Essay: How 'The Godfather Part III' stole Christmas

One family’s Yuletide saga

Dec 14, 2025

This is the story of The Great DeVore Family Christmas Tragedy of 1990.

I have never told it before. It is a sad story that nonetheless teaches a valuable life lesson: Don’t get your hopes up. In this miserably short and often beautiful life, we must all strive to keep our hopes sideways. It is for the best.

This story ends in tears, but it begins with laughter, joy, and all of the happy emotions we associate with the holiday season.

First, the main characters. My father. He was a man who loved Christmas, cigars, and walking around the house in his underwear, which deeply embarrassed me. It was his house, however, and he liked to be comfortable. Next, my mother. She also loved Christmas. She had an artist’s temperament, and every year she’d transform the house into all kinds of high-concept, festive tableaus: “Winter Wonderland,” “Santa’s Workshop,” or “The Land of 1,000 Baby Jesuses.” With a snap of her fingers, she could conjure plates of cookies, pies, and Mexican hot cocoa like a Christmas witch.

Then there was my older sister, Wendy, who was very funny and very scary. I always laughed at her jokes, even when they weren’t funny. Once, we played a game where she was the boss, and I was her assistant, and then the game never ended. Finally, my younger brother, Chris, who had the misfortune of being born last and, therefore, never got to have an opinion on anything. Luck of the draw, I suppose.

And then there’s me, a sullen teen shaped like a plum pudding.

We were a family that was mad about Christmas. My parents had grown up with meager Christmases, so they dedicated their adulthoods to putting on a real production. America forgets so much because it’s much more expensive to remember, but the Depression was a near-Apocalypse of poverty and struggle. The immediate post-war decade, though prosperous, was born of a global slaughter that is still unimaginable. These were my parents’ formative years.

And so, we had many traditions. One tradition was festooning the tree with way too much tinsel. Instead of looking covered in icicles, our Christmas trees always looked as if a metallic alien vine had infested our living room and spread its silvery tendrils everywhere, including in our hair and on the bottoms of our slippers. Then there was the formal wish list presentation ceremony, held on the first weekend of December. That was serious business. Another tradition was what I now call The Twelve Days of Mostly Carbs.

During the second week of every December, my dad would give my mother an impossibly cryptic clue about her gift that year, and she would spend the next two weeks trying to figure it out. It transformed her into a Latina Columbo — she would grill each of us — “just one more thing” — and when her line of questioning failed, she would try to bribe us. We stayed strong, of course.

My dad was a Baptist, but he happily attended multiple Catholic services, including Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, which usually started at 10 PM, an hour of incense and coughing, and ancient hymns mumbled that felt like six.

Once home, we’d put out cookies for Santa, and our dad would read “The Night Before Christmas” and Luke 2:1–20 from the Gospels. That last reading was essential to him. Then the three children — me, Wendy, and Chris — would drag ourselves to bed and slowly fall asleep to the silent night sounds of Dad cursing God as he put together whatever bicycle or action-figure playset my brother or I had asked for.

***

Christmas began early in our house. No matter how early I woke, logs were burning brightly in the fireplace. The blinking Christmas tree would have given birth to dozens of new presents. My mom’s favorite record of Nat King Cole singing carols would be playing, and I remember every scratch and pop of the vinyl. We would take turns handing each other presents, and the torn paper would be piled high. The final gift was from my dad to my mom: she never guessed the clues because they were so nonsensical, but it didn’t matter. Christmas morning ended with a kiss.

There would be a quick nap and breakfast for lunch: pancakes and eggs, sausages, and biscuits. My sister would crack jokes. My mother would marvel over her gift. My dad would smoke cigars. My brother and I would play with toys.

And after another nap, we would watch a movie on the state-of-the-art video home system that sat in the family room like a golden calf. We’d watch, as a family, all the typical Christmas movies in the days leading up to zero hour: Miracle on 34th Street, It’s A Wonderful Life, and the 1951 A Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge. But December 25th was reserved for one in particular. That movie was Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic, The Godfather. It didn’t feel like Christmas as a kid until Sonny Corleone got gunned down at that toll booth — just obliterated by bullets. Though I’ve watched it dozens of times, I still think the scene is shocking and awful. It also warms me up, like a cup of hot cider.

I grew up with the first two Godfather movies. My parents revered them. They were almost a holy story. The Bible, Patsy Cline, and The Godfather (and maybe a little Shakespeare) were the best Western Civilization had to offer.

Clint Eastwood once said, and I’m paraphrasing the man, that the two greatest American art forms are jazz and the western. I’d add the humble gangster flick to that shortlist. That genre is about the American Dream: immigrants, hope, capitalism, and crime. At their best, gangster flicks are melancholy and romantic warnings — yes, making money is what this country is all about, but easy money eventually brings destruction. My folks were raised poor, and the story of the Corleones was… relatable?

To my mom, a Mexican-American woman, and my dad, born the son of a Baptist preacher, this epic tale of Italian-Americans going for broke but losing their soul taught a lesson about family, ambition, the fragility of the former, and the dangers of the latter. It was both meaningful and profoundly entertaining.

