My little family doesn’t have much in the way of Christmas traditions. There are a lot of reasons for this, most of them involving the dysfunctional dynamics of my extended family and one too many of what my friend Jack accurately calls “family hostage situations.” Without delving into the gory details, I’ll just say that circumstances prevented my folks and me from developing any annual rituals of our own, and now that I’m grown and haven’t yet produced any children for Mom and Dad to spoil, Christmas tends to be a pretty dull affair for the three of us. In recent years, December 25th has consisted mostly of my nuclear trio shuffling around the house and trying to think of some way to tap into the joyful zeitgeist everyone else seems to enjoy, while grumbling quietly to ourselves that there really isn’t much difference between Christmas and any other day off from work. (Like I said in the previous entry, I’m not very sentimental about this particular holiday.)

Even though I don’t share any particular tradition with my parents, however, there is something I personally do every year. Every Christmas Eve, I make it a point to sit down, have a glass of eggnog and watch a Christmas-themed movie. Sometimes one or both of my folks join in, sometimes Anne is there, but even if I’m the only one in the room, the lights go down and the DVD starts to spin right around the time little children are imagining they hear sleigh bells overhead.

This tradition — if you can really call it that — dates back to my high school days, when It’s a Wonderful Life ran constantly on my local PBS stations during the month of December. I remember catching bits and pieces of the film over several years, but I never watched it all the way through until one Christmas Eve when Dad was at work, Mom was busy wrapping presents, and I’d grown bored with whatever book I was reading at the time. I noticed the film was just starting, so I watched it beginning to end for the first time. My reaction was profound. The movie had always seemed cute and quaint when delivered in bite-sized chunks, but suddenly it came together into a cohesive fist that smacked me upside the head and brought me to tears. I was deeply moved by the film’s theme of interconnectedness and the idealized vision of small-town American life that seemed so familiar, even though I’d never really experienced it, like some kind of Jungian race-memory passed down through my genes. I was hooked, and I dutifully watched the adventures of George Bailey every Christmas Eve for years afterward. For awhile I even wished I could live in a place like the film’s setting, Bedford Falls.

(Quick aside for those who don’t know the interesting history of It’s a Wonderful Life: the Jimmy Stewart/Frank Capra film that we all have memorized was a box-office flop when it was first released. By the 1980s it was virtually forgotten, so unloved that its owners allowed the copyright to lapse into the public domain. That meant there were no restrictions on the film; anyone who had a print of it could run it whenever they wanted, as often as they wanted, without having to pay for it. A lot of television stations began scheduling Wonderful Life marathons because it was cheaper than paying for more current holiday programming, and, voila, a Christmas classic was born. People rediscovered “Capra’s folly” on television — usually on public television where they didn’t have to endure commercial interruptions — and they gorged themselves on endless repeats. It was truly a Golden Age, of a sort. But eventually Ted Turner or somebody realized there was money could be made from this title, so the copyright was reacquired and the marathons came to an end. Now the film is shown only once during the season, an official airing on network TV that’s riddled with ads. I can’t watch it on TV anymore; it’s just not the same.)

I eventually overdosed on Wonderful Life and decided I ought to expand my repertoire of holiday films. It hasn’t been easy, though. Most holiday films are, in my humble opinion, pretty lousy. They tend to be simplistic and treacly, and, in the case of newer titles, are often laden with crass humor that doesn’t fit the quiet themes of the holiday. Dreck like Home Alone or any Christmas movie starring Tim Allen doesn’t fan a warm glow in my heart so much as leave a sour taste in the back of my throat, like the ‘nog-flavored bile that rises up on you around 2 a.m. and wakes you from a sound sleep. I’m also not big on stories about adorable children, perfect families, Santa Claus or angels. (Yes, I know there’s an angel in It’s a Wonderful Life; I’ll rationalize my way out of that in a moment.)

I prefer my Christmas stories to be more grounded in the real world, to be honest about the ambivalence that grown-up people actually feel about family and holidays. In other words, I like “edgy” holiday movies, if that’s not too much of an oxymoron. That’s not to say I don’t like sentiment or nostalgia or stuff that warms the heart, but those emotions have to be earned, and too many Christmas films just take it for granted that the audience will end up feeling a certain way simply because the characters are bathed in the glow of colored lights.

Well, I’m running long here, and the hour is late, so without any further ado, here are my five favorite holiday films:

5. It’s A Wondeful Life

I had to include it on the list, even though, as I said, I’ve grown somewhat weary of it after all those years of re-runs. I’m sure everyone knows the plot, so I won’t bother to synopsize, but the thing I find really interesting about Wondeful Life is how often the film is misread even by people who love it. It isn’t nearly as simplistic or as syrupy as the ending would suggest. While the film does end with the sappy stuff about angels getting their wings and no man with friends being a failure, I think this movie is surprisingly dark in tone, overall. George Bailey has friends, yes, and everything works out for him eventually, but he goes through a lot of emotional hell during the course of this story, and the sad truth is that his life in Bedford Falls really isn’t the one he originally wanted for himself. He’s trapped by circumstance into a small town and a family structure that both protects and smothers him. Jimmy Stewart delivers one of his finest performances as Bailey, a man seething with as much frustration as nobility, and even though he loves his wife and family, he resents the hell out of them, too. These days Stewart is often thought of as a big sweetheart, but watch the scene near the end of this film when he comes unglued at his children. There’s real anger there, and for a moment we’re not sure if this man isn’t capable of really harming his kids or his wife. Stewart is genuinely frightening in this scene. But we feel symapthy toward him even as he’s threatening — the biographical structure of the film lets us understand and share his anger, his sense of helplessness and despair. It is this despair that justifies the film’s sentimental ending; the sap is earned. And that’s why I’m willing to overlook the angel character and his accompanying nonsense, which I find to be the film’s weakest element.

