As soon as December comes....

We're in the first day of a new month, and with that month being December, it means Christmas on the 25. And Christmas movies throughout the month. Some places started well before Thanksgiving, but I'm not really into Christmas before Thanksgiving. (Other than the fact that I've done all my Christmas shopping on Amazon already, except for the bottle of wine for Dad.)

TCM claims that it's running Christmas double features in prime time on Sundays, and that's true as far as it goes. Tonight sees the 1951 (Alastair Sim) version of Scrooge tonight at 8:00 PM, followed by The Bishop's Wife at 10:00 PM. They're both often shown, but to be fair they're movies that deserve that many showings because of how good they both are.

In fact, however, it's not just prime time double features on TCM. The Christmas movies are starting in the afternoon. If memory serves, The Lady in the Lake at noon is set around Christmas, while Little Women (the 1949 color version with Elizabeth Taylor and others) definitely has Christmas scenes. And the following two movies, Holiday Affair at 4:00 PM and The Shop Around the Corner at 6:00 PM are most definitely Christmas films.

One could also argue that the prime-time lineup isn't just a double feature, since there's time after Scrooge for the 1945 two-reeler Star in the Night, a retelling of the Three Wise Men story.