{"id":23968,"date":"2016-03-26T09:09:08","date_gmt":"2016-03-26T15:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=23968"},"modified":"2016-03-26T09:12:38","modified_gmt":"2016-03-26T15:12:38","slug":"why-the-homecoming-is-one-of-the-most-important-christmas-movies-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/why-the-homecoming-is-one-of-the-most-important-christmas-movies-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The Homecoming is One of the Most Important Christmas Movies Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Earl_Hamner,_Jr.\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Earl Hamner Jr.<\/strong><\/a> passed away this week at the age of 92 and the world hardly noticed. <\/p>\n<p>Hamner was a prolific writer whose contributions were more noted on television than anywhere else. While he is no Dickens his <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> story titled <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.christmastvhistory.com\/2011\/11\/homecoming-christmas-story-1971.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>The Homecoming<\/strong><\/a><\/em> was more than just a TV movie that launched a successful, long-running television series known as <em>The Waltons<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p><em>The Homecoming<\/em> should be considered one of the most important <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> movies ever made. <\/p>\n<p>The movie is based on Hamner&#8217;s true story of <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> 1933. He was just ten years old when this event took place. <\/p>\n<p>The story tells of the family&#8217;s desperate circumstances. It was a large family whose father had lost his job in a nearby mine and had to find work miles away, a heart wrenching reality that allowed him only to return home on weekends after being dropped off by a bus that would leave him six miles still from home. <\/p>\n<p>As a <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> story this movie tells of the father&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> Eve homecoming when a storm forced the oldest son, John-boy, on an adventure over those six miles to try to find his father and bring him home for <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To understand why this movie was so important, and Hamner&#8217;s contribution through it to <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> and television history, you must consider the time in which it burst upon the public. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MG3hs7euH5I\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>CBS Television aired the movie on December 19, 1971 &#8212; a time when family was under fire in American culture. <\/p>\n<p><em>All in the Family<\/em> got it&#8217;s start in 1971, a critical success that lampooned traditional American family dynamics and mocked the attitudes of Depression-era generations. <\/p>\n<p>This came on the heels of a tumultuous political period of the 1960s when free <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/sneaking-christmas\/\">love<\/a> and &#8220;rugged individualism&#8221; took up new definitions in counter-culture America. <\/p>\n<p>The charged political debates of the time were squarely focused on non-traditional and what some considered anti-family themes: drugs, abortion, the anti-war movement, the environmental movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, etc. <\/p>\n<p><em>The Homecoming<\/em> celebrates family. It captures, like a snapshot in time, the essence of America during the Depression. And it brings that all together under a <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> theme. <\/p>\n<p>America, which rocked from the debates of the age, seemed to bask in this nostalgic celebration of family. CBS, sensing the positive reaction to <em>The Homecoming<\/em> meant an untapped programming market, launched <em>The Waltons<\/em>, a television series based on the characters introduced in The Homecoming. The series ran for more than a decade and holds a place in American television history as a champion for families.  <\/p>\n<p>The Homecoming has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years as the movie has been rebroadcast on various cable channels and made available via DVD and Blu Ray. Some consider it a holiday staple along side other classics such as <em>White <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a><\/em> or <em>How the Grinch Stole <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>Dickens achieved cult status with <em>A <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> Carol<\/em> because of the transformation of Scooge as he embraced <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> celebration. <em>The Homecoming<\/em> is doing the same with its tale of a family&#8217;s transformation from focusing on a material <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> during difficult times to really celebrating simply because they were together. It is an old and even familiar story, one expertly told by Hamner and appreciated still today. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earl Hamner Jr. passed away this week at the age of 92 and the world hardly noticed. Hamner was a prolific writer whose contributions were more noted on television than anywhere else. While he is no Dickens his Christmas story titled The Homecoming was more than just a TV movie that launched a successful, long-running [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":416,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,25,99],"tags":[118,535,534,536],"class_list":["post-23968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-features","category-christmas-movies","category-christmas-television","tag-christmas-movie","tag-earl-hamner-jr","tag-the-homecoming","tag-the-waltons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}