The movie was a pure myth to me. I didn’t grow up around many Italians; for years, I thought they were mythological, like leprechauns. My mom would make spaghetti — a special Mexican version with albondigas-style meatballs and cheddar cheese she invented — and I would twist my fork into the pasta like my heroes, the murderers and henchmen of The Godfather. I remember telling my little brother, “Never tell anyone outside the family what you’re thinking.” This was the Gospel, according to Saint Brando. The family was the most important thing, I’d tell him, completely missing how, in The Godfather, the family is the most important thing until the family screws up, and then it’s two in the back of the head when you’re fishing.

***

When the news came that after 16 years, a new chapter to The Godfather saga — The Godfather Part III — would be released on December 25th, 1990, well, it was an offer my family could not refuse. The news of a new Godfather movie was like the Pope announcing he was coming over for some eggnog. It was a Christmas miracle.

This was unheard of back then. Not many movies opened on Christmas Day. And it was rare for such iconic films to see sequels produced a decade or more after their release. This kind of cash grab is more typical today, but not back, way back when President Bush Sr. was in office. What did we have to fear? I, mean, The Godfather Part II is the only sequel ever to win the Best Picture Oscar! What could go wrong with that pedigree?

Thus begins The Great DeVore Family Christmas Tragedy of 1990. After many years, we decided to change our perfect traditions. We were going to do something new and forsake our cozy den of pecan pie and Christmas stockings full of Halloween candy and instead see — Twentieth Century Fox fanfare, please — the third and concluding chapter in the most incredible human epic ever told. The anticipation was palpable; a second Christmas on Christmas Day itself!

The true cruelty of tragedy is that, afterward, one can stand in the wreckage and clearly see the choices that led to ruin. A few weeks before the movie’s release, I read an article in a newspaper about how Robert Duvall, who played adopted son and consigliere Tom Hagen in the first two Godfathers, would not be in the movie and was replaced by George Hamilton, the handsome, tanned star of the '80s vampire comedy Love at First Bite. I pointed this out to my dad, who dismissed it. I, mean, how could the director of The Godfather screw up The Godfather? Well, I also pointed out that the director's daughter was starring in the new movie. My dad was self-made and, like most self-made people, held a dim view of nepotism. But, even then, maybe this woman, Sofia, was as brilliant an actress as her father was a director. (It turns out she would grow up to become one of the great filmmakers of her generation. Who knew then?)

My family was determined to see The Godfather Part III. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, the Lord appeared in the clouds and announced a third testament was coming. Who would argue about reading it? My dad’s faith in Coppola was unshakable. My mom wondered aloud how Al Pacino could ever be in a bad movie. Wendy questioned my loyalty to the Corleone family. I don’t know if my little brother had an opinion because none of us asked.

Our hopes were high. I never let my hopes fly too close to the sun anymore, not after what happened next.

Christmas morning, 1990, was joyous, as usual. Gifts, naps, pancakes. Our traditions carried the day until we all bundled up and excitedly piled into our used, chocolate brown Ford Mercury Marquis and drove to the local movie theater. Popcorn was procured. Good seats were found. When last we saw Michael Corleone, he was powerful… and alone. Darkness was falling over him. Had this darkness consumed him? Was he beyond redemption?

I can’t completely remember the plot of The Godfather Part III. I have never watched it again, and I never will. Michael Corleone is older. He wants to go legit. There are rivalries with other families. I’m pretty sure there were betrayals aplenty. There’s a plot with the Vatican and an evil Cardinal. George Hamilton looks like lovely expensive luggage. Andy Garcia is a young hotshot with the hots for Sofia Coppola, who plays Michael’s daughter. There’s a scene between the two where they make erotic gnocchi together. I feel bad for disliking Sofia Coppola so much. She was just a kid at the time and didn’t deserve the hatred she received. But, on the other hand, she ruined Christmas.

There was one fantastic scene of graphic violence when hitmen use a helicopter to shoot up a meeting of mob bosses. But that was followed by countless scenes of Sophia Coppola confusing sneering with smiling and Al Pacino carving thick, juicy slabs of ham.

The Godfather Part III is boring and lazy. An artless B-movie wearing a used Academy Awards tux. It was also a dark preview of the coming industrial nostalgia complex that revives, reboots, and reinvents beloved movies from the past for the current box office. I will see almost any Star Wars movie because my inner child demands it. It’s a brilliant bit of emotional exploitation. This strategy reminds me of when my first hamster died, and my parents bought me a new hamster that looked just like the old one (but just wasn’t… the old one was a gentle genius, and the new one lived only to nibble lettuce like a true dumbass).

The movie’s uninspired, if beautiful, slog towards a climax involves the murder of Michael’s daughter — she takes a bullet meant for him — and Pacino unleashes a howl of sorrow like a theater school Lear. But it was nearly two and a half hours too late. My little brother was asleep. My dad angrily got up and stormed out of the theater twice to smoke his cigars. My mom and sister were struck dumb with boredom and heartbreak. My eyes were wet. The Godfather Part III was shit. It was worse. The Godfather Part III was Christmas shit.

The drive home was quiet. The rest of the evening was somber. The following year, we watched The Godfather and The Godfather Part II on Christmas Day and pretended The Godfather Part III never existed. Some offers, it turns out, should be refused.