Daniel's Favorite Christmas Movie Was/Is "Home Alone"

"Kevin McCallister" from "Home Alone"/ Macaulay Culkin who played him,in the present day.




The film "Home Alone" actually came out in the early nineties, and Daniel was not born until the late middle of that decade, however it quickly became Daniel's favorite Christmas film. For those of you who haven't seen it, or don't remember it well, it's the story of a large Chicago suburban family whose cousins come to visit and the entire family is to make a trip to Europe on a plane Christmas week. Sometimes things in large families go awry, and Kevin is relegated to the third floor of the big house, on the night before they must leave early for the airport. A power outage causes the family to oversleep, and somehow, the family takes off at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, with only seconds to spare, leaving Kevin asleep in the attic. This is the story of how highly intelligent and resourceful Kevin works, eats, plays, worships, all while simaltaneously defending his home from Christmas thieves. Macaulay Culkin is absolutely excellent in the role of Kevin, and this indeed helped to propel him to stardom. The film is the work of filmmaker John Hughes who died suddenly in 2002.
Macaulay Culkin has since grown to be thirty. My kids follow his career, He is quite interested and quite gifted in art himself, and attended art school in Rhode Island. He occasionally buys fine art for his own collection. Our older kids, both being professional artists, hope he buys some of their art work someday. Macaulay has also known sorrow in the past few years. His older sister, Dakota Culkin died just two weeks after Daniel's passing in Los Angeles, following an accidental hit by a car while walking. This time of year is likely bittersweet for him as well.
Daniel loved the "Home Alone" movie. The character Kevin not only resembled our son Matthew at about eight, but Daniel memorized long stretches of the dialogue from the film. When Daniel was only about four, he deemed the entire film where an eight year old defends his home against serial robbers as "entirely plausible". Daniel himself would have been a fine filmmaker. He had an eye for detail, irony, pathos, etc. He watched this film many times, and probably related to how busy a large family can be sometimes, and how easily siblings can hurt each other ibn the course of sibling rivalry, as they grow. If you have a chance to catch it this season, please do.
On this day, the third actual anniversary of Daniel's departure from Earth, we wish all of you well. We also hope that Macaulay and his family have found some peace too, following the passing of Dakota. Everyone, please make this holiday season memorable for all the right reasons, not for the material ones.






This is one of the original trailers to the film. Interestingly, changes were made between the time this trailer was made and the final cut of the film. You will however, get the idea.