Defrosting Mariah Carey might have become an annual tradition the second the festive season kicks in, but the ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ singer has nothing on Dolly Parton.
Whether it’s releasing multiple seasonal albums, including A Holly Dolly Christmas, Once Upon a Christmas, or Home for Christmas, or the sheer volume of Yuletide movies she’s either starred in or produced, December is one month of the year where Parton can always be relied on to make her presence felt.
In the last several years alone, audiences have been treated to Netflix’s Emmy-winning musical extravaganza Christmas on the Square and NBC’s Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas, merely two of the latest entries to a wholesome and decade-spanning subgenre that includes Christmas at Dollywood, Unlikely Angel, A Smoky Mountain Christmas, A Country Christmas Story, Dolly Parton’s Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love, and many more. In short, nobody loves Christmas quite like Parton.
In typically self-effacing fashion, though, Parton wouldn’t even consider naming one of her own projects as her favourite Christmas feature when speaking to Entertainment Weekly, opting instead to stick with the classics and plump for It’s a Wonderful Life: “We watch that every year, like everybody does! I love watching that every year.”
Frank Capra’s 1946 masterpiece might be lauded as one of the greatest movies to ever come out of Hollywood, but it takes on a life of its own each and every time December rolls around. For 11 months of the year, nobody pays much heed to George Bailey’s trials and tribulations, but from the second the bells start ringing to signal that it’s officially the festive season, all bets are well and truly off.
Despite Parton having such a strong connection to anything even vaguely Christmas-themed, covering film, television, cinema, and more, even she knows that Carey’s status as the warbling shadow looming over everything isn’t to be trifled with. She said: “They’re calling us both Queen of Christmas, but she’s the queen. I’m proud of her. She’s great! What could be better than that great song?”
Christmas on the Square was hardly shy about wearing the It’s a Wonderful Life inspiration on its sleeve, either, seeing as Parton quite literally played a character called Angel who steps in to stop a bitter and wealthy antagonist from evicting all of the residents from an entire town in order to sell the land to an unscrupulous property developer so they can build a mall. Not exactly identical, in fairness, but the message is pretty much the same.
While it would be fair to say none of Parton’s many, many Christmas projects have gained the same sort of iconic status as It’s a Wonderful Life, there’s no denying she’s taken its influence to heart in more ways than one.
