A Yippi-ki-yay Christmas?

“Is Die Hard a Christmas film?”

That is the million-dollar question. Well not really, but it is a question guaranteed to come up in conversation every Yuletide and one that can inflame passions within normally calm and measured members of the human race. I have to admit to stupidly strong opinions myself on what constitutes a Christmas film and spent part of a Christmas do this year ‘debating’ the merits of this grand-daddy of modern action films as far as holly-jolly festive moments go, when I started thinking about what actually really constituted a Christmas film. I’ve spent more time than is perhaps good for me trying to break this down – I’ve come up with a few points to ponder…

Does a Christmas film have to be set at Christmas to be a Christmas film? 

Well it certainly helps and Die Hard is very much set at Christmas. John McClane has flown into LA from New York to spend Christmas with his wife Holly and their 2 children. He arrives at Nakatomi Plaza in the middle of the staff Christmas party. It is mentioned that it is Christmas Eve and not only that characters reference the holiday throughout – Ellis talks about a fireside get-together with ‘an aged brie and mulled wine’, Argyle the limo-driver has ‘Christmas in Hollis’ by Run-DMC playing in the car while driving McClane to the party; Theo, the safe-cracker, paraphrases the rhyme ‘The Night Before Christmas’ when the SWAT team try to storm the building and even Hans Grüber gets in the spirit by telling Theo that ‘it’s Christmas…it’s the time for miracles.’

Other well-loved Christmas films are overt in their reference to the season – obviously the likes of Santa Claus: The Movie, The Santa Clause and Miracle on 34th Street are all about Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Pére Noel etc. These are Christmas films plain and simple. But then there are others where it is a fair bit more complicated. Some holiday staples – Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Nightmare Before Christmas – muddy the waters somewhat by not necessarily being set at Christmas at all. Planes, Trains and Automobiles has all the hallmarks of a festive film – two men trying to get home for the holidays by any means they can – but is actually set at Thanksgiving. Much like the song ‘Jingle Bells’ (one of the ultimate festive sing-songs), they were both made for the Thanksgiving holiday, the fourth Thursday of November, some 3 or 4 weeks before Christmas Day. Perhaps the lack of celebration of Thanksgiving in Europe has meant that both have had their significance transmogrified? Planes, Trains and Automobiles is often considered a Christmas film as much because of the festive feel to the whole hour and a half. But should it be disqualified because it’s not set at Christmas?

But then if we were to apply this logic we’d have to discount the ultimate Christmas film, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life – a Christmas film which has two-thirds of its run-time set outside the holiday season. Crucially though, the film is bookended by scenes at Christmas – George Bailey’s Christmas Eve prayer desperation (and the prayers of those close to him heard by the angels) at the beginning of the film and the ‘miracle’ at the end. The overarching plot and the denouement are emblematic of the joy and goodwill that the season tends to foster (in theory anyway). Plus, if you’re being extremely pedantic (and we will be here) the majority (i.e. the two-thirds) of the film is told in flashback, so as to serve as an introduction to the man for angel second-class Clarence in order to be able to help him when he is sent to Earth.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is more problematic. The story of Jack Skellington, ruler of Halloweentown, who wants to take over Christmastown in the absence of Santa Claus, has flashes of Yuletide cheer but was ultimately made for Halloween. However, its title works for both holidays – it mentions Christmas, while also being another paraphrasing of that well-known rhyme. But I still regard it as more of a Halloween film, with Tim Burton’s more recent (and brilliant) Frankenweenie acting as a very good complement to the film. But I can accept this as a Christmas movie for obvious reasons.

Does a Christmas film have to have snow?

Many festive favourites have become so as much because of the very feel of the film, rather than any overt reference to Christmas. And when I say feel, I am of course referring to the presence of snow. And lots of it. A Christmas film can be further enhanced by the very appearance of the white stuff – Capra knew to include as much as he could in the final scenes as George begins to lose all hope, Die Hard 2 has a surfeit of the stuff as such because it was set in D.C. in December (plus seemed to be making up for the distinct lack of snow in the original), and Love Actually features a fair amount despite it actually being statistically more likely to drizzle in Britain around Christmas Day (BBC forecast for Christmas Day where I live? Heavy rain of course). But there have been examples of Christmas films that have become so, thanks to the inclusion of snow flurries, snowmen, snowdrifts and snowfall. And in some cases, the creatures that live in said snowfall.

Take Happy Feet for example. Not set at Christmas as far as I can recall (in fact, I could swear it’s set in summer) and its only concession to the season is the proliferation of snow and ice – and penguins that live in said snow and ice. As a side note, just when did penguins become a Christmas thing? I mean, they’re cute, they’re cuddly, but they don’t just suddenly appear in December. After all, you’ll find penguins in Antarctica in October. Yet, they appear on Christmas jumpers, wrapping paper, even Christmas coffee cups in Costa. Is it because it is snowy white in almost every scene? Frozen is another brilliant example of this festive iciness. Yes, there is a snow queen; yes, there is a lovable snowman; yes, it has songs in it that just scream ‘Holidays!!’; and yes, it’s the ideal film to keep certain members of the family ‘quiet’ on Christmas Day, but the film’s action is set in the summer – July if I’m not mistaken, and therefore by true logic should not be a Christmas film.

