...on Movies! It's a holiday week (almost) and there are lots of holiday themed questions out there! And the Musing on Movies is no exception!

**Home for the holidays**

"After all, there's only one more sleep 'til Christmas."
~~The Muppet Christmas Carol

Do you have any film traditions in your home, such as watching "It's a Wonderful Life" at Christmas or "Night of the Living Dead" at Halloween?

Oh you bet we do! Every year, after Thanksgiving we pull out "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and watch that at least once.

And then there's the traditional slate of movies that I pull out every once in a while at Christmas. Things like 'Die Hard', 'Lethal Weapon', and 'Gremlins' - they're the ultimate Christmas movies. Like I said yesterday with the music thing - I am clearly not a traditionalist. 'It's a Wonderful Life' sends me screaming for the streets. Maybe now that I've not seen it in a decade or so, I might be able to sit through it with a different perspective, but I used to hate that movie.

But I've grown up, and I have kids now, and I've read Richard Bach's 'One' several times since then, so maybe it will have a different perspective to me now. Still, it's almost more of a tradition to avoid viewings of it.

I know it's not a movie, but 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' is something that I always make sure that I catch when it's on, and this year was no exception. My kids and I really enjoyed it, and I told them all about how I used to see commericials for Zingers during Charlie Brown specials when they were all on CBS. Ah... and my kids only had a Zinger for the first time this year. For some reason there was something that just made me compelled to have one, and I turned around in the store, musing that I'd not seen any in a long time and there was a whole box of them.

Fate, that's what it was. Ah, but I digress - we were talking about movie traditions. I don't think that there's really any other tradition that we have. When I got out of school for the summer as a kid, and even in college, the very last day I would end up watching movie after movie - the summer movies, like 'One Crazy Summer' and 'Summer School' and 'Animal House'. Those are all still a little up in age for my kids, so they're not going to be watching those just yet. But a day of cartoons on the last day of school, along with a big bowl of popcorn, isn't out of the question.

I can't really think of any other movie traditions that we have right now, or ones that we've had in the past that are seasonal, so I guess that's it for today. Happy Movie Watching!