If you're a fan of Christmas movies (and, yes, I am and also yes, "Die Hard"
is a Christmas movie), this is the season to get your fix.

But the ratio of sticky, chick-flick, gooey-sweet Hallmark Christmas
movies to the few good ones is very high. There's a lot like 
"Christmas Prince(s)", "Christmas in the Castle(s)", 'Christmas
Inheritance(s)", "Love Actually (in the snow?)", and "The Santa Clause (1 &
2 & 3 & ?)". Hard to find the good ones. Rotten Tomatoes (and a dozen
other sites) have their Top 100 list (bet you didn't know there were 100?).

Here are my picks (in no particular order and definately not following
Rotten Tomatoes' ranking):

"A Christmas Story" -- this is the classic 1950's Christmas movie that my folks would
always make us watch. It is from a far simpler time but has a wonderful message.

"It's a Wonderful Life" -- this one created the whole "Christmas movie"
idea; it is now colorized on Prime and is really great in color!

"White Christmas" -- the Christmas movie perfected.

"Holiday Inn" -- the prototype for "White Christmas" (and for the hotel
chain, too).

"Christmas Story" not that one-- a new one, Norwegian, tale of orphan boy who
becomes Father Christmas or Saint Nicholas (it's on Prime).

"A Christmas Carol" -- there's many of these but the best, I think, is
with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge; George C. Scott is good, too. Charles
Dickens wrote the best original Christmas tale in history. "The Man Who
Invented Christmas" is well worth watching.

"Christmas Vacation" -- totally corny and stupid-funny (too
stupid-funny?) and one-joke but, if you're in the mood for Chevy Chase,
why not?

"The Polar Express" -- the best animated Christmas movie, ever; great
for kids.

And how could I forget the Rankin Bass movies? Well I guess it has been a while since I
watched them but they are dear to my heart. Growing up I would look forward to them.
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was the first and the best, it's done in hand crafted
stop motion animation and is such a sweet tale, then there is Frosty the Snowman which
always draws a tear at the end no matter how many times you have seen it. They made
more but those two are classics.

What's your favorite? You can probably find it somewhere. It's gonna
be a White Christmas for me in the form of a snow storm coming in with 55mph winds,
and so cold the balls-less brass monkey will be begging to sit by the fire.

Stay warm. Hunker down and watch a good Christmas movie if you can.

Merry Christmas to all.

Lance