So I got to thinking, with the smell of chestnuts roasting over a street vendor’s coal, that we need a new pop culture holiday tradition. Don’t we all have enough versions of We Wish You A Merry Christmas on our music playback machine of choice to last us the rest of our lives? Really, can anyone want figgy pudding so much that they would refuse to leave a person’s porch/living room until some is brought to them? I mean, how merry of a Christmas can you possibly be wishing me in this scenario?

Here’s what I propose: we replace the annual release of Music Celebrity du Jour’s Christmas record with something that has just as much cultural identity and brand development as those far-out music stars of wonder shining beyond us. Something that always turns a profit, regardless of the quality of the artifact. Something that would at least give us a break from hearing silver bells jingle.

“What is this something?” you ask, your cheeks quivering nervously like a bowl full of jelly thanks to all the pumpkin pie and egg nog you’ve been downing since Thanksgiving?

Movie franchises.

Instead of the Jon Secada & Lady Gaga Christmas Duets from La-La-Land, we get Pirates of the Caribbean: Mists of the Black Coal Stocking. A much needed change for the better.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Mists of the Black Coal Stocking

Captain Jack and crew sail to the North Pole to discover the source of coal filling the world’s Christmas stockings. Along the way, Will and Elizabeth Turner must rescue their young twins from the Isle of Banished Elves, while Jack schemes to find a way to turn coal mists into diamonds and partners with a most unusual sailor of the skies.

Terminator: Incarnation

War rages endless between man and machine. Weary of the constant loss of life, cyborgical and biological, SkyNet determines there is only one way to bring peace between man and machine. A young orphan, Maria, agrees to be the vessel that will bear the perfect half man/half machine. When word of this deliverer’s birth reaches ears and CPUs, many are threatened by the new world he will bring. But three cyborg generals, and three vagabond resistance guardians, join forces to protect the new hope that has entered their broken world.

AVP: Joyeux Noel

After eons of slaughter and violence cutting across the galaxies, two enemies – separated from their brethren – become unlikely friends as they learn to lean on each other for survival. Inspired by their experience together, Autjr’tyi and Xoktz return to their respective species and tirelessly pursue an unfathomable armistice on Pt’Katix, a holy day of celebration for both worlds.

Indiana Jones and the Star of Wonder

After inscriptions on a rare 1st century vase from the fertile crescent are found – supposedly detailing the falling of an eastern star that had shown brighter in the sky than any in ancient history – Indy and Mutt are dragged into a race against the clock to decipher the remainder of the script and find the location of the fallen star before the evil energy conglomerate Consortio Globus can destroy the treasure: a meteorite, presumed to contain enough mineralogical space radiation to overcome the world’s fossil fuel dependence and bring peace on earth and good will to all.

Sinterklaas and the Planet of the Apes

For thousands of years Kris Kringle has warped time to circumnavigate this planet in one night to deliver good gifts and cheer to all the Earth, but this time, night is bent too far and Santa is hurled to an apparently lifeless, foreign planet. The sleigh’s power of flight lost, and his reindeer scattered, Claus begins the search for a way home and discovers the horrifying reality of this new place. His capture at the hands of an impossible enemy leaves him wondering if he’ll ever escape to be Father Christmas again.

National Treasure: The Tunnel to Korvatunturi

Santa Claus and his North Pole home are the most powerful myths of the modern world. But, what if it is more than a myth? What if the Santa Claus lore is actually a series of clues? Clues to an unfathomable hidden treasure buried beneath Mount Korvatunturi, one of the many rumored locations of Santa’s lair. Ben Gates is determined to find out. He and his band of treasure-hunters embark on twisting, turning adventure to discover the fabled entrance to the Tunnel to Korvatunturi and reclaim the lost treasure of Saint Nicholas.

Star Trek: Epiphany

The United Federation of Planets calls the Enterprise and its crew into action once more. This time the mission is one of peace: to bring a gift to a new race only just discovering warp drive. But when they arrive, they find a most unusual series of events unfolding in the history of this people – events much like those reported to have occurred on Earth millennia ago. A child that some fear and others hope will be their savior has been born. Kirk and crew must confront long abandoned ideas of God and faith to present the gift to its true recipient while the fate of this entire planet hangs in the balance.

The Matrix: Neotivity

Rain pounds the window of Michelle McGahey’s Lower Downtown Capital City apartment. This dark night brings a strange visitor to the door, calling herself “The Oracle.” She tells the young woman that she is pregnant, and that her son will be “The One” and restore order to what she calls “The Matrix.” “You shall name him Thomas Anderson, but his true name will be Neo.” The Oracle leaves behind her a guardian – John Anderson, a servant of The Oracle – to watch over the shocked mother and her unborn son as a husband and father. A word of warning she gives as she departs, “stay hidden, and stay quiet. For, others will come after me who do not seek to protect Neo, but to destroy. In good time all will be revealed. Until then, guard this child.”

