This year, I'm on top of things. Usually, around mid-December I start looking through the DVR list, wanting to tape my favorite Christmas programs. Doh! Now, why in the world would any silly person think that they would air the Christmas programs around Christmas? Well, that silly person would be wrong.

So this year I started checking out the DVR in November.

• I've already taped the original, 1947, black and white, Natalie Wood and Maureen O'Hara Miracle on 34th Street.
• Tonight I recorded Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
• (I think it was yesterday) I recorded the 1966, Chuck Jones and Boris Karloff How the Grinch Stole Christmas (see my icon).

Now I just need to find a few others to set them to record:

• Frosty the Snowman
• It's A Wonderful Life
• The Year Without A Santa Claus (source of Heat Miser and Freeze Miser and their fabulous song:
  
  which I remember very well from my childhood)
• Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (gotta love a young, red-haired Kris Kringle)
• Die Hard? Do they air Die Hard at Christmas time? Because I love me some Alan Rickman with the smart ass remarks.
• I might even be willing to watch Home Alone, as I first saw it on a flight from London to L.A. on Christmas Day in 1991 -- in the company of some very festive and friendly fellow passengers with whom I shared a great holiday camaraderie for the 12 hours of the flight -- and it therefore brings back good memories.

Now if only someone still aired Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol and The Little Drummer Boy (which I loved as a child without noticing anything religious about it, but which has since pretty much disappeared).

We already own The Nightmare Before Christmas on DVD, so there's no need to hunt that one down. :)