People typically assume Christmas Eve traditions, like most holiday traditions, originate within the family. I inherited my favorite Christmas Eve tradition, however, from neither kith nor kin. I learned what to do on the night before Christmas from none other than Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne.

For years and years, TCM included the 1945 film “Christmas in Connecticut” as part of its Christmas Eve lineup. The movie, which stars Barbara Stanwyck as a magazine writer who celebrates homemaking despite her ignorance of cooking and domesticity in general, cannot compare with other classics of the season. For starters, Stanwyck gave a deeper, richer performance in another Christmas-themed film, the Preston Sturges-scripted “Remember the Night” (1940). And director Peter Godfrey will never be mistaken for Frank Capra, the maker of that most favored of holiday films, “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946).