Avatar: Blue Christmas (IMAX 3D)

100 years after the Pandora War, peace exists between the Na’vi and humanity. Mankind has long since colonized the Edenic planet and has intermingled life and love with the Na’vi. But some Na’vi fear the loss of their ways as they see the “small man” grab more and more authority over this shared world. A group of young freedom fighters begin to study the culture of their invaders to find the perfect time – a point of great vulnerability – to take back what is rightfully theirs.

How many of the above movies would you go to the theater to see? 1? 4? 8? Won’t you join me in righting the pop-cultural ship we see sailing in on Christmas Day? Together we can usher in a new era of the commercialization of Christmas – an era that will be as timeless as an era can be, in our age of ultimate consumerism.

This was going to be a very intelligent article. After using this space previously to gush about summer blockbusters and iPhones, I meant for this month’s subject matter to be smarter – or, at least, headier.

I fully intended to go for that most of academic of topics, the kind of thing you would have to read in one browser tab with Wikipedia open in another. Nothing less than the plays of the Bard himself – and, specifically, his comedy Twelfth Night – as recently and majestically performed by The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park in Manhattan’s Central Park was, you must know, my starting point.

Except, it’s Monday night and Monday night is (for those of you who still pay for cable) the night that the SciFi Channel airs four hours of back-to-back episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

So I have Star Trek on the brain, and yet I do very much want to share thoughts on this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park. And, if you’ll bear with me, I think we will find more connections between the works of Gene Roddenberry and those of Shakespeare than just the actor Patrick Stewart.

I assert that the plays of Shakespeare are heady and academic with my tongue in my cheek. The way Shakespeare is taught in high schools – and in some cases, colleges – is a misreading of what the man’s purpose was, what he meant for his plays to do. In this way, and without too much uncomfortable stretching, we come to our first similarity between Shakespeare’s plays and the continuing mission that is Star Trek: they are dramas performed in distinct acts, and they have it as their purpose to entertain, enlighten, and engage their audience.

It’s just as difficult to summarize the plot of Twelfth Night as it is to attempt to explain how time travel works in the Star Trek universe. I will say that Twelfth Night involves not one but two cases of mistaken identity, cross-dressing, possible homosexual relationships, and one of the greatest and least understood phrases Shakespeare ever wrote, at least contextually:

Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.

As it turns out, in the context of Twelfth Night these words are not spoken by way of motivation, as they often are used in our culture; rather, they are part of a ruse, a plot to embarrass a character that neither the audience nor the other characters much like. And, in the hands of the excellent cast of The Public’s presentation, this line actually carried with it the appropriate measure of innuendo as well. In short, even this most inspiring of moments, this most serious and heavy charge is, in context, a joke, a bit of entertainment.

Another very important similarity: both works are heavily influenced by their predecessors. At one time among so-called Shakespeare scholars it was very popular to actually try to debunk the Bard. People saw obvious similarities between Shakespeare’s plays and a number of sources that came before him (or, in the case of Christopher Marlowe, works written contemporaneously) and drew conclusions, painting Shakespeare in many shades of crook from plagiarizer to front man to myth.

These days (read: postmodernity) most accept that every story is a re-telling of some story that came before it, or, as my mother and King Solomon like to say, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” And this is fine with us. It is expected. We don’t and shouldn’t tolerate plagiarism, but we also do not fly off the handle every time something seems like something else.

For a more recent example, see the almost-conspiracy around that other widely read British author, J.K. Rowling. At the height of her fame (is she still at the height? will she ever come down?) many people accused her of lifting her tale from Adrian Jacobs’ The Adventures of Willy the Wizard. This is still being worked out in the courts, but barring some major shift, in perpetuity no one will care much that there once was a story about a wizard named Willy that bears many similarities to the more famous Harry.

Star Trek, too, is packed with other people’s stories, be it highly inventive retellings of Greek classics, verbatim performances of Sherlock Holmes and even, it turns out, many examples of Shakespeare’s plays being appropriated and adapted to the twenty-fourth century.

Shakespeare’s plays can be crude and funny, sad and moving, mystical and romantic, and any combination of these things. Mostly, though, they do what the best stories do. Elizabethan English makes them seem untouchably highbrow, but even this would have been funny to Shakespeare because much of his language, to his contemporaries, would have seemed base and coarse, as it suited the characters.

Imagine what the English language will sound like 400 years into the future; imagine how the works of Gene Roddenberry will sound to readers then. Will they be any more “highbrow” because they’re old? Certainly not.

Admittedly, Star Trek probably won’t be read or performed like Shakespeare’s plays are today. I don’t see there ever being a “Roddenberry in the Park.” Shakespeare is certainly on a higher level, but let’s not put him too high up on the pedestal.

Twelfth Night in Central Park ended its run on July 12, back here in the 21st century. It was truly fantastic, with an amazing cast that featured Anne Hathaway opposite several well-regarded Broadway actors. If you missed it, take heart: Shakespeare in the Park will be back next summer with Othello, and in the meantime The Public Theater’s next production, The Bacchae by Euripides, begins August 11.

