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Dec. 8, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
31:40
The Things we love most: Lessons from our Favorite Holiday Movies
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Hey, everybody.
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We talk about a lot of things here from politics to life to sports to Everything is if you just go back and look, you can tell everything we've been talking about.
And one of the things that if you've listened long enough, you know that I am a big movie person and I'm a big TV person.
I believe that I'm a very visual person.
I like to see representations of things, especially when they actually attach themselves to real life.
And they may not actually attach it in the way you think, But it's the lessons that you can glean from it as we go forward.
And so here we are in December.
It is holiday movie season.
From Thanksgiving to Christmas to, you know, all the holidays, Hanukkah, and everything else is rolled into one.
And we, Hollywood, over the years, has done a pretty good job of rolling out movies that have become enduring classics.
Okay?
Things that, you know, I know families that, and mine is one of them, that there are certain movies that That we're going to watch during the holiday season, sometimes more than once.
And we're going to talk about those this morning.
But I want to talk about life lessons that you can gain from these movies that just watching them, I want to make sure that we go back and say, you know, that movie is pretty cool and I like watching it, but how can I apply it to my life?
And what is the lesson being taught?
I mean, and we're going to talk about a lot of these movies today, just in general touching on them.
I mean, you've got It's a Wonderful Life.
You've got Christmas Carol.
You've got Grant Who Stole Christmas.
You've got The Christmas Story.
You've got Miracle on 42nd Street.
You've got, I mean, just on and on and on.
And you've got some modern, what we'll call sort of classics that come up in the last number of years.
Elf.
I mean...
Yeah, there's just, you know, some of the movies begin to be part of who we are.
And I think that's one of the special parts about this time of year.
And if you take the holiday season, and I'm just capturing, you know, frankly, everything sort of from fall on end, but Thanksgiving and then to the Christmas, Hanukkah, all the holiday season, is taking that all into account and coming to the end of the year.
It's an amazing time For us to take stock in who we are, to take stock in what we believe, but also to have just a moment to share with our friends and families.
And then also, frankly though, for some of those just quiet Alone moments.
Just those moments that you have and I have in which we ponder and think.
So here's just some of my thoughts.
I'd love to hear yours.
The DougCollinsPodcast.com.
Hit the email button there and you send me an email.
And if we have stuff, if you want to maybe share some of your memories or have an idea for another podcast, please let us know.
But let's dig in.
These are no orders.
These are sort of random thoughts that I had.
And really, I'm going to tell you the trigger for the whole idea here came in one of my favorite holiday movies of all times is the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
And Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is turning 35, if you can believe that, this year.
Steve Martin, John Candy, it's an amazing story.
And if you've never seen it, I don't really...
You gotta watch it, okay?
But hopefully by this point in time, most everybody, unless you're under 10 years old, listen to the podcast, you've probably seen Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
Some great lines, very funny, but very poignant in this as well.
So that sort of triggered this thought, but then I started thinking about all the other movies and said, hey, what kind of lessons can we learn here?
What can make our holiday season better, but also then take us into a new year with some thoughts that maybe we can carry on as we talk to this.
So here's just some lessons learned from watching holiday movies over the time.
One quick interjection, though.
There will not be a Hallmark movie reference here.
I know some of you are very big into Hallmark movies.
My wife loves Hallmark movies.
Those are pretty much the normal lessons.
You move back, find a love, get married.
Those are pretty simple.
We'll leave those there.
I love to watch them.
Don't get me wrong.
But we're probably not going to touch on those in this one.
So let's get into this.
Let's dig into it.
The first thing that is taught in most of these movies, and you see this, is that holiday activities can become the problem and not the solution.
And I think we're all guilty of this.
That around the holidays that we get so concerned about the party, we get so concerned about the gifts, we get so concerned about the meals, we get so concerned about the trips for some, that we forget that the real idea of the holidays Is the time that, you know, with family, it is the time that we get to spend not doing the quote work thing all the time, but having these special moments.
Now you see this in a lot of the movies.
It was, planes, trains, and automobiles probably hits this bus.
The Steve Martin character is just a very, you know, anal character who is about work.
He's about getting home.
He doesn't sort of think about anything else.
He travels all the time.
I have a lot of sympathy for this character.
In the sense of traveling and how especially messy travel can be.
