Last week, in a grand gesture to mark the start of the holiday season, my fiancée popped in "Christmas With the Kranks". This 2004 Tim Allen film received a dismal 5 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics often complained about how the screenplay clumsily combined lifeless Middle American sentimentality with the kind of visual gags one might encounter in Progressive commercials. There's a particular sequence where Jamie Lee Curtis battles for the last ham in a grocery store, ending with her crashing through a snowman-adorned display of Milano cookies. While "Christmas With the Kranks" won't be making it into the Criterion Collection anytime soon, and there are undoubtedly better ways to spend a winter evening, if you hold the season dear like we do and plan to have a Christmas movie on screen throughout the holiday, you must be selective with the heavy hitters and save them for the prime slots on the calendar. In other words, if you want to watch "Home Alone" on December 22nd, you might have to endure a night with Tim Allen on December 5th.

Discovering the Christmas Movie Classics

We are all well-acquainted with the Christmas movies that get our hearts racing. According to mainstream millennial opinion, the Mount Rushmore of Christmas movies includes "Elf", "A Charlie Brown Christmas", the Chuck Jones-animated "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", and the aforementioned "Home Alone". Each of us has our personal favorites alongside this core quartet. Personally, I hold a special place for the superior Tim Allen Christmas film "The Santa Clause", which is also laden with conservative sentimentality and presents a strong anti-therapy thesis. (When I was growing up, this tape hardly left our VCR.) I'm sure some older readers have a fondness for "A Christmas Carol", despite its flaws (sorry). I've even heard of some ill-intentioned maniacs who claim that the Jim Carrey Grinch is the top entry in the Seussiverse - further evidence of a lost and godless society.The point here is that you already know the Christmas movies that get you excited. And since anticipation is the essence of the season, especially when you're no longer a child and a jolting dose of psychotropic nostalgia is more satisfying than the ritual of unwrapping gifts, it's best to stick to the B-list movies until Christmas Day is just around the corner. Trust me, you don't want to end up like Slate's culture editor Forrest Wickman. After learning that a friend had never seen "Elf", he rewatched the movie with them before the tinsel had even been taken out of the attic. "This was a great service to my friend, but it has been a disaster for me personally," said Wickman. "Now, if I want to watch a great, family-friendly Christmas comedy, what am I supposed to watch? Thank God I still have 'Home Alone', but after that, it quickly descends into mediocrity. There's no way I'm watching 'Spirited'."

Exploring the Outer Reaches of the Christmas Movie Canon

If you ask me, the first week of December is the perfect time to delve into the remote corners of the Christmas movie universe. You could choose something on the boorish side, like "Bad Santa", or perhaps the turgid "Love Actually", a film with a rather dark undertone. As you move into more respected selections, you might consider "The Holiday", which, in my opinion, is longer than all three "Lord of the Rings" movies combined. This ensures that the presentation of the Mount Rushmore is saved for the sacred Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve Eve. These scheduling decisions will become increasingly important as time goes on. Netflix is determined to release a slew of spare, CW-ish, 78-minute-long Christmas movies every year, all of which often star Vanessa Hudgens. Some of these movies are moderately decent if you squint (like "Happiest Season"), while others create a postironic vortex of fandom (people seem to like the "Hot Frosty" movie, and my fiancée is a staunch defender of the "Princess Switch" trilogy). The rest simply fade away. Remember "Rob Lowe's Holiday in the Wild"? Of course, you don't!The Christmas movie catalog is expanding at an unprecedented rate. In 2019 alone, a ridiculous 17 new Netflix productions entered the canon, greatly increasing the junk quotient. But what does this mean? It means there's more soft-focus Christmas-flavored pabulum to keep you occupied before reaching the main event. And in my opinion, that's more of a blessing than a curse.

Embracing the Holiday Tradition of Watching

Of course, you might argue that instead of watching any of this stuff - "Hot Frosty", "Christmas With the Kranks", or [shudder] "Fred Claus" - you could take a more sensible approach and simply not watch anything other than the Christmas movies you already love. And you know what? That's a valid point. I can't argue with that stance. However, one of the hallmarks of December, at least in my family, was to keep a mind-dulling stream of holiday content on the TV at all times. I think of the 24/7 Christmas marathons hosted by Comedy Central and the Disney Channel. Or the joyous empty days of winter break when I somehow managed to watch "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" twice in one afternoon. Or the legendary Chrismukkah oeuvre of "The O.C.", and the trips to crowded theaters to endure feverish slop with Grandma and Grandpa. (I'm pretty sure we paid for tickets to see both "The Santa Clause 2" and "3". Chilling.) The Christmas season is about connectedness, kinship, and the important things in life. But don't be mistaken - it has always been about watching a whole lot of stuff, of varying quality, while the world comes to a glorious standstill.So, please join me in my discipline this year. Let us be diligent in rationing the Yuletide joy so that every night feels like Christmas. We only get a limited number of Decembers in our lives, and if I need to spend some time with Tim Allen to make them last longer? Then so be it.