Ho, Ho, How Much Christmas Can You Handle?

By Andrew Peerless in Arts & Entertainment on Dec 14, 2004 4:58PM

Christmas bells are ringing… and ringing, and ringing at the Music Box Theatre, the jewel in the crown of the northwest side’s piping hot, yuppie magnetized Southport Corridor. From Sunday through Thursday, the Music Box will celebrate its 21st Annual Christmas Show, featuring two holiday classics and more Christmas cheer than you can shake a Restoration Hardware Woodland Twig Berry Wreath at.

The Christmas Show is essentially a double-feature of unimaginably spirited proportions, including classics White Christmas (starring Bing Crosby, but not David Bowie, unfortunately)
and It’s a Wonderful Life. Just in case you’re wondering where the spirit is, know that visits from Santa and Christmas carol sing-alongs before each film will leave viewers literally bleeding red and green from their eyes and plucking mistletoe from between their teeth. Tickets go on sale tomorrow through Ticketmaster or the theatre box office, and will run you $10 for one film or $15 for both.

Planning on staying up late so you can catch Santa as he heaves armfuls of gifts down your chimney (or in Chicagoists’s case, snakes his way through your clanging, hissing radiator)? Get yourself used to those wee hours during special holiday editions of the Music Box’s Midnight Movies on Friday and Saturday night. Take your pick: join Ralphie in his quest for a Red Rider BB gun in the nostalgic, sweet-as-sugar A Christmas Story (credited with single-handedly energizing the market for seductive plastic leg-lamps), or join The Nightmare Before Christmas’s bony hero, Jack Skellington, as he attempts to slather morbid Halloweentown with holiday schmaltz.

Finally, just in case you’re really booked this week, you can still catch thousands of glimpses of A Christmas Story on TBS’s annual “24 hours of A Christmas Story,” starting at 8:00 p.m. on December 24 and running for – you guessed it! – the next 24 hours.