This is Post 1 of 4 this afternoon.

We begin with wishes to all MonSFFen, their families, and the club’s friends for a very Merry Christmas, a Joyful Holiday season, and a Happy New Year!

INTRODUCTION

Note that we’ll be chatting on ZOOM for the next few hours and, with no formal programming scheduled, rerunning on this site a few of our best Holiday presentations, resurrected from MonSFFA’s very first online Christmas e-gathering of December 2020. Think of this as our take on the broadcasting of perennial Holiday specials, not on TV, but right here on the club’s Web site!

You may recall that in December 2020, with infections rising and vaccines still months away, we were about to head into lockdown, just as the Holiday season was getting underway. And worse was to come before things would begin to turn around, although we’ve been at this for almost three years, and we’re still not completely back to normal!

But let’s focus on the positive; this afternoon is about MonSFFA club members and friends-in-fandom getting together online to celebrate the season. So let’s get right to it!

JOIN THIS AFTERNOON’S ZOOM-CHAT!

Here’s how to join our ZOOM-chat today: just click here and follow the prompts: This Afternoon’s MonSFFA e-Meeting on ZOOM

If you’re not fully equipped to ZOOM by computer, you can also join in by phone (voice only); in the Montreal area, the toll-free number to call is: 1-438-809-7799. If you’re from out of town, find your Zoom call-in number here: International Call-In Numbers

Also, have this information on hand as you may be asked to enter it:

Meeting ID: 899 4439 2961
Passcode: 611313

As we gather online again this Holiday season, we remind local members that the club is also hosting an in-person Christmas Luncheon next Saturday, December 10. More about that later, but this afternoon, we’ll be putting up posts every hour until 4:00PM. So we’re pretty much all ZOOM today; do pop in and join the conversation.

All posts will also be available concurrently on MonSFFA’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MonSFFA), however, note that the interface best suited for taking in this meeting is this very Web site.

Up first, we present again club vice-president Keith Braithwaite’s list of perennial Holiday Favourites on Screen, followed by a reworked and updated Trivia Challenge for the Festive Season:

HOLIDAY FAVOURITES ON SCREEN: KEITH’S LIST OF MUST-SEE VIEWING FOR THE SEASON!

Countless Christmas movies and television specials have been produced over the decades, with fresh installments added every year. There are far too many to watch over the typical Holiday season. Anyway, most of them can be classified employing Sturgeon’s Law! But there are those few that bear repeated viewing, year after year, never ceasing to stir in one sentimental feelings entirely apt for this most wonderful time of the year. We all have our favourites, some fondly remembered from childhood, others more recent.

In my case, there a handful that I absolutely must watch each December. They are, in my humble opinion, unrivaled classics that help spark in me annually something that I suppose must be the Christmas spirit. They warm my heart, bring a smile, elicit joy, and get me all fired up for tree trimming and gift wrapping and Christmas baking and all the other fabulous things associated with the festive season that I so enjoy.

Here’s my list, in no particular order:

 It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)—A perennial favourite on TV at Christmastime, this is the story of George Bailey, a fundamentally good and decent man who has always put his own lofty ambitions aside to accommodate his family and friends, all of this outlined in flashback through the first half of the film. Then Bailey finds that his small-town building and loan business is suddenly short $8000 on Christmas Eve! Scandal, ruin, and shame vested upon his wife and children are sure to follow, he fears, and despairing, he opts for suicide, convinced that his family and friends would be better off without him. His guardian angel is dispatched from Heaven to save the man. The pacing is, perhaps, a little too relaxed for modern audiences but stick with it and you will be rewarded with a heart-warming, life-affirming, lightly comedic, part romance, part drama, and part science fiction movie. You read that right: science fiction! For in a chilling, noire-ish alternate-universe sequence, the angel seeks to show Bailey just how valuable a gift is life, allowing him to see how things would have played out for his family and friends had he never been born.

