We’re Gonna Have the Hap-Hap-Happiest Christmas Since Bing Crosby Tap-danced with Danny Kaye

Christmas movies are the comfort food of the holidays, with multiple days off work or school and temperature too cold to actually go outside during the Christmas vacation, it is easy to sit in front of the television with a blanket on and watch some holiday fare, and since ‘tis the season any movie with snow will do. There are few Christmas movies that are legitimately good any time of year and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is one of the few and this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame.

Like the first two Vacation movies, Chevy Chase (Fletch) and Beverly D’Angelo (The House Bunny) reprise themselves as the married Griswolds. And like the previous two movies, their children are played by entirely different actors; this time inexplicably Audrey became older than Rusty for the first in the film and were played by the relatively unknown at the time Johnny Galecki (Suicide Kings) and Juliette Lewis (Natural Born Killers). There was also the returning Randy Quaid (who could not make it to Europe in the previous film) who torments the Griswolds in their own home this time around.

But like every Vacation movie, no matter how many people they try to bring in to steal his thunder, the star of the movie remains Chevy Chase as the bumbling father who thinks he has a chance with a younger woman and has one massive breakdown per movie because everything that could wrong does. And there were plenty of reasons for a break down this time around from unannounced guests to a light show that does not work right. But it is the lack of a Christmas bonus (or more specifically one that turns into jello) that sends him, and Cousin Eddie, who kidnaps his Scrooge of a boss and his wife, over the edge to high comedic results.

My fondest memory of the film happened in high school when my math teacher decided to show the movie before our Christmas vacation and “forgot” to bring the School Board edit version and instead watched the full unedited version instead (actually this was a common occurrence of my teacher as we also got the real version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in English one time). For those that do not have cool enough teachers, you can catch the movie playing on ABC Family this month on 12/7 and 12/12 both at 9:00.