The perennial debate of “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie” is, let’s be honest here, pretty tired at this point. We’ve all talked about it until we’re as blue in the face as Cold Miser, and nobody is changing anybody’s opinion. Even the edgelords who take it as an excuse to classify anything with so much as a single strand of tinsel as a “Christmas movie” in an effort to see who can come up with the most outlandish example (that would be those who call Star Trek: Generations a Christmas movie on the grounds that Picard has a single scene in which he hallucinates having a family at Christmas time) have gotten tired of the argument. This year a new one has cropped up: “Why haven’t they made any good Christmas movies recently?”
I’ve actually seen this posited several times recently from various different sources, and I guess “There are no new Christmas movies” is at least a DIFFERENT debate than the Die Hard one, although it’s even harder to make a legitimate argument. The first time I heard it, I hopped on my TikTok feed and ran through a list of good Christmas movies from the past decade, with everything from family fare like The Christmas Chronicles to horror movies like Krampus. Since I made the video I also got around to watching the 2024 adaptation of Barbara Robinson’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and I thought it was absolutely lovely.
As I saw this debate go on and on, though, I noticed a disturbing trend. As people bemoaned the dearth of new movies, they kept asking for movies that stack up against classics like…Elf. And you know, I like Elf. It’s probably Will Ferrell’s best movie. But should that be the go-to example of the last great benchmark Christmas movie?
Or movies like Jim Carrey’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Okay, now my hackles are starting to bristle. I do not care for that movie, I don’t think it deserves any mention among the classics, but I can accept that different people have different tastes, right?
As the examples kept coming, I realized that none of the “old” movies these people were citing were movies that I – as a certified old person – would have considered OLD. The oldest movie that these fans kept referencing, in fact, was The Santa Clause from 1994. (It’s a good movie, but it has a special place in my personal hatedom for being the film responsible for making so many people misspell Santa Claus’s name every damned year.)
These people, the people who are begging for new Christmas movies – which is fair – haven’t even finished watching the OLD ones. Seriously, they’re not even throwing in movies from the 80s like A Christmas Story or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation into their blender of Christmas classics. Even 1990’s Home Alone seems to be outside of the bubble. How is that POSSIBLE?
That’s a rhetorical question, of course, I know exactly how that’s possible. I am a high school teacher, I spend the majority of my time around teenage American human beings, and I know that a chillingly high percentage of them believe that western civilization began in October of 2006 with the release of Taylor Swift’s first album. The truly cultured – a term which here means “goths” – can see back to 1993 and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
But the movies that I consider classics? Completely missing from their sphere of reference.
So my friends, this is my plea to you this year: reach out and try to educate your children with the true greats. I know it won’t necessarily be an easy sell. Put on a black and white movie like It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street and a lot of modern kids (and let’s be honest – a lot of modern adults) will roll their eyes back, finding it as incomprehensible as hieroglyphics. But they’re going to miss out not only on great movies, but on some of the stories that have fundamentally shaped the modern tropes of Christmas. Think about it – how many movies and TV shows have referenced those two movies I mentioned? How many versions of A Christmas Carol are there? And look – as far as Christmas Carols go, we all know that the Muppets did it the BEST, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t good ones BEFORE it.
How about The Bishop’s Wife from 1947? David Niven plays a clergyman desperately working to build a new cathedral, but his struggles are straining both his family and his faith. Enter Dudley, an angel with the inimitable charm of Cary Grant, who shows up to help out…only the Bishop thinks Dudley is there to replace him. It’s a lovely movie – sweet, funny, and it’s the sort of thing that will remind you why Cary Grant must be front and center in any conversation about the greatest movie stars of all time.
Or how about Jimmy Stewart’s OTHER great Christmas movie, The Shop Around the Corner from 1940? Stewart and Margaret Sullavan are employees at a tiny gift shop during the Christmas rush – two people who bicker, antagonize, and basically cannot stand to be around each other. Neither of them realizes, of course, that the anonymous pen pal they’ve been sending letters to and falling in love with is that person at work who drives them crazy. The movie was updated and remade with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as You’ve Got Mail, although that version drops the Christmas cred. At the risk of sounding saccharine, it’s the sort of movie that made people believe in true love during a dark time when everyone needed it. For bonus points, the shop owner is played by the Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan.
