Everybody loves Christmas carols and everyone loves Christmas movies, but did you ever consider how your favorite films use your favorite music? Eighth in a 12-part series.

Acknowledging the inclusion of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) in our collective holiday movie canon is probably akin to a foodie cringing as he drives past the “Billions Served” sign outside a McDonalds restaurant. I remember watching the film for the first time when it was released, thinking I wasted eight bucks, and going home in mild disgust. I never would have imagined back then that the film would someday be called a modern holiday classic – or, for that matter, that I would be one of those who call it that. What can I say? It grew on me. I guess sometimes we all crave McNuggets.

There’s a little more music on the Christmas Vacation soundtrack than in most contemporary holiday movies – which is ironic, because for years no soundtrack album was ever released – but the standout musical moment occurs without a doubt as Chevy Chase is gazing out his kitchen window late at night, imagining a summertime tableau starring the inground pool he desperately wants to give his family for Christmas. The scene is soon overrun with the same extended-family chaos that has infiltrated his real-life holiday household (along with a special appearance by a barely clad shopgirl who appeared early in the film), and not even “Mele Kalikimaka” by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters can ease his strife.

That definitive version of “Mele Kalikimaka” is meant to invoke oddball nostalgia in Christmas Vacation, but a few years later Curtis Hanson would use it with a straight face in his 1950s-era police noir L.A. Confidential. Context is everything, right boys?