Christmas - Drink It While It's Nice And Hot

I’m going to risk sounding repetitive here. While I realize Stephen King was sort of one of my themes the last time, I simply cannot write a Christmas piece without including him. So here goes:

Ever since I was young and bookish, one of my standing wishes to Santa was the new King novel. It was my parents’ job to get it, and after opening the presents, I proceeded to immerse myself into the new translated title for the rest of my school holiday while gorging on gargantuan portions of chocolate and gingerbread and other official holiday delicacies. This tradition continued well into my twenties, even after I became adept enough to start reading Anglo-American literature in English. While these days I purchase my own original copies of his still unending cornucopia of new books, and bring them with me over to my parents’ when I go home for the holidays, the basic idea of reading King and overeating on the days around Christmas has remained somewhat the same.

The first King novel I ever read in English was It. I think it might be my Desert Island King novel, and I had already read it many times by the time I dared to take on the thousand-and-a-hundred pages of foreign words. After accustoming myself into the realms of this language, the rest was smooth sailing. I think it served as a learning tool, too, since I already knew the story and was able to induce the meanings of most of the completely new and exciting words. The silver dollar eyes of Pennywise, the apocalyptic rock battle, the netherworld of The Dark Tower at the end, were acutely more real and urgent in the original language. The passage where Henry abuses the dog makes me cry every time, and sometimes I have a hard time continuing after that chapter.

But books aside, the bottom line why King became The Man Who Ate Christmas for me must originate in the notorious TV-movie-version of It by Tommy Lee Wallace. For some reason or other, my childhood best friend and I took to watching this movie during our Christmas vacations from school. With our other holiday favorites there is some logic to be found there, but I believe this anvil of a movie became one of our Christmas musts out of coincidence. We both had original copies of It on video cassette, bought from one of those Everything Goes –rummage sales the video rentals used to have from time to time, the tape scratchy and blurry from lots of usage, the audio sort of faded so we had to crank the volume high, and when we were done we naturally forgot to reset it, so the next person who opened the television had his or her head blown off by the gigantic bellowing of Jessica Fletcher or Ben Matlock or Sue Ellen and J.R.

Because we were kids, our holiday watch list included the most varied and eclectic choices: there was It, of course, but also Die Hard, because it was great fun, and wasn’t it technically a Christmas movie? When Harry met Sally… was more my own thing, my friend never really warmed up to romantic comedies, but I loved it, still do, and to this day try to squeeze it in on Christmas days off whenever I can. Madonna’s The Virgin Tour Live was on our list for a long time; my friend’s mother ordered the tape from The United States as a Christmas present to my friend, making her the coolest mom ever, and thus it was handled with the utmost respect and care because it had taken over a month to arrive in Finland and hadn’t been cheap. We would dress up like Madonna, in lace and crucifixes and riveted leather belts, munch on candy and ooh and aah for hours on end. To this day, if I happen upon pictures of Madonna from that era, and specifically from that tour, my mind instantly connects the dots to Christmas, the smell of tangerines and burnt matches and needles from the Christmas tree in my socks, stinging annoyingly.

As for family hour, for years, Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life was on TV on Christmas Eve, and we had it on in my house while I decorated the Christmas tree. I am the youngest in my family so the chore of decorating the tree was passed along to me from my sister when I reached an age I was able to handle baubles and festoons. It was a great honor, and I became extremely proud of my designs over the years, taking hours with it, carefully circling around the tree, balancing the whites with the golds and the silvers, deciding on whether to use the electric lights this year, or perhaps go all red. Father would come check out the proceedings with glasses of glogg and sit with me in the living room, making trips to add some wood to the fire in the sauna, while mom and my sister hovered in the kitchen, setting the table and preparing the rice porridge or making plum puffs, and James Stewart would be on the ledge, thinking of killing himself, and then he would be in the water, saving his guardian angel, and then experiencing life without him in it, and by the end of the film the whole family would be sitting with me, watching as Clarence finally got his wings, father and myself crying, mother and sister stiff-upper-liping it, before we would take turns going to sauna before the official family Christmas Dinner.

I absolutely hate that for the past maybe ten or even more years now It’s A Wonderful Life isn’t on anymore on Christmas Eve. It screens on Christmas Day, or even as late as Boxing Day sometimes, and without James Stewart’s rabid fire of nasal ravings in the background, the decorating process just isn’t the same. When writing this story, the TV Guide for the Christmas week hasn’t come out yet, so I still could be pleasantly surprised this year. Lucky for me I acquired my DVD copy of the film just in time before DVD’s all but vanished from the stores, so if push comes to shove, I can recreate the moment for my family, although we all know it really isn’t the same. Thank god for mother’s Dean Martin Christmas Album, though. Dino singing White Christmas is almost better than his homie Sinatra’s version, and after opening the presents at night, we always play The Best of Dean Martin while we clean up the thrash and drink coffee and red wine and try on our presents and start reading our new books. It’s why That’s Amore, to me, is very much a Christmas song. That, and its inclusion on the opening credits of Moonstruck.

It’s been years since I last watched It on Christmas vacation, but I always remember it, and always tie it to the holiday season if I do watch it. If the new film adaptation doesn’t premiere next Christmas, I’ll be shocked and a little disappointed. At the turn of the century, for a couple of years, my Christmas tradition was altered a little, and consisted mainly of re-watching Peter Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings, as I guess was the case with most of the people roughly my age, but lately I feel, for now at least, that I have watched it enough times to sustain me the next decade, maybe two.

My cinephile man hates It with fiery vengeance, and was extremely verbal about his criticisms the one time I have forced him to watch it with me. While I have to admit that there are some really clumsy transitions, especially in the editing, and some dreadful effects, and sometimes I think some of the adult actors aren’t really all that good, I still love it with all my childish heart. Seth Green is one of those strange people that tend to turn up everywhere I look; he played the young Woody Allen character in Radio Days, and later appeared in my favorite TV show when I was in my twenties, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and because he is in this movie, too, he has my undying love, even if he was also in the Austin Powers movies. Tim Curry as Pennywise The Dancing Clown is on my all-time Top Five list of the scariest movie monsters, and while the first photos of Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise in the forthcoming remake are totally respectable, and I do believe the brilliant book deserves a film that opens in cinemas and not only on TV, even if TV is the new film, I don’t think anyone or anything can replace the terror Curry’s crazed white face and fangs bring forth in my heart.

So, in the spirit of Christmas, and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (no matter how unrelated), here’s my Top Five of movie monsters:

Pennywise The Clown, for all the reasons listed above.

Gizmo and his offspring, from Gremlins. First you think he’s cute, then it’s bye bye Kansas and welcome to, I don’t know, Insanetown. And very Christmassy.

Creature from The Black Lagoon. Really the gentleman of all movie monsters, a tragic figure in the same vein as Frankenstein’s monster, so very misunderstood. And the film itself is all about keeping our waters clean and pollution free.

Alien. I’m still afraid of going to the bathroom at night from that one time I watched a late night screening of this movie on TV, and afterwards stumbled on the vacuum cleaner on my way to the john. Hello heart attack.

Jaws. The greatest there ever was. I have never swum in the ocean and never will. Jesus.

Christmas! Almost there. This is for The Losers' Club.