All Christmas movies ever, the abridged scripts

I hate Christmas. A lot of people say they do, but don’t really. I actually loathe it. Humbug and all other relevant sentiments.

I hate the panic for presents. I hate the over indulgence. I hate the fake spirit of having to be nice to strangers just because it’s close becoming the 25th of December. I hate Christmas trees, the space filling, annoying to decorate and a who-er to clean up after. I hate turkey. Does anyone eat roast turkey, dry turkey sandwiches or turkey curry at any other part of the year? No, because it’s shit. And cranberry sauce? It’s like the inventor of turkeys wondered how to make the worst meat even more revolting and then brainstormed while having a glass of the worst variety of juice and thought: “OMG, that totally goes together”. No it doesn’t.

Ham? Irish people don’t eat enough pork, bacon and ham all year round? Obviously not. Someone once told me that the only time a lot of people will eat a fresh meal that has been prepared completely from start to finish at home is Christmas dinner. Let’s for the sake of argument say that’s true. Why have something you’d eat at least once a week in some form or other included in that? That goes for potatoes too, but instead we have mash, roast, boiled, chips for the kids, and baked for the fussy aunt.

Sprouts?

Sprouts?

I was in a supermarket queue the other day and the woman in front of me had bags and bags of them in her trolley. The checkout girl commented on that and the lady replied: “I know, but I don’t even like them. No one does, but it’s Christmas”. This is on par with peanuts still in the shell at Halloween. I have no words. Well I do, but they’re not for here.

There’s so much I hate about Christmas, but the worst culprit are Christmas movies.

All movies are made for profit, that’s fine. Christmas movies are made to cash in on the season, and that’s not alright. Cos I said so, and that should be enough. So for all movie producers reading this, the next schmaltzy luvvy duvvy piece of Christmas crap you roll out I’m going to rub your nose in it, slap you across the snout with a rolled up Indo and kick you out to the garden to stay.

There is a simple formula for a Christmas movie, and it goes as follows:

INT: BEDROOM. EARLY MORNING HOURS

A DOG sleeps at the foot of a bed.

A CLOCK reads twenty to six.

A NIGHT STAND holds a tattered and worn copy of A Christmas Carol next to a small glass of milk and a gingerbread man cookie. A young girl lays in bed looking out of the frosted window and into the night of Christmas eve. She has a look of deep wonder in her gaze as she strokes the dog. We hear a voice. A warm and soothing deep male narrator who will take us through to the end. As the voice begins, the camera moves through one of the four window panes and reveals a snowed over neighbourhood.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Poor little Susie, laying in bed on Christmas eve

wondering if Santa will bring her the thing she

wants most for Christmas. Not because she wants

a new doll that cries and pees and poops. I don’t

know why little girls want dolls that do that. I mean

if she really wanted to take care of someone who had

no control over her emotions or bodily functions, she

could just come over and take the reigns in my house

when the mother in law comes to visit. No. Susie

wonders if she’ll get what she wants from Santa

because she wonders if Santa is really real. She’s seen

a hundred shopping centre Santas and they all claim

to be real, but they couldn’t be, could they? And if they

weren’t real, how could they bring her what she wants?

THE CAMERA continues to move over various streets and houses picking up scenes of carollers and open log fires through frosted windows.

NARRATOR (V.O.) CONT’D

Even if adults and other kids were to be believed, and

Santa was indeed real, would he have the power to grant

Susie her Christmas wish? She didn’t know, maybe no one

knew for sure.

THE CAMERA ends up coming full circle and moving back into SUSIE’S room. She has since fallen asleep.

NARRATOR (V.O.) CONT’D

Susie didn’t know, but she hoped. She hoped with all her

little heart that she would feel the spirit of Christmas. She

hoped that her mother would feel it, she wished that her

father would feel it, she hoped her brother and sister

would feel it. That’s all she wanted, no fancy toys, no pooping

dolls, just a happy Christmas.

CAMERA cuts to a story of the whole family going through a character arc of not appreciating Christmas, to coming aorund to the idea, and before you know it, they’re singing Bing Crosby and being all luvvy duvvy thus keeping the evil demon spirit of Walt Disney at bay.

THE END

********* *********

You all know the kind of film, I hate them.

Here’s how I’d rewrite them just to give them a bit of reality:

INT: BEDROOM. EARLY MORNING HOURS

A DOG sleeps at the foot of a bed.

A CLOCK reads twenty to six.

A NIGHT STAND holds a tattered and worn copy of A Christmas Carol next to a small glass of milk and a gingerbread man cookie. A young girl lays in bed looking out of the frosted window and into the night of Christmas eve. She has a look of deep disappointment in her gaze as she strokes the dog. We hear a voice. A warm and soothing deep male narrator who will take us through to the end. As the voice begins, the camera moves through one of the four window panes and reveals a snowed over neighbourhood.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Poor little Susie, laying in bed on Christmas eve

wondering if Santa will bring her the thing she

wants most for Christmas. Not because she wants

a new doll that cries and pees and poops. I don’t

know why little girls want dolls that do that. She did in

fact want that doll, and it should have come from Santa.

Instead she found it in her parent’s wardrobe two weeks ago.

The excitement mixed with dread as she realised she had discovered

her own Christmas present.

FLASHBACK to little Susie playing dress up in her mother’s clothes and sobbing as she finds her doll.

NARRATOR (V.O.) CONT’D

Is Susie crying because she found her present? No.

Is she crying because her dreams of Santa have been crushed? No.

Is she crying because the thought of her parents lying to her

about such a person as Santa being real tears her up inside? No.

Little Susie is crying because the doll she found is not the one she wanted.

SUSIE fights back the tears and swallows hard.

NARRATOR (V.O.) CONT’D

This doll is the cheaper no name brand that didn’t have all the

features of the one she wanted.

SUSIE puts the doll back where she found it and leaves her mother’s room.

FASTFORWARD to Christmas morning and see SUSIE opening the present and pretending to be surprised and happy.

NARRATOR (V.O.) CONT’D

Susie didn’t want her excited mother to know that she had found her

present. In the last two weeks Susie’s dad had left and her mother

had lost her job. A man came to the door asking for money

and it made her mother cry. The house is colder and they

couldn’t go to the doctor when Susie’s sister was sick. This is

why she didn’t get the doll she really wanted. She didn’t mind

because the hurt in her mother’s eyes and dread that Susie

wouldn’t like her present out weighed her own feelings.

Susie just wanted to make her mother feel better, and

maybe pretending to be happy with a present would make that

happen. But when Susie saw the look of relief on her mother’s

face, she didn’t have to pretend.

CAMERA cuts to a story of a single mother of two being evicted from their repossessed house and living in temporary accommodation. Their struggle kicks off a trend of SUSIE never wanting Christmas to come again because it was the time that things went wrong and the time that always makes her mother cry.

SUSIE would grow up to develop a Santa fetish while stinking of Jack Daniels.

SUSIE ends up hating Christmas for all of her days and eventually will find her end when she attacks a shopping center Santa and all the visitors before turning the AK47 on herself.

********* *********

That’d be a great film. It’d be in black and white and Morgan Freeman or Anthony Hopkins would be the Narrator. John Williams will do the music. Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorcese have expressed interest to direct.

You know I’m right.

Humbug.