But if we're letting the ideas of the holiday activities and got to get somewhere to miss the real reasons we're there, then we're going to be in trouble.
Home Alone, a classic case of, you know, they're so focused about the trip that they leave their own kid at the house.
I mean, when you look at these kind of events, Christmas vacation, you know, the...
Is there ever a thought of Chevy Chase becoming so obsessed with the lights and with the outside and beating the neighbors and doing everything else that the whole family gathering just torpedoes?
How many of us have been there?
How many of us have been there in which we become so focused on the things that we think are important and the ideas around the holiday that we forget the actual people of the holiday?
And I'm not even getting into the religious implications of Jesus' birth and celebrating the Savior and those kind of things, which we all tend to do from a faith perspective, especially a Christian faith perspective.
But this is just in the ones around us in the family.
The first thing that I can tell you from watching these movies is all of them when we watch them, and I've watched, you know, hundreds of Christmas-style movies, is, you know, even in Elf, we talk about the, you know...
The dad who is just so focused on getting the next book out, willing to cut corners, but yet at the middle, missing his family, missing the things around.
So the first lesson, as we just kick it off here, is don't let the holidays and the things around the holidays let you forget the real reasons of the holidays.
The family members, the time just talking to friends, sharing a moment with maybe people that you haven't had a chance to talk to in a while.
Maybe it's that time to reach back out.
Don't let the busyness That you say is the activity interfere with the real activity itself.
Another one that you can't get away from.
And I had a friend of mine talk about this the other day.
We all get down in the dumps sometimes.
A little classic statement of my mom.
You just get down in the dumps.
We mope around.
We walk around.
We feel sorry for ourselves.
Life's not been good.
Maybe this has not been your year.
Maybe this has not been your day, week, month, whatever you want to call it.
And we feel bad.
Now, for some of you, and a very serious note for all of you out there as a chaplain in the Air Force, I would be remiss in saying the holidays are very difficult times for many people.
It is now the time for you to be a friend, even to people you may not know.
In the Air Force, military, we call it, you know, that is our battle buddy, that is our wingman, that is our, you know, we look after those Sometimes by just asking a question and not willing to look at the response and just say, okay, but actually asking, you know, hey, how are you doing and not being satisfied with, I'm okay.
Sometimes we need to ask a little bit more.
So I'm going to encourage you this holiday season, ask questions.
More questions of the friends around you.
I'd rather you ask and offend somebody about asking how they are or checking on them than to not ask, and they feel alone.
And many times, unfortunately, during the holiday season, we see suicides go up a great deal.
So I'm speaking to you right now.
Look out for those around you.
But one of the most impactful movies, if you ever want to see, is about the value of everybody's life.
It has to be It's a Wonderful Life.
There are just so many lessons there.
And Jimmy Stewart, you know, the character there, you've watched it.
Hopefully you've watched it many times.
If you've not, please place it on your to-watch list this holiday season.
It is a reminder that things were going bad and things were not going the way he had planned.
And all of it was taking on a burden for him.
And at the end, in a moment, he just gets to the point and says, it's probably better off if I never even was born.
And the lesson was born out of that.
The whole movie premise is, okay, George, you're not born.
You never existed.
He had to go back and look at life through the lenses of never being born.
Now, the question for many of us is we don't know who we've impacted.
We don't know who we've touched.
We take for granted the family relationships, the things that we've done, the people we've been a part of.
We take those for granted because we don't see them in the bigger picture.
We live our life in the increment of time we have been given, and it's hard to see backwards because we wasn't a part of the past.
We cannot see into the future.
So for many of us, it's just what do we see at this moment?
We become very now me generation kind of issue.
And the It's a Wonderful Life is a good reminder to remember that The little things in life matter.
The little things in life matter.
And this is, you know, we always want to make the big present, the big party, we want to have the big splash, but it's those little things in life that matter that means that your life is important to those around you.
And if there's never been a better life lesson than that out of the movie It's a Wonderful Life was the fact that your life matters, that you matter.
And if you're listening to this podcast today and you don't think you matter, you go to DougCollinsPodcast.com, hit that email button, and you send me an email.
And you tell me you're struggling or you just want to talk because you might not think life is that good for you right now.
You let me know or just find somebody.
