Our Holiday Favorites: Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

Every couple faces the challenge of how to blend two holiday traditions into one. Here's ours: I don't celebrate Christmas. My wife does.

She deserves to have her holiday, but I shouldn't have to pretend to celebrate an event that I don't -- even a secularized facsimile thereof. Yes, I'm one of those people who prefers "season greetings" to "merry Christmas", but I don't want to deny -- or even dampen -- anybody else's celebration of their holidays.

So we've had to build our own holiday tradition, one that allows her to express her celebration for the season, while allowing me to be true to my grinchy self.

It's worked out pretty well. We typically spend our time together, rather than travel. She puts up her "pink and sparkly" Barbie holiday tree, decorated with movie memorabilia ornaments, and draped with celluloid film like strings of popcorn.

And each year at this time, we watch Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.

Everybody has a favorite holiday movie. For some people, it has a sly connection to the season, like the way Die Hard takes place at a company Christmas party.

My pick doesn't have the thinnest wisp of a connection to Christmas. The reason that it's a holiday favorite is because every year, for the past several years, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has shown this movie in Austin during the holiday season. My wife and I have attended every showing since they started at the Ritz location in 2007.

The first year, it was on Christmas Eve itself, so 6th Street was a beautiful and peaceful winter wonderland, but with stale beer smell instead of snow.

The event has featured all-you-can-eat sliders. Plus, there's a slider-eating contest before the movie, as shown in the photo below. One year Tim League hosted the contest, and the grand prize was whatever cash he had in his wallet.

Several things make this a great holiday movie. First, there is the counterprogramming aspect. Movies such as Bad Santa notwithstanding, Harold and Kumar are pretty much the opposite of what Hollywood and Turner Classic Movies will be programming.

Plus, during the stressful holiday time, with so much pent-up and choked-down emotion, it's cathartic to watch a movie so wrong, so inappropriate, that you just have to give in and laugh (if you are into that sort of thing).

I don't know if the Alamo is going to program Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle again this year. If they do, you know we'll be there. If they don't, we've got the DVD. C'mon over, I'll be grilling up the sliders.

Want to watch? As of this moment, the Alamo has not programmed Harold & Kumar for the holiday season. However, you can rent it from I Luv Video, Vulcan Video or Encore, and it's available on Amazon Instant Video.

Warning: the clip below is both NSFW and stupid.

[Editor's Note: The guy with the beard on the left side of the 2007 slider-eating contest photo is Austin filmmaker David Hartstein, who would go on to produce a movie about a poet who shuns mass-produced fast food for healthy vegetarian options.]

[Photo credit: "Oh, holiday tree" and "Sliders at Alamo Ritz, 2007" by J. Kernion.]