Behind the Scenes of Our Favorite Christmas Classics

Have you ever watched a great movie or television show and been so wrapped up in it that you went to the Internet to find out more? Maybe you watched ‘Behind the Scenes’ videos or read about the personal lives of the cast. With that in mind, let’s take a behind the scenes look at some of Hollywood’s greatest holiday stories.

It’s a Wonderful Life might be a classic film, but it started out as an overgrown Christmas card. After trying unsuccessfully to sell his short story, The Greatest Gift, author Philip Van Doren Stern printed up copies of the story and sent them out as 21-page Christmas cards. 

Coca-Cola originally sponsored A Charlie Brown Christmas, so the original broadcast included several product placement scenes that had to be cut out of subsequent televised versions. Deleted scenes included Linus crashing into a Coca-Cola sign after being thrown by Snoopy. 

Is the Grinch too scary? When horror icon Boris Karloff was cast to voice the title character in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Dr. Seuss initially disputed it, fearing that Karloff’s Grinch would be too terrifying for children.

A Christmas Story is supposed to take place in Cleveland, Ohio during the cold and snowy days leading up to Christmas. It was a warm winter in Cleveland that year so much of the ‘snow’ is actually a mixture of potato flakes, shredded vinyl and firefighters' foam.

May your holidays have the same sense of wonder as these timeless stories. We wish you a blessed season and many happy endings to your own holiday stories.