Being a TCM junkie, there are movies that I watch at least parts of whenever they're on, which is mutliple times a year: Casablanca, The Apartment, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, Mrs Miniver, The Philadelphia Story...the list goes on.

Remember when The Ten Commandments, and Ben Hur were shown only once a year? Usually at Christmas and Easter, one or the other. It was a big treat, and our family would anticipate and gather around the TV each time. Now those two are show throughout the year, esp. Ben Hur on TCM. I think Ben Hur is my favorite of the two..

And yes, I watched last night. ha Altho I did channel surf a bit during commercials - not the same with commercials! - and then went to bed right after the Egyptian army was swallowed up by the waters of the Red Sea.

And also yes, when Nefeteri clutches Moses's arm....swooon. Hubba Hubba

10 commandments were always Palm Sunday evening...wish they were still as we were at Easter Vigil. As a child we WAITED for Rodger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella each year as well as Wizard of Oz. Sound of Music is another that was yearly... I have them all of VHS so I could show them to my children back in the day. Today we will watch Jesus Christ Superstar--our annual movie watching this Easter season.

Schoolhouse OMG swoon! I didn't want to offend anyone but them not wearing shirts is my once a year major hot flash. My husband would leave the room when that movie came on lol

"A Christmas Story". i've seen it so many times, i have a lot of the dialog memorized. even now, this movie cracks me up.

IT'S A MAJOR AWARD!!!

I was never into those big Biblical epics. IIRC, Sound of Music was always shown this time of year on broadcast TV, which we no longer have. We cut the cable a number of years ago, so I can watch those things just about any time I wish.

Easter Parade is one of my faves.

Not too many people still have 'appointment' TV these days. Funny how things change...

P.S. Forgot to add that the 1960s R&H Cinderella is available on demand now on a number of different platforms, I think, and the musical Scrooge with Albert Finney is a winter holiday season must in our house.

Thanksgiving evening we watch Miracle on 34th Street. which opens the holiday season for us From then until Christmas we watch A Christmas Carol, both the black and white one with Alistair Sim and the remake with George C. Scott.. We're No Angels is charming and we sometimes watch it twice during the season.

For general viewing we like Support Your Local Sheriff, and Support your Local Gunfighter. Jack Elam is great, and hilarious!

We used to watch Beach Blanket Bingo, or one of its sequels every year when we lived in Venice close to the beach.

A friend of mine in Venice, Robert Lee King, wrote and directed Psycho Beach Party, and I watch that regularly also. I met him before he wrote that movie - I was taking a screenwriting class at the time. It's a good parody of the beach blanket movies.

I seem to have developed the tradition of re-watching Dr. Who, at least the first 7 seasons of the re-boot, yearly. I'm in the midst of it now. I would watch more than one episode per night, but I keep falling asleep midway through the second one.

The only movies that I can think of that I've rewatched kind of regularly (but not yearly) are Yankee Doodle Dandy (because I love Jimmy Cagney's dancing), The Great Escape, and Stalag 17.. . I am sure there are many other that I will watch if I come across them but I don't seek them out.

George C. Scott's version of A Christmas Carol is a holiday favorite.

It seems my movie traditions are centered around fall and winter holidays.

Bell, Book And Candle is another winter/holiday movie that I like to rewatch.

White Christmas was an annual must-see with my mother.

The invention of video has completely changed the OPs original idea and it's question. Waiting for much of anything is a foreign concept these days.

For some reason on Christmas Day, when we were growing up, a local station would run the movie, "The Crawling Eye". Don't think we ever watched it through but my brother, myself and our 4 cousins would run around the house screaming and such, attacking each other as "the eye". So several months ago, it was broadcast again and I watched it. All things considered for the low budget, lousy special effects silly sci-fi movie it was, it wasn't half bad.

I miss ”appointment TV”. But we have our own traditions, like ”Elf” is the movie that plays while we decorate the tree, and basically recite the movie as it goes. (DH has a new tradition where, when one of us goes with him to NYC, he takes us on an Elf tour…but we don’t walk through the Lincoln Tunnel.)

The R&H Cinderella is perfection. I saw it when it first aired, and a couple of years later it was our final play at summer camp. I didn’t see it again until just a couple of years ago, and every moment was exactly as I remembered. It’s so simple, and elegant, nothing extraneous. Perfection. If only the streaming commercial break-ins lined up with the planned commercial breaks.

I remember watching R&H Cinderella annually as a child. My favorite Christmas movies are Love Actually and The Holiday, but I don’t watch them every year.

" The invention of video has completely changed the OPs original idea and it's question. Waiting for much of anything is a foreign concept these days. "

This is a surprising comment, I don't think many share this thought. The much greater availability of and easy access to so many movies whenever desired, often for free, is hard to not like.

I don't miss "appointment TV" or waiting for annual movies.......I can think of movies that were shown annually (The 10 Commandments, in all it's scenery-chewing glory, The Sound of Music around Christmas, etc), but I never waited with anticipation to see them as a kind of tradition. Ditto for the TV show regular repeaters, like How The Grinch Stole Christmas, or It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.

I think arcy’s comment is actually on track. While I like being able to watch something at my convenience, when it comes around, there was something nice about the ”communal experience even though we weren’t all in the same living room at the same time”. Kind of like going to the movies, and afterward talking about because you were pretty sure your friends had just watched it, too.

Appointment tv and streaming are both good concepts.

There are movies that come around to streaming during their season, but you have to find it, and hope its on a service you have. Kind of like cable (I guess; I rarely had cable.).

So, I have movies that I love, and want to watch when I want to watch them and not go hunting for them. Like Elf. or think it’s on Netflix because it was there yesterday, but new month, new lineup, and my movie is gone.

FWIW, there are some streaming platforms that replicate old school broadcast/cable TV with channels. We like Pluto TV and appreciate the random discovery of turning on the TV to watch whatever happens to be on.

I always look forward to watching Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments. Ben Hur was my Mom's favourite movie and she said she used to wear Ben Hur perfume when she was young. I loved Mary Martin's Peter Pan that came on every year but they don't show it on tv any more. Vincent Price's House of Wax also came on once a year and whenever that movie was on I would go hide. I also looked forward every year to watching Tammy and Gidget movies.

carolb, thanks for the info about the ”live tv”. I see them, but never flipped to them, because, well, I didn’t know what they were and I just wanted to watch a movie or something, not poke around deeper. But I will give that a try, thanks.