My Favourite Festive Films

After the midwinter solstice, there's nothing I like doing more than spending the rest of the festive holiday relaxing with friends and family - more often than not in front of the telly or watching a movie.

There are some good things on BBC1 on December 25 this year, with a Dr Who special at 6pm and Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death at 8.30pm.

But, like most people, I also like to rent a few DVDs and I'm thinking about getting out a few of my favourite yuletide movies that have a pagan theme.

One movie I can always rewatch is Disney's Beauty And The Beast. It might not be specifically pagan, but it is the greatest love story in a cartoon.

It also has a strong female lead character and makes the point perfectly that good looks don't necessarily make a person nice, while things that seem ugly or scary can really be treasures in disguise.

The Box of Delights is a wonderful children's story by John Masefield that was made into a TV movie back in 1984. It is about a boy who enters a world of magic when he accepts a box from an old Punch and Judy man on his way home for the school holidays.

Although the ending is a bit Christian, it is a kind of Christianity that happily embraces Christmas's pagan roots, as characters from ancient mythology help the boy in his struggle to outwit the forces of darkness before sunrise on Christmas Day.

You can buy a boxed set from Amazon for about £9.99 containing the Box of Delights and two other classic TV versions of famous novels, called Children's Christmas Classics - Snow Queen/The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe/Box Of Delights

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is another of my favourite films and it fits in with the idea of Halloween preceding Christmas in the wheel of the year. In the movie, Jack Skellington, king of Halloween Town, discovers Christmas Town and decides to masquerade as Santa, with disastrous results, before everything turns out happily in the end.

Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, which was made into a movie by Sky in 2006, is in some ways similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas in that Death tries to masquerade as the Hogfather, the equivalent of Santa in the fantasy realm of The Discworld.

However, it delves far deeper into the original meaning of the midwinter festival as an ancient ritual of death and rebirth and is deliberately pagan in theme.

Bambi the Disney classic from 1942 for me sums up what paganism is about more than any other movie.

It begins in winter, with the birth of Bambi, a baby deer, and goes through the cycle of the seasons as Bambi grows up, makes friends, falls in love and experiences loss and hardship before taking his place as an adult stag and a prince of the forest.

It is a wonderful movie about learning the lessons of life andf can be enjoyed by everyone, of every age and every religion.

What are your favourite pagan movies to watch over the yule holidays? Leave a comment below.
Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765458/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086675/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107688/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765458/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034492/
Children's Christmas Classics - Snow Queen/The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe/Box Of Delights
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Beauty And The Beast [Disney 1992]
Hogfather [2006]
Bambi [Disney 1942]