More Christmas Thoughts

Thank you all for the very positive response to my Christmas recollections. It's always nice to share seemingly random thoughts and know that something resonates with someone else. To me, that's the really great about blogging--finding that little nugget of thought in someone else's writing that makes you feel validated.

So a few more things related to the upcoming holiday, a few of which I've borrowed from a meme I've seen floating around...

• Like most folks, I have my favorite Christmas movies. "Christmas Vacation" is a reliable laugh, the last good thing Chevy Chase has done. "The Ref" (with Denis Leary) is our sleeper favorite--Mrs. J absolutely adores it, and it gets funnier every time you watch it. "Trading Places" (Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis' boobs) is the one my brother and I used to watch every year together--it's not so much ABOUT Christmas but just set at Christmastime. That tradition died along with our friendship. But my favorite is "Prancer"--I love love love it. It always makes me cry a little. I first saw it flying a redeye back home from college for Christmas one year, and there was something about being cocooned in the plane, miles above the frozen Great Plains, watching this sweet small-town story, that just embedded it in my mind. Every time I watch it, I can feel that place and time again. And come on, it's SO cute!
  
• Being a TV junkie, I rely on my favorite shows to help me get in the spirit. I always love the Saturday Night Live holiday episode, when they decorate the stage and all that, and they do great skits like Hanukkah Harry or D**k in a Box. And even though it's been on forever, I still love ER, and I look forward to their Christmas episode every year. After watching for 15 years, it feels like a real place to me, plus I've always thought it would be cool to live in Chicago, so I can live vicariously through them.
  
• Speaking of places I'd like to live, Mrs. J and I have developed a probably highly over-romanticized perception of what England is like at Christmastime. Thank the movies over the last few years that have made it look so lovely and quaint (Bridget Jones, Love Actually, The Holiday), not to mention Gordon Ramsay's F-Word. I know I have a few English readers--is it really not that great?
  

More to come as my brain continues to churn...