One of the films I use to enjoy catching on television many years ago is titled The Cheaters. This film stars Eugene Pallette, the millionaire father in several screwball comedies and Billie Burke, best known as Glinda, the good witch. Joseph Schildkraut is the homeless man invited to dinner who teaches Burke, Pallette and their family about the real meaning of Christmas. Another dinner guest, Erland Josephson, saves Christmas in Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander. Christianity plays a key part in many of Bergman's films, but what was interesting for me is that Josephson's character is specifically Jewish, and within the context of this film seemed to have a sense of freedom some of the other characters lacked.

Until I saw it again a couple years ago, I forgot that Eric Rohmer's My Night at Maud's takes place primarily on Christmas Eve. Little did I know when I first saw the film soon after it's initial release that watching a couple of French intellectuals talking all night would be so thrilling. As it turns out, Francoise Fabian, Rohmer's Maude is one of several stars in the French Christmas movie, La Buche. This is the dysfunctional family comedy done right, very dark and very funny. Also in the cast are Claude Rich, Emmanuelle Beart and my current favorite French actress, Charlotte Gainsbourg. I found La Buche by chance at Netflix, one of my happier film discoveries.

I don't know if I had anything to do with it, but after mentioning Die Hard at Cinematical, it was listed in the IMDb poll of favorite Christmas movies. This is a film that almost always grabs me, even if I'm channel surfing and I catch the film in progress. Between Bruce Willis going, "Yippee ki yi yay!", and the song "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" as the film closes on the never going to snow Los Angeles, this has always been a fun film for me. Certainly a film about killing "terrorists" on Christmas is more timely than ever.

While there is some question as to whether Jesus was actually born on Christmas Day, there is no question about it being the birthday of Leon Corledo, portrayed by Oliver Reed in Curse of the Werewolf. With that in mind, I can more easily explain my own tradition of watching several horror movies on Christmas day. Of course my significant other will argue that as far as my watching horror movies, every day is Christmas.