I was never a Christmas movie guy. It has always been one of my pop culture blind spots. If you’ve been around for a bit you’ve probably seen me try to fill in these gaps so that I can have conversations with other humans, but I think it kind of backfired. Watching a lot of Christmas classics without the nostalgia goggles on has made me more insufferable (somehow), instead of the desired less so. What is more log cabin Sunday, though, than enjoying a movie you know you only have fondness for because it reminds you of being a kid excited for (hopefully) a Super Nintendo Entertainment System?
My general criteria for judging Christmas movies followed a rigid rubric. The first question is whether or not this is actually a Christmas movie or does it just have a scene with a Christmas tree in it? Or in extreme cases there may be zero mention of Christmas at all (Sound of Music) but it was played a lot during holidays in the time of network TV because it was cheap (Sound of Music).
Whether something is a Christmas movie or not is now an exhausting and boring debate, which is probably why I feel so strongly about it. This can be a surprisingly tricky thing to pin down. Some movies are set during Christmastime, but the holiday is used like an ironic backdrop to violence. Almost without exception, these were released in theaters during the summer season. I don’t consider Die Hard a Christmas movie any more than I do Batman Returns, 12 Monkeys (Bruce Willis again), or The Bourne Identity. If you do, that’s fine. They’re good and fun movies, but show some consistency and throw on The Long Kiss Goodnight this advent.
Sleepless in Seattle begins at Christmas and Meg Ryan does sing along to a Christmas carol, but it ends at Valentine’s day. I’d argue that to be a Christmas movie, the climax of the film should occur at Christmastime. Rise of the Guardians features a Santa Claus hero but is, if anything, an Easter movie. Bing Crosby’s The Bells of Saint Mary’s is beautiful, but falls into a category of movies that take place over an entire year, including a brief stop in Christmastown (there are a lot of these). While You Were Sleeping? Pretty Christmasy.
Speaking of Christmastown, Nightmare Before Christmas is emphatically a Christmas movie. It can’t be a Halloween movie because it literally takes place after Halloween. This is very important stuff we’re talking about here.
Arguably, all of these films are better for not being a dedicated Christmas movie, because in my opinion, most Christmas movies are often pretty bad and I was right to avoid them. Most of them hardly qualify as movies if they don’t depend on the predisposition of the average American moviegoer to be ensorcelled by yuletide cheer. No normal person would watch Jingle All the Way or Christmas With the Cranks on a Saturday in August.
Some beloved movies fall into this category for me; like The Holiday or The Santa Clause. They don’t hold up to any scrutiny in terms of plot or acting or anything, but there’s a general good-natured vibe to them that it doesn’t hurt to dip into once in a while. I don’t seek out gingerbread in my day to day life, either. But I will say “don’t mind if I do,” when there’s a plate of thick cookies at work. This year’s So. Much. Fun. is a profoundly flawed movie with its heart in the right place that doesn’t hold up to the merest of scrutiny but I’ll do what I can to ensure that Michelle Pfeiffer continues to get royalty checks.
One of my general beefs with the “Die Hard is a Christmas movie” narrative is that it lumps one of the finest action movies ever made with films that are only watchable if you half pay attention while wrapping presents or, in the Howard family’s case, making the annual family party pinata. You can watch Die Hard any (or every) day of the calendar year. My favorite movie of all time is Mad Max: Fury Road. I would not want to be placed in a cultural world in which it was expected that I only watch it on Labor Day.
That being said, some Christmas movies genuinely transcend the season and manage to be a good movie all on their own. In these cases, I still wouldn’t be motivated to watch it any other time but December (unless I was very depressed), but are great movies on their own. There’s a decent list of these, so this won’t be comprehensive, but would include classics like Muppet Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Home Alone and the beautiful instant classic Klaus.
Finally, we have the wild swings. The definitively Christmasy black sheep. The goth teen in a reindeer sweater. One year, amid all of the sugary neighbor gifts, a neighbor gave us a giant bag of Chex Mix. Having some salty treats to leaven the sick tummies inflicted by sugar cookies and homemade caramels was such a hit in our household that we get one of these every year. These movies are the Chex Mix of the Christmas movie milieu. Some favorites of mine are Krampus and Rare Exports. 2022’s Violent Night is perhaps the platonic ideal of this kind of movie. It’s xmas as frick while also blood-soaked and dark.
