:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/IMG_9132-b026d9a8ac89484bb784ee1325150004.jpeg?ssl=1 "The Farming Ties in These Beloved Christmas Movie Scenes")
Farming’s Hidden Role in Classic Christmas Movies
Farming is integral to life. If you look close enough, you can find its fingerprint in any given moment, even in popular Christmas movies.
Check out the hidden agricultural ties in these memorable scenes from five classic Christmas movies.
Home Alone
The Scene
Just before 8-year-old Kevin McCallister goes head-to-head with the incompetent burglars who target his home, he sits down to a Christmas Eve dinner of macaroni and cheese and a goblet of milk. He bows his head and prays, “Bless this highly nutritious microwavable macaroni and cheese dinner and the people who sold it on sale. Amen.”
The Farming Tie
Although Kevin expressed gratitude for grocery store workers specifically, he wouldn’t have had such a meal without wheat producers and dairy farmers.
Elf
The Scene
When Buddy, a human raised by elves, travels to New York City from the North Pole in search of his biological father, he has dinner with his newfound family for the first time. Before digging into a plate of spaghetti and red sauce, Buddy pulls a small bottle of maple syrup from his sleeve, douses his main course with it, and explains, “We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup.”
The Farming Tie
Although credit is due to wheat and specialty crop farmers for the pasta dish, this scene wouldn’t be complete without maple syrup producers.
A Christmas Story
The Scene
After the Parker family’s Christmas centerpiece was devoured by neighborhood dogs invading their kitchen, they found themselves at a Chinese restaurant being served duck instead of turkey. Although it wasn’t the Christmas dinner the family envisioned, the scene ends with Ralphie, who narrates the film as an adult reminiscing on his youth, concluding, “All was right with the world.”
The Farming Tie
Neither the turkey nor the duck would have been possible without the country’s poultry farmers.
A Charlie Brown Christmas
The Scene
“We need a Christmas tree!” is Charlie Brown’s declaration to Lucy as he laments how commercialized Christmas has become. He leaves the school play in Lucy’s capable hands and heads to a Christmas tree lot with Linus with orders to find a “great, big, shiny, aluminum Christmas tree.” Among dozens of fake ones, Charlie Brown spots the well-known small and scrappy Christmas tree, which he proudly takes back to school. When mocked by his classmates, he admits, “I guess I really don’t know what Christmas is all about,” which prompts Linus to recite the Nativity story and say, “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
The Farming Tie
The main prop of these scenes, which led to Linus’s memorable recitation of the Nativity story, wouldn’t have been possible without Christmas tree farmers.
It’s a Wonderful Life
The Scene
In what may be the best Christmas movie ending of all time, George Bailey, realizing the immense value of his life, comes home to his family and is bombarded with the people of his hometown, Bedford Falls, generously offering him money to pay back the $8,000 stolen by the film’s antagonist earlier in the movie. Near the end of this poignant scene, George’s brother makes a toast: “To my big brother George, the richest man in town.”
The Farming Tie
The dollar bills poured out in this scene in an act of generosity and love wouldn’t be possible without cotton growers.