But at the point for all of us who may not even have those thoughts, it's a reminder that sometimes we forget that the words that we say or the words we don't say, the actions that we have, the choices that we make, have lifelong impacts on those around us.
And I think if we remember that more, not just at a holiday season, not just at a moment of time, but throughout the year, it would make us, I think, a little bit more willing to go out of our way, to ask the questions, to make time for things.
Because at the end of the day, at the end of our lives, we're not going to look back and say, we wish we had done things that didn't matter more.
It's going to go back to the things that are important to us.
But it's a wonderful life.
It just makes it everybody's important.
You're important.
And I'm so thankful for you being a part of this podcast.
One of my other favorite, favorite Christmas time holiday movies is the old, excuse me, classic Dickens Christmas Carol.
And for me, it's got to be the George C. Scott version from the early 80s.
You can find it on most of the subscription services or anything.
And it goes back and it is to me.
This is the one that I grew up with.
It's the one that means the most to me.
And I remember, if you remember back in the early part of the movie when Scrooge is going to the market and to the exchange, and the two men approach him about giving to the poor.
Everybody now, you have the Salvation Army kettles, you have people doing Toys for Tots, and there's so many good charities out there right now who help in the holiday season.
But something about what these gentlemen said to Scrooge has stuck with me As long as I can really comprehend and remember as an adult.
And they said this, and you hear this a lot, and not just in this context.
This just stuck out to me in this movie.
It says, at this time of the year, our attention turns to those in need.
Something to that effect.
Basically implying that during the holiday seasons is the time that we think about charitable giving.
The holiday season is the time that people are in need, so we need to help them.
And I'm just going to throw out this idea that the holiday seasons should not be the only time we think about those around us.
It should not be the only time that we throw an extra toy in the basket for the toys for tots.
It shouldn't be the only time that we maybe take a few cans of food to the...
Food bank.
And look, I'm as guilty of this as anybody.
It's easy to think about it in times, well, there must be somebody in need this Christmas season, this holiday season, and I'll give.
But I always have sat back and thought to myself and known, Where are those same folks in February, in March, in June, in August?
You know, the same folks so many times who are struggling in the holiday seasons are struggling throughout the year as well.
And the question for us is, will we take these moments throughout the year to have a giving spirit, to have something that we have in our life that we want to help with?
I made a comment a long time ago in a sermon that I gave in A lot of folks, I've remembered it and it really meant to me, but I've had more people who heard it that day have talked to me about it since.
And that was, I said, I've never missed, and it was from something that I had heard, but it really resonated with me.
And it says, I've never missed anything that I'd give away.
Why don't you think about that for a minute?
I've never missed anything that I gave away, that I willingly gave away.
I've not missed it.
Because it's in the act of giving, it's in the act of caring, it's in the act of doing for others that we find some of our greatest gifts, whether we realize it or not.
Going back to the point just a few moments ago, every life matters and you don't know who you touch in this life.
Giving should be something that we do all year round, not just at a holiday season.
Why is it do we believe that it is only the holiday season That we should be focused on those in need.
You know, those not going to have a Christmas.
Those aren't going to have a Thanksgiving.
Those are not maybe have a Hanukkah to celebrate.
Those are, you know, whatever faith background or even just a secular background that, you know, that they're not going to be with family or friends.
They don't have a house or they don't have, you know, a transfer.
We tend to think about it during the season, which I'm glad of.
We need to.
But what is it going to take to make these movies, so to speak, impact us year-round so that we're not like the men who came to see Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and says, you know, at this time of the year, we all turn our minds or turn our thoughts toward giving.
Just as a reminder for all of us, from myself on down, There are people in need in our life all year round, not necessarily just for money, not necessarily just for things, but maybe somebody who just needs somebody to listen to, somebody who needs a ride somewhere.
You know, there's a lot of things we can do to help people and have that giving spirit, if you would, to those throughout the year.
And remember, I'll ask you to try me out on this.
I've never missed anything that I've gave away.
All right.
Moving right along.
Planes, trains, and automobiles, I'm going to come back to this, also is the main emphasis on this next point, but also, you know, A Christmas Carol, also Home Alone, and this is, but especially in planes, trains, and automobiles, the holidays remind us that we must have a work-home or work-family balance, whatever that may look like for you.
