It snowed on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day and I didn’t run out of eggnog AND I had fun with the family.
With that being said I was ready for it to be over.
Holidays are hard.
They’re hard all the way from the Prep work to cleanup day and then the guilt for having a good time, or not having enough fun or not buying the right gifts or for buying to much.
So I was at that stage- you know, if you love something set it free, blah, blah, blah… and then I remember that this weekend
IT
comes back.
And by IT I don’t mean the clown from the Stephen King story.
I mean
IT
I’ll ‘fess up.
My reaction to that bit of news was not good.
I facepalmed myself against a wall a few times and chanted merrily to myself as I sank into an ocean of stars:
I ‘ve done a few posts about what my favorite Christmas films are- so what I’d like to share with you is how one in particular became my absolute favorite and how it went on to inspire me in my own writing.
That film is A Christmas Carol starring Alistair Sim.
I saw A Christmas Carol for the first time when I was a little girl. Very little. I was about five or six years old. So this would have been around 1969
I remember sort of catching bits and pieces of it, but the part I zeroed in on, the part that got my attention was when Scrooge came face to face with the The Spirit of Christmas Yet-to-Come .
I was a scary movie buff by this time ( one of my favorite TV shows was called ” Nightmare Theatre” ) and it had recently brought me into the universe of spooky movies and educated into the world of Ghosts, Witch Doctors, Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves, Witches, Mad Scientists and things from Outer Space.
So when Scrooge ran into this dark, faceless obviously merciless apparition I was impressed beyond words-enchanted and pulled into the story right then and there with my blanket over my head and my arms wrapped around my dog who was NOT into being squeezed to death by his young mistress judging by the way he desperately tried to get out of my arms.
Not to worry. I was not defenseless.
I just ran after him and dragged him back to the front of the tv with me. It took some doing because I refused to turn loose of my blanket and that was one strong little dog. He was fond of taking lungfuls of air. What can I say?
Anyway.
I was terrified and falling in love with this movie scream by silent scream on that Christmas Eve.
It was a magical experience and from then on not only had I become a life long fan of the movie I went on to read every single book from Dickens that I could get my hands on.
To this day I read those books slowly- I savor each word. I only allow myself a chapter a night so that I can prolong the experience.
A nod to that Christmas Eve when I discovered one of the best ghost stories on film EVER
