There’s nothing like tradition around the holiday season. While those modern holiday movies seem great with their famous actors and special effects, there’s nothing like watching the classic, stop motion and animation movies that we saw as children.

SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN

There can’t be Christmas without the origin story of the Father of Christmas, right? It’s all about a boy named Kris Kringle that just wants to deliver his adopted family’s toys to Sombertown, where toys have been outlawed by the Burgermeister Meisterburger. Kris tells the town’s children to leave their socks drying by the fireplace at night so he can sneak toys to them during the night. Eventually, Kris marries the beautiful schoolteacher and they open a workshop in the North Pole with his adopted elf family. Once a year, he sneaks into Sombertown to deliver presents until the ban is lifted, and soon enough, he is bringing presents all around the world to children. It’s a nice story, maybe not what every parent ever lied to their kid about the origin of Santa, but it always seems to be the least popular and I never knew why. Santa teaches the Winter Warlock to walk using the power of song and instruction!

FROSTY THE SNOWMAN

We all know the story and the song of dear, old Frosty: A terrible magician with a magical hat in the hands of school children prove to do wonderful things. Who cares that it isn’t a stop-motion animation, it’s a classic. This movie has really shown the kindness that comes from people The children in this movie aren’t very old, and Frosty himself is a young creation. There is a great innocence about the movie, with people who genuinely want to help each other. I give my dear Frosty a good thumbs up this holiday season.

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER

Rudolph is just as popular as Frosty for both their movie and their song. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was based on the song by the same name, but the movie gives more detail to the story in the song. Besides just the misfit of Rudolph, there is the elf Hermey that

wants to be a dentist and Yukon Cornelius, who calls himself as the Greatest Prospector of the North, but has never found any precious silver or gold. Together, they try to find the Island of Misfit Toys that would welcome them, but are even misfits there because they are not toys (By the way: who didn’t want the polka-dotted elephant because that’s all I ever wanted as a child). The ending goes the same, as they all eventually return home and Santa enlists Rudolph to help him through the storm as find homes for the misfit toys (Santa’s rejects) and deliver toys to all the children. This movie is a holiday classic, but there are way too many hard-hitting realities in this movie that I wasn’t ready yet to realize.

THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS

This is the best one of all the movies, hands down. This wasn’t a story we were all told as children, but a completely different plot emerged. With Santa being sick, he decides to take a holiday because he believes children simply don’t believe in him anymore. Two elves are determined to get kids to believe in Santa again, and head to Southtown. Some tomfoolery goes down, we have some of the best Christmas songs ever and yet Santa still cancels Christmas. It’s not until the children of the world show how much they care about Santa that he packs his sleigh for the victorious ending of another fantastic Christmas movie.