Deck the Halls...

There are a few things missing to make Christmas official for me besides the tree, lights and presents. Some of them go way back, some are recent. But they all have to be there or somehow it just isn't right.

For those of us a certain age there are the necessary movies to be seen.
*Any time after Thanksgiving, but best on the Friday after, is Miracle on 34th Street. None but the original black-and-white will do. Only John Payne, Maureen O'Hara, Edmund Gwynn and Natalie Wood can set the holiday mood for the ensuing five weeks.
*The modern classic, Christmas Vacation, is essential as well. Chevy Chase is a bit of a horse's ass but I have to admit he was good as the hapless Clark, trying to deliver the perfect family Christmas to his clan. I don't know, somehow I can identify with him -- and his failures, mostly. That could easily have been me sorting through hundreds of bulbs, searching in vain for the one that killed the whole show. There are hundreds of quotable lines from that movie.
*White Christmas. When I was a kid, the Wichita TV stations we received inexplicably ran this on New Year's Eve. It didn't make any difference. White Christmas kind of rounded out the holiday experience but it unfortunately always reminded me, on New Year's Eve, that school was about to resume.
*Go ahead and laugh. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer still has a place in the holiday schedule. If you feel you are too old and dignified to watch this, kids around or not, you are cold-hearted, without spirit and probably smell of Ben-Gay and Mentholatum.
*A few others--Going My Way, A Christmas Story and A Christmas Carol. If you can say it was truly a great holiday season without at least one of these you probably gave out gift cards as presents. My Christmas Carol, by the way, is the one with George C. Scott. He was another horse's ass in person, but he evermore made me believe he was Scrooge.

It isn't just movies. You have to get the L.L. Bean catalog to look through, and imagine getting and wearing all their great winter clothes for the next three months until Spring breaks. Like that would ever happen. Then there are the classic Hickory Farms and Harry and David food catalogs, loaded with ridiculously expensive gift boxes of sausage, pears and jellies. It is all good but Harry and David are sure proud of their products. People love to get them though. I recall my dad received a couple of these jewels every year the last week before Christmas. I don't know who sent them; I just remember I was happy they did.

A couple of other things: you have to go to a party and you have to go look at the lights on the Plaza. A party doesn't hold as much as it used to. Often as not, we'll get a work-related invitation and don't know anyone else there, or it is so out of our league {read: classy) that we are the brown shoes to the social tuxedo. Or both, with us completely unsure why we were invited to begin with. The parties were more fun when they were people we knew, but the people that know us won't invite us to their parties any more so we just operate on the outer edge of any kind of society.

Who cannot be moved by the sight of the Country Club Plaza set aglow by miles of colored lights? If you don't have to work there it's a true holiday icon. With all the shop windows to explore and the bustle of people everywhere, an evening there during the season reminds me that some things never change. All of the sights and aromas of holiday shopping are part of the complete experience. Of course, the Plaza has a lot of high-end stores which have nothing I could afford to buy, let alone give as a present. It is just fun to cruise through and watch the high rollers spend their money.

You don't have to have the glowing tree and a lot of expensive presents (athough there is a lot to be said for them) or rich friends and a crowded social calendar. Sometimes it's just staying up and watching an old movie late at night that truly makes it Christmas. And going back to work the next day to remind you that Scrooge is out there too.