With Christmas firmly upon us, I wanted to reflect on a man’s role in this most holy and commercially blest of holidays.
Suicides go up around the holidays, along with violent crimes and theft. A man feels the inability to take care of his family most heavily over the holidays, when their children are waiting for toys the man can’t afford, wondering why their dad can’t put up lights like the neighbors, are just barely getting their hunger quenched while inundated by pictures of happy, smiling (mostly white) families gathering around tables overloaded with turkey, potatoes, vegetables, wine, 4 types of pie, all that grandeur.
But let’s put that aside. The holidays are when we try to project the best of ourselves – we try to be more forgiving, more giving, a better father, better husband. This may decimate the men struggling for work, for money, especially in this economy. But hark, this struggle goes all the way up the chain. The difference is, when it’s about men of middle class and middle means, they have almost enough to make it perfect – and thus hilarity and drama ensue.
I’ll stop the holiday proselytizing here and get on with the point of this – the top 5 greatest movies about a man struggling over the holidays:
5. A CHRISTMAS STORY – A son struggling to get a gun while his father tries to balance strictness, good spirits, and a light-up leg lamp. The Christmas turkey even gets eaten by the dog, sending them to a Chinese restaurant. Classic.
4. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE – A man’s company is bamboozled by his alcoholic uncle and the evil man in the wheelchair who runs the town so he decides to kill himself. The closest we can come to the plight of man’s struggle on this holiday without getting depressing – and it reduces all men to blubbering fools by the end, when we realize a man isn’t measure by money or gifts but by how many people whose lives he’s touched.
3. JINGLE ALL THE WAY – Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad fight over getting the best holiday toy. So bad it’s good but the lesson rings true – the living metaphor for man’s battle to get his family what they want.
2. WHITE CHRISTMAS – A man who led his men nobly in the last great war is running a struggling Vermont resort during a mild winter (a possible early harkening to Global Warming?). A few of his old soldiers who’ve now made it big show up in time to see the General struggle. They need to do everything to take care of the man and his family who led them so well. The last time the mainstream public respected military high command. A simpler and more romantic time.
1. NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION – A father obsessed with the perfect Christmas struggles with keeping his cool as one disaster after the next plunges his perfect plans into chaos. As a son of a family that has mastered the perfect Christmas – and therefore a young man struggling with his own quest to realize such perfection in his young adult holidays – I understand Clark Griswold in this classic almost more than any other figure in cinema.
In the end, perhaps we have lost the humble beginnings of the holiday – a celebration of the birth of Christ enveloped around the older pagan celebration of the point at which the days will finally start getting longer and people can stop fasting to keep food stores till Spring (look it up). But I believe it has only taken that basic celebration and all of its virtues – kindness, good will, family and love – and aspired to elevate it to true greatness. Just like when we aspire to any great ideal, there will always be failures, often more than successes. But to get hung up on this failure is to judge an institution for the flaws of the people that make it up – and, honestly, nothing good will ever come of such ludicrous judgments.
RUNNERS UP:
A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS - A skeleton, tired of scaring, wants to give people the good vibes of Christmas he envies of Santa Claus - but quickly realizes it's much harder than it looks.
SCROOGED - Christmas Carol retold with Scrooge as a heartless TV exec. Witty, comical, and downright brilliant for a remake of a story that's been retold countless times in various forms.
Happy Holidays.
- Ryan
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