The Polar Express UNEDITED REACTION (all access)

Please watch as many Christmas movies as you want! I am here for it! I love this movie so much. It came out when my kids were little. It's actually based off of a kids Picture book. I highly recommend getting the book. They put the illustrations EXACTLY in the movie. The shot of the bell at the end is the last page of the book. So I have so many stories relating to this movie and concept: First of all, we lived in Boone, Iowa for years and years. Its a HUGE train town, and it has a scenic train railway. They used to do a Polar Express Christmas train every year. It was every weekend in December. The kids came on in their pjs, they were served hot cocoa and each train car had a volunteer read the book during the ride. At the end of the ride, it reached the "North Pole" and the kids got to visit Santa. The train depot is purely a non profit, its there for the spirit of the town. So most of it is run by volunteers. Our family volunteered every year. I would read the story in my train car, and my kids would help pass out cocoa and cookies. So we got to ride for free because we volunteered. Win-win both ways...great way to volunteer plus we got a fun Christmas train ride. They still do it, but they had to get rid of the book part of it for copyright reasons, and its called the Christmas Train now. Its still fun, though. My other big story is a Christmas memory I have when I was a kid. I was about 9 or 10, and hitting the age where I didn't believe in Santa anymore. I had a younger sister who still completely believed, and I was so much like this little boy in the story. We both woke up Christmas morning, it was probably about 5 am and still dark. We saw some weird lights in the sky through the window, so we ran outside and we both heard as clear as a bell, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!" and I swear, it sounded otherworldly. I still get goosebumps thinking about it. Now, I know as an adult, there are a lot of reasonable explanations that could be had...but a part of me still believes that was real, as does my sister. So, I have NEVER told my kids Santa isn't real. I tell them the truth though...that no one has ever seen the real Santa Claus. But I believe in him, the spirit of Christmas, and Christmas miracles (and I have witnessed so many over the years). They eventually figured out that we buy the presents...but we have had some instances where presents showed up that we didn't know who they were from. Anyways, we keep the Spirit alive in our family. And when they were old enough, I told them this story as well.

Jenny MacRunnel