs in… well, Britain, but I imagine more and more people around the world watch it since full episodes can be found on YouTube (shout out to whoever handles those things for them and clearly understands how people view entertainment television and does not rush to delete them).
Basically, every year, on Boxing Day (December 26th) on the UK’s Channel 4, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year is broadcast. It is… well, a quiz about all sorts of things, mostly viral stories, that went on in the last twelve months. The contestants are divided into three teams of twos and they are mostly comedians (or comedians accompanied by a clueless celebrity which can go well or not*), which means getting the question right is often not the objective — making your answer funny is.
There are teams that appear in multiple editions (like the fan favourite, Richard Ayoade and Noel Fielding), there are segments that appear every year (like the news anchor Jon Snow recapping the lyrics of a popular song — I cannot WAIT to hear him describe “WAP” this year — or a group of little children putting on a “play” of the last year’s news story)… It is just so fun. It is one of my favourite new traditions. And I guess what helps is that it technically happens “after” Christmas, so it is something fun to look forward to once the festivities are over. I wonder how it is going to look this year, I imagine there will be less physical comedy and interactions with the audience and the guests. But I can already predict the questions are going to be great.
For a nice little primer, I recommend the 2016 series of three Big Fat Quizzes of Everything they aired in the summer.
*Although I guess I am going to come clear here and admit that I am a sort of a Mel B apologist. She is generally considered the worst contestant to ever appear on the show and someone who ruined her episode with her “bitchiness” but I think this entire booking was a modern art performance and just added to the ridiculousness.
3. Irena Jarocka, Wigilijne życzenia — visual album
This one is probably the most obscure thing on the list and one that would be the most difficult sell. Why would anyone (outside of Poland) be interested in some old Polish Christmas album? And to be honest, it is not that popular in Poland to begin with, my sister and I found it one winter’s day on YouTube by chance. But what a lucky day it was. Now I cannot imagine why anyone WOULDN’T want to get into it. And my life’s mission has become to spread the gospel of it — the Christmas Good News, if you will.
Maybe you are reading this in New England (Connecticut?) or India or the Philippines, and you think to yourself: “Wait, I have plenty of Christmas music already. Why would I check out more? Besides, is there even a point in me listening to this album if I do not understand Polish?”. The answer is yes, there is. And listening might not even be the best part of it. Sure, the songs themselves are nice, but what is really remarkable is how basically this is a visual album. Beyoncé, who? And what a visual treat it is. Imagine Mary Tyler Moore but with no colors and no laughs walking through a construction site. Nothing screams “Christmas” quite like some low-budget, low-effort “music videos” of a very brown and very beige and very dirty Warsaw. Snow? Christmas lights? Decorations? Not here, baby! What you get instead is a 70s woman walking around or taking a public transport to move around a truly shady neighborhood, then going back to her sad Soviet-adjacent apartment to sit by the kitchen table with her plain-looking husband. It is incredible.
Please, do yourself a favor and check out the videos below.
Samotnie kolędować źle: Look at this incredibly cheerful Christmas parade.
Kolęda nowoprojektowana: This is what I’m talking about — a quintessential PRL Christmas experience.
Gwiazda Nocy Wigilijnej: Here we get some actual winter, we have actually not seen one like this in Poland in years, another magical thing this album gives us.
Jeszcze dzisiaj pamiętam: Possibly the wildest track in the whole album. We moved to the Tatra mountains from Warsaw, there is snow and a horse carriage… And a VERY dark song about… Christmas? Sleigh ride? The WAR? We just don’t know! Merry Christmas!
4. A Christmas Prince trilogy
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “No way you’re recommending a white bread mayonnaise unspiced hetero nonsense Original Netflix romantic comedy times three here. I thought this list was going to suck and I was correct”. No. You’re not. A Christmas Prince is not just some white bread mayonnaise unspiced hetero nonsense Christmas movie. It is the crowning jewel (a literal royal jewel) of white bread mayonnaise unspiced hetero nonsense Christmas movies.
