Home Alone

It has crept its way into the canon. I hold somethings pretty dear to my heart. Christmas specials are a part of those things. They will never really be as they were when I was a kid: When there was only five channels on TV, the networks plus 25, 56, and 27, although 27 didn't really count. (for some reason I only remember things in Spanish and occasionally religious programming being on there.)  Then, magically, one day, a special would be on channel 5, or 7 or 4. We would camp out in the living room and soak up the glory of it all. Now, they come on the 400 or so channels and we tivo them and then watch them at our leisure. Or... we could always just tune in to the 24 hour Christmas special network and watch them all day long... in June. Sometimes too much availability ruins things. Specials were a bit more special then, but we try to recreate them here. Yes, we tivo them. But we don't allow our kids to chain watch them. We pick a night and watch whatever is in the tivo cue.

Tonight was Home Alone. Who ever dreamed up this show was pure genius. It is as backward thinking as it gets if you try to consider the plot to be up for a Christmas Special... but in the end, the bad guys get whats coming to them (something less than the turning heart of the Grinch though, but still ok), the scary guys prove good, the family gets back together and the true meaning of Christmas, balanced against the frivolity of wealth, comes shining through. Plus, we get to see some pretty great Three-Stoogesesque slap stick. When Marv gets that spider on his face and screams like a tormented, B-movie actress, it is nothing but pure joy on this end.

Henry couldn't sit down at all throughout the whole movie... he was up and cringing, laughing...ducking. Home Alone, the first one anyway, really deserves to be there, in the canon of Christmas Specials....... Plus the soundtrack is awesome!

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