4. The Ref

I’m surprised this 1994 comedy-drama isn’t better known, but it often seems as if I’m the only person who’s ever heard of it. Dennis Leary plays a burglar who is forced to take hostages after one of his jobs goes terrible wrong, and it’s his bad luck to select the most dysfunctional family in town. While not exactly a traditional Christmas story, the film does explore themes of redemption and reconciliation against the backdrop of Christmas Eve. The genuinely warm-hearted ending satisfies without being sticky, and Leary’s ranting when he gets stirred up about something never fails to put me on the floor with laughter. (I also identify very strongly with the scenes of a bickering extended family being manipulated by a domineering matriarch and tortured by their own inability to stand up to each other. Read into that what you will…)

3. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

I like the Vacation movies in general, and this entry in the long-running series is possibly the best one. Certainly it has the most coherent plot, involving klutzy Clark W. Griswold’s quest to create the perfect Christmas celebration. Chevy Chase in his signature role strikes the same balance of earnest good intentions and simmering frustration that I remember seeing in my own father for many years. While the humor in the film is slapsticky, occasionally vulgar and frequently dumb, it is also genuinely funny and never mean-spirited, which is something that really turns me off in so-called comedies like Home Alone. I don’t think it’s funny to see someone get the shit kicked out of them by a little kid; I do think it’s funny to see a grown man throw a hissy fit because his 50,000 Christmas lights don’t work in front of his relatives.

Outrageous gags aside, this movie is actually pretty warm-hearted, evoking the gentle push-pull of love and antagonism that defines real families (as opposed to those in most Christmas movies). It ends on a perfect note of contentment as Clark wistfully announces, “I did it.”

(Full disclosure: in addition to just plain liking this film, I’m also fond of it for certain personal reasons. First, this film came out while I was working as an usher in a movie theater. That was a golden age in my life, and movies from that time bring back a lot of happy memories. And secondly, this is one of the few movies that I can watch with my dad. We share very little when it comes to viewing material, but this is one we have in common…)

2. A Christmas Carol (1951 version) a.k.a. Scrooge

According to the Internet Movie Database, there are no less than 25 film versions of Charles Dickens’ short novel about Ebenezer Scrooge and the Cratchits, and that’s not counting all the countless variations, homages, and rip-offs done on TV sitcoms and in children’s cartoons. Of all these, however, my favorite is the British-made 1951 version starring Alastair Sim. The film was low-budget and looks more like it was made in the ’30s (the Brits were still coming out of war-era rationing in ’51 and didn’t have access to the best film stock at that time), but the scratchy black-and-white cinematography just adds to the foreboding mood, in my opinion. Sim is the most effective Scrooge I’ve ever seen, and the most human. Unlike so many actors who don’t seem terribly different at the end of the story than they did at the beginning, Sim really sells the character’s transformation from grumpy old skinflint into a warm and caring man. Even at Scrooge’s worst, however, Sim manages to make him sympathetic, and when he’s playing Scrooge’s best at the end of the film, he is simply a pleasure to watch. Giddy, brimming over with mirth and joy, and also a bit sad — fully conscious of and regretful for the years he wasted — Sim’s Scrooge is the version I grew up watching and the one I consider to be definitive.

1. A Christmas Story

Like It’s a Wonderful Life, my number-one favorite Christmas movie didn’t make much of a splash upon its initial release but has grown in stature in the years since. The story of a young boy’s desperate quest to convince his parents they should get him a BB gun for Christmas, this film is nostalgic but not sappy, honest about the darker side of the Christmas season but not cynical, and, above all else, it’s funny. The humor arises from the characters and their situations, not from canned gags, so it feels real. And even though the film is set in the 1940s and I grew up in the ’70s, I swear this thing somehow captures my own childhood perfectly. So much of the movie, from neighborhood bullies pushing you until you snap to the Old Man’s barely controlled temper, to that horrible moment when you slip up and swear in front of your folks for the first time, to the innocent wonder that comes from receiving just the right gift (not to mention the horror of getitng the wrong gift from a distant relative), this movie is the universal Christmas experience. Anyone who can’t relate to it on some level obviously didn’t grow up on the same planet I did.

Well, that’s it… my top five holiday movies. Really they’re the only holiday movies I like. Although Bad Santa was pretty funny in a misanthropic, amoral way, and I suppose you could call Die Hard a holiday film, since it takes place on Christmas Eve and features the song “Let It Snow” over the closing titles. And then there’s the 1960 version of The Time Machine, which begins and ends in the last week of December, 1899, in a snowy Victorian setting, so it feels like a Christmas movie to me… ah, hell, I could probably go on all night if I really put some thought into it, but it’s getting late.

Merry Christmas, kids.