A Christmas Prince is an incredible property, as far as Netflix goes. Forget Stranger Things! THIS is what true strangeness looks like. On its surface, A Christmas Prince is your average Hallmark Christmas movie. There is a blonde American woman, Amber, she’s about thirty years old, and she pursues career in journalism in the big city. But something is missing… And so it happens that she is sent to the European country of Aldovia (side note: one of my favourite things about the franchise is that it was clearly supposed to take place in a land similar to some of the small European monarchies, like Monaco or Liechtenstein, but when they show a map in film three, you can see that Aldovia stretches throughout most of Europe! My HOMETOWN, the PLACE WHERE I LIVE is in this country!) to find a scoop about the Playboy Prince. A comedy of errors makes everyone, except for the sassy little princess, in the palace believe she is actually the new governess. Soon, Amber finds herself between her journalistic duty and her heart, as she grows closer to the family and the Prince himself. And this is just one of the problems…
The second movie is called The Royal Wedding and the third, The Royal Baby so you can maybe figure out how things go yourselves. I am not sure if this story was inspired directly by Meghan Markle but it certainly influenced certain plot points.
This is a perfect Christmas cheese. But my favourite movie is the second one, which also serves as some truly bonkers commentary on class. Jenny Nicholson actually made an in-depth video about it and I highly recommend checking it out.
By the way, the only other thing on Netflix that comes close to A Christmas Prince is the series of movies from the Vanessa Hudgens Christmas Cinematic Universe and from what I heard from somewhat reputable sources, the Prince and Amber (and the royal baby whose name I forgot) have a cameo in the sequel to the Princess Switch (called Switched Again — perfection, almost as good as Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again). Christmas is saved.
5. Moominland Midwinter, by Tove Jansson
Moomin books are my childhood favourites and, honestly, adulthood favourites. Especially now that my relationship with a certain other kid literature classic has soured because of what the author has been doing (you probably know what I’m talking about; this is an interesting thing to think about by itself. This particular kid literature classic has been an incredibly important part of my life for most of my life — 20 years — and it is perhaps the one piece of ~*problematic*~ media I cannot completely cut out of my life). The Moomins are always there for me. Ideally, I re-visit the seasonal book every year (there is a Summer one and a November one, plus the more generic “Moomin tales” are clearly set in the spring), throughout the year (even more ideally, alongside the relevant anime episodes).
Moominland Midwinter is a perfect happy-sad childhood book (mostly happy, though. It does not come close to the almost complete despair of the November book). Moomins (as a family) hibernate throughout the winter, but one year, Moomin (as in, the main character) wakes up earlier than everybody else and cannot fall asleep again. He experiences winter and snow for the first time. All his friends are either sleeping or away (except for Little My who also wakes up), he meets all sorts of new creatures (including the iconic Too-tiki, modeled after Tove Jansson’s real life partner), has new experiences (skiing! Ice-skating! Observing little creatures burn a big fire and dancing around it in some form of a magical ritual!).
It is cozy and beautiful and nostalgic, perfect to read during the period between Christmas and New Year’s (to be clear, at the very beginning of the first chapter it is mentioned that “New Year” just passed, but I think there is actually some quite Christmas-y imagery and ambiance for it to fit the bill), maybe the nicest part of the year. The biggest tragedy of Spotify is that the soundtrack from the anime is not available because it would be an ideal music for those unreal days.
6. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), dir. Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson is a joke for many people these days, but I will never stop considering The Royal Tenenbaums a masterpiece and one of my absolutely favourite films. I think I am not the only one who considers it a Christmas classic, or at least a winter classic. I don’t know if this is a film that needs a lot of words to explain it, to me this is absolutely a film to feel rather than overthink. It centers around the family of the Tenenbaums, of which the three children were all prodigies in some field. Now, they are adult and miserable. To add to that, thhe father, the senior Tenenbaum finds out he is dying. He has been estranged for years but now decides to reconnect with the family.
Call it pretentious and shallow, I don’t care, Margot Tenenbaum getting off the bus to the sound of These Days is an all-time magical scene.
Maybe I can relate to Eli, the neighbor’s, Owen Wilson’s character’s “I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum”. I feel like I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum, too, and live in this quirky and wonderful house in New York City and be a depressed genius (as opposed to a depressed idiot in a boring house in Poland). Maybe this is where my problems come from.
As I mentioned, Christmas is a sad period, filled with melancholy, and the atmosphere of this sad, dysfunctional family fits in perfectly. But the coziness of the sets and the costumes and the soundtrack matters too. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving this film, regardless of how uncool Wes Anderson becomes.
