Saturday afternoon I went all the way Downtown to see a movie I've seen at least a dozen times, and which I could have watched on TV in the comfort of my own home the following night with a festively enhanced glass of eggnog in my hand. Why? Because I'm not getting enough butter-flavored petroleum in my diet?

No. Because I wanted to see "A Christmas Story" on a big screen, in the dark, with no commercials and no distractions besides the laughter of complete strangers who share an appreciation for Jean Shepherd's tale of a boy and his overwhelming lust for firepower.

(Really, at this most joyful time of year, as we sit in mall traffic and endure endless, inventively vile arrangements of "Jingle Bell Rock," who hasn't wished for a gun?)

"A Christmas Story" is now giving "It's a Wonderful Life" a run for its hat full of money in the competition for Favorite Christmas Movie Ever. I think which one you prefer depends on what you want in a Christmas movie. "Christmas Story" is better if you like a good laugh; "Wonderful Life" wins if you like a good cry.

I like a good cry as much as the next person, and I've never been shy about crying all through the ends of the Zeffirelli version of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Gladiator," no matter how many times I see them. I guess I'm a sucker for a stabbing.

But I don't really want Christmas to make me cry. I want Christmas to be joyful, full of happy surprises and eyes shining with love. On the other hand, as a grown-up I know that what I will actually get is mostly socks. You never get what you really want for Christmas.

Real estate. No, sorry, that's what Lucy van Pelt wants for Christmas.

Lucy's precocious disappointment with Christmas made her a pioneer of the modern Christmas movie/TV special. "A Charlie Brown Christmas," which debuted in 1965, and the following year's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" were about commercialism and how it sucks all the meaning out of Christmas while filling it with cool, shiny stuff that lights up.

Before that, the big Christmas stories (other than the Big Christmas Story) were "Wonderful Life" (which started out as a turkey), "Miracle on 34th Street," "The Bells of St. Mary's" and versions of "A Christmas Carol," the best of which, for my money, is "Scrooge." That's the black-and-white 1951 version with Alastair Sim as the kind of boss you burn in effigy in the break-room microwave.

Mr. Magoo's was a nuanced performance, but I think Sim really brings the humbug.

Lately, Christmas movies are short on redemption and long on aggravation, kind of like Christmas itself. Movies like "Bad Santa" and "Jingle All the Way" and "Deck the Halls" mine the lumps of coal.

This is why I didn't see them.

I grouse about the humbug and the noise, noise, noise, noise as much as any Scrooge or Grinch (a loudspeaker sings in Market Square, and I'm perfectly willing to swear), but that's because I am trying to keep Christmas in my heart. I'm also trying to keep it fresh. It might be better to keep Christmas in my fridge.

Maybe Christmas movies have gotten less angelic and more like stable-sweepings because we realize, as a society, that the commercialism has won. It used to be "creeping," and people clicked their tongues. Lately it's hard to hear any tongue-clicking over the hubbub of people assaulting each other in Wal-Mart parking lots at 3 in the morning on Black Friday. Creeping? How about creepy?

It's very reasonable. You have to hit the sales before sunrise because that's when you can save the most money. And the more money you save on each purchase, the more things you can buy. And the person who buys the most things wins.

Right?

The more things each of us buys, the more money we spend, the more money the retailers make, and the more money goes into our economy. The entire U.S. economy is wrapped up in that big bag in Santa's sleigh. Kind of makes you wish our air traffic control system wasn't so dangerously overloaded.

Every time I think about this, I wish I could go back to the time when Christmas was as simple as getting one really good present. A present so wonderful you fell asleep embracing it.

Maybe that kind of bliss comes only once, and only before puberty. But you have to keep aiming for it. Even when the world says,

"You'll shoot your eye out, kid."