YELLOW BRICK CINEMA: 'The Wizard of Oz' shows Dec. 17-18 at the California Theatre.

THAT PEOPLE'S PALACE, the 1927 California Theatre in downtown San Jose, is practically a shrine to the riches of the Ghost of Christmas Past. A trip there caps a downtown ice-skating party or a wander past the world (or at least Bay Area) famous Christmas in the Park display, now celebrating its 30th year. A Christmas Eve (at 9pm) screening of It's a Wonderful Life (1946) runs simultaneously with the Stanford Theatre's annual showing in Palo Alto. Director Frank Capra maintained that It's a Wonderful Life had been made to combat atheism by fostering a belief in divine providence. What's up front is an honest air of panic about the holiday. The film is equally honest about something else that's in the air during the holidays: a feeling of failure, a feeling of not fufilling duties to family and friends.

Dickens is clearly at the root of the Capra tale. Lionel "Mr. Potter" Barrymore had played Scrooge on an annual radio broadcast: "a character I've loved for many years," Barrymore said in theater previews for the 1938 film version of A Christmas Carol (playing Dec. 19–20, 1 and 6pm). Appearing in the coming attractions was Barrymore's way of putting his seal on a role he was born to play—but couldn't play, because of his crippling arthritis. As with James Bond, so with Scrooge—whoever you saw first in the role is your ideal. My first Scrooge was the one Barrymore introduced: the Anthony Hopkins–ish Reginald Owens, a fleshy snarler. The version is a trim 69 minutes with the uncredited film noir factotum John F. Seitz behind the camera. In her introduction to the new Everyman's Library A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books, Margaret Atwood supposes a couple of reasons why Scrooge sticks around. First, he gives us the pleasure of imaging a boycott of Christmas, bahhing and humbugging all the way. Second, the tale is grounded in Scrooge and Dickens' own deprived childhoods and a fantasy of living them over happily. When Ebenezer reforms, he says that he is as merry as a schoolboy; Atwood responds, "Now, what schoolboy might that be?"

The holiday theme of making a past better continues in the modern favorite, 1983's A Christmas Story, playing on the 25th itself (at 7:30pm). It became a classic because of the never-ending delight in dangerous toys, Bob Clark's sturdy, fast direction and the vastly underrated actress Melinda Dillon as the mom. As a Boxing Day afterthought—and as an urging-on to populist triumph in the new year, 1938's all-color The Adventures of Robin Hood (Dec. 26–27, 1 and 6pm) features Los Gatos' own then-17-year-old Olivia de Havilland, fit to make Natalie Portman look like Ugly Betty. The Wizard of Oz (Dec. 17–18, 7:30pm) needs neither outline nor justification: everyone's favorite film, on a big screen in a true picture palace, not an overpriced shoebox. And at $5 a ticket, these screenings are doable. A rough end for a rough year begs for a little working-class luxury, which calls to mind the banner outside a New Orleans theater, seen in the novel The Moviegoer by Walker Percy: "Where happiness costs so little."

THE WINTER MOVIE SERIES, presented by Team San Jose and Stanford Theatre Foundation, runs Dec. 17–27 at California Theatre, 345 S. First St., San Jose. Tickets are $5.