The Totally Non-Holiday Holiday Movie List

Somehow it became November, and the winter holiday season is creeping upon us. 

Which got me thinking about the rather strange array of movies I trot out during the next eight weeks in an attempt to be festive... while simultaneously not feeling the urge to drive an icepick through my ears because I'm hearing "White Christmas" for the 400th time in a day.

So for all of you folks who reach a point where if you hear about how "every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings" one more time, you're going to go on an eggnog-fueled rampage, this list just might be for you.

Thanksgiving

• Addams Family Values. Ah, nothing like the combination of dry Gothic wit and blue blood summer camp, culminating in a completely off-season Thanksgiving holiday pageant to say, "Pass the turkey... But please use the medieval catapult."
  

Christmas

• Die Hard. Terrorists. Walking through glass in bare feet. Being held hostage. Lengthy delays in airports... Sounds like a family holiday to me! Plus, it's chock full of Christmas music, peace on Earth, and goodwill toward men. Okay, so that's near the closing credits. But, still.

• The Ref. This is the Christmas movie you watch to feel really good about any of the petty conflicts, inconveniences and irritations you might encounter during your own holiday season. Or, perhaps, you'll be wishing Denis Leary will come and hold your own squabbling relatives hostage for holiday dinner-- y'know, just to liven things up a bit in a new, fresh and festive way.

• Ghostbusters II. The ultimate in Christmas feel-goodness as found in mood slime and Jackie Wilson piping "Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher" through the movin' groovin' "Harbor Chick," Lady Liberty. If you can make New Yorkers happy during rush hour with monumental traffic jams (literally, in this case), you've truly channeled some holiday spirits. Believe me, I know. I'm originally from New Jersey. I've seen the malls.

• Funny Farm. Watch Chevy Chase try to create the picture-perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas without Randy Quaid in a powder blue leisure suit and dickey. Challenge guests who've had an excess of mulled cider with rum to compete and see who can laugh most like the insane Redbud mailman.

• The Hogfather. Okay, so this really is a Christmas movie... If, y'know, you lived in an alternate universe where Santa was actually an anthropomorphic pig deity. And a wild-boar entourage pulled his sleigh. And where Death was basically a good guy but a little bit misunderstood. And he had a granddaughter who was a part-time nanny, part-time witch. But otherwise, totally Christmassy.

• Death Race. Jason Straitham demonstrates that Christmas is more than a season-- it's inexpensive background set decor while you eradicate the baddies. (Thanks to my friend Dave for this suggestion.)

So, folks-- any other films you'd like to add to this list? At Of Cabbages and Kings we always are glad for suggestions!

Christmas Songs that Need to Be Written

The awesome beauty of crystallized precipitation... The joy of uniting with people who share a common genetic structure... Hard-shelled, protein-rich foodstuffs combusting over a potential fire-hazard... This is the stuff of Christmas song.

Yet, I can't help but feel there are other topics that reveal an even greater part of the Modern Family Christmas Experience that have not yet been addressed.

So rather than endure a 3,000th broadcast of George Michael's "Last Christmas" or McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime"-- which always make me want to puncture my eardrums with a marshmallow roasting stick-- someone needs to write about the subjects that are truly relevant to our time.

Subjects like:

• 35 and Sleeping in the Bunk Over Grandpa

• O Little Table of Lesser Fam, Where Dost Thou Put One's Knees?

• Yes, Yes, Yes, I'm Still Single, Auntie (Pass the Peas)

• Over the River and Through a Ten Car Pile Up On the Turnpike

• Egg Nog Helps Me Forget

• Silent Treatment for Sister

• Dreidel, Dreidel, Spun Way Under the Couch (For my Jewish friends)

• Guilt Brings Us Together

• Oh Christmas Socks, Oh Christmas Socks!

• Tales from a Christmas Form Letter

• The Airline Peanut Feast

• When Santa Brings Math Flash Cards

• In the Glow of the Shining Leg Lamp

• A Toy Worth Trampling For

• Black Friday, Blue Christmas

• Please Don't Eat the Garland

• Ornament Physics with Fluffy

• Weeping on the Keyboard (The Sappy Christmas Email Forward Song)

• Who Stole the Light-up Baby Jesus?
  

...And, of course, many other soon-to-be-classic hits!

I hope this preliminary list will inspire you talented songwriters out there to really get creative and make music that reflects Christmas as we truly know it. Because I have to tell you, McCartney's really getting on my last nerve.

Help me.

Please.

