48 hours of Christmas movies

Or, at least, that's what we're going to be getting from TCM for Christmas, starting tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM with All Mine to Give, and continuing through to Wednesday, when the prime time lineup brings us one final night of Fred Astaire as Star of the Month, while the daytime lineup is relgious themed movies, but not specifically Christmas themed. Speaking of the latter, I suppose I ought to mention the silent verion of Ben-Hur: A Story of the Christ, which is on at midnight tonight as this week's Silent Sunday Nights selection.

One short airing tomorrow that's worth seeing is technically titled Loews Christmas Greeting, although it's really Christmas greetings from the Hardy family. You can catch it at 11:32 AM tomorrow, or just after Love Finds Andy Hardy, beginning at 10:00 AM Monday. The short basically is nothing more than the members of the Hardy family coming down the stairs on Christmas morning to find their Christmas gifts, and then thanking the movie goers for turning out at the cinema palaces and watching them. And yet, there's something incredibly charming about it. It's commonplace for casts of TV shows, or families in family businesses, or local TV news, to do little blurbs running maybe 15 seconds, in which they're posed like some sort of family portrait, wishing viewers happy holidays. But nothing this elaborate. And there aren't movie series these days that could do a thing.