Which means that there has to be more to it than the presence of blankets and blankets of chilly H20. After all, Fargo has tons of snow in it – barely a scene takes place without the characters bundled up and trudging through drifts, which admittedly is not surprising given the usual climate in Minnesota and North Dakota, the 2 main locations of the film. J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year (one of my films of 2015) is set in the winter of 1981 (January to be exact), completely by accident, as there was an unprecedented amount of snowfall when shooting began. But we don’t consider this a Christmas film – nor will we ever consider it so. And then there’s the Ice Age movies, all very snowy and icy, yet never considered festive films and all released in summer blockbuster season. Hell, if snow meant Christmas, we could include The Empire Strikes Back which is definitely not a Christmas film. I sense The Force Awakens may well become one just by virtue of its release date, which leads me to my next thought – is there more to it than just the white stuff that makes a Christmas film?

Does a film have to be released at Christmas to be a Christmas film?

Well, let’s consider the actual theatrical release dates of holiday favourites shall we? This is where it gets rather interesting. Let’s go back to the theme of this piece – is Die Hard a Christmas film? After all, it’s set at Christmas; it has hallmarks of other Christmas films and was released in…May 1988, some 6 or 7 months before Christmas. Okay, so let’s look at Lethal Weapon – after all, Riggs (Mel Gibson) drives a police car through his partner Roger’s front window, demolishing the tree; has a fight where he makes creative use of the outside tree as a weapon; ends up having Christmas dinner with Roger’s family; and the film was released in…March 1987, 9 months before Christmas.

Well, surely those holiday classics Meet Me in St. Louis and It’s a Wonderful Life would have been released around Christmas – after all ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ was emerged from Meet Me in St. Louis as a yuletide favourite and It’s a Wonderful Life has George Bailey running up and down Bedford Falls shouting ‘Merry Christmas’ to everyone he sees, so naturally both films would be released in January 1944 and 1947…In other words, after Christmas.

Yet, if you then consider some of the aforementioned ‘non-Christmas’ films, namely Happy Feet and Frozen in particular, were both released at the end of November of their respective years (2006 and 2013) it becomes easier to understand why both films are considered particularly festive – despite the lack of any apparent need to reference Christmas. Both performed exceptionally well in the Christmas season, both were number one at the US box office in the weeks leading up to Christmas, with Frozen reclaiming the top spot in the first week of 2014, and both films are very much family orientated with a specific appeal to a certain demographic – namely families with children under 12, who are the most likely to be going to the cinema around Christmas. It’s understandable that a film that has a hint of a winter wonderland, released before or during Christmas will enter the canon of festive cinema. Of course, there are plenty of Christmas films released over the same period – Bad Santa, A Christmas Story, Elf and Nativity! all saw Christmas releases to name but a few. Naturally these are of variable quality, with the very worst knocked out quickly in July featuring stellar casts to tick all the boxes supposedly necessary for a successful festive feel – and a successful box-office return. And the festive season has traditionally been one of the two most lucrative periods for movie studios, so you will always see their biggest films released in either the summer or Christmas. Some of the biggest films of all time saw release dates at Christmas – Avatar, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies all saw mid-December release dates. But yet these are definitely not Christmas movies.

Another thing to consider is the Christmas terrestrial television premiere, which invariably created yuletide classics that have nothing to do with the holiday. The blockbusting likes of the Indiana Jones series; Pixar animations and other massive films at the cinema from the past 2 or 3 years would get a third life as a Christmas staple for broadcasters. The Toy Story films seem to be shown at Christmas almost every year, and usually accompanied by the first terrestrial showing of the latest of their output (though admittedly 2 or 3 films back – this year is Brave’s turn). This is perhaps not as important as it once was, with the advent of Netflix, Amazon Prime and the multi-channel television packages. But there are certain films that you will almost always see on over Christmas: there will be at least one Bond film; there’ll be showings of the aforementioned Indiana Jones or other such blockbuster series; chances are there will be a Pirates of the Caribbean film and Christmas used to mean re-runs of Carry On pictures, though this is less common than it once was. Therefore, does a film have to be a Christmas film to have that festive feeling?

Does any of this matter?

Of course, what constitutes a seasonal favourite or even a Christmas film is different for everyone. If you want it, you can have Happy Feet and Frozen as Christmas films – hell, you can have Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as a festive film if you really want. Let’s have the presence of snow and snowmen and penguins as reminders of the time we’re all visited by jolly ol’ Saint Nick (only if you’re good, of course). Because let’s face it, they’re better than some of the often brashly manipulative Christmas fare shovelled into cinemas this time of year – Christmas with the Coopers, Fred Claus, Four Christmases spring to mind. The penguins’ and Elsa’s films may not be set at Christmas, and may not even mention it, but they display far more festive cheer than any of these wastes of celluloid (or digital video, whatever).

And Die Hard? Yeah, it’s a Christmas film, obviously.

Merry Christmas!