Top Ten Holiday Movies For Jaded Curmudgeons
We are in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when the days get jumbled and we want to maintain the holiday spirit as much as we can until the real world comes roaring back at us. One of the holiday traditions I look forward to every year is watching holiday movies—both rewatching the classics and discovering new ones. Here are my top 10 holiday movies:
#10 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
This Christmas version of the National Lampoon’s Vacation series that never got as good as the original National Lampoon’s Vacation, follows the Griswold family trying to navigate the holidays. Like the original, Randy Quaid’s performance as Cousin Eddy makes the movie complete and his arrival in the film (“Shitter’s full!)” is its most memorable moment.
#9 The Naught Nine
A group of kids who don’t get Christmas gifts because of their varying misdeeds take it upon themselves to steal gifts directly from Santa’s workshop at the North Pole. The motley crew of miscreants is likeable from the start. Danny Glover pulls it off as a beleaguered but compassionate Santa Claus and the story left me wanting a sequel, which the film’s ending seems to indicate is coming (so far it hasn’t; get on that, Disney).
#8 Red One
This Christmas action-adventure features Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the head of security for the North Pole when Santa Claus, played with sharp-witted and jovial panache by J.K. Simmons, is kidnapped. Chris Evans, best known for playing Captain America, is the ne’er-do-well computer hacker who unwittingly helps locate Santa for the kidnappers and is drawn into a battle between two differing views of the supernatural world’s view of Christmas. It’s a bit heavy on the CGI but it works and it’s kid friendly with some nice material for adults also.
#7 It’s a Wonderful Life
This is the movie I watched because everyone I knew had seen it because it’s a classic Christmas movie. Although time and technology have chipped away at its dominance among Christmas films, it continues to occupy a place in the American consciousness. The classic Frank Capra American drama of good vs. evil and community vs. craven greed holds up as every bit as relevant today. Enjoy a classic American film and believe.
#6 Home Alone
This story of an isolated young man waging a campaign of mechanized violence against two bumbling thieves never gets old. It has slapstick comedic appeal for adults, self-recognition for parents, and good goofy fun for kids. It also has the same appeal that Death Wish has in that we get to see lowly criminals dealt harsh street justice at the hands of a would-be victim.
#5 Elf
This brings holiday cheer for children with some nice crumbs thrown to adults. Will Farrell’s over-the-top performance as Buddy the Elf helps sell the film, as does the casting choice of Ed Asner as Santa Claus. Santa’s advice to Buddy as he prepares to leave the North Pole for New York City is memorable: “First off, you see gum on the street, leave it there. It isn’t free candy.” It has a great scene with Peter Dinklage as an enraged executive and James Caan is Buddy’s long-lost father. Good holiday cheer and kid friendly.
#4 Santa’s Slay
Hilarious purposely B-movie gory comedy horror starring pro-wrestler (and Georgia Bulldog) Bill Goldberg as a murderous St. Nick who delivers over-the-top carnage while driving a bison-drawn sleigh across the land. Robert Culp, who I loved as a kid when he played a rugged FBI agent on “The Greatest American Hero,” plays a loving grandfather with a secret past who must confront the evil Santa to save Christmas. Not kid-friendly but perfect for holiday gatherings with adults.
#3 A Christmas Story
This is many people’s number one for good reason and it never gets old no matter how many times you see it. I feel Ralphie Parker’s pain as he longs for a Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle. The scene with Santa Claus in the department store is a must-see Christmas scene, and there are many iconic scenes in the film that represent the experience of growing up in America at Christmastime. This has stood the test of time and will continue.
#2 Fatman
This movie takes you by surprise in its subtlety. You almost don’t think Mel Gibson is playing Santa Claus but someone who just looks like Santa. Make no mistake though, “Chris” is Chris Cringle himself, and struggles with finances and sleigh repairs in a down-to-earth way that makes the holiday spirit impact that much more effective. The scene where Santa gets letters from kids who are living their dreams will give you the holiday feels. Also, there’s a ruthless, Santa-hating assassin hired to kill Santa and a bloody gun battle ensues. Put this on your holiday movie watch list.
#1 Bad Santa
Still the creepy granddaddy of all holiday movies. Bad Santa will have you spitting up your eggnog with its absolute depravity but also brighten your day with redemptive holiday cheer. Billy Bob Thorton as a drunken, safe-cracking thief is the jaded antihero we need to balance the relentlessness of the holiday season, which creeps in earlier every year. The ensemble cast includes “Gilmore Girls” star Lauren Graham, John Ritter in one of his last roles as the department store manager, and Bernie Mac as the head of mall security. The sequel that followed a few years later has its moments, but can’t replicate the power of the original. Watch this with your adult friends who have a good sense of humor and after the kids are asleep (not just in bed, asleep).
Honorable mentions: Violent Night, Gremlins, Home Alone 2, Die Hard, Scrooged.
Alternative New York Holiday Traditions
The holidays, as we collectively call them, start in earnest while we are still recovering from Halloween and preparing for Thanksgiving. Once Thanksgiving is over, all bets are off and we are surrounded by the Christmas season until we crawl back to work on January 2nd to the grim realities of our winter lives.
Holiday traditions are fine things, and for many years I took pride in my annual Bad Santa Party, which celebrated the greatest Christmas movie ever made, Bad Santa. Someday I will revive that tradition with a vengeance, but until that time it pays to find other holiday traditions that will celebrate the season without going to church or being part of a slack-jawed mob.