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)—Peanuts was a favourite comic strip of mine growing up, so that probably plays a part in influencing my opinion of this simple, sincere, funny, moving, and endearing cartoon. In later years I came to appreciate the unassuming yet arresting artwork paired so beautifully with Vince Guaraldi’s outstanding jazz score and his unorthodox take on traditional Christmas music. Commentary on the rampant commercialization of Christmas is deftly handled with humour so as not to come across as too preachy. And when Charlie Brown asks in exasperation if there’s anyone who knows what Christmas is all about, Linus steps up with a wisdom beyond his years, making for a marvellously memorable moment.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)—The other animated Holiday special that is an annual must-see in our house brings to life the wacky world of Dr. Suess in vibrant colour. This is the enchanting tale of the dour Grinch’s emotional journey from wretched recluse and hater of all things Christmas to epiphany and jubilant embrace of the whole thing! Like A Charlie Brown Christmas, there’s an anti-consumerist message, here, avowing that Christmas “doesn’t come from a store,” but that it “means a little bit more.”

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)— Ludicrous plots, inane dialogue, stilted acting, ridiculously amateurish sets, costumes, and special effects, all on a dollar-store budget! If you enjoy cheap, low-rent flicks like Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) or Robot Monster (1953), you’ll be thrilled to know that there exists such a so-bad-it’s-good movie for the festive season! Santa Claus and a couple of Earth children are kidnapped by Martians and brought to the red planet, whose leader seeks to bring Mars’ melancholy youth out of their doldrums. And thus does Santa Claus “conquer” his captors not with arms, but with the spirit of Christmas.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)—The movies of my parents’ generation frequently aired on television when I was a youngster, affording me the opportunity to enjoy seasonal classics like this one, the light-hearted tale of a white-bearded old fellow named Kris Kringle, hired as a department store Santa Claus at Macy’s in New York City, who claims to be the real thing! A young Natalie Wood plays a little girl whose mother has brought her up to rebuff fanciful fairy tales of Santa Claus and the like, but over the course of the film, she comes to believe that the old man really is who he says he is, and so regains her lost childhood innocence. Her mother and the other adults at Macy’s are not quite so sure but they, too, eventually begin to come around. The centerpiece of the story is the court hearing instigated to determine if Mr. Kringle is, in fact, the one and only Santa Claus, as he claims, or is mentally ill and in need of hospitalization. His sympathetic lawyer is the mother’s romantic interest and there’s a love story playing out, here, as the principal plot unfolds. This is a feel-good film if ever there was one!

Die Hard (1988)—An office Christmas party, garlands and decorations hung about, eggnog, hostages, gunfire, anti-tank missiles, explosions, and John McClane versus Hans Gruber! Must be Christmas at Nakatomi Plaza. A solid action movie that has been adopted by fans as a modern Holiday delight. Yippee-ki-yay!

King Kong (2005)—Peter Jackson’s magnificent remake includes a scene of Kong and Ann cavorting on a frozen pond in New York City’s Central Park at Christmastime, which is enough to justify a viewing and permit me to get my Kong on!

I SAW MOMMY QUIZZING SANTA CLAUS: A REWORKED AND UPDATED TRIVIA CHALLENGE FOR THE FESTIVE SEASON

Christmas movies and television specials are not generally considered SF/F, but any story centered on a jolly old elf capable of hitting every household on the planet to deliver so many gifts in one night has got to be rocking some kind of time-altering technology, right? Sounds sci-fi to us! And magical creatures like flying reindeer and snowmen come to life by means of an old silk hat must certainly be categorized under the fantasy heading!

Many sci-fi television series have featured episodes that play on Holiday themes, from The Twilight Zone (“Night of the Meek,” “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” among others) and animated Batman (“Christmas with the Joker,” “Holiday Knights”) to Quantum Leap (“A Little Miracle,” “Promised Land,”) and Doctor Who (“The Christmas Invasion,” “A Christmas Carol,” “Last Christmas,” to name a few)!

