Field Trip City

Christmas Eve was standard fare, that is, nice time spent with family over lots of food and laughter at movies that used to fascinate us as kids. We had our yearly buffet dinner at the Carousel restaurant and everyone got a little camera happy. I'm sure the evidence will pop online somewhere.

Afterwards we came home and popped in Jeannot Szwarc's Santa Claus: The Movie, which stars Dudley Moore as a pun-happy elf and John Lithgow as an overacting tour-de-force. I hadn't seen it in years and it was good times reliving the memories it brought up.

I waited until much later on in the night to put in Scrooge, which plays more effectively as a thriller if it's watched in sync with the appearances of the ghosts. Sims is amazing in the role, of course, but the version really wrings the gothic elements out of the narrative better than any other. My mother always stays up late to take care of the turker for the Christmas Day dinner, and I rewound the ending so that she could see her favorite part (when Scrooge's cockney housekeeper freaks out).

It took me awhile to get to sleep due to all of the sugar and coffee I'd ingested earlier in the evening. All in all, a status quo Christmas Eve, and I wouldn't have it any other way.