For many years, my family had a Thanksgiving holiday tradition of watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Since the kids have all grown, it was hit or miss, mostly the latter.

Of late, I've made it kind of my personal tradition to watch Die Hard, because "It's not Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off the Nakatomi Tower."

We spent last Thanksgiving up in DC with Mitzi's older daughter. Their infant son was sleeping when we watched it at their place, and it was a fun time, a la Mystery Science Theater 3000, or Rocky Horror, as we commented on all the absurdities of the film.

This Thanksgiving, Mitzi's younger daughter was here with us, and her two-and-a-half year old wasn't going to sleep anytime soon, and watching the movie after was kind of incompatible with her staying asleep. So we watched Kung Fu Panda instead.

They went home on Saturday, so Mitzi and I watched Die Hard on Saturday night. With just the two of us, it's not quite as much fun as Mitzi doesn't seem to enjoy my commentary as much as I do. Alas. And it's kind of bittersweet because of what Bruce Willis is going through, and missing Alan Rickman.

Which brings me to another holiday film we watched for the first time in several years, Love Actually. I watched that movie every year for several years back in the 'aughts and early 'teens; but it can get to be a bit too much after a while. It's a little hard to believe it's been 20 years since that movie was released.

We enjoyed it very much, and I think Bill Nighy's character is the funniest. I'm glad he's still with us and doing some remarkable work; LIving and Their Finest being two relatively recent movies featuring him that Mitzi and I enjoyed.

We wrapped up the holiday film festival last night with another classic I hadn't watched in a fairly long time, Grumpy Old Men. Hard to believe that Jack Lemmon was only two years older than I am when he made that movie.

I'm sure there will be more holiday movies between now and the new year, but it feels like we got off to a nice start.