As we sit down to celebrate the holidays this year, we asked our Mutant crew what Christmas movie and TV traditions they tend to keep year after year:

Anthony: I HAD a tradition long ago, back in my student days. My best friend gave me a Godfather boxset as a present, first year of college, and for a time I would watch all three movies every year during the holidays. It’s been a while since I’ve done it, and this year I’m thinking I’m way overdue to leave the gun, take the cannoli. Plus I’ve yet to watch the CODA cut of Part III, might as well get it over with!

Justin: Our household has several staples that see heavy rotation around Christmas, including Elf, The Santa Clause, and Home Alone 1 and 2. But for me, the quintessential experience is popping in Christmas Vacation a few days before the 25th and drink some eggnog out of a moose cup. It’s still as riotous, quotable, and seasonal as it ever was.

Drake: We don’t really have a set movie that we have to watch every year, but a large handful that we rotate through every few years. Classics like Die Hard are on that list (of course!), as well as any given Shane Black movie, but we also stay on the lookout for newer flicks to add to our holiday watch list (which is how we ran across Violent Night this year). That said, a few of our long-time favorites are:

• Dead End (2003) – Ray Wise and his family take a wrong turn on a Christmas Eve drive and find themselves on a seemingly endless road where all sorts of weird things happen. It’s a fun Christmas ghost story that will make you think twice about taking that seemingly harmless detour.
• The Tower (2012) – This South Korean disaster flick is a winner, with brilliant FX work and wonderfully dramatic performances by all involved. When a high-rise apartment tower in Seoul is the scene of a helicopter accident, it’s going to take all the skill of legendary firefighter Kang Young-ki (Sol Kyng-gu) to get the residents out of this towering inferno. Be warned: In the tradition of the best Hollywood disaster classics, not everyone makes it in this one.
• Go (1999) – Young adults in Los Angeles work dead-end jobs, watch soap operas, piss off drug dealers, talk to cats and go on the run from strip club owners. It’s pretty much the perfect SoCal Christmas movie. Just remember: Never try to wedge a body into the trunk of a Miata. It just ain’t gonna fit.
• A. Confidential (1997) – OK, it’s only the early part that takes place at Christmas, but I’ll take any excuse to watch this one. Although it deviates considerably from the original novel, the filmmakers nonetheless made the right decisions in doing so. Even at over two hours, this is a well-paced crime thriller/noir packed to the gills with the worst that the City of Angels had to offer, but still, somehow, retains a thread of optimism through to the end.

ZombieDog: I absolutely do have a Christmas ritual, and I have been trying to stay true to it since I was young boy. My ritual is to sit down and focus on 1951’s Scrooge: A Christmas Carol. There have been dozens of adaptations from as early as 1901 to the most recent animated Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (2022). The 1951 version is the version that played most when I was a boy, and while I suppose it is an opinion, it’s the one that I think aligns most with Dickens’ view.

I think more than anything, Christmas Carol is a timepiece. It will be hard to set in modern days because there’s so much gray area and overlapping of responsibilities mixed with who we are. The original book is set in 1840, more than that though the characters are strikingly one-dimensional. Scrooge is a gruff businessman doesn’t care about anything except money, Bob Cratchet is a hard-working employee, yet his primary identity is a devoted father and husband. Tiny Tim is optimism incarnate. Scrooge’s transformation isn’t so much coercion from Christmas spirits, as it is an overdue realization that there was more to life. Christmas as a child is a magical wonderful time but it really is a time of wishes. Christmas as an adult is a time of self-reflection.

The older I become, the more I want other people’s Christmas experience to be better. That is where I draw my joy from. In the stark world that Dickens paints filled with desperation around every corner, Scrooge’s true revelation is realizing the world is what we make it.

Sitting Duck: We don’t have any set traditions regarding Christmas gathering movie viewing. Mostly it’s just showing something one of us came across recently that we want to share with others. I recall one year where I screened the ITV comedy Jeeves and Wooster and my sister-in-law remarked that the latter looked like a young Hugh Laurie. To which I noted that this was because it was a young Hugh Laurie.

This year, I’m planning to show episodes from Season 13 of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Got the Blu-rays so we don’t have to worry about any inopportune loss of internet service ruining the experience.