I believe this is heaven
It’s Christmas time which means it’s CHRISTMAS MOVIE TIME. There are Christmas movies on every channel of the television pretty much 24/7. My favorites are probably National Lampoon, A Muppet Christmas Carol and Home Alone. The worst ones are on Hallmark or Lifetime and almost always about single Moms who work too much whose children want them to date former Saved by the Bell cast members or that guy from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and enjoy the spirit of Christmas. It’s pretty awesome. I’ll watch all of them, I can’t help it, I’m a Jew who loves Christmas and bad Christmas movies. LET’S GET WASTED.
One drink for the first appearance of the following archetypal characters:
- Workaholic Parent
- Precocious child in a puffy coat and/or sporting a bowl cut
- Mall Santa Claus
- City girl returning home to the country from the big city
- Father in the service who is overseas for Christmas
- Christmas Fanatic
- Rutheless businessperson who doesn’t understand the spirit of Christmas
- Santa Claus’ unruly son / nephew / brother
- Talking animal
- Angel
- Ghost
- Suspiciously wealthy journalist or writer
Two drinks for the first appearance of the following archetypal characters:
- Workaholic Single Mom
- Actual Santa Claus
- Father in the service who comes home for Christmas (three drinks if it’s a surprise)
One drink for cast members who:
- Were in the original Beverly Hills 90210
- Were in Saved by the Bell
- Had a major role in a popular ’90s sitcom
- Are Meredith Baxter
- Are Kevin Sorbo
Two drinks for cast members who:
- Were in the original Beverly Hills 90210 and Saved by the Bell
One drink if:
- City slicker ruins her clothes or breaks her shoes in a country situation
- Precocious child tries to set up single parent with a handsome man (two drinks if he turns out to be Santa Claus)
- Rich person’s privilege is humbled and transformed by extended interactions or friendship with a poor person
- Rich person takes steps to evict good people from their homes, neighborhoods, small businesses and/or Christmas shows OR destroy their charitable or otherwise noble works during the holiday season
- Somebody throws a fundraiser (e.g., calendar, party, performance) to save a home, neighborhood, small business and/or Christmas show OR to prevent the destruction of their charitable or otherwise noble works during the holiday season
- An adult is inspired to believe in Santa or a child proves that Santa is real
- A little kid gets the gift he always wanted from a Scrooge-type person
- A Gift of the Magi situation shakes down
- Somebody cries while looking at a Christmas tree
- Bad guy has to step in and play Santa
- Parent succeeds in finding their child that one special toy they wanted for Christmas
- Somebody burns the turkey
- A scene is set at the North Pole
- Somebody is wearing more than four pieces of Christmas flair at once
- Mistletoe makes something so awkward
One drink whenever anybody in the movie uses the following phrases:
- The spirit of Christmas
- The true meaning of Christmas
- Where’s your Christmas spirit?
- But it’s Christmas!
- But only Santa can [something]!
- Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
- We’re gonna have an old-fashioned family Christmas!
Two drinks if:
- City slicker finds the true meaning of Christmas in the country
- Ruthless business-person finds the true meaning of Christmas in down-home people’s attempts to stave off his ruthless business-personing
- Bad weather forces bad guy to stick around in the presence of good people until he is wearing plaid and ice skating with a smile
- Heartless Christmas-hater switches bodies or travels through time in order to understand the true meaning of Christmas
- We’re treated to gratuitous male shirtlessness in a Lifetime movie
- Someone time travels in the presence of a ghost
- Somebody cancels Christmas
- Workaholic quits their job to be there for their family on Christmas
- Inanimate thing comes to life and saves Christmas
Three drinks if:
- Family member employs 3+ methods of transportation to access family Christmas celebration
- When the hero is redeemed, it starts to snow
- Clark Griswold gets all the lights to turn on
- Anybody sings “All I Want For Christmas Is You”
this is delightful. slam a spiked eggnog for every puppy/kitten/horse/furbaby wearing christmas
crapflair.I am so excited about this!
*Note: I think the schedule posted above is for last year.
I love that you noticed that
One drink for Sinbad. Ten drinks if you ARE Sinbad.
word
Hehe this is awesome.
Gonna need a couple of Costco-sized bottles of vodka for this
How many drinks for a Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places?
Hmm… this may require having some medical care on standby.
but what if the medical person turned out to be your soulmate and then you learned the true meaning of christmas (unless you’re already in a relationship in which case it will be Santa Claus)
What I’m hearing is we have an Autostraddle holiday movie plot right here.
