Every year around the holidays, I have to watch the Cary Grant-Tony Curtis World War II comedy Operation Petticoat. It’s based on all nature of real events that happened to various submarines in the Pacific during World War II—well, I don’t know how much of it is based on fact, but it does include the infamous Toilet Paper memo penned by Lieutenant Commander James Wiggins Coe of the USS Skipjack, and if you’re unfamiliar with the memo, it’s a delight of military history. Anyway, it’s not really a holiday movie, though of course it’s mostly set in December—it starts within a day or so of Pearl Harbor, in fact—and they have a New Year’s Eve feast at one point. But its place in my holiday traditions has a lot more to do with a happy moment of my childhood involving my mom watching it.
Some movies are tradition for people because of course they are. Whether your family tradition is Die Hard or Miracle on 34th Street, you watch the movies set around the holidays. Of course, the specific ones you choose will tell people a lot about you. One of my best friends watches The Lion in Winter every year, because watching Henry and Eleanor and their children reminds them that, terrible though their family may be, at least no one’s overthrowing anyone else’s kingdom. I watch The Ref for similar reasons, though it’s harder for me to justify in recent years because wow, do I not want to watch Kevin Spacey.
But then there are movies you watch, or shows you watch, because someone did once, and it’s now a thing. You may not even be sure why, anymore, but tradition is a hell of a thing. It’s not limited to Christmas, but Christmas is a good time of year for them, at least in the northern temperate areas where you might not want to leave the house if you can avoid it. Fourth of July is not exactly the same for watching TV, you know? Even in LA, my mom started a holiday tradition of going to the movies for the day, once people’s moving away and so forth meant her old holiday traditions weren’t in place anymore.
I suppose there are probably people who’d rather we have traditions of reading the Bible. Though many of us have Linus read it to us for the holiday, which is at least something? But Oliver Cromwell wasn’t wrong that Christmas has long been a secular holiday, and I think the strength of our secular traditions is that they are building on the idea of family. Which is now what Christmas is about, and most of our Christmas movie traditions involve watching movies with family. Yes, my six-year-old Simon and I are probably going to make a gingerbread house today. (From scratch, using my mother’s recipe which turns out to come from Santa’s Village in the Southern California mountains.) But also, I’ll probably have him watch and review Operation Petticoat or The Nightmare Before Christmas.
And if you can’t at all stand the holidays and your tradition is to watch the least holiday things you can think of? That’s okay, too! Maybe you’ve got Seasonal Affective Disorder and you watch movies full of sun and warmth. (Seriously, Operation Petticoat is in the South Pacific, though admittedly in a submarine and therefore not quite “full” of sun and warmth.) Your traditions are what they are, and that’s great! But it is the time of year for thinking of them, and for thinking, I suppose, of the reason for your particular celebration of the season. Even if you can’t explain it to anyone else, it can be your gift to yourself.