Oh we are so very close. Just a couple days separate us from Christmas which means it’s well past time for a Christmas movie post.

I didn’t talk about Christmas movies last year. We were too busy praying. Actually, one can never be too busy praying but last year I put the prayer out in public. But this year, let’s talk movies again.

I’ve visited this subject four time before, the most recent from 2019 when I revealed my then current favorite Christmas movie. At the time I said, “I say my current favorite because like children there can be no real favorite among Christmas movies. The favorite is the one making you smile today or remember yesterday, the one encouraging a perfect alternative to an imperfect world and providing an escape from the ordinary.” I stand by that thought still. There can be no favorite among the 873 bazillion holiday film offerings, even if only a handful are truly good movies. If they make you feel good, then they are. Except Die Hard. It isn’t, it never was, it never will be, end of discussion, period. (And it’s not a western either even though the main character does say, “Yippee ki yay.”)

When you get down to it, almost any of our favorite “Christmas movies” can be reworked to be set in some other month, some other season, with some other set decorations, and would play just as well. Maybe we set the bar too low for what we expect of holiday film fare. Maybe we really need those classics that wouldn’t work any other time of the year. Ebeneezer Scrooge would not convey the same sense of repentance in August. A Christmas Carol is a Christmas movie.

My current favorite most likely would work any other time of the year. In fact, the basic story is released dozens of times every year, and I’m surprised Hallmark or Lifetime or whoever churns out a new Christmas story every evening between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve hasn’t lifted the very plot for one of theirs. My current favorite wasn’t even in the theaters at Christmas, its general release coming in mid-January although it had a Boston release on New Year’s Day. That’s not at all unusual. There are more Christmas movies released in the summer months than any other time. Many studios feel winter releases won’t generate the type of first weekend or first month income their investors demand. One of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, Miracle on 34th Street, was released in June, the classic White Christmas was released in October, and for the younger crowd, it was barely October when Elf arrived. However, you have to give credit to George Minter Productions who managed to get the definitive Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge released on Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. in 1951. No, release date does not a Christmas movie make.

If you are to go by set decorations and locations, it would be difficult to call my current favorite a very Christmassy Christmas movie. The tree in the Poseidon Adventure gets more screen time and there are few, precious few, presents unwrapped. Most of the action is in a court room and there is one scene where our top credited stars milk a cow. Other than snippets of “Jingle Bells” heard occasionally, there is no Christmas music in a movie featuring a half dozen full songs. Appearances don’t seem to make a Christmas movie either.

So what does make a Christmas movie and why should my current favorite rank so high this year? It has the same unknown last year’s favorite has. Imperfect characters making imperfect plans, and ordinary people doing ordinary things while dealing with ordinary problems. Somehow, among all that mediocrity come glimpses of joy until the end when you find yourself smiling amid the improbability of a happily every after ever happening and the true desire to wish it could.

My current favorite Christmas movie is the 1940 production of “Remember the Night,” pairing Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck four years before they team up to become the couple you love to hate in “Double Indemnity.” Here they are the non-couple you want so badly to become the couple you love. All the printed synopses are blah. The story they describe isn’t the movie at all. I saw this movie years ago and promptly forgot about it. Maybe it was where I was in my life. Maybe I wasn’t looking for joy. I saw it in the summer and maybe the joy was there but lost in the stifling heat of July. I saw it again a few years ago at Christmas and fell in love with it. This year I can’t get enough of it. To me, it really is “a perfect alternative to an imperfect world.”

As I was doing some research for this post, I discovered it is #69 on Rotten Tomatoes list of top Christmas movies. There are any number of questionable offerings ranked higher, including their number 2, but at least Die Hard isn’t among them and that my friends, is this year’s true Christmas miracle!

Watch “Remember the Night” trailer