What’s That in the Fridge?!
Rick Retro’s Realm, Project #5: 2025 Christmas Leftovers—A mixed bag, happening now!
Project #5: 2025 Christmas Leftovers—A mixed bag, happening now!
In 2024, we called our secondary post-Christmas tour “Christmas Follow-Up” and it ran from December 26, 2024, to January 1, 2025.
This year we’ve improved the name to “Christmas Leftovers”. This time it’s running from January 1, 2026, to January 12, 2026. This is not ideal! In the future, I plan to have Christmas leftovers only between Christmas and New Year’s. But this year, I want to complete the debuts of all the reviews that were previously posted to the text group, and there remains eight to go. So bear with me these first couple of weeks of January.
Now, just like if you were checking your post-Christmas refrigerator offerings, don’t expect all of these Retro Reviews to be super-tasty. You may like some more than others. Most of the best dishes were served before Christmas or on Christmas, after all.
Four of the upcoming reviews making their Substack debuts are Retro Reviews of remakes of two films that we visited on our 2025 Christmas Tour. Specifically, we will visit two theatrical remakes of The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and two made-for-television remakes of Miracle on 34th Street (1947).
The remaining four Retro Reviews that will be making their Substack debuts are films I originally scheduled for the main 2025 Christmas Tour, but later moved to this 2025 Christmas Leftovers schedule to give myself a little more time. All four of these films made at least eight of the ten all-time best Christmas movies lists that I consulted. Spoiler alert: If these are near the top of your list, you may not like my reviews of these films. It’s not as if I completely hated all four… well, you’ll see.
We will visit these eight movies in chronological order of their original release, as is always my preference.
As we did during the 2025 Christmas Tour, for the reviews below, after the name and year of the reviewed work, I will include, where applicable, how many Best Christmas Movies lists that each film made out of ten 🎅, followed by the Retro Review Grade given (explained here). The next line includes the Family Suitability Rating I have given 👨👩👧👦 (explained here) and the Alignment with Judeo-Christian Values Rating I have given ✝️ (explained here). Last but not least comes the Dark Whimsy score and readings (explained here). These will be added after each day has passed, so check back to see where we have been at a glance.
There won’t be posts mixed in along the way with new comments like we did for the 2025 Christmas Tour, so if you are following along reading these as old archives and want to re-enact the experience of those who were discovering this in early 2026, then just check out each review in order, and come back here for the next post rather than following the “Previous” and “Next” buttons which will follow the different order of the 2024-2025 Christmas season when these were originally posted.
Jan 1 | Post: 2025 Christmas Leftovers [You are here.]
Jan 3 | Review: In the Good Old Summertime (1949) 🎅 [0] B+^
👨👩👧👦✅2️⃣ | ✝️❎0️⃣⚠️ | 🚫5.4 | 🌚5 🌝7
Remake of The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Jan 6 | Review: “The Miracle on 34th Street” (1955), Television remake broadcast on The 20th Century Fox Hour s1 e06 🎅 [0] B ^
👨👩👧👦✅3️⃣ | ✝️⛔1️⃣ | 🚫5.7 | 🌚5 🌝9
Remake of Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Jan 7 | Review: “Miracle on 34th Street” (1959), Television remake broadcast on NBC Friday Night Special Presentation s1 e09 🎅 [0] B+^
👨👩👧👦✅3️⃣ | ✝️❎1️⃣ | 🚫6.7 | 🌚6 🌝9
Remake of Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Jan 8 | Review: Black Christmas (1974) 🎅 [8] D+>
👨👩👧👦❌4️⃣ | ✝️⛔4️⃣ | 🚫0.6 | 🌚12 🌝0
Jan 9 | Review: Home Alone (1990) 🎅 [10] A-v
👨👩👧👦✅2️⃣ | ✝️❎2️⃣ | 😎9.4 | 🌚9 🌝10
Jan 10 | Review: You’ve Got Mail (1998) 🎅 [3]
Remake of The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Jan 11 | Review: Love Actually (2003) 🎅 [10]
Jan 12 | Review: Bad Santa (2003) 🎅 [9]
Finally in January: Rick Retro’s Rankings #2: All-Time Best Christmas Movies
Don’t forget the popcorn!
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This is such a cool concept. Christmas Leftovers might actually be my favorite part.