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Sweden's tradition of watching Donald Duck cartoons on Christmas Eve.

http://www.slate.com/id/2239252

Wow, that's almost a "The Gods Must Be Crazy" story. To have this random show plop down into a foreign country's Christmas tradition and stick so mightily...

That is just so random.

It is, but so is the reason that It's a Wonderful Life is a holiday staple in the United States.

Copyright was mistakenly allowed to lapse. So TV stations could play it without paying royalties. So they showed it. After years of showing it, people got attached to a miserably treacly movie and decades later is comes to embody the event.

Many of our traditions are simply things that for some accident of history happened several times in a row and then the masses decide that because it happened three straight years it must now happen every year for eternity or somehow it is indicative of the end of society and loss of social cohesion.

I talked with a Swedish friend, he confirmed it.

Swedish people watch Donald Duck cartoons because Donald f*cking rocks!
Woohoo! I knew I liked Swedish men for a reason.
:)

Well, that'll explain why I get the urge to watch Donald Duck around Christmas time. :cool:

Aww, It's a Wonderful Life is a great movie, and it's actually a Christmas movie, so it seems more appropriate to me...but it's hard to not be biased.

I can confirm this one. The part of my family that still lives in Sweden is so happy that my favorite Disney character is Donald Duck, too :)

The evolution of a (Donald) Duck?

And even a video!

Reindeer s**t. It's a Christmas movie that reaffirms the meaning, for a lot of us, of the season; family, loved ones, community, being happy with the life you have, etc. Perhaps you don't enjoy it, and that is perfectly fine, no problem, but those of us who do cherish this movie don't simply do so because of some quirk of history, so go belittle somebody else' traditions. We're perfectly happy with ours.

Of course that's not the complete reason why people like the movie. It is pretty much the complete reason why it became a Christmas tradition.

And I don't consider saying that to be belittling (saying it isn't a good movie, though, is somewhat belittling) any more than it is belittling to say that many of the hard core American Christmas traditions are accidents of history created through immigration patterns in the 18th and early 19th century. But the fact is that while many people liked the movie for the first 30 years after its release, watching it didn't become a Christmas tradition until the copyright lapsed, TV stations noticed they could play it for nearly free, and so they began to do so. I'm sure it is purely a coincidence that as this happened the perception of the movie shifted from mixed to nearly universal regard.

But if it makes you feel better since you're so touchy that your holiday movie be respected, yesterday they did most of an hour on the movie on NPR's Talk of the Nation and one of the guests suggested a way to read the film that makes a lot of sense to me and I hadn't considered before. Next time I get an opportunity I'll watch it with that perspective and maybe it will change my feeling.

Besides, what kind of asshole are you to **** on my Christmas tradition of ****ting on other people's Christmas traditions. How insensitive of you, I may cry. And possibly stamp my feet a bit. And lose bladder control.

Whatever Alex. I'll enjoy my Christmas, and you enjoy your pseudo-intellectual ivory tower holiday. Cheers and Merry Christmas. Or humbug. Whatever.

Hey Alex, is that the first time someone called you a pseudo-intellectual?

I, for one, enjoy treacle. Well, the figurative kind, at least, having never had the real stuff. I mean, kind of explains the general consensus around here for a fondness of hanging around on a movie-set turn-of-the-twentieth-century small-town Main Street with tears in our eyes while fake snow blows at us and speakers blare the most sappy version of White Christmas ever recorded.

Nothing wrong with liking treacle and nothing wrong with calling it what it is. Now play nice, it's Christmas. Where's Steve? I wanna give him a hug.

/rerail/ Husker Dü! /end rerail/