Changing Traditions
Rebecca Parnaby-Rooke
Day 1 of 7: Christmas Movies
It’s true wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas. -The Muppets Christmas Carol (1992)
I really start to feel Christmassy once I watch The Muppet’s Christmas Carol. I know I’m supposed to reflect on the reason for the season, focus on the candles and the Bible stories. And I do. But I just adore this film. I love the singing veggies, the absolute wit of the script, and the way Michael Caine gives the performance of his career against a cast of puppets. Christmas movies, love them or hate them, are part of the fabric of Christmas for many of us. Streaming platforms are full of them, cinemas are playing reruns of the classics. There is even a running argument about the legitimacy of Die Hard in the Christmas canon. Movies, and indeed the music they hold, can contain such memories for us. I wonder if the tradition is in watching the beloved movie itself, or if it is in settling down to know we are going to experience the comforting memories of going to the cinema for the first time to watch Miracle on 34th Street, or the hilarity of sharing Home Alone with our young ones.
Yet I am sure while some of us were curled up in the warm watching The Snowman dance in the air, others have watched from a distance without such warmth and comfort. When we get swept away with the escapism of A Royal Winter, do we forget the gritty reality of American Winter?
In A Christmas Carol—Muppet version or not!—Scrooge learns that the true message of Christmas is love. To find love feels like Christmas, and we are blessed to find it every time we find God. In prayer, in circumstance, in our Bibles. Sharing love is what God did at Christmas when God sent Jesus to us in the form of a tiny baby, to write a new chapter in God’s relationship with humanity.
How can you write a new chapter in your relationship with Christmas this year? During your next Christmas Movie night, think about how you could share the love you’ve found, with someone who maybe needs to feel it more than just from afar?
Rebecca Parnaby-Rooke, she/her
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