Gremlins

What a carry on! Our loving tutors decided to screen a mystery movie for all DFTV students on the last day of term and add some festive spirit by giving us mince pies with it! Gremlins is about a horde of unpleasant, rude creatures who wreck a town right before Christmas. It wasn’t a Christmas film in the warm, cosy, fireside sense of the word but it was an outrageous, fun and entertaining film which happily was set at Christmas. I think what made it so enjoyable was that it was unexpected. It was the classic ‘Monster in the House’ story and yet at every beat it delivered something new. No-one expected the mum to turn on that food blender, the antics of the gremlins are hilariously unpredictable, and we knew the heroine would tell why she doesn’t like Christmas but the actual reason takes us completely off guard (and I’m still in shock!). In my opinion it’s not a children’s film or a Christmas film really but it is a good laugh and I really enjoyed it.

So now it’s time for the holidays and, I’m sure, more fun. Yet it’s strange to think, while the commercial tornado that is Christmas blows our lives all over the place that its whole purpose, its real origins, are the complete opposite; a quiet ordinary night, a simple stable, a child crying… Softly and spectacularly God becomes one of us. That’s what I will be remembering this Christmas. Why? Why still celebrate this birth? What was so special about this child?