It's Official!

Now that Thanksgiving is over and Cyber Monday has passed (I got some GREAT deals! Yay!), the Christmas season is officially upon us. In my house that means cookie baking, candy making and tree decorating. But as important as all of those things are to our enjoyment of the holidays, there are a few other things we simply must do before Santa scoots his fat ass down the chimney. I'm talking Christmas movies.We love them. We watch the same ones religiously year after year and it just wouldn't be Christmas without them.

I thought I would share my five favorite "must see" seasonal movies:

5.  Christmas Vacation - Classic Chevy Chase and my personal favorite of all the Vacation movies.

4. The Homecoming - This is my "when I was your age" movie even though I never lived on a farm or a mountain, never had six brothers and sisters, never walked to school and was never that poor.  I'm older than the kids, so I figure I'm entitled to claim it.

3. A Christmas Carol - Although this movie has been made and remade a dozen times, my favorite is the 1951 version with Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge.

2. It's A Wonderful Life - This is the one you want on in the background when you're wrapping presents.

1. A Christmas Story - Ralphie is like part of the family and we all cried when Darren McGavin died back in 2006.

This was tough for me because I could have easily made a list of twenty that we watch almost every year, but I decided to go with these. You know that feeling you get on the way to the airport when you're leaving for vacation, that "what am I forgetting" feeling? Well, these are the five movies that give me that inkling of panic if I don't watch them before the stroke of midnight on Christmas night.

Of course we are always on the lookout for new Christmas movie ideas, so I would love to hear which movies your family enjoys during the holidays so I can add them to my list. Well, come on, I know you all have an opinion...

P.S. NaNo was a bust for me but congrats to all of you that have won or will by the end of the day. I did get quite a bit written on my current MS, more than I would have without the NaNo support, so I thank all of my cheerleaders for that.