Catherine O'Hara Was More Than A Comedy Legend – She Was A Holiday Movie Master

It's not hard to see how Catherine O'Hara has become a de facto pop culture mom for a whole generation (and then some) of young Gen-Xers and Millennials. She's a comedy legend who started on "Second City Television," but for many audiences of a certain age, she's the voice and face of the holidays. With the great actor's passing at the age of 71, it's hard not to reflect on just how much she impacted a whole bunch of kids as our ultimate holiday queen. 

In 1988, O'Hara starred as high-strung stepmom and goth goddess Delia Deetz in the perfect Halloween-flavored comedy classic "Beetlejuice," then, in 1990 and 1992, played high-strung mother Kate McAllister in the Christmas classics "Home Alone" and "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York." She also voiced the whip-smart Sally in Henry Selick's "The Nightmare Before Christmas," the ultimate kids Halloween-slash-Christmas film, in 1993. To say that she was a master of holiday movies in the late 1980s and early 1990s is kind of an understatement, because she left her imprint on those holidays for many of us for life. She's one of the most influential comedy stars in movie history for a reason, and part of that reason is that she's our collective Holiday Mom.

As a kid, Halloween almost always meant watching "Beetlejuice" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas," though it would take me years to make the connection between the haughty and hilarious Delia Deetz and the soft-spoken but strong-willed Sally. The soundtrack for "The Nightmare Before Christmas" plays from October through December in my home, which means that Catherine O'Hara's breathy soprano is the sound of the holidays to me just as much as "The Monster Mash" or "Carol of the Bells." In "Beetlejuice" she's a bit antagonistic, but comes around and proves her mettle as a pretty cool stepmom, while in "Nightmare," she's the voice of reason — the only person in all of Halloweentown who doesn't blindly follow their charismatic but obsessed leader Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon/Danny Elfman). In both films, she is very much her own woman, an inspiration to little girls everywhere who needed to be reminded of their own voices. 

While O'Hara was never a scream queen in the traditional sense and would never be listed among the most influential women in horror, she did make a huge impact on the Halloween holiday for a whole lot of kids (and probably inspired more than a few young goths). But it was as Kate McAllister in the "Home Alone" movies that O'Hara really cemented her place in our hearts forever. 

Here's the thing about Kate McAllister: She's really giving it her best as the mother of five rambunctious kids, but she's only human. She's impatient and a little harsh with her son Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) in particular, leading to his being stuck on his own in both "Home Alone" and its immediate sequel. While it could be easy to paint Kate as shrill and unfair, Catherine O'Hara's performance is kind of sympathetic even to a kid watching, because we can identify with just how frazzled she feels. Not only that, but once she discovers that Kevin isn't with the family, she goes through all kinds of craziness to get back to him, including a very long ride in the back of a semi truck with a socially awkward John Candy. 

In the second movie, she knows to find Kevin at the big Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, and when the two see one another and hug, it's an absolutely incredible moment because we get to see just how much they love one another. No family is perfect, but seeing a family that can fight and come back together is wonderful, especially when the mother of that family is as incredible as O'Hara as Kate. Without her, the "Home Alone" movies are just some cartoonishly violent siege movies that happen to take place during the holidays, but thanks in part to her performance, they contain what the Christmas holiday season is really all about. 

Halloween and Christmas will never be the same without Catherine O'Hara, but I'm thankful that she made the holidays of my childhood so lovely. Rest in peace, and thanks for the movie magic.