What have the Editors in Chief been thinking about this week?
Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé are defrosting…it’s almost the holiday season! As Isla and I eagerly await travelling home for the winter break, we thought we’d share with you some of our holiday favourites–from movies, to traditions, to our thoughts on the season all together.
Our opinions on Christmas films:
Molly: I can’t seem to pick a favourite Christmas movie. It’s honestly a five-or-six way tie at this point. I’m a big fan of Home Alone (the first one, of course…) It always makes me laugh, and has great quotable lines. I also love White Christmas–an older pick for sure, but it feels very nostalgic from watching it in my childhood; there’s a great scene where the characters are on a train to Vermont and singing about snow (the song is straight-up called “Snow”.) Of course I also love Elf and A Charlie Brown Christmas. There are too many good ones to choose from!
Isla: Molly will object to me saying this, but I would like to take this moment to clarify … Die Hard is NOT, I repeat NOT, a Christmas film.
Molly: I guess we can agree to disagree. (It's totally a Christmas movie.)
Isla: Now that’s out of the way, Christmas films are one of my favourite parts of the holidays. In order to avoid family arguments over the holidays, we each pick 3 Christmas films, all of which we MUST watch in the lead up to Christmas Day. It’s a lovely way to start getting into the Christmas spirit whilst you’re still at work in December. In what has become a very busy build-up period for our family, whether it’s holiday jobs, uni work, or clearing the emails, Christmas films mean we can all enjoy a longer and more relaxing holiday period. If anyone is interested, my film choices this year will be: Love Actually, Elf, and The Muppet Christmas Carol. Although my sister and I will also try to work in A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong at some point (much to our parents’ dismay). Recently, my dad and I have started a new tradition of watching a war film over the holidays; usually on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, to give everyone else that all important after-lunch nap. Ignore how morbid it might sound, but we’re the only 2 in the family that love a war film, especially some of the classics, like last year’s The Great Escape!
Experiencing Christmas in a different way and sharing our traditions:
Molly: Christmas is my favourite holiday, and I absolutely love this time of year. However, it looks a little different for me as my parents are divorced. On the one hand it means I celebrate Christmas twice, which is awesome, but it also can be difficult as it means adopting quite a divided approach of going from one parent's house to the other, back and forth. As an international student, my main priority with going home for the holidays is to spend as much time as I can with family and friends. However, this can be tricky to navigate when I’m constantly switching from Mom’s to Dad’s.
In terms of working through the moveable logistics of my holidays, there is a lot more to think about now that I'm older. The holiday spirit is still there, however, and I am lucky to have different traditions with each of my parents. With my Mom, my brother and I will spend time watching Christmas episodes from our favourite TV shows–from Seinfeld’s “Festivus” to Downton Abbey’s Christmas Special. With my Dad, we’ll drive up to my grandparents house out of town and have a big festive dinner there. My friends and I usually do a lot of baking, and we’ll go for walks through the snow. Mainly, we just have a lot of hot chocolate. It’s always a great time. All in all, I’m very much looking forward to heading home soon. It’s the main thing motivating me to work through my end-of-semester assessments.
Isla: My family and I have many traditions which include:
Mince Pies - the night we all make mince pies together is serious business - it is not fun, it is an organised military operation. That’s partly true - it is very fun. I think for my family this is when we start to get into the Christmas spirit, and it’s probably the first ‘Christmassy’ thing we do altogether; we have the Christmas playlist on and a production line of homemade mince pies.
Whamaggedon - This is something we’ve started doing each year with our cousins. As don’t get to see them throughout December, and usually see them after Christmas Day itself, we play a little game on our family groupchat. If you;re unfamiliar, the aim of the game is to avoid hearing ‘Last Christmas, by Wham until 25th December. The game is based on a system of honesty - if you hear Wham you must tell the group immediately - the game loses it’s fun if you lie about it (and you cannot intentionally play it or send it to someone in order to eliminate someone - that is bad sportsmanship and it not permitted). If anyone is laughing, this is a serious game and the decision to play should never be taken lightly. I would also advise that if you suffer from anxiety, please do not play this game - I do not suffer from severe anxiety yet I was in a state of panic whilst trying to make it out of St James earlier today without hearing Wham. (If you’re interested, I made it out before it came on, so I’m not eliminated - phew!)
For myself and our family, I’d say that there’s a different kind of Christmas magic you find as you get older; it’s not really the elements of magic and stories that you get excited by; it’s the pure joy of spending time with my family and really appreciating that time I have with them. The new traditions we’ve made allow us to simply be together and share things we love. As life gets a little more tricky year on year and we’re more apart from each other than previous Christmas holidays, we know that we’ll have at least the holiday period to spend with each other and simply coexist (with a Bublé-themed soundtrack).
Thanks again for reading our many rambling thoughts and opinions! As this is our last spotlight until January, we wanted to thank all of you who read what we have to say every week. We hope these articles bring you a smile or brighten your day. Our challenge to you this week is to create a new December tradition just for you. You could start it with your family, your friends, your flatmates, or just yourself. Watch a holiday movie you’ve never seen before (bonus points if you’ve never heard of it…) or bake a festive dessert. Regardless of what holiday you celebrate, or if you don’t celebrate this time of year at all, we hope you have a restful winter break. See you in the new year!
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