The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Categories: Editor's Blog, Featured
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By Elke Feuer, author of For the Love of Jazz

For the Love of JazzAs a romance author I’m fascinated by everyone’s love story: their meet cute (how they met), and what keeps them together through the challenges. Most romance stories have a happy ending, but it’s the character’s journey and how their love story will turn out that keeps us coming back for more.

Christmas is my favorite time of the year, mainly because people are a little nicer to each other. There’s joy, peace, love, drifting in the air. Then of course there are the Christmas movies. Like any great book, a great movie stays with us and it’s a pleasure to watch them every Christmas. Here are my must watch for the holidays.

It’s a Wonderful Life
A classic that follows the life of George Bailey and the doubts he faces about his life and existence. He gets the chance to see what his life is like without him and finds out he really did make a difference to the lives of the people around him. It’s a delightful story of family, community, hope and second chances. It’s a great reminder that we do matter.

The Holiday
Two women switch houses and cars during the Christmas holidays, and get more than they bargained for. Unexpected friendship and a chance at love, something both were trying to avoid. Heartwarming, sweet and funny, it’s a journey to triumphing over your fears and obstacles to find love.

Love Actually
It’s by no means your traditional Christmas movie, with parts you have to cover the eyes and ears of the kids, but what I love most is the various types of love it depicts: sibling, young, lost, new, old, forbidden, and even unrequited. It shows the difficult decisions people make to keep their love, let it go, fight for it, or make an ass of yourself for it. It’s laugh out loud funny, sad, and endearing. A reminder there’s many kinds of love and we’re fortunate to have any one of them.

Love is the main reason I write romance. Love of the characters that talk in my head, the stories they won’t shut up about until I write it down, and the places they take me.

What is your favorite Christmas movie? What about it keeps you coming back for more?

4 thoughts on “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”

  1. Great post, Elke! I have two favorites: The Bishop’s Wife – Cary Grant, David Niven, and Loretta Young… and more Cary Grant! What’s not to love? – and White Christmas – Vera Ellen, Rosemary Clooney (George’s auntie), Der Bingle and Danny Kaye, all singing the song that has come to epitomize ‘Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow’!

  3. Beautiful sentiment, Elke. Isn’t it the truth. We’re in this for the love of love :)

    We had watching Love Actually on our to do list Christmas day along with playing euchre. Neither of which happened. It’s much to busy a day preparing for company. I loved The Holiday too. Great Christmas movies!

  4. I really enjoyed ‘The Holiday’, although I’d kind of forgotten it was a Christmas film! My favourite for some years was ‘Olive the Other Reindeer’ because I love its positive message, but it’s recently been overtaken by ‘Arthur Christmas’ – I suppose it’s similar in the way Arthur starts out as a misfit but gets to see himself differently because of the Christmas present that’s nearly left behind. Two super-sweet animations – Christmas always seems like a time for cartoons to me.

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