01/22/2020

GGB Reno’s December “Holiday Humor” Brunch

For GGB Reno’s 4th Annual geeky white elephant holiday brunch, we decided on hosting a “Festivus for the rest of us,” celebrating all forms of holiday-themed humor!

Introductions went around the table, as our 16 attendees made merry, ranting and raving about their favorite holiday movies, TV specials, albums, songs, comedy skits, and other geeky pop culture references. While taking notes, officers filled up 3 pages just listing everything that was mentioned!

Movies

Gold standards like Elf, A Christmas Story, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Gremlins, Scrooged, The Muppets Christmas Carol, and Die Hard (fight us if you don’t consider this both a comedy AND a Christmas movie) received many mentions. Less well known but equally loved films like Toys, Iron Man 3, Tokyo Godfathers, Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Trading Places, and even hilarious holiday horror movies like Jack Frost – the killer snowman one, NOT the Michael Keaton one! – and Krampus also deserved a mention. And a truly shocking tangent developed when we discussed the 1986 Jim Henson movie “The Christmas Toy,” which was disturbingly close to Toy Story in so many ways that we decided there’s no way Pixar didn’t rip it off! We also decided, now that we are older, there is NO WAY the Home Alone movies are appropriate for kids!

Television

One of the most revered holiday specials of all time

It would take a year to list all the TV specials that we went on about. Here’s a short list – A Colbert Christmas, the long multitude of amazing Muppets Christmas specials (list here), the Community Christmas episodes, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Duck Tales’ “Last Christmas” episode and yes, even that classic celebration of Life Day, The Star Wars Holiday Special itself. Definitely a comedy. We also (quite accidentally) discovered that Mel Brooks once held a holiday movie marathon called “Oy! To the World!”

Music

Turns out there are also a surprising number of geeky holiday albums and songs, including A Very Spidey Christmas (courtesy of Into the Spiderverse), John Denver & The Muppets’ A Christmas Together, Weird Al’s Christmas songs, Allen Sherman’s The 12 Gifts of Christmas, the Lovecraft Society’s multiple holiday themed albums, and Monty Python’s Christmas in Heaven from The Meaning of Life.