Ooh ooh what about the medical person soulmate X-mas teacher person be the liver tissue donor too? You don’t need to be dead to donate liver tissue. It works well enough for cirrhosis. :P
If that’s the case, a few things will happen:
1) You will be invited out to officiate the wedding (after we get you certified via the webz of course), which we will have over the holiday season… and the wedding reception will consist of about 10-15 different big screen TVS, each one playing a movie that adheres to the aforementioned criteria, and there we shall set a world record for the largest holiday drinking game EVER. A dance floor will be set up with music from Zac Attack only.
2) This game will become a mandatory family tradition for future generations… with eggnog for the babiez to get them sugar drunk as opposed to adult drunk.
Man, I’m getting just chillz just thinking about all this! (Going to go throw away all my previous wedding plans now)
And if “Love Actually” comes on, take an entire bottle of wine with you as you run screaming from the room. Then take a nice bath or curl up in bed with some Christmas fanfics of your femslash couple of choice.
I FUCKING HATE THAT MOVIE
I KNOW, ME TOO!
Both a reaction to this article and an example.
Once I calculated it is about 62 days of Christmas movies, meaning roughly 1488 hours of films on the Hallmark Channel alone.
I like Golden Girls and may have be getting squirrelly with Sophia withdrawl. Algebraically provable math is calming okay?
“We’re treated to gratuitous male shirtlessness in a Lifetime movie”
LOL
“Rutheless businessperson who doesn’t understand the spirit of Christmas”
so accurate
If only there were movies that could combine all the Christmas movie tropes and all the terrible lesbian film tropes!
Here are some suggestions:
A Gay In A Manger
Lesbian couple Jo and Mary are driving home for Christmas when Mary unexpectedly goes into labour. They make an emergency stop in Bethlehem, KY, where, with the help of a surly club owner and three wise drag kings, Mary gives birth to a boy. The baby is revered as the resurrection until it turns out Mary slept with a straight dude 9 months earlier. Only the white male screenwriter knows why.
Stone Butch Santa
A disgruntled mall worker really doesn’t like anyone sitting in hir lap.
All I Want For Christmas Is a Girlfriend…or Boyfriend
A bisexual woman with no other defining personality traits than her gender and sexuality spends the holiday season caught in a love triangle with a straight man and a lesbian, who also have no other defining personality traits. Probably she breaks the lesbian’s heart and ends up with the dude, but even the white male screenwriter has fallen asleep before finishing the story.
Honey, I’ll Be Home Depot For Christmas
A lesbian couple heads to a DIY store late on Christmas Eve for some last-minute shopping, and gets locked in. They live happily ever after.
I want to hate/shame watch all of these movies over and over.
i knew the comments to this article would also be awesome, but i had no idea they would be this awesome.
I’m literally sobbing with laughter, this better make it to the comment awards.
You are brilliant! I hope you’re doing great things in life!!
You forgot the one where the adult gets the gift he/she always wanted from Santa as a little kid.
My girlfriend and I have been lamenting the lack of lesbian Christmas films (the closest thing I found was a Yahoo Answers page that suggested Precious and Boys Don’t Cry) and have been brainstorming our own. Thanks for the inspiration!
I thought of some more…
Independent Claus
Mrs Claus is trapped in a loveless marriage to a husband that’s out all night and has too much facial hair. Then one day she meets a free-spirited young female elf who turns her world upside down, and is probably also a photographer. They don’t end up together, but at least one of them cries during sex.
Homo Alone
An over-educated and under-employed queer twenty-something can’t afford to go anywhere for Christmas so stays home and watches Netflix. Two hapless burglars break into her apartment, but leave after discovering she owns nothing except a Tegan and Sara poster and a quarter-full packet of quinoa.
Dyke Hard
A headstrong butch gatecrashes her ex girlfriend’s Christmas work party at a swanky office block. She gets into a fight with a group of European-accented women that are either hitting on her ex, or maybe they’re international terrorists. Either way, she ends up running around barefoot in a vest shouting “yippee ki gay motherfucker” and some things explode.
I would watch the fuck out of Dyke Hard! Just saying.
This is the greatest thing I didn’t know I needed.
My christmas tradition is watching the weird and horrifying soon-to-be classic “Christmas in Handcuffs” wherein Mario Lopez develops stockholm syndrome from a badly permed Sabrina the Teenage witch