Swiss Miss
Christmas is for the kiddies - and so are most of the films that have gained a Proustian association with the smell of pine needles. The first Christmas Day movie ever broadcast on British TV was Wallaby Jim of the Islands in 1951. Two years later the BBC plugged a gap with Swiss Miss, in which Stan Laurel chucks feathers in the air in order to seduce a St Bernard dog into giving up his barrel of brandy, and Oliver Hardy is pursued across an Alpine rope-bridge by a furious gorilla. This screening secured Stan and Ollie's place in the Christmas TV listings for decades - though the feature most favored by schedulers, over the years, is Way Out West, which has no snow at all, not even the feathery variety.
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