It is interesting how traditions begin. I really do not know how this one got started, other than that we saw this video at a friend’s house (and I was little enough, I thought it was *scary*!) but then we liked it so much we borrowed it from the library each Christmas season until we bought our own copy. It’s very old fashioned…you know, it’s VCR. You have to rewind it.
Nevertheless, we really like this movie, and it’s our favorite version (that we’ve seen) of The Christmas Carol 😀 Maybe it’s because Gonzo is a funny Charles Dickens, or maybe it’s because Rizzo the Rat always makes you laugh because he doesn’t realize he’s supposed to be in the late 1800’s.
One of our favorite songs they sing is “It Feels Like Christmas”.
“It’s in the singing of a street corner choir, it’s going home and getting warm by the fire…”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL5_P8Wn_Pw&feature=related[/youtube]
A couple of our favorite scenes are the jelly bean scene:
Rizzo: “What?!”
Gonzo a.k.a Charles Dickens: “You can fit through those bars?!”
pardon the bad quality of the video
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8em_Fm1AZWk[/youtube]
and the lamp-lighting scene…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qyE2cbplGc[/youtube]
We used to fast forward through the song in the middle called “The Love is Gone” because we thought it was mushy-gushy and nobody wanted to sit through it.
Then we realized at the end they sing “The Love is Found”…and so we realized that there was a message there, the love can’t ‘be found’ if it isn’t ‘gone’ first. So…we sit through that mushy-gushy song now (but we sure are happy when they’re through with singing that) 😀
A few of our other Christmas favorites are:
- It’s A Wonderful Life
- A Charlie Brown Christmas
- Polar Express