And So many of us enjoy what we do.
We love what we do.
We work at it very hard.
We go out and we try to make the difference in our lives.
We use every excuse in the world for our own competitiveness to take care of our families or whatever.
But at a certain point in time, that work-family, work-life balance has to be in place.
And it's tough during the holidays because we're constantly being pulled to this party, this get-together, this family gathering, going shopping, not going shopping, getting things done, got to do work, work's closing out.
And if you don't watch it, the balance can get off-center.
And an off-center life will leave us lacking.
You're not going to be really technically good at home, and you're not going to be technically good at work.
So finding that balance matters.
And if you look at these movies, Scrooge and A Christmas Carol, the only thing he ever did was work.
In fact, he sacrificed a future wife.
He sacrificed a family.
He sacrificed everything.
But he had a dark house to go home to, in which he didn't even spend the money that he made on the...
Times that they had that, you know, to even enhance his own life.
It became such a goal to be a miser, if you would, that he lost track of what really mattered.
And I think that's one of the most important lessons out of A Christmas Carol, is to look around and say, work matters.
Bob Cratchit, you know, understood he'd get to work and he would work hard, but yet his family was where his home was.
I remind people all the time, and being in the world of politics, being in the world of media, being in the world in which it's easy to lose base, if you would, of who is important in your life.
I remind people all the time, especially when I'm talking to people who want to run for office and do those things, they say, look, the first point is your family has to be involved, and number two, don't forget that your family is involved.
And this is hard for us all.
At times, we take our families for granted.
But, you know, at this time, you've got to remember that work is only part of who you are.
And that the family is the one who's going to be there the rest of the time.
That's what I mean about a life balance.
And we saw this in Scrooge.
We saw it in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles with the Steve Martin character, who said, Look, he was just so focused on doing his job that family was there, but it was not the main thing.
I tend to have it this way.
You need to invest the most in the folks who will be there the longest.
And that means the ones that you love, your family, your friends, those that you invest in, who will be there long after a job, long after retirement, long after anywhere else.
Where will they be and where will you be in their lives?
It's a balance that we have to find.
Next thing.
Holiday stories are pretty cool in the sense that they reveal things that maybe we don't want to think about ourselves.
They reveal these holiday movies such as The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
I mean, The Plains, Trains, and Robles, The Christmas Carol, A Wonderful Life, all these others.
They reveal sort of things in us that a lot of times we don't like to talk about.
And one of the things that I would say is that the holidays show individual stories.
And The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Elf, I mean, if you want to, you know, take and watch his journey to find his father.
And the other is that story of who we are.
But The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, for me, applies to so many in life that they have let life beat them down.
They have let life take joy out of living.
And, you know, it talks about his heart, you know, shrinking and that, you know, that he was, he didn't like the Christmas house.
He didn't like laughter.
He didn't like the joy.
I mean, probably most of us are not Grinches, but I mean, I wonder how many of us have Grinch-like tendencies.
How many times have we become so jaded by the world and the problems in the world that we don't smile anymore when we see a child play?
We don't laugh at a funny joke from a friend or a co-worker.
We don't have the things in life that make us smile and that we take joy in the simple things of taking a walk in the summer or watching a sunset or watching a sunrise.
Talking to a co-worker.
It's the joy in life.
And if we allow ourselves to become so encrusted with a backwards looking or a hateful spirit, then we're simply going to become the Grinch that we laugh about or we watch it in the holiday shows and tend to say, oh, that's not me.
But in reality, we're becoming that.
So, the questions that come out of this is, what are the qualities that, if you were in the holiday movie, what qualities are real in you?
Do you still take time for the little things?
Do you have a regret or something in your life, a pain in your life that you're still holding onto that eats at you, that eats at you, that eats at you, and you won't let go?
Most everybody else in the world has forgotten about, but you won't let it go.
And it's just eating away inside of you, taking the joy of life, not just in the holiday season, but all year long.
Maybe this is the time to watch The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and realize that when kindness and love is shown, that your heart can grow again, that you can live again.
It was once said to me that you don't know love until you have been heartbroken.
In other words, love It shows itself even in times of pain, whether we have lost family members, whether we've lost loved ones, whether we've lost relationships that we thought were going to last forever that didn't last but a year.
We have regrets.
