If there is one thing I can always count on during Thanksgiving break, it is the designated time after dinner where the only thing anyone can do is sit on the couch and feel full. As my family and I sit on our powder blue couch after the mightiest meal of the year, someone inevitably gets up and begins sifting through the mountain of DVDs we keep in our living room. Usually, after about fifteen minutes of hemming and hawing, we decide on a movie like “Holiday Inn” with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. This time, my sister-in-law pulls out “Home Alone,” and there is a bit of a kerfuffle about whether or not watching a Christmas movie is allowed, a common debate in our household. We end up watching it anyway.
The best Christmas movies are movies that are about, well, Christmas. Whether it is a movie that speaks to the holiness of the origins of the holiday — like “A Charlie Brown Christmas” — or references the joys and headaches of spending time with your family — “Home Alone” being the pinnacle of hair-brained family chaos and heart — Christmas movies have a reverence for what it means to be human. But what does it mean for something to be a Thanksgiving movie?
Thanksgiving does not have the benefit of the Christmas spirit to make the holiday magical. What it does have are traditions. So here are a few “traditions” that will make up my family’s Thanksgiving streaming guide next week.
The Watch: “Holiday Inn”
There are few better ways to ease into the Christmas season than to watch a movie about all of the holidays at once. Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire star as musical performers Hardy and Hanover, partners in business and rivals in love. When Hardy (Crosby) decides to quit show business to run a farm in Connecticut, what he finds instead is a second chance in the form of Linda Mason, played by the lovely Marjorie Reynolds. Will he be able to keep her and his new “Holiday Inn” away from prying eyes? This musical marathon packs enough holiday spirit for you to keep watching year round.
Stream on Prime Video and Vudu.
The Watch: “The Philadelphia Story”
Nothing says “family holiday” like a classic movie, and few things say “classic movie” better than the combination of Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Inspired by real-life socialite Helen Hope Montgomery Scott, “The Philadelphia Story” tells the tale of one woman’s wedding, the journalist who comes to cover it, and the ex-husband who seems intent on ruining her day. But you won’t be able to guess who she’s marrying until the final scene. This witty, romantic shell game pits Stewart against Grant as it asks whether a woman really wants to be worshipped.
Stream on Prime Video and HBO Max.
The Watch: “The Sound of Music”
From the mountains of Austria comes the now-familiar narrative of Maria, a woman who is remarkably ill-suited to be a nun, and Captain Von Trapp, a naval man unused to raising his own children. Behind the celebrated music and tender romance of this Best Picture winner is the story of the pieces of familiarity — a song, a flower, a mountain — that make a country a “homeland,” and the lengths that some will go to in order to keep it. At its core, this iconic film is about the strength of family and how it can overcome the most brutal of odds, even the pressure of the Nazi regime.
Stream on Disney+.
What a “Thanksgiving” movie is truly depends on who you are and what traditions make the holiday special to you. If that involves watching a Christmas movie before Thanksgiving is truly over, then it is, in a way, still a Thanksgiving tradition. That’s what matters. We count on the small things we do, year by year, that bring us a sense of familiar stability, no matter where we are throughout the rest of the year. It is the same reason that we watch movies over and over again, even as we have well and thoroughly memorized the script. We want to watch familiar faces and stories with happy endings. These movies are emotional comfort food, stuffing for the soul.
And I plan to stuff myself silly.
