When I was in second grade I became best friends with this awesome kid named Julie. Unbeknownst to me my sister in pre-school was becoming best friends with a kid named Caroline. Imagine everyone’s surprised when we found out Caroline and Julie were sisters. Best friend sisters becoming best friends with sisters! (KWP)

Prancer – by guest writer Caroline Nelson

I’m a sucker for those movies where sweet, innocent kids remind jaded, unsentimental grown ups how hope and goodwill are really what life is all about. If the jaded grown up is Sam Elliott, I get a little faint. Then if the movie is about Christmas, I’ll collapse.

Watching Prancer (1989) is part of preparing for Christmas for me now. I love this little girl named Jessica. She is devoted to Christmas. She rejoices gladly and loudly in the joy of it.   And she’s a firm believer in Santa. So when a mysteriously injured reindeer shows up, she knows who exactly who he is, he’s Prancer.  He MUST be better by Christmas Eve, and taking him in is a no brainer for her. Her dad, not so much

Watching Sam Elliott as her cheerless widowed father struggle with grief and frustration is heartbreaking, and awesome because he does a fair amount of it in long underwear. But slowly he sees his daughter’s unwavering faith in the season win over the people around her, some of who were almost as crabby as him. Then he understands that saving Prancer really will do everything she believes it will do – SAVE CHRISTMAS.   Which of course it does, along with everything and everyone.   And then we all cry and cry and cry because it’s so sweet!

Caroline Nelson lives with her husband and son in a place much like Lake Wobegon. She is a life-long film lover and a best friend to the Wagner sister.