I’m a frequent customer at my local 7-Brew, where the windows are always scribbled with questions. One day it read:  “What’s your favorite Chrtsmas movie?” 

I turned to the barista and answered: “It’s a Wonderful Life”. She blinked and said, “Never heard of it.” A small part of me ached in that moment. 

Movies—classic films—dark, dusty and discolored—are what make Christmas feel like Christmas. I don’t know what I would do without my scratched-up DVDs and my old Frank Sinatra’s “Greatest Christmas Hits” record. 

As a kid, the holidays felt different. Santa is real, the Elf on the Shelf is untouchable, the cookies you left on the table have mysteriously turned to crumbles and the glass of milk sits—parched of every drop.

Since, obviously, Santa had come. 

I remember my dad once telling me he saw Santa “sneak in through the living room fireplace and set presents beneath the tree.” Five-year-old me was determined to “catch” Santa too. In an attempt to showcase my faith, I crafted a blank-paper sign made of Scotch tape and cheap red crayon reading: “I Belive.” Anything to pursue the belief. 

I would lie on the big red sofa chair and wait to hear the heels of reindeer clicking on the rooftop. “I promise you, Santa will come tonight,” my grandma said with a slight grin of closure on her face. The magic, I knew, was simple—complete and honest.

Christmas used to be the day when every wish came true, the night when magic felt tangible. Now, the real magic—the nostalgia—lives through the TV screen. “The Santa Clause” glows with the same warmth of my childhood that I swear I can still feel while watching Macaulay Culkin mumble the words: “Keep the change, ya filthy animal.” 

My family and I would snuggle on the twenty-year-old brown couch, drinking hot Swiss Miss and eating Mimi’s freshly baked cookies. I distinctly remember watching my grandma run through the living room with a hot cookie tray raised above her head, warning us: “Hot pan, coming through!” as we curled our legs to our chests and hugged them tight, wearing our new Christmas pajamas. 

Those were the moments I held closest during the holidays. Those old Christmas DVDs meant the world to me—and still do. “The Polar Express” theme still loops in my mind at least a hundred times every December. I still quote “Elf” daily. 

If there is any real connection people can find this holiday season—it’s through yuletide cinema. 

I’ve noticed lately that the holidays have lost some of their weight. I’m not talking about Santa’s cookie-induced weight. I mean the true meaning.

People have made it all about material things—gifts, parties, cocktails and stocking-stuffers. 

Where is the togetherness that lived inside every 90s Christmas movie? Where is the quiet and unquestionable intimacy that exists between people sitting on an old couch and a crackling box TV illuminating the face of Will Ferrell dressed in ugly green tights?  

People don’t do those things anymore. They don’t value the mundane. They care more about buying that seventieth Apple product on Cyber Monday than they do a Christmas movie made some unknown time in the 90s. 

My favorite director, David Lynch, once said,“Cinema is a language. [It] can express a feeling and a thought that can’t be conveyed any other way. It’s a magical medium.”

And truly, the root of Christmas magic lives inside those wholesome tales.

Not because they are perfect films or flawless stories, but because they remind us of something we tend to forget: wonder is allowed to be simple. That joy doesn’t need an upgrade. That closeness isn’t something you can wrap in ribbon or order overnight with free shipping. 

Christmas has always been about pausing long enough to feel something real. To sit beside someone you love and laugh at a movie you’ve both memorized. 

Cinema keeps those moments alive for us.

And maybe, in a world that’s racing forward—scrolling, buying, refreshing, consuming—those quiet stories are the last things still willing to slow down.

Still willing to hold our attention.

Still willing to remind us of who we were, and who we hoped to be.

This year, I think the magic is still there.

You just have to look where it’s always been: in the glow of the TV, in the hush of a living room, in the company of people who make you feel known.