When I was young there was essentially just one of these (maybe you’d include the original Black Christmas but I haven’t seen that one yet), and it’s my least favorite Christmas movie of all time. I hesitate to say what it is, because this newsletter is starting to get its first unsubscribes, but I actually think it’s really fun to make fun of it. It’s National Lampoons Christmas Vacation.
I’m baffled by this movie. It’s essentially a sketch movie with only the barest throughline. That’s fine, but to pull that off the sketches need to work. For me, none of them do. There are two good jokes in the whole film. One the setup and reveal of how dry the turkey is, the other is Beverly D’Angelo (bless her heart for being a good sport and gracing this movie with some class) saying “This is our first kidnapping”. The rest just fails over and over. I hadn’t seen it in maybe two decades before this watch, and was surprised to find that even the often quotable lines fall completely flat. “You serious, Clark?” and “the shitter’s full,” are just complete non-sequiters that the movie doesn’t even seem to think are funny. Why did those lines of all of them become so ubiquitous? Who knows. Some of the sequences don’t add anything to the story but are at least interminably long. Like there is ostensibly a setup and and delivery in the sledding scene, though that feels like it goes for four and a half hours, and the punchline is “bingo.” What? Why did we sit through this?
I also think it’s a weirdly Reagan-era message to infer that the only “good” people in the film are middle-class. The wealthy neighbors suck almost exclusively because they don’t have kids and have a nice stereo. The poor cousins are cartoonishly vile and deserve what they get. Clark is told by many characters that he’s a good person (“the last of the great family men”), though we are not shown any reasons why. He is constantly through this series trying to cheat on his wife, and the one sweet moment he has when talking to his niece occurs immediately after he was fantasizing about the woman at the department store skinny dipping in the imaginary pool. One could argue that Clark is an anti-hero, except that by the end of the movie everything works out for him, a consequence free serial sexual harasser.
This is probably the most controversial opinion I have so I will not belabor it further. I only know that if I left it out someone would ask me to talk on it. This I have done. And while I have yet to be visited by three profane ghosts with the intent on making me appreciate the line “a bit nipply out,” there are ten more days in the season for such an occurrence.
If you’ve made it this far and are considering unsubscribing from sheer pretentious cringe, let me soothe your soul by deflating any thoughts that I am or should be the arbiter of quality vis a vis yuletide cinema: I found some guilty pleasures in this experiment. I like Fred Claus kind of a lot. This is a movie where Rachel Weisz grimaces through a meal while wrestlers fart on her.
Not an exaggeration
But Claus help me, I found it to be funny and genuinely sweet and I never would have watched it if not for my experiment.
By leaving my comfort zone I now have some seasonal classics worth revisiting (though maybe not every year). I liked a fair bit of holiday rom-coms. Last Christmas is an underrated gem that features one of my favorite conclusions: a kind person is recognized at the end by all the people whose lives she touched. The Family Stone gutted me in all the right ways. The scene in Miracle on 34th Street when Santa talks to the orphan from Rotterdam in her native Dutch makes me cry just thinking about it. I was introduced to Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas, which is thoroughly charming. While I’m no better a conversationalist at Christmas parties, I am perhaps a better person for having done this.
I also had to sit through Home Sweet Home Alone, which I would not wish on my worst enemy. OK, who am I kidding. I do wish Clark Griswold would have to sit through that film.
The Media Report
This Sunday was football and jigsaw puzzle heavy, though the weekend itself consisted of a profound dive into comfort and cozy as we celebrated my wife’s birthday. A walk, morning doughnuts and kolaches, art museums, record stores, sugar cookies and Home Alone. We had planned on seeing Muppet Christmas Carol in the small local theater, but it sold out too dang fast.
We listened to:
Kelly Clarkson - When Christmas Comes Around
The Highwomen, Self-titled
First Aid Kit - Stay Gold
Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American
Various Artists - Beach Blvd
The Mexicali Brass - Jingle Bells (this was a dollar bin find that I highly recommend
Poe - Haunted
Various Artists - A Very Special Christmas (this was a dollar bin find that I do not necessarily recommend, but had Beach Blvd in the same sleeve as a bonus which is a delight)
And I read T. Kingfisher’s Hemlock and Silver and kept working my way through Gemma Hartley’s Fed Up