Test your knowledge of Christmas and Holiday films, TV specials, and things festive with this sci-fi flavoured trivia challenge, which we’ve reworked from the original we posted as part of our 2020 Holiday e-Meeting, with a number of new questions also added. Answers will be provided in our closing Post 4 of 4 at 4:00PM this afternoon. Good luck!

1) In the atrociously bad 1964 “Yuletide science fiction fantasy” Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, what are the names of the two Earth children kidnapped by the Martians?

2) 1978’s Star Wars Holiday Special included an animated sequence entitled “The Faithful Wookiee,” which introduced a new character to Star Wars canon, bounty hunter Boba Fett. Name the Canadian animation studio that George Lucas enlisted to produce this “Faithful Wookiee” cartoon.

3) Rankin/Bass’ 1964 stop-motion animated Christmas classic, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, was filmed in Japan under the direction of animation supervisor Tadahito “Tad” Mochinaga. The voice work and songs, however, were recorded elsewhere; where was the show’s soundtrack recorded?

4) What is the clever postal code created by Canada Post for the North Pole?

5) The Big Heart, My Heart Tells Me, and It’s Only Human—these were working titles for which classic Christmas film?

6) Name the only three Christmas movies to have been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

7) How many ghosts appear to surly Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol?

8) What is briefly visible on Katrina “Kate” Andrich’s wrist as she rides her father’s cab home in the fantasy/rom-com Last Christmas (2019)?

9) He famously voiced an animated space hero, she made her mark as a scream queen; name these two actors, and the 2004 Christmas movie in which they star.

10) What former “James Bond” starred as the bishop in Christmas classic The Bishop’s Wife?

11) What child actress was featured as a young family member in two back-to-back classic Christmas films?

12) What is notable about supporting player Alvin Greenman, who portrayed young Macy’s Department Store janitor Alfred in the original Miracle on 34th Street?

13) In the Lost in Space episode “Return From Outer Space,” against his father’s express orders, young Will Robinson employs dangerous alien technology to matter-transfer himself across the gulf of space and back to Earth, materializing in a small town at Christmastime. His plan is to alert Alpha Control at Cape Kennedy of his family’s location on a distant, barren planet so that a rescue ship might be dispatched. But no one in town believes that he’s a member of the famous First Family in Space, long missing and now presumed dead! In what U.S. state is located the small town to which Will beams himself?

14) Who wrote the book that served as inspiration for the movie Christmas with the Kranks?

15) Gimmel, Nun, Hey, and Shin are the Hebrew letters traditionally inscribed on a dreidel, one on each of the four sides. A dreidel is a spinning top associated with Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. The letters stand for the phrase “Nes gadôl hayah sham,” or in English, “A great miracle happened there.” In Israel, the phrase is modified slightly to read “Nes gadôl hayah poh,” or “A great miracle happened here.” But what are Kimar, Rigna, Stobo, and Shim?

16) Because nothing says Yuletide like math, in “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” how many presents are given altogether?

17) Name all of Santa’s reindeer!

18) In It’s a Wonderful Life, a distraught and suicidal George Bailey is certain that his family and friends would have been better off had he never been born, and in a chilling alternate-history sequence, his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody, allows him a look at just such a scenario in a bid to convince George otherwise. The two stop for a drink at a bar George finds markedly changed from the friendly watering hole he’d always known. While Clarence considers ordering a flaming rum punch, he finally settles on “a mulled wine, heavy on the cinnamon, light on the troubles!” George, on the other hand, asks for a stiff drink more suited to his current mood; what does he order?

19) Last Christmas is based on the Wham song of the same name, written and co-performed by British pop star George Michael. Though released in 2019, in what year is the film primarily set?

20) What Christmas song plays over the end-credits of Die Hard (1988)?

The next post will be up at 2:00PM