SDG’s Top 10 Christmas movies list!
[The Truth.]
This list is definitive and authoritative, I will not be taking questions.
Here is the hard, cold truth about Christmas movies: There are none. At all. True fact! Like Santa himself, Christmas movies do not exist.1
Having said that, there is, of course, one and only one Christmas movie: It’s a Wonderful Life. That is literally the only Christmas movie, that’s it.
Except for also The Muppet Christmas Carol, and nothing against your favorite Christmas Carol adaptation, which is almost certainly good too,2 because nearly all of them are, though The Muppets is the best.3
There is no 5, just those three, the end.
A Charlie Brown Christmas is not a “movie” but otherwise yes also that obviously.5
Honestly, I’m not even hating on other “Christmas movies,” from White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, and March of the Wooden Soldiers to A Christmas Story, Home Alone, and Elf, please feel free to enjoy these also.6
Except for Love Actually which I am literally hating on. Even some of you fans, if you’re honest, seem to have a Stockholm syndrome–type7 relationship with the film, like “It’s terrible actually but I watch it every year.” My friends: You don’t have to let Alan Rickman hurt you any more.8
Also hating on any and all Christmas-adjacent movies featuring Tim Allen, yes all of them hate hate hate.9
The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween movie what on earth is wrong with you.
Sorry to be the one to break it to you.
Unless you think Scrooged is a Christmas Carol adaptation, which it is not, nor is it good. Again, sorry to be the one to tell you. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Here at The Grey Havens we have a new holiday tradition of watching non-Muppety Christmas Carol adaptations in October, because when Christmas comes only Kermit as Bob Cratchit and Gonzo as Charles Dickens will do for us. Dickens is too good to limit to one month anyway.
I can’t believe some people still want to litigate this one. Unassailably, Die Hard is a Christmas movie, in the first place, in the same sense that Christmas lights are Christmas lights and fruitcake is a Christmas treat: All of these things are Christmas traditions for countless people, and that’s all the rationale we need. (And yes, my wiseacre friends, I am aware that Bruce Willis once opined that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie—but screenwriter Jeb Stuart says it is, and screenwriters generally know better than actors. Director John McTiernan has an intermediate take.)
That’s before you get to the fact that Die Hard stakes its claim to be an unconventional Christmas movie the moment that Argyle puts on RunDMC’s Christmas in Hollis and tells a skeptical John, “This is Christmas music!” What Christmas in Hollis to (unconventional) Christmas music, Die Hard is to Christmas movies.
Even the name Argyle, not to mention John’s wife Holly: Any of these things ring a bell? Like the nondiegetic jingle bells when John gets an inspiration? Oh, and speaking of Christmas music, do you know the name of the person who wrote Silent Night? Franz Gruber. I’m not kidding!
The much-noted thematic convergences of Die Hard and Home Alone add to Die Hard’s Christmas vibe. Underneath it all, Die Hard is about a couple in a troubled marriage reuniting to spend Christmas as a family with their kids.
The same goes for Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (which we already covered in 3 anyway) and the Chuck Jones How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The feature-length animated Grinch from Illumination, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, is pretty okay. We do not speak of any other adaptation.
Joyeux Noel is good, The Bishop’s Wife really is not. In untraditional choices, I like The Lion in Winter, and if you watch it at Christmastime, I won’t judge you, but for my tastes it’s too bitter and harsh for Christmas fare.
Or “Helsinki syndrome,” if you’ve watched Die Hard recently enough.
Rickman does not hurt you in Die Hard, and no, watching Die Hard afterward does not make it okay to watch Love Actually first. This time I am making the rules. It’s for your own good!
Instead of this…
Do this instead:
Pass on Love Actually;
take Rickman’s comeuppance (comedownance?) in Die Hard on its own entirely self-sufficient terms; and
in the New Year, enjoy Rickman and Thompson in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility without irrationally wanting Elinor to cold-cock Colonel Brandon the whole time.
In the comments my friend T. Martin points out that “Christmas-adjacent movies featuring Tim Allen” can be construed to include the original Toy Story (because of the Christmas-themed epilogue). Fair point: I should have been clearer! First, “movies featuring Tim Allen” really should have been “Tim Allen vehicles.” Second, “Christmas-adjacent” was my clumsy way of trying to say “either a) having some kind of Christmas connection, however slight, to the main plot (i.e., the three Santa Clause movies plus Christmas With the Kranks (and, more recently on Netflix, El Camino Christmas), or b) released in December accompanied with Christmas-themed marketing (i.e., Joe Somebody; For Richer for Poorer).” Dailies & Sundays regrets the imprecise language.
Surprised no mention of Remember the Night, with an excellent Preston Sturges script and the first of four times Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck starred together. The scene where Ms. Stanwyck's character is rejected by her mother is still heartbreaking all these years later. Family dynamics are only intensified around Christmas.
Like you, almost all the Christmas Carol movies.... but never quite finding *the* Christmas Carol, unless it is Mr. Magoo's Christmas. Now you can throw things, because I'm safely out of reach.