This "Home Alone"-Inspired Ambient Playlist Hums Perfectly

While the Christmas season is generally the time of year when Home Alone comes to mind, it seems like it’s been a little more embedded in our collective unconscious this year. Earlier this month, actor Kevin Zak came up with a genius idea for a Home Alone film that would catch up with many of its characters in the present day, and that’s but one example.

It isn’t hard to see why the story of someone spending the holidays unexpectedly alone, cut off from family and friends, would resonate in 2020. Numerous people have had to make like Kevin McAllister this year and figure out surprising ways to be resourceful with the items they had on hand at home. And while most of us don’t have to fight off the Wet Bandits on a regular basis — or whoever their 2020 equivalent is — that’s little comfort most of the time.

That blend of invention and melancholy comes to the foreground in a new video from Calmed by Nature. Titled Christmas Music From Another Room: Home Alone Christmas Party Ambience, the video takes its cue from the Home Alone scene in which Kevin uses mannequins and other household objects to rig the appearance of a Christmas party.

The music is subtly muted to sound as though it’s coming from — as the video’s title suggests — another room or the other side of a window. And it’s over 4 hours long. If it leaves you feeling festive with just a touch of melancholy, well, that sounds about right for this year.