One of my childhood chums loves her some Hallmark Christmas movies. She watches them on a loop this time of year. She is comforted, she says, by the predictable plots, the sparkly sets, the pretty people. Even the fake snow pleases her. She only half-way watches them, instead has them setting the mood for her holiday preparations. I don’t like them.

Here’s the plot I could get behind. The handsome or beautiful New York attorney or hedge fund manager returns home for the holidays, only to find their handsome or beautiful high school sweetheart in desperate straits trying to save the Christmas town, the family Christmas Inn or their Christmas tree farm. The successful big city sweetheart arrives and the old flame grabs them by the lapels and says, “Thank goodness you’re here. Get me outta this one-horse town, and I mean, PRONTO!”

Until the day that movie lands, here are some of my favorite holiday flicks, the old ones, and perhaps as sappy in their way as a Hallmark movie, but different. I can’t explain it. In the “Miracle at Christmas” vein, let me recommend “The Lemon Drop Kid.” Bob Hope at his best, a snowy New York with a cadre of characters all conspiring to pay off gambling debts while saving their skins, they come up with a plan to bilk the city out of charity funds by creating the Nellie Thursday Home for Old Dolls. But then, hearts change, fortunes change, and it is funny and sweet and thoroughly watchable.

“It Happened on Fifth Avenue” is a similar movie, and also full of improbable shenanigans that, in black and white is a delight to watch. It is hard to find out there, but worth watching if you come across it.

A couple of oldies to sit with when you plop down on the couch to take a rest, are “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” with a young Bette Davis, and “Christmas in Connecticut,” with Barbara Stanwyck, of undetermined age. Barbara plays a columnist who specializes in homemaking, kind of an early day Martha Stewart. Except, she has no homemaking skills at all, nor does she have the baby and husband that she writes about frequently.

A fancy magazine gets the big idea to highlight her home and hearth at Christmas and hilarity ensues. I mean, it is a farce of a movie but in the right frame of mind, it really is funny.

“The Man Who Came to Dinner” is performed as a farce, too, and you can imagine it performed as a stage play, which it first was.. Monty Woolley plays an obnoxious and arrogant radio personality who takes a tumble on some icy steps when dining with a hapless family in Ohio during a cross-country lecture tour. He sets up shop, receiving calls, well wishes for the good and great. Someone sends him a crate of penguins for Christmas, or maybe it is an otter. Could be a swan. He barks orders and commandeers the whole house. There are laughs, a love interest, and Jimmy Durante.

I am a sucker for anything William Powell played in, and I pretty much adore that old Myrna Loy, so “The Thin Man” makes my list because it is set at Christmas, there is a mystery, a wire fox terrier named Asta, bad guys, worse guys, and lots and lots of cocktails, all to remind us how sophisticated life in New York can be. Black and white as it should be.


 I wrapped presents to “Meet Me In St. Louis,” and I didn’t even have to watch the screen. I listened to the dialogue and recalled the whole movie in vivid detail, I’ve seen it so often. And I make no apologies for it. If Judy Garland bores you, or you don’t hold a special place in your heart for Marjorie Main, then watch it for the very young Margaret O’Bryan. She plays Tootie, the youngest Smith sister, and she steals every scene she is in.

Perhaps my favorite Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn movie is “Desk Set.” The action takes place almost exclusively at 30 Rock in New York, just a few days before Christmas. One of the first IBM computers makes a guest appearance as Tracy shows up to streamline the workings of the reference department, the one Hepburn heads.

Hepburn and her staff are the clearinghouse for facts and figures for the a nation-wide television outfit. They pull data from books, magazines and their own heads. They think that old computer will replace them. In these early days, it will not, not quite yet. Hilarity ensues.

And romance. And not a single Christmas tree farm to be saved.