Classic Christmas Movie Quotes

Cookies are the cornerstone of pastry. But for many of us, they are also at the core of our memories, connecting our palate to our person. Cookies wait for us after school, anxious for little ones to emerge from a bus and race through the door. They fit themselves snugly in boxes, happy to be passed out to neighbors on cold Christmas mornings; trays of them line long tables, mourning the loss of the dearly departed. While fancy cakes and tarts walk the red carpet, their toasted meringue piles, spun sugar, and chocolate curls boasting of rich rewards that often fail to sustain, cookies simply whisper knowingly. Instead of pomp and flash, they offer us warm blankets and cozy slippers. They slip us our favorite book, they know the lines to our favorite movies. They laugh at our jokes, they stay in for the night. They are good friends, they are kind words. They are not jealous, conceited, or proud. They evoke a giving spirit, a generous nature. They beg to be shared, and rejoice in connection. Cookies are home.

The noise of Blixxen galloping seemed to be shaking the trees, and Niko couldn't help but be reminded of that scene in the classic dinosaur movie where the T. rex was hunting a human, but he tried to banish that particular set of images because it hadn't ended well for the human.

Esther and Rose stare longingly at John Truitt as he stands in his front yard trying a new pipe, an object intended to suggest both his maturity and his masculinity. For Meet Me in St. Louis, this latter quality proved to be particularly urgent: Tom Drake, the actor playing Truitt, never seems convincing as Esther’s boyfriend. (Drake, in fact, was gay.) Hence the movie mobilizes several devices (the pipe, basketball) to “heterosexualize” his character. The pipe, however, remains unlit, and is then tossed aside, implying an impotence confirmed by John’s subsequent behavior: He does not kiss the eager Esther at her party, he nearly misses the trolley, he cancels their date for the Christmas ball. Even when he finally proposes, he leaves Esther in tears, urging her to choose between him and her family. Truitt’s aversion to flame appears most tellingly in the party’s turning-out-the-lights sequence (to which the also gay Minnelli devoted four days), where he not only puts out the Smiths’ lights but Esther’s, too, extinguishing her hopes with a flaccid handshake and hasty departure.