{"id":951,"date":"2015-12-23T16:35:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T12:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=951"},"modified":"2015-12-23T16:35:00","modified_gmt":"2015-12-23T12:35:00","slug":"christmas-movies-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=951","title":{"rendered":"Christmas movies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are three Christmas movies that stand out above all others and must be watched each year in the days leading up to the big day. They are: <i>Home Alone<\/i> (now 25 years old\u2026 wow), <i>A Christmas Story<\/i>, and <i>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/i>. I\u2019d say they should be watched in that order, on the 23<sup>rd<\/sup>, 24<sup>th<\/sup>, and 25<sup>th<\/sup>, because somehow that just makes sense. Television stations will help you out on this one because these movies will be shown pretty much constantly this week.<\/p>\n<p>The sort of \u201csleeper\u201d pick for me as great Christmas movie, one that I must watch every year is <i>Bad Santa<\/i>, an underrated vehicle for Billy Bob Thorton as a boozing, thieving, department store Santa. Yes, the film is a bit silly, but isn\u2019t everything, really? Don\u2019t watch this one with your kids, though, as it is definitely <i>not<\/i> family friendly.<\/p>\n<p>I should add that each year between Christmas and New Year\u2019s I must watch the movie <i>Diner<\/i>, one of my favorites of all time. Sort of a Christmas movie, the action begins on December 25, 1959, and shows the week leading up to New Year&#8217;s 1960. It\u2019s a movie about life and love and of growing up. I liked it when I was in high school, in college, post-college, and I still like it now. I think I\u2019ll have Franklin watch it when he\u2019s about 15.<\/p>\n<p>And <i>Bad Santa<\/i> when he\u2019s 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are three Christmas movies that stand out above all others and must be watched each year in the days leading up to the big day. They are: Home Alone (now 25 years old\u2026 wow), A Christmas Story, and It\u2019s &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=951\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":952,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions\/952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}