Books-to-Movies: DECEMBER

Deck The Halls is a 2006 family comedy film set during the Christmas season in Massachusetts where snow piles up in early December. When the spirit of Christmas compels a small-town to decorate his home with enough lights to make it visible from space, much more is set to be decked than just the halls in this holiday comedy featuring Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick as two warring neighbors determined to outdo each other in creating the best lighting display on the planet. Christmas is without question the most wonderful time of the year for optometrist Steve Finch. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Steve’s wife, Kelly and their children Madison and Carter. Despite Steve’s annual holiday zeal, the rest of the Carters have grown to resent the seemingly endless family rituals leading up the Winterfest carnival over which their terminally cheerful patriarch presides. Though it seems that nothing in the world could dampen the spirits of the local “King of Christmas,” Steve soon finds his royal status challenged when used-car salesman Buddy Hall who moves in next door and covers his house with enough festive lights to make it visible from the deepest crater of the moon. His Yuletide thunder effectively stolen, Steve resorts to desperate measures in regaining his crown when Buddy’s lavish decorations make him a local celebrity, his wife strikes up a warm friendship with the neighbor’s outspoken better half and even the kids seem to warm to the car salesman’s air-headed twin daughters.

Genre: Comedy, Family
Available in HS Call No.C54d 2000

A Christmas Carol (named on-screen as Disney’s A Christmas Carol) is a 2009 film written and directed by Robert Zemeckies. It is an adaptation of the Charles Dickens story of the same name and stars Jim Carey in a multitude of roles, including Ebenezer Scrooge as a young, middle-aged, and old man – a penny-pinching miser who cares nothing for the people around him, least of all his hopelessly downtrodden employee Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman) and infectiously optimistic nephew, Fred (Colin Firth). On Christmas Eve, after a frightening encounter with the ghost of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley, Scrooge is visited by three spirits — the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come — who take him on an eye-opening journey to expose the truths he is reluctant to face. He must open his heart to undo years of ill will before it’s too late.