Christmas Vacation

The holiday season is upon us and that can only mean one thing... National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. It is one of the few movies that I can watch over and over again and without growing tired. In fact, I have to keep it locked away except for the 4 weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am a little obsessed.

The first time I watched Christmas Vacation, I wasn't that impressed. I chuckled a few times and went to bed. As the years rolled by, my love for the movie grew like mold on an old hunk of cheese. I look forward to watching it like my son looks forward to waking up to a mountain of presents on Christmas morning.

The "good old fashioned Griswold family Christmas" has me hooked. Every year I get a strange desire to cut down the biggest tree I can find and cram it in my living room, cover my house with 25,000 twinkling Italian Christmas lights, spray non-nutritive cereal varnish on a sled and tear down a hill, buy a black dickie and pair it with a white sweater, and drink eggnog from a moose cup.

The Griswold family is one that we can all relate to. What family doesn't have their own Cousin Eddy - that relative that you wish you could forget? Who hasn't sat down to a miserable, overcooked turkey at least once in their lives? How many times have you been left feeling like you are literally at the "threshold of hell" during a particularly stressful holiday? Christmas Vacation's over-the-top script hits home.

I'm off to kick off my "fun old fashioned family Christmas by heading out into the country in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols."

Have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas ever!