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Question for today: Any new Christmas song ideas you'd like to add to this list?

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Unofficial Guide to Family Holiday Personalities

Holidays: uniting people with common DNA, under the rented pavilion of blind hope, thick, creamy guilt, and pickled eggs.

Yet in every family gathering, there seem to be some common players--- personalities that somehow span generations and cultures, transforming each get-together into another keepsake reminder of just why we move 200 miles away from these people in the first place.

So let's pass the fried chicken and take a gander at our talented cast of characters. Perhaps you will even recognize some of these folks from your own holiday events!:

• The Time Traveler- Due to some personal issues with the space-time continuum, this person always pops up at least an hour and a half later to any event than expected. They call and say they're headed out the door, yet still find themselves missing significant chunks of time between the duration it typically takes to make the journey and the time they actually set foot at the family event. A stopover in the Jurassic era? Layover in the Bermuda Triangle? Abduction by aliens? This phenomenon is so mysterious, relatives will automatically add hours onto any ETA data given, just to compensate for the flux. The Government is looking into this phenomena.

• The Storyteller- This is the person who turns something as simple as an oil change into an elaborate tale for the masses. Depending on your storyteller, these tales can have the audience rolling off their chairs or running for the hills. My grandfather was the latter. His hunting journeys were like Last of the Mohicans II: Natty Bumppo's Nature Scrapbook, Now With Even Fewer Action Sequences. They were not memories as much as early 1800s topographic and botanical expeditions, where every leaf, tree and rock got equal attention, complete with sub-story and sub-sub-story offshoots. It could go on for several years. Or until everyone in the audience died.
  

• The Drama Llama- Whatever the event-- wedding, funeral, annual picnic-- the family Drama Llama knows that the function is actually secretly about him or her. It becomes the perfect time to air decaying grievances, announce bitter divorces, and toss other cherry bombs of intimate angst into the festivities, just to see where the parts fly. Techniques include grand entrances, loud accusations, crying fits and lengthy non-communicative sulking.
  

• The Negative Nelly- If it's a bright sunny day, the Negative Nelly lets you know it's probably going to rain soon. If you brought potato salad, the Negative Nelly makes a public service announcement that it has too much onion, and you probably shouldn't eat it anyway, because it will clog your arteries and kill you. If you have good news about a pending trip, a marriage or a job shift, the Negative Nelly will greet your enthusiasm with a "What do you want to do a fool thing like that for?"

• The Rube Goldberg Worrier- For any activity, the Rube Goldberg Worrier will come up with elaborate ideas why this is incredibly dangerous and is likely to get everyone turned into charcoal briquettes. "Don't put that macaroni salad there-- it's so close to the edge. It could fall off the table and knock one of the smaller children unconscious with the sturdy Tupperware." "Oh, don't park your car there. One of the kids could throw a Frisbee and not look where he was going and run into the side of it and then burn his face on the hot engine, becoming disfigured for life." You might try to persuade the Rube Goldberg Worrier to just relax and have some fun. But remember, safety proofing the picnic area for a possible attack of locusts between the hours of noon and five is fun. We all have our hobbies.
  

• Hydroponic Tot- This child has not eaten more than a teaspoonful of anything solid since last Christmas, and isn't going to start now. How the kid has survived to be age five seems to be due to some supernatural ability to draw nutrients directly from the air. No, he does not want a cookie. No, he does not want some of Great Aunt Edna's Jell-O salad. He will test that Jell-O's physics, though. The Hydroponic Tot loves physics.

• Black Plague Betty. This relative chronicles family illness more thoroughly than the National Health Organization. Not only will you hear about her own lengthy battles with heartburn, nasal mucus, elevated blood pressure, diabetes and dandruff, you will hear about Aunt Myrtle's gout, Uncle Cedric's erectile dysfunction and the new pacemaker of her neighbor's nephew's sister's ex-husband's former boss. Black Plague Betty can recall all of this in an instant. She, however, will consistently call you by the name of your cousin, Todd.

• The Flash. This person attends every family event-- but for about 4.9 seconds. Yes, this relative is in-and-out in a blur of baby seats and covered dishes. Once the 4.9 seconds elapse, crisis arises and The Flash has vanished into the ether, leaving nothing but a whiff of Gerber strained peas and an empty styrofoam plate.

So tell me, folks-- do you have your own personal Negative Nelly? Or perhaps you're the family Time Traveler? Or maybe you have another personality to add to the list. Go ahead and share with Cabbages readers!..

The therapy is free.

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