We have regrets in our job.
We have regrets in our situations.
But if we let the backwards regret keep us, then we will become like Grinch and our hearts will grow small and that we will not experience the joys of life.
It doesn't mean that we're flippant in what we do.
It doesn't mean that we are going through life making and pretend.
It's actual true joy.
Joy comes from the inside.
Joy is spoken of, and from my faith background in Scripture, that joy is not an emotion in the sense that we think of emotion that comes from the inside.
Joy is a peace.
It's an inner being, if you would.
Joy is that idea that I am satisfied.
That I am in a life that I am living as I should be living and that I am satisfied and content in that.
My wish for all of you this Christmas season and this holiday season would be that you find joy, that you find true peace in your life.
These shows like The Grinch and A Christmas Carol and with Scrooge's greed and with others focused on everything else but things that matter, just Hopefully, you're reflecting a mirror in areas of our life that we need to work on.
Not that we fell on completely, just as these characters are, but they actually provide us with some looks into our life.
In thinking of that vein, the next point that I want to make out of this is, because I think those, the characters' development in these movies also go into our own life in this way.
Fake smiles are common at the holidays.
But it fails to really realize that there are deeper things going on.
This is Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
The first time that I watched this movie, About halfway through it, I began to say, something's not right here.
Nobody told me about the movie.
I hadn't seen the movie.
I was just watching.
And I said, something's not right here.
And the John Candy character, whose face is just an amazing mosaic of expression and life and others, it is...
It's a reflection of those who smile and then having that peace within.
There was a part in the movie in which Steve Martin is yelling at, you know, Neil is yelling at the John Candy character, and then Dale, who is the character, makes this statement.
He says, you want to hurt me.
Go right ahead.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm an easy target.
But you think what you want.
I'm not changing.
I like me.
My wife likes me.
My customers like me because I'm the real article.
What you see is what you get.
There's one thing that was missing there.
His wife had passed away eight years ago.
What you see was not what you got.
What you see was somebody who is desperately trying to keep it all together.
And searching and reaching for humanity around him.
But yet he knew in himself he had to hold it together.
He knew in himself, like me, he was holding on to our memory to get through the next day.
This holiday season, I'm just going to challenge you.
Go beyond the how you doings.
Go beyond your co-workers and your families and make sure that you're connecting with people again.
For almost half of a movie, well, really for the entire movie, Steve Martin thought that John Candy was just this bumbling, talkative, obnoxious, rude, fumbling clown.
And then when it hit him at the end, that all of this that I just said, he was hiding because he was lonely and homeless and nowhere to go.
And if you ever go back to watch this movie, and if you've never watched Planes, Transit, and Automobiles, please do, and you'll see John's face.
It tells the story of the world.
How many people do we know have that kind of face that are just dying for somebody to truly understand what's going on behind the smile?
This is your opportunity this holiday season to do that.
My final discussion for us today is this.
And it's what I started off with.
I said it early, and I believe this is what holiday movies and this holiday season means so much and everybody thinks about things, is that coming to the end of the year, it reminds us...
That the holiday season is a time for fresh starts, new gifts, new giving, and a time to start again.
The year is coming to a close.
Let's end it in a way in which we're remembering what matters so that it can flow over into a new year that lies before us.
So, as you're watching these movies, my last thought to you is this.
Find a new start.
Find a new hobby.
Find a new friend.
Find something to do.
Find that proper work-life balance if you've not found it yet.
Find the things that improve you as you watch these movies.
I mean, we can name them.
And, you know, the debate will rage on whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not.
I'm in the fact that it is a Christmas movie.
But if you ever watch that movie again, I want you to watch the interaction between the Officer Carl and the Bruce Willis character.
Listen to the conversations as they go back and forth.
Two people who've never met bonding over a situation in which both were sort of out of control.
You know, maybe that's a new start, a fresh beginning.
Maybe it's a sign for you as you watch Die Hard or you watch any of these other movies.
That maybe is a time to self-reflect, to look at what may be, and to say, this holiday season, I'm going to take the movies to heart.
Not just laugh and watch, but they're going to change a heart in me.
And as the Grinch was told, his heart grew in his chest.
May we all have that same feeling this holiday season.
God bless you.
We'll see you again on the Doug Collins Podcast.
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