Harry Potter Weekend

It's hard to say if anybody else has noticed this, but it seems to me that ABC Family has a Harry Potter movie marathon during every imaginable holiday weekend. I'm not exaggerating here.

So far I've seen a Harry Potter movie marathon during Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas (TWICE!), Presidents' Day, AND the Fourth of July.

Now, let's think about this, people. Halloween... ok.. I would call that appropriate. Witches and wizards and stuff. Ok, Halloween is cool. Thanksgiving is stupid. This just in: the British don't even celebrate Thanksgiving. OBVIOUSLY. That seems just a titch illogical. For Christmas... it's a bit of a stretch. Granted, there are some glorious Christmasy scenes in most of the Harry Potter movies and, more to the point, glorious Christmas music by Mr. John Williams. But it's definitely not a Christmas movie. On the same note, though, I don't think Home Alone is a Christmas movie, either. It just happens to take place at Christmastime. So... I suppose I can accept Harry Potter at Christmas, but it's kind of a gray area.

But for Presidents' Day and, more importantly, the FOURTH OF JULY!?! Nothing says "God bless America" like spending all weekend inside watching movies about a fictional, BRITISH wizard, his buddies, and all their shenanigans. Yay.

Maybe, just maybe, ABC Family was going for a little irony or something. Fourth of July does, after all, celebrate our freedom from the British. But if that's really what they were trying to do, I wouldn't have picked Harry Potter - a British phenomenon that took America by storm. Seriously? That's like asking the Beatles to sing the Star Spangled Banner.

Yay, America!! Better than England since 1776 - until J.K. Rowling filled cocktail napkins with stories about a geeky teen charged with the responsibility of saving the entire wizarding world. You go, USA!


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