Most of the holidays I do enjoy and with their approach every year they bring a fond memory of family movie nights and gatherings.

For the remainder of the year there are four major holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Yes, I have a classic movie that I watch every year in honor of each holiday, as many families do.

This tradition was established back when I was very little and the first memory I have is during Halloween night.

Halloween in my family was never largely celebrated the way most families do. I honestly cannot remember a time that I went on the classic Halloween trip of trick-or-treating.

Don’t pity me. My mother tells me that I did go when I was younger.

I enjoyed every Halloween with our family tradition of candy corn, popcorn, and a great series of movies.

Our movie nights generally had great black and white classics such as “Arsenic and Old Lace” or “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein”. I believe that this tradition firmly established my love of black and white movies.

I loved sitting around and laughing with my family about the antics of Cary Grant or Costello’s stupidity. Even though I made myself sick on sweets every Halloween, I’ll always continue watching the movies.

Thanksgiving is marked by the annual playing of “Miracle on 34th Street” shortly after the Macy’s Day Parade. I never really liked or appreciated the movie until I witnessed the 1947 version. Again, it was a great black and white version.

I don’t know when it started that we had to watch the movie every year, but now I always insist that we watch the black and white version. There is just something nostalgic for me about that version.

Even though I live on my own now, I always feel at home when I watch it. It brings back memories of Mom cooking the turkey for dinner and the sounds of the fire in our iron woodstove.

Those smells and sounds just make me feel at home wherever I am.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I always enjoy baking cookies with my grandmother and singing carols with my cousins, but whenever I go home and we’re just sitting around, I love popping in a classic holiday movie.

Anything from “A Christmas Carol” to “Holiday Inn” brings me back to the warm fuzzies of holiday togetherness. But my absolute favorite essential Christmas holiday movie that I have to watch with my family is “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

Cheesy and unoriginal, but I grew up watching it with my family. We always curled up on the couch and had a box of tissues nearby and always had some eggnog or homemade hot chocolate on hand.

I never fully understood the movie until I was about 16, but I didn’t care either. I was with my family.

I have yet to find my perfect black and white movie for New Year’s Eve. It is getting harder to find a place that still offers black and white films.

Thanks to my family and their love of classic films, I was introduced to a quite a wide array of options for my New Year traditional movie. Until I come across something better, I have settled on “Casablanca”.

There’s nothing better than a little Bogart to help ring in my New Year.

Years come and go, but the Fall and Winter holiday season will always have a treasured place in my memories and future holiday traditions.

All in all, each holiday has its own special place within my family and I look forward to creating new memories and reliving the older ones.

By GRACE STAMPER
Editor
gstamper@ius.edu