Insert Pun About Christmas Here

Tradition is a word used a lot this time of the year. Obviously people have traditions during different times of the year, but Christmas is so big that it’s hard for anyone one year to just be like, “Oh, I think I’ll skip everything about Christmas this year.” It’s not like in the movies where the hard-working, non-observant parent tells the kid they won’t be home for Christmas and the squirt whines, “But it’s a traditioooonnnnn.” Even my helluva-inconsistent family keeps some things sacred in December.

For a few good years now, my family and I have had the tradition of, after Christmas Eve service at my church, getting Tomaso’s Pizza and watching a movie together. The pizza, I’m sure, is just so that my mom doesn't have to cook/put anything from the freezer in the big, hot box in the kitchen I don’t go near, but the movie is just something to keep the fam together for a little while during the most hectic season of the year.

These movies rarely have anything to do with the next day, although I’m pretty sure what we had in mind when this tradition was made is that every year it would be a Christmas movie. (But frankly, the only two holiday movies we owned would’ve gotten old very quickly). Since we usually need a consensus on the choice of movie, it can definitely take a while to choose one. (Ah, the traditional Christmas Eve pre-movie fight.)

A Christmas Story and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (both eighties movies that my parents swore were the bee’s knees when they showed us that were really just weird, if not slightly disturbing and awkward) were included in the first few years, I think. After that we ventured out to Over the Hedge, Wall-E, and Up. This isn’t a time for hard-hitters, but it’s still nice for us to all sit together and all of that sappy shit. Also, the fact that we’re pretty much just sitting and staring at a screen drastically minimizes the chance we’ll start fighting. After the movie ends everything is free game, though. (Ah, the traditional Christmas Eve post-movie fight.)

Traditions are a pretty awesome thing. They let us reflect on the good times we’ve had and, for all of you obsessive-compulsives out there, set up a pattern that shouldn’t be messed with. Otherwise you get things like silver Christmas trees, which are just a crime against nature.

And You Thought Spending Time with Relatives Was Bad

Less than two weeks until Christmas!

Along with the presents, the cookies, the carols, and the poker (oh, wait. Is that just with my family?), come another tradition of the holiday season. It’s about two weeks into December, so naturally the awfully stereotypical, made-for-television Christmas movies have begun to trickle onto the weekend line-up.

Usually theater-released Christmas movies (aka real movies) are legends. They survive the test of time to be rewatched again and again by people like me. It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, and Elf are just a few of the many that find themselves being played over and over by people, young and old, wanting to relive the ghost of memories past.

Unfortunately this epidemic of TV movies is hard to escape, and this year I sat myself down on the couch and decided to actually watch one.

It’s called The Mistle-Tones, about an a capella group competing for a spot to sing at a holiday show at the local mall. Amongst other groups, their main competitors are the Snow Belles (must every a capella group’s name be a pun? No, really. Is this some unspoken rule you learn when you start one?), led by the straight-up bitch Marci (Tori Spelling), who has it out for the completely good, angel-voiced Holly (Tia Mowry).

Holly has to put together an awesome arrangement for her group (of coworkers: her possibly-gay, wise-cracking male friend, the over-weight, supposedly-straight male acquaintance, the pretty-but-completely-timid HR rep who has to stick her nose in everything, and the uptight-at-first, karaoke-loving boss). The Snow Belles consist of supposedly pretty, pick jumpsuit-wearing, perky middle-aged women, not unlike their leader.

For a full plot description just add “predictable” before every noun.

 

The Mistle-Tones not only lacks originality, but also subtlety. From the beginning of the groups’ formation, it’s obvious the Mistle-Tones are having tons of fun practicing in comparison to the strictly-run Snow Belles. The romance between Holly and her boss was written from the beginning when he was still completely business and also somewhat of an asshole.

It’s one of those movies which you can guess what happens before it does; I feel like I’ve seen the movie dozens of times before. Even Spelling agreed that The Mistle-Tones is just a baby of two movie parents. And I paraphrase: “It's a combination of Mean Girls and Glee” [said in an interview with E! News]. I mean, these two things have each been spun in so many directions so many times because people think it’ll give their movie/TV show a freaking edge. Instead all it does is make me slightly nauseous and wish I was surrounded by my relatives as they ogled over how much I've grown.