For I-don't-even-know-how-long, it has been a Christmas tradition for my siblings and I to watch Die Hard on Christmas morning. I am not really sure how this came about, how Die Hard became our favorite Christmas movie, but such is life. I do suppose the tradition started partially because of the 6 a.m. rule.
Most of our presents were wrapped and under the tree before Christmas, but Santa would come in the night and fill our stockings and leave, unwrapped, our best gift, the "Santa gift." So, naturally, we were very excited to get up as early as possible to see what was left under the tree (and start munching on the candy in our stockings). So, we would decide before bed that whoever woke up first would wake up the others straight away and we would head down to check out the gifts together. Generally, this was around 4 a.m. Now, for so crazy reason, our parents did not want to be woken up this early, so the rule was to not wake them up before 6.
Those of you skilled at math will notice this leaves two hours between children wake up time and present-opening time, and when you add in the antsy excitement of Christmas morning, two hours feels a lot like ten. So, how to make the time go by faster? Well, Die Hard, of course! Pop that baby in and spend a couple of hours enthralled by the antics of John McClane. Fantastic, I know.
As we've gotten older, we've stopped waking up quite so early, and, more importantly, we let the 'rents wake up when they will, but we always watch our movie sometime during the morning.
And now, we've added a new layer to our Christmas movie watching tradition.
It all started at karaoke about ten days before Christmas. Josey and I were trying to decide what movies to watch together and had a great idea -- let's do a 'degrees' thing, watch a movie, and then the next movie must have an actor from the previous movie. We started with Peacemaker, and then (using Nicole Kidman) went to Moulin Rouge. And then, on the way to picking Amber up from the airport, the truly amazing idea hit Josey: the 12 movies of Christmas -- get from Peacemaker to Die Hard in exactly 12 movies! We filled Amber in, and really started pounding it out. There were a few rules: an actor can only be used as a link once; we must own each movie; and only two movies cannot be used from the same series. And, of course, it would be nice to have movies we actually like. So here are the 12 movies of Christmas for 2011:
1) Peacemaker (Nicole Kidman to)
2) Moulin Rouge (Ewan McGregor to)
3) Star Wars: The Phantome Menace (Liam Neeson to)
4) Batman Begins (Christian Bale to)
5) Equilibrium (Sean Bean to)
6) Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Hugo Weaving to)
7) V for Vendetta (John Hurt -- thanks Momma for that! -- to)
8) Alien (Signourney Weaver to)
9) The Village (Joaquin Phoenix to)
10) Gladiator (Richard Harris to)
11) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Alan Rickman to)
12) Die Hard!!
We actually worked from both ends, and tried to get from LOTR to Gladiator in 3 moves. It was all thanks to mom, who came up with the John Hurt connection. So, we spent the next week popping these movies in (and, honestly, hardly watching them). The most fun was actually the making of the list. Next year, we will be adding in complications -- like getting movies from certain genres or picking several movies we want included. And, of course, we'll be starting with a different movie. But will always be finding our way to Die Hard.
Most of our presents were wrapped and under the tree before Christmas, but Santa would come in the night and fill our stockings and leave, unwrapped, our best gift, the "Santa gift." So, naturally, we were very excited to get up as early as possible to see what was left under the tree (and start munching on the candy in our stockings). So, we would decide before bed that whoever woke up first would wake up the others straight away and we would head down to check out the gifts together. Generally, this was around 4 a.m. Now, for so crazy reason, our parents did not want to be woken up this early, so the rule was to not wake them up before 6.
Those of you skilled at math will notice this leaves two hours between children wake up time and present-opening time, and when you add in the antsy excitement of Christmas morning, two hours feels a lot like ten. So, how to make the time go by faster? Well, Die Hard, of course! Pop that baby in and spend a couple of hours enthralled by the antics of John McClane. Fantastic, I know.
As we've gotten older, we've stopped waking up quite so early, and, more importantly, we let the 'rents wake up when they will, but we always watch our movie sometime during the morning.
And now, we've added a new layer to our Christmas movie watching tradition.
It all started at karaoke about ten days before Christmas. Josey and I were trying to decide what movies to watch together and had a great idea -- let's do a 'degrees' thing, watch a movie, and then the next movie must have an actor from the previous movie. We started with Peacemaker, and then (using Nicole Kidman) went to Moulin Rouge. And then, on the way to picking Amber up from the airport, the truly amazing idea hit Josey: the 12 movies of Christmas -- get from Peacemaker to Die Hard in exactly 12 movies! We filled Amber in, and really started pounding it out. There were a few rules: an actor can only be used as a link once; we must own each movie; and only two movies cannot be used from the same series. And, of course, it would be nice to have movies we actually like. So here are the 12 movies of Christmas for 2011:
1) Peacemaker (Nicole Kidman to)
2) Moulin Rouge (Ewan McGregor to)
3) Star Wars: The Phantome Menace (Liam Neeson to)
4) Batman Begins (Christian Bale to)
5) Equilibrium (Sean Bean to)
6) Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Hugo Weaving to)
7) V for Vendetta (John Hurt -- thanks Momma for that! -- to)
8) Alien (Signourney Weaver to)
9) The Village (Joaquin Phoenix to)
10) Gladiator (Richard Harris to)
11) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Alan Rickman to)
12) Die Hard!!
We actually worked from both ends, and tried to get from LOTR to Gladiator in 3 moves. It was all thanks to mom, who came up with the John Hurt connection. So, we spent the next week popping these movies in (and, honestly, hardly watching them). The most fun was actually the making of the list. Next year, we will be adding in complications -- like getting movies from certain genres or picking several movies we want included. And, of course, we'll be starting with a different movie. But will always be finding our way to Die Hard.
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