7. Picture books on archive.org
Not the most specific recommendation, I realize. This is basically a cozy aesthetic scavenger hunt. The Internet Archive is an incredible tool and I live in fear that one day we are going to lose it. There are classics galore on the site, there is the history of the Internet, there are magazines, and books, and movies. Books are what is of interest to me. I always get excited when I see a title like Pictures of Christmas or Pictures of Winter and it was published c. 1900. Those convey the exact aesthetic I enjoy at Christmas (as distant as it may seem from Irena Jarocka). Of course the books get extra points if there are ghosts involved — my favourite underrated/forgotten Christmas tradition is that of telling ghost stories (there’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories… plus, you know, A Christmas Carol). Here are a few books to flip through when you feel like you need some vintage inspiration for your festive decor, or maybe if you have kids you could read aloud too (or adults you could read aloud too! I don’t know your life).
Babouscka [sic!]: a Russian Christmas Story
Christmas Chimes, by Alfred Tennyson
Sidney Martin’s Christmas, by Pansy
Christmas Mystery, by C.O. Boring
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, by Clement C. Moore
And since we’re here, here’s the first edition of A Christmas Carol, illustrated by John Leech.
8. 8 femmes (2004), dir. François Ozon
Maybe a crime/psychological drama about a bunch of miserable French women is not necessarily something you would choose to play to get into the festive mood, but hey — we already did miserable families, so we might as well keep going. And to be perfectly honest, I do think 8 femmes might actually be fairly common among movie fan to revisit around Christmas, but maybe it’s because I actually used to study French at university so I may have encountered people of… all sorts of different tastes.
Anyway, 8 femmes is great. The acting is great, the costumes are great, and I love nothing more than a story of a small group of people trapped in a single location, ESPECIALLY during the winter. Just some people who know each other or not who cannot leave the location they are currently in, even though something troubling has happened.
And something troubling does happen: a family gets together for Christmas… The oldest daughter arrives back home… But before they can celebrate, tragedy strikes. The father is dead! He was killed! And the only person who could have killed him would have been one of the 8 femmes currently in the house… Was it his wife, definitely unhappy in marriage? Was it the Grandma?! Her weak disposition could be just an act! Could it be the spinster sister-in-law, clearly angry at what her life turned out to be? What about the gorgeous young maid? The older, Black housekeeper? Who knows what kind of motive someone possibly mistreated by the boss could have… The youngest daughter seems like a sweet kid but you never know… Maybe the freshly-arrived older daughter found a way..? And who’s that other woman who appears out of nowhere? There are twists and turns galore! There is tension, there is passion, there is passion for fashion.
Oh, and it’s a jukebox musical. Starring every* iconic French actress.
*Not the racist BB, though.
9. The Season’s Greetings meme
Self-explanatory, I think. No need to go in-depth for this one.
Truly iconic.
10. Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett
And now we have reached the finale of the list, and I am going to close it off with another book. If you read any of the fifty-ish Discworld novels, possibly one of them was Hogfather, which seems to be among the more popular ones. But I do not care if it is an obvious choice, it is still one of my favourites. And it is very clearly a Christmas book, more than Moominland Midwinter, I guess. The plot is rich in various different characters and situations, but I guess the biggest one is that Death himself has to step in the role of the Hogfather (who is basically Discworld’s Santa Claus) and all sorts of shenanigans go down. All Discworld novels are humorous and there are plenty of funny moments in this one as well, but there is also heart, a lot of love and tenderness. And maybe it’s a cliche at this point to post this quote from the book but I still like to revisit it when time gets hard and the world seems bleak.
All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY. THERE IS A PLACE WHERE TWO GALAXIES HAVE BEEN COLLIDING FOR A MILLION YEARS. DON’T TRY TO TELL ME THAT’S RIGHT.
“Yes, but people don’t think about that.” Said Susan. “Somewhere there was a bed…”
CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE’S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A . . . A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.
“Talent?”
OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS.
“You make us sound mad.” said Susan. A nice, warm bed…
NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?
***
So, here are a few of my favourite things (I am actually writing these words as A Christmas Prince 2: a Royal Wedding is playing in the background). Maybe you’ll feel inspired to check some of them out, maybe one or two will bring a smile to your face. That’s be nice, wouldn’t it? I realize that you probably feel scared and lonely right now, maybe you’re missing something, or someone. To me, again, Christmas is a pretty melancholy-filled time anyway, even in the best of years, so this one is going to be especially difficult. But I guess finding joy in little things might be what helps us get through it. That is what we do these days, right?
Happy Holidays. Be safe. Be he hopeful.
Swingin' at the Seance 