Christmas Magic and Mom
One of my earliest memories centers on a Christmas movie. At night, my mom would sit on the edge of my bed and sing “White Christmas.” All year long. Every night. It was my lullaby.
And then there’s the “Christmas magic.” According to my mother, Christmas magic was real, and while it was made up of many things, it was mainly made up of Christmas movies:
The classics: Holiday Inn (with its problematic blackface scene, educational for me at a young age), White Christmas, Christmas in Connecticut, and Miracle on 34th Street (the original, not that colorized crap or the God-awful remake).
The illustrated/claymation movies: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, Charlie Brown’s Christmas, and Frosty the Snowman.
The movies that came out as I was grew up: One Magic Christmas, Home Alone (1, 2, 3, how many did they end up with?), Santa Claus the Movie, The Santa Clause (I, II, and III), The Muppet Christmas Carol, Scrooged, Gremlins, and Die Hard. Mom argued about that last one. She liked her Christmas movies more traditional — not necessarily good, but more traditional.
As I recently watched the opening of Jurasssic World, I thought, this is technically a Christmas movie. Mom would have laughed. And argued. But laughed. I miss that laugh.
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation became a favorite of Mom’s. Tangentially-related Christmas movies like Family Stone, Love Actually, and The Holiday were also “good,” she thought. They were imbued with that “Christmas magic” by nature — even if the stories themselves were arguably awful.
For Mom, the holiday season started as soon as we saw Santa at the end of the Macy’s Day Parade. We went out the day after Thanksgiving to pick out our tree, set it up, and decorate it. From that day until the end of the 12 Days of Christmas, Christmas movies played in the background: every one I mentioned above as well as Hallmark movies, no matter how awful or how many D-list actors were in them.
It didn’t matter, because to Mom, each movie contained a bit of Christmas magic, which was what the entire season was about — just as Scrooged argues about Christmas Eve:
“It’s the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we… we… we smile a little easier, we… w-w-we… we… we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be.”
This was how I was raised. I believed. Desperately. And completely.
We didn’t have family traditions, but Christmas was our holiday. It was Mom’s. She truly believed it was a transformative, magical time of year, when anything was possible. Christmas magic existed in each and every one of us.
One year we were too poor for Christmas. A local charity provided presents. Mom left open our garage door, and people put presents in there. When I asked why Santa delivered there instead of the house, Mom just said “It’s Christmas magic.” And I believed her.
When I found out Santa was not real — that it was Mom leaving presents under the tree — I wasn’t traumatized like other kids. I didn’t cry because Mom explained that Santa was also Christmas magic. And we were all responsible for it.
It was always fitting that we ended Christmas Eve with It’s a Wonderful Life, perhaps one of Mom’s favorites. As much as she loved all Christmas movies, it was the classics she loved best — It’s a Wonderful Life above them all.
Every year Mom cried at the ending, when the whole town came together to help George (Jimmy Stewart). That sappy cinematic conclusion was the embodiment of everything in which she believed: Christmas was a time for us to be the best versions of ourselves, and if we needed any help in achieving that, the answer was to be found on TV (or in the VCR or DVD player).
Even though Mom is gone, I still put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving. And as I decorate, Hogfather plays. And then the next day and the next and the day after that, I’ll put on another film from Mom’s Christmas movie collection. I’ll tear up at the end of most of them, not only for the magical way in which these movies still touch me, but also because I’m remembering her.
Maybe that’s my bit of Christmas magic. Her gift to me.
If you have a memory to share about a holiday movie or TV show, please let us know.
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