Love your enemies. Of any other time of the year this saying should be most closest to our hearts. Yet despite the yuletide spirit that pervades the air this time of year, there still are those who persist in being a pest and pain not just to you but to the world in general. I'm talking about the those we refer to as jerks (a.k.a. bozos, stinkers, cads, finks, heels, slime-balls or creeps). In case you didn't know Christmas for jerks is a grand opportunity to up their game. What better time of the year, when there are so many pressures and obligations weighing on people already to really crank up the torment and send someone into a seasonal nervous breakdown. The fact that we can make it through the holiday season, having dealt with so many disagreeable people should not be taken for granted as one of the great miracles of Christmas. We owe our survival in part to the lessons we learn from the Christmas movie classics we watch this time of year. While most Christmas movies (the good ones anyway) are often thought of in rosy terms, we often forget the very common struggles most of our holiday hero's go through in these films. They face many of the same trials we face around this time of year: including annoying relatives, crazed consumerism, and most importantly the seasonal jerks that come along this time of year. The main character in most Christmas movies always faces off in one way or another with a colossal jerk. Either that or the main character himself is a jerk who must undergo a dramatic transformation of some sort by the end of the story. Whatever the case, whether in dealing with jerks or being one yourself, we come away from these films learning that how to deal a little better with those who would seek to make our Christmas no so merry or bright.
12. Uncle Frank: Home Alone 1 & 2
Who: Frank McCallister. The uncle to Kevin McCallister in the 1990 Christmas film
Home Alone 1 & 2Why: He's the Uncle that no one ever wants to have. While most uncles are supposed to be cool and give you money, Uncle Frank gets off on calling his little nephew a jerk, threatening
physical violence against him, and
pulling his pants down for a laugh. Awful stuff but it doesn't stop there for he is a jerk in general to his whole family. He's an uncaring, unfeeling, balding leech who stiffs his brother with a pizza bill worth over 100 dollars and gripes about the free trip to Paris him and his family are getting. He never has a genuine kind word for anyone and any attempt at human sympathy is an epic fail. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NAg_Fi_q-8
Redemption?: Sadly its once a jerk always a jerk for Frank McCallister. Throughout both
Home Alone films he remains the consummate varmint to Kevin and his family. The good thing is he figures very little in the grand scheme of things in the end, and Kevin and his family are too happy being reunited to care about his garbage. Its still such a shame that he couldn't be taught a lesson. Thats just what a jerk needs sometimes to turn their life around. Uncle Frank may not have got his comeuppance but number 11 sure did.