And Star Trek: The Next Generation is on the SciFi network every Monday night. Make time for both, make time for it all: the plays of Shakespeare, the space operas of Gene Roddenberry, the blue notes of Miles Davis, and the crooning of Duncan Sheik. Find entertainment, enlightenment, and engaging stories wherever you can; really, they’re all around us.

I’m not a film critic. I’m putting that right out there. If you’re looking for film criticism, you don’t have to look far – this place is teeming with it.

It’s not that I can’t be critical. I love tearing into literature, or even the occasional music album. I’ve praised the merits of this writer or that performer, but I know, frankly, I’d be crap at reviewing movies.

The reason is simple: I’m far too forgiving of film. Here’s how I know I’m not enjoying a movie: if at any time I’m taken out of the story enough to stop and think, Am I really still watching this?

Not very demanding criteria. Even if I do actually hear myself asking this question, I will usually try to hang in there, ever a believer in the power of cinema to entertain me. There are times when this question has ultimately prompted me to leave the theater before the movie has ended, like during Final Destination, and other times when it really should have, as in Sin City.

This aesthetic, if you’ll indulge me and call it that, is why I am particularly merciful on the so-called Summer Blockbuster. The sole purpose of these big, booming tours-de-awesome is to generally delight for two hours at the end of a day spent in the sun. If they can accomplish this, if they add to my summertime delight, they have succeeded; if they do more than that, I am pleasantly surprised. And if, when the film has ended and I walk out of the theater into a still-balmy night, I can actually have a conversation with my wife about the implications of this or that plot twist, I know I am going to eagerly recommend the film to others.

Thus far this summer I have seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine (generally panned by critics, enjoyed by me), Star Trek (critics seem okay with it, I was in love with it from the opening sequence), and Terminator: Salvation (disliked by critics and by me). Admittedly, while growing up I was a comic book collector, Trekkie (or Trekker for those who care about those kinds of distinctions), and all-around sci-fi guy; so, as long as my precious expectations were not completely shattered, there was a good chance I was going to like each of these movies. But because each film is both a summer blockbuster and a prequel, each is subject to one additional criteria: whether or not it remained true to the spirit of the original story.

See, growing up, I was the kind of kid that wouldn’t play with my Ghostbusters action figures together with my Ninja Turtles guys. Sure, I knew that they both lived in New York City in each of their respective universes, but their universes were separate. It didn’t make sense in either narrative for the two to meet. At least not to my pre-tween self.

Fortunately, each of these three prequels – Wolverine, Star Trek, and Terminator – stayed true to the narratives that bore them, and two of the three scored big in entertainment value. But there was a time, somewhere in the middle of this Terminator, when I slipped out of the story to ponder, I wonder if this is the scene during which Christian Bale flew off the handle? And my next thought, was, Uh oh, I’m not thinking about the story anymore. Followed by, Why are my feet sticking to the floor?

But this isn’t a movie review. I’m terrible at that, remember.

The real question here, in light of these three movies is, “Is the convention of ‘prequel’ a shameless, money-making trick or is it a legitimate narrative convention?” There are two well-written articles from respected publications that elaborate each side and frame this debate. The first is a review of Star Trek in The New Yorker in which Anthony Lane rages against that film with a kind of snark that would have made his colleague David Denby blush. His main target is what he calls the “long-range backstory,” and he cites examples from the Willy Wonka remake to Batman Begins.

And he doesn’t like them, his thesis being that “there is a beauty to the merely given.” The fact that Hollywood seems so intent on delivering these backstories, he says, is an indication that those responsible for these films see their audience as little more than “plaintive children” who demand to have everything explained.

That particular metaphor, the audience as children, leads into the other article I mentioned, a piece by film critic Ty Burr that was published in The Boston Globe called “Backstory: Why we love prequels.” Burr acknowledges that the prequel is, among other things, used as a marketing tool – “business as usual,” he calls it. But then he takes it further, suggesting that the audience is comforted by the familiarity of known characters and the fantasy that these characters live, like we do, “between the connective tissue of our media experiences.” He also points to examples of prequel in other media ranging from scripture to television to music to literature, even calling the Aeneid a prequel to The Iliad, a reference that flies in the face of Lane’s assertion that backstory would have ruined classical literature like Hamlet. True, Burr acknowledges, prequels are a kind of “childish cheat” that prolongs the story, but, he concludes, what’s so wrong with that.

So I’m a child. I want to be entertained. I don’t want to be taken out of the myth. When I sensed that Star Trek was coming to a close, I turned to my wife and said, as sincerely as I’ve ever said anything, “I wish this would never end.” Luckily, if I know my Star Trek, there will be at least a few more sequels (and maybe even prequels) to keep the dream alive.

This may be a “childish cheat.” I may be asking for more than the “merely given,” but isn’t that what going to the movies is all about? And isn’t that an important part of all narrative? Isn’t that the power of myth? And isn’t the sound that Woverine’s claws make as they emerge from his knuckles wicked cool?