re: TulaneLSU's Christmas Pilgrimage XIII: Top 10 Christmas Films

I could easily make an "acceptable" top 10 list like the rest of the uncultured, but that wouldn't be honest. If I wanted to have a pat on the back and a bunch of upvotes, I could lie and make a list like this:

10. Elf
9. Miracle on 34th St
8. Scrooged
7. The Santa Clause
6. Polar Express
5. A Christmas Story
4. Home Alone
3. The Nightmare Before Christmas
2. Christmas Vacation
1. It's A Wonderful Life

Does this meet your approval? Am I popular and accepted now? Or should I also include something like Gremlins or Die Hard simply because it was filmed during Christmastide even though none of their themes are Christmas related?

But I am here to give my Top 10 CHRISTMAS films. I'd be more than happy to read yours.

So...Home Alone doesn't make the cut?

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How do you not have Christmas Vacation on the list? Have a million down votes

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Please refer to TulaneLSU's analysis of Clark Griswold

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Am I popular and accepted now? 

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No, but it's a small step in the right direction from these other lists.

Add black christmas, silent night, deadly night and santa claus conquers the Martians

Barely the title

I love The Money Pit. That is my answer to this awful list.

If there was a teenage male equivalent to the saccharine Lifetime romance "Christmas" movies, it would be A Christmas Story. I'm convinced that its popularity comes from two TV execs making a bet much like the one from Trading Places.

One says, "If we broadcast any movie over and over long enough, the American public will learn to love it and proclaim it a classic."

The other exec replies, "Poppycock and gobbledygook. Impossible."

"Any movie," the first exec says, "You can pick any movie and we will broadcast it until it's a classic."

The other exec responds, "A Christmas Story. No one can stand watching that one. Good luck with it!"

Sure enough, the American public, desperate for tradition and foundation, brainwashed by repetition, has fallen for it. The first exec won the bet.

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My 35th birthday approaches, but that shan’t encourage those on my employer list from finding a better babysitter. I don’t mean to brag, but if there were a hall of fame for babysitters, I would be a first balloter. I can tutor Latin, teach the piano, help with the creation of short plays, play volleyball, or teach the Catechism. Some parents have called me the “male Mary Poppins.”

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There is no scenario where I’d ever leave you alone with my children, you fricking weirdo. I wouldn’t want you around my kids in my presence.

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To not even put It's a Wonderful Life in your top 10 is laughable at best.

It's not only a top 10 Christmas movie, it's a top 10 of any genre movie.

Clarence Oddbody is disappointed in your list

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Although I applaud TulaneLSU's efforts to rejuvenate our culture's dying sensibilities, I have to agree with your assessment.

Perhaps It's A Wonderful Life suffers from its familiarity, popularity, and perfection and is disregarded as a contender for those reasons. We've grown cold and hard of heart indeed when George Bailey's story leaves us indifferent.

When Violet, the whole town, and even the bank examiner give of their own money to save George from ruin, with Hark, The Herald Angels being sung reverently, fervently, with great gusto by the gathered community-who cannot remember the words of our Savior?

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Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.

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I include two others on my top ten.

One, not really a movie, but an animated feature and a staple at Casa Misanthrope where Christmas is not Christmas until it plays for gathered friends and family. Who cannot empathize with the frustrations of an overcommercialized, spiritually bereft season where its meaning and reason are obscured by time pressures and frenzied activities?

Linus comes to point the way to the Charlie Brown in all of us in A Charlie Brown Christmas with his recitation of St. Luke's incomparable account of Christ's birth.

Christmas is not complete without a viewing of A Christmas Carol , my preference being George C. Scott cast as Ebenezer Scrooge.

A good ghost story in its own right, it also points the way to a Christmas, although more subtly so than Linus Van Pelt's gospel lesson, in which Christ is preeminent. Sadly, some of my more Fundamentalist brothers and sisters in Christ have unfairly, I believe, labeled the film "A Christ-less Christmas".

From the mouths of babes as they say, Tiny Tim reminds us of the Savior in a most poignant way through his father telling Tim's mother of her dying child's thoughts on being at Church at Christmastide.

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"Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas day who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see."

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These are submitted not to minimize or denigrate TulaneLSU's list or efforts but to support and enhance them.