Christmas with Walt Disney

Release Date: November 27, 2009

Watch Date: December 2, 2023

“In a Walt Disney Family Museum original production directed by Don Hahn, view Disney family home movies and holiday segments from Walt’s shorts and feature films as Walt’s daughter, Diane, shares her Christmas memories alongside Disney family home movies, holiday segments classic Disney films, and vintage Disneyland footage.”

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    We are choosing to run our holiday movie portion of this marathon, at least for this first one, the same way we ran our Halloween one, which is to say, we’re each going to take turns choosing films. But for the first one…well once it popped on to my ‘New to Disney+’ list there was no other real option. ‘Christmas with Walt Disney’ had to be the way we started the Disney Holiday season. What else could you choose?

    This film is short, and sweet, and made by ‘The Walt Disney Family Museum,’ and whenever we’re allowed to go into Walt’s personal archives and to hear interviews from his close friends and relatives I’m incredibly appreciative. Look, I didn’t know the man, and I’m sure he was by no means perfect – but I don’t really want to hear about his imperfections. I don’t care that his company has now taken over…well, pretty much everything. I don’t want to hear about the lack of soul in new movies like Wish, or that it’s all just marketing. I don’t want to hear that they ruined Star Wars, or have stretched Marvel too thin or do things just for profit. I don’t. That’s what running a company is, okay? Because those moments with soul, those moments that bring you back to your childhood, those moments filled with magic…that makes all the other crap worth it. And this marathon has been nothing but that, even with the bad films, it’s all been magical, it’s all crystalized moments in our lives, and if Walt Disney hadn’t had a mouse and a dream none of that would have occurred.

    So yes, I want to spend Christmas with Walt Disney.

    And you do…kind of. It’s not as personal as maybe it was advertised to be. Sure, there’s home movies shown, but they’re definitely cherry picked. It shows an idyllic family life, but who isn’t showing the idyllic family life and why would his daughters want to demonstrate anything else? It’s shows old commercials, and clips from old, classic Christmas specials. It talks about the Disneyland parade, a thing my mother puts on without fail every year – right up there with the Doctor Who Christmas Special and the Queens speech. And no, I don’t always watch it, but just seeing the familiar characters, from Christmas and film, strut by to celebrate the holidays definitely fills me with the Christmas spirit.

    But, Doc, Disney is the pinnacle of commercialism and isn’t Christmas meant to be about more than mass produced products. It’s about family, and love, and spirituality (if you’re into that sort of thing), it’s about huddling together for warmth in the darkest part of the year. And yea, I agree with you. But can’t Disney provide both those things? Is it not possible to hold two ideas in your head at the same time? Disney is a corporation, and corporations are meant to make money, but they’re also a cherished childhood memory, they’re a movie you opened up on Christmas morning and got to watch that evening with hot cocoa while you cuddled up with your parents. They’re the stuffed toy you unwrapped and slept with every night for years. The character on your Christmas stocking.

    I think it’s okay to be both, and I think, it’s okay to acknowledge one and still attach more significance to the other. Nothing in life is perfect, not even Disney.

    But for an hour, while you watch this film, you kind of forget that maybe every Christmas didn’t have snow, and maybe some Christmases Santa didn’t bring you whole wish list, or your parents fought, or the dinner was burned. You watch this film, and you feel as though, maybe all Christmases were perfect in their own little way, and maybe some of that, if you’re like me, is because of one man and a mouse.