THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – SURVIVING CHRISTMAS (2018)

 

Miranda (Gemma Whelan) and Dan (Julian Ovenden) and their children live in the run down, rambling country house inherited from her recently deceased parents which they run as a small holding.

Despite its dilapidated, work in progress, state with a team of polish builders’ resident on site, they have invited a house full for Christmas.

Mirandas fading Hollywood actress sister Lyla (Joely Richardson), her alcoholic/drug addict husband Trent (Michael Landes) and their children, Dans oversexed half-sister Vicky (Ronni Ancona), his ex-wife Miriam (Sally Phillips) and addict son Harry (Jonas Moore),

Aunt Peggy (Patricia Hodge) and Uncle John (James Fox), to name but a few.

So, a chaotic Christmas ensues with old sibling rivalry, family squabbles, drunkenness, drug abuse, and infidelities all of which threaten to sabotage the season of goodwill.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – THE NIGHT THEY SAVED CHRISTMAS

An oil company is exploring two Arctic sites for oil and they needed to blast through the bedrock at the first site and the shocks were so strong that they rocked Santa’s village.

Santa (Art Carney) realizes that any blasting at the second site will destroy his home so he enlists the aid of Claudia Baldwin (Jaclyn Smith), whose husband Michael (Paul Le Mat) works for the company, so that she and her children can convince her husband that the first site is where the oil that they are searching for is.

Along the way, Santa explains all his secrets about delivering presents all around the world.

June Lockhart stars as Mrs. Claus, Paul Williams as Ed the Elf and Mason Adams is the suborn old boss Sumner Murdock in this Christmas movie that is so bad its good. 

IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE

 

It was Christmas Eve

We were preparing for Christmas day

Stuffing the bird and peeling veg

Singing of Santa on his sleigh

When the phone call came

I thought great Dads on his way

Or maybe it will be Gran

With another Christmas cliché

 

A happy Christmas call

Full of happiness and cheer

In truth it was the very opposite

It was the call we all fear

The death of a loved one

The voice says so very clear

“I’ve lost my best friend”

And I had no words only tears

 

Out of the blue so unexpected

Certainly not on Christmas Eve

Christmas should be a celebration

Certainly not a time to grieve

But Christmas Eve or not

It seems it was his time to leave

So farewell dear brother

Life without you I cannot conceive

For my Brother Peter who died on Christmas Eve 2008

KIDS DON’T UNDERSTAND CHRISTMAS

 

All children think

Christmas just happens

But parents work tirelessly

To bring it about

Months in the planning

Putting things away

Things to add to a special day

Shopping and wrapping

Dressing and decking

Supermarket shopping

The prices heart stopping

Journeying from shop to shop

For the latest must have toy

All made worth while

To see a face lit with joy

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – KRINGLES FOR CHRISTMAS (2018)

 

In her quaint hometown of White Deer, Ellie Hartman (Brooke D'Orsay) works for the Carlington Bakery, famous for making Christmas Kringles, but her real passion is crafting, and her Christmas wreaths are in great demand.

Unbeknown to everyone at the bakery CEO Jack Carlingson (Jonathan Whittaker) is planning to step down in the New Year and hand the reigns over to his son Nick (Daniel Lissing).

However, because of his obsession with modernization he has reservations, so he sends Nick to White Deer in December to learn all aspects of working in a bakery, including the production line that he is so keen to replace and to meet the employees people face to face, because they are the ones destined to be laid off if he got his way.

It fell on Ellie as human resources manager to show him the ropes and teach Nick how to make a Kringle, while also showing him that people make a business successful, not machines.

He is also introduced to the other employees as well as townspeople who work at and use the food bank and begins to appreciate the human cost of mass layoffs.

During the process Ellie and Nick fall for each other as he helps her to chase her entrepreneurial dreams and their other dreams come true at the same time.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1951)

Alastair Sim stars as miser Ebenezer Scrooge in this quality retelling of Charles Dickens' “A Christmas Carol”.

The classic tale in which he is taught the true meaning of Christmas by three Spirits who visit him, revealing to him the truth about his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current catalogue of cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways.

Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold, death or redemption.

The Spirits are played by Michael Dolan (Past), Francis De Wolff (Present) and Czeslaw Konarski (Future)

The other key characters and portrayed by Michael Hordern (Marley), Eleanor Summerfield (Flora), Mervyn Johns and Hermione Baddeley (The Cratchit’s), Glyn Dearman (Tiny Tim), Roddy Hughes and Hattie Jacques (The Fezziwig’s), Brian Worth (Fred) and Carol Marsh (Fan). 

JUST LIKE JACOB MARLEY

 

Peter was taken on Christmas Eve

Just like Jacob Marley

But the similarity ends there

He was never grasping or stingy

He had not been well for a time

And happy to pass without fuss

But he would have been hopping mad

That he was missing Christmas

He would not have planned it that way

And picked a better time to leave

I think he would have been happier

If he had died on New Years Eve

 

For my Brother Peter who died on Christmas Eve 2008