Eyeglasses In Holiday Movies: A Few Of Our Favorites

It’s that time of year again and somehow, with all the shopping, cooking and eating, most of us manage to watch a Christmas movie or two. Here are a few of our favorite holiday movies that all involve eyewear in some way:

A Christmas Story (1983)

Child with brown hair, wearing glasses, black coat, and smiling excitedly while lying on a red slide.

Nine year old Ralphie Parker helps demonstrate why kids should never be given glasses with glass lenses — or BB guns. When his Christmas wishes come true and he finally gets the Red Ryder BB gun he’s begged his parents for, little Ralphie has a little accident despite multiple people telling him constantly, “You’ll shoot your eye out.” The gun backfires on him in his excitement to finally use it and Ralphie’s black-framed, oversized nerd glasses fly off his head. Not only is a lens propelled right out of the frame, but Raphie manages to break the other one too in all the chaos. Now, like all nine year olds, Ralphie feels he has to make up a story to cover up what really happened. The best he can do is to tell his mom that a giant icicle fell on his glasses. He then adds in a convincing crying jag, so that his mother actually buys the story. A Christmas Story indeed!

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Hermey the Elf standing in the snow with trees in the background.

Yes, there is Rudolph, Santa, Hermey, The Abominable and Yukon Cornelius who are all memorable characters of this classic children’s Christmas movie. But, an unnamed elf with a very small part in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is still likely to be remembered by anyone familiar with this holiday special. “The tall elf with the glasses” stands out not only because of his height, but also for the cat eye, black glasses he wears.

A Christmas Carol (1951 and 2009)

Elderly man in a top hat and red scarf, holding a lit candle, snow falling around him.

The way too small, grampy glasses worn by Ebenezer Scrooge suited the character perfectly to accentuate his cheapo personality. Scrooge had to look over the edge of the skimpy eyeglasses with the pencil line thin frames rather than through the tiny, rectangular lenses. The eyeglasses are every bit as much of his character as hi frequent, grumpy expression, “Bah! Humbug!”

Arthur’s Perfect Christmas (2000)

Arthur cartoon characters in pajamas celebrating Christmas with a decorated tree in the background.

We love that the cartoon aardvark, Arthur’s, glasses are literally a part of his face. The dark round frames really bring out his oval aardvark face shape and they go with all of his cute, little outfits from t-shirts to coats. Although Arthur has to get through a lot of imperfect situations, his glasses look as perfect as his Christmas turns out to be.

Home Alone (1990)

Bald man holding four stacked pizza boxes in front of a staircase.

One of the best lines in any film has to be “If it’ll make you feel any better, I forgot my reading glasses” since the speaker, Frank McCallister is saying it to two people who just flew off to Paris for Christmas forgetting their eight year old child at home.  Frank is the Uncle of little Kevin McCallister played by Macaulay Culkin who will forever be in many people’s memories as the open-mouthed kid with his hands on his face. This holiday film is one of the top grossing comedies of all time.