All Christmas

Over the Christmas holidays, after we have exhausted our funds on parties, presents and all the necessary accoutrement that makes the holidays pleasurable, there's nothing better than spending days curled up on the sofa watching all the great Christmas films that the festive season could never be without. Of course, if you happen to be holidaying in Orlando, there will be absolutely no need to be concerned with the likes of Christmas films. Your Orlando Theme park tickets will grant you access to some of the best festive celebrations in the world, particularly Universal tickets, which will allow you to experience Universal's Grinchmas, the theme park adaptation of the world's much loved Christmas film, Dr Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Like Christmas songs and Christmas carols, Christmas films evoke a Christmassy sensation that usually strikes an emotive chord. Films belonging to this genre often focus on issues surrounding family, love, loss and miracles. They generally tend to tell fictional stories, aimed at children and families that unveil the true meaning of Christmas and reveal some kind of moral. As a genre on the whole, Christmas films tend to get a bad wrap for reasons not dissimilar to the Chick Flick genre; they have a reputation for being cheesy, flowery and make such easy watching that the audience can predict the narrative. Such films aren't particularly groundbreaking for the medium and often aren't worth watching outside of the Christmas context.

Nevertheless, the festive film genre is not a genre to be overlooked, even for the most serious and sophisticated of moviegoers. Albeit, we may have grown tired of the many renditions and remakes of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol 1843, however Dickens' novella was not only successful in defining a new literary genre, or being the basis for an extremely successful movie adaptation and Christmas film, the novella helped redefine Christmas as a British tradition in society. The story features the cold, greedy and joyless Eboniser Scrooge and begins on Christmas Eve. Ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present and Christmas yet to come visit Scrooge in his sleep, taking him on a journey that opens his heart to Christmas, charity and goodwill in time for the big day.

It is likely that the Christmas tale has inspired a number of other novels and films of the Christmas genre, particularly Dr Seuss's 1957 children's book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Like Scrooge, the Grinch is a distant and miserable creature who also happens to hate Christmas. The Grinch is unable to comprehend the happiness that Christmas brings to the Whos, residence of WhoVille, so he decides to steal all the Christmas presents, food and decorations from WhoVille. However, the Grinch is pleasantly surprised when the Christmas celebrations continue regardless. He realises that Christmas isn't about material goods and this warms his heart to the festivities. The warm hearted Grinch returns all the goods he has stolen and the Whos welcome him into the WhoVille community with open arms.

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is possibly one of the most adapted films ever, adapted for film, theatre, radio and TV. How the Grinch Stole Christmas 2008 film adaptation, starring Jim Carrey and directed by Ron Howard, is the world's second highest grossing Christmas film, behind Home Alone and is possibly one of the only Christmas films adapted for a theme park experience. Both tales have contributed significantly to the Christmas film genre with unique Christmas tales. However, we needn't travel so far back in time, 1843 for A Christmas Carol and 1957 for How the Grinch Stole Christmas, to find creative and imaginative contributions to the Christmas genre. Home Alone, The Gremlins and Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas are all examples of such films, crossing genres to create unique Christmas films. Home Alone uses slapstick comedy, Gremlins combines comedy with horror and The Nightmare Before Christmas combines animation, musical and fantasy genres.

If you prefer to be a part of the action as opposed to watching it, a Universal ticket is the only way to see the Grinch live in action at Universal's Grinchmas.