Of course, there are plenty of things to do that are not holiday related, but if you want to enjoy some yuletide spirit but not be surrounded by entitled ignoramuses or enormous crowds, here are some ways to observe the holiday season without losing your sanity or your edge.
Tree lightings abound. Mobs crowd Rockefeller Center and their tree is the most well-known in the city, but lots of other trees and menorahs have ceremonial lightings. Different parks, zoos and public gardens hold a host of lighting events and they are often a lot of fun. Go to one of those and you’ll get just as much craic as you would from going to some massive retail tree lighting and have a better time with smaller crowds as well.
Santa Claus for a better cause. You could certainly wait on a long line at a department store or shopping mall to put your sloppy toddler on that stranger’s lap, or you could explore an alternative venue where there won’t be as many elves or predatory photographers but the money will be going to a good cause. In my area, both the Queens Botanical Garden and the Lewis Latimer House have events where kids get to meet Santa Claus.
Anti SantaCon Pub Crawl. One of the more obnoxious holiday traditions in the city is SantaCon, a prolonged drunken stumble by perpetually unaware hollow men and their fawning female enablers. Sadly, SantaCon was once a fun and inspiring artistic event that became too popular and is now the corrupt antithesis of its founding ideals. But where there is a need for change, New Yorkers will step into the breech, and so bar owners in Brooklyn have started the Anti-SantaCon Gowanus Pub Crawl on Sunday, Dec. 9. You still get to dress up and drink in the holiday spirit, but absent the feeble stupidity that passes for holiday spirit among the current SantaCon crowd.
Literary birthday celebrations. Did you know that December 3 is Joseph Conrad’s birthday? Or that December 7 is the anniversary of Willa Cather’s birth? Shirley Jackson, Stanley Crouch, Edna O’Brien, Jane Austen, George Santayana, John Milton, and Mary Higgins Clark, among other literary lights, have birthdays in December. Why not have a party where you read their works?
Visit the New York Hall of Science. I have a tradition of visiting the New York Hall of Science on Christmas Eve with my daughters. It’s usually not crowded and our girls love science. It gives their mother a break from watching them for a while and she has time to wrap their gifts while they are away. It allows us to enjoy this popular public space in a bit of solitude and quiet.
There is no more New York thing to do than to carve out your own new tradition and celebration. The holidays give us these opportunities. Seize the day.
’Tis the Season to Watch Bad Santa
There are several great Christmas traditions that I refuse to surrender despite being a jaded, cynical atheist. I still give gifts to family and friends, I still buy a real Christmas tree and decorate it, and still I watch Bad Santa every year.
If you have not seen it, do so; you won’t be sorry. The 2003 movie stars Billy Bob Thorton as a thief who works as a department store Santa in order to gain easier access to the safe. You could argue that the movie is dated on that count—the most successful retail thieves these days do their work from laptops and the prevalence of credit and debit cards means store safes don’t hold as much cash as they used to—but that’s a minor point that will not detract from the movie.
Thorton is genius as the hard-drinking, serial-fornicating, foul-mouthed career criminal. The cast also includes John Ritter (RIP), Bernie Mac (RIP), Lauren Graham, Tony Cox and Ajay Naidu of Office Space fame as a “Hindustani Troublemaker.”
Bad Santa manages to both piss on the fraudulent cheer that comprises so much of what passes for holiday spirit while still offering a tale of redemption. His sneering delivery and drunken slurs give the holiday season the violent kick in the groin it rightfully deserves. He exudes contempt for the pampered children and jabbering housewives that expect him to be at their beck and call. He’s a champion to anyone who has ever had to work at a department store at Christmas time (I have; it sucks). He is a hardened predator among easy prey, a prisoner to his criminal profession, but willing to commit to violent street justice without hesitation to help his bullied host.
Cinema has given us no better Christmas hero than Billy Bob Thorton’s Willie.
Willie represents our great unbridled American spirit, unashamed to fornicate with strangers in department store changing rooms and tell shoppers to shove their holiday cheer right up their plus-sized asses.
I saw Bad Santa in the theater reluctantly the year it came out. The TV commercials didn’t make it look very good and I didn’t need another silly holiday comedy. But the movie won me over before the opening credits were through. I was blown away by the excellence of the film. It is at the same time incredibly depraved and inspiring. No other movie better captured the dual hatred and love we often feel towards the holidays.
The forced cheerfulness, the clueless do-gooder religious bleating, the consumerist fervor and the crowded conditions of our roads, trains and stores make all thinking men want to shit on the holidays with fiendish enthusiasm. Yet the undercurrent of holiday cheer is appealing. It is the end of the year harvest festival of the Roman Saturnalia, though colored by the pasted-on veneer of Christian myth. The silver lining to Christmas is that it promotes traditions that help strengthen the family, and it gets you gifts.
It’s for this reason that the next Christmas season I began a tradition of having a holiday party with watching Bad Santa the centerpiece of the event. This past weekend was no different, though many of my friends have now seen the move so many times that they didn’t pay as much attention to the movie, but it never fails to entertain.
If you’re going to watch a special movie for the holidays, there are many to choose from. Watch Bad Santa. It’s a holiday tradition you will want to continue.
Matthew Sheahan 
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