In 1951, Bob Hope starred in The Lemon Drop Kid, a story of a small-time con man who accidentally cheats a gangster out of a massive win at the track. The Kid is given until Christmas to pay up, and he cooks up an elaborate scheme involving sidewalk Santas pretending to collect money for elderly widows. Fortunately, as is to be expected in a film of this nature, the spirit of Christmas steps in before things go too far, and the movie gets the requisite happy ending, although perhaps not in the way that a modern audience might expect. And as a little yuletide trivia, this movie is also the original source of the classic Christmas song “Silver Bells.”
Of course, eventually Christmas movies DID start to show up in color. I think it’s safe to say the first truly great color Christmas film was White Christmas from 1954, featuring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye as a pair of entertainers who fall in love with a pair of sisters. Less iconic but still enjoyable was Disney’s Babes in Toyland from 1961, starring Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands as a pair of fairy tale characters who get embroiled in the schemes of a vile villain who wants to marry Annette (which was 100 percent relatable in 1961). The kids flee to Toyland, where Santa’s toys are all made. The movie is a technicolor bonanza, with more bursts of hue per minute than an explosion in a kaleidoscope factory. It also happened to be a favorite of my mother, who watched it with us countless times when we were kids, so that’s no small part of why I think of this movie so affectionately. And like The Shop Around the Corner, this movie sports an Oz alumni: Ray Bolger turns in his kindhearted Scarecrow persona for the sleazy, scummy Barnaby.
In 1978, there was the Star Wars Holiday Special.
In 1983, John Landis brought nascent stars Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd to the screen in Trading Places, a comedy about a businessman and a street con artist who get swept up in a bet by a pair of cold-hearted millionaires. They pluck Aykroyd out of his affluent life and give it to Murphy, but the two of them come together and decide to turn the tables on the people who’ve been using them. This is one of those “is it a Christmas movie” films that often enter the debate. It takes place at the Christmas season, although unlike most Christmas movies, the story actually reaches its climax AFTER Christmas. But it’s funny and poignant, and you can definitely see why Eddie Murphy was going to go on to be one of the biggest stars of the decade. This isn’t one to watch with the kids, but it IS one to watch if you’ve never seen it before.
And although some people dismiss it, I have a very warm spot in my heart for Santa Claus: The Movie from 1985. David Huddleston is, in my mind, the definitive on-screen Santa Claus: warm, jolly, cheerful, and kind, with exactly the stature and voice that I imagine when I close my eyes and think about St. Nick. The movie was produced by the Salkinds, who also produced the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, and in fact the plot is almost a direct lift from the first one. The first half of the movie is concerned with Santa’s origin story, then there’s a time skip to the present day where the villain is introduced (played by John Lithgow chewing so much scenery they must have had to stage an intervention) and the real plot plays out, with a battle between Santa and the corrupt toy executive B.Z. for the hearts of the worlds’ children. Interestingly, like The Fifth Element, this is a movie in which the hero and the villain never actually meet each other.
When this movie came out I was the same age as my son is now, and that makes me think it’s time he and I watch it together.
These are only feature films, incidentally. I haven’t even dipped into the vast back catalogue of theatrical shorts (like the Donald Duck-starring Clock Watcher and Toy Tinkers, the Looney Tunes classic Gift Wrapped, or the Popeye cartoon Mister and Mistletoe), or the mountain of TV specials from the likes of Rankin and Bass, the Peanuts crew, or our friends at Hanna-Barbera.
It is both fair and legitimate, my friends, to want new Christmas movies. I want them too. I look for them every year, and I agree that unless you’re looking at the Hallmark Channel there aren’t nearly enough being produced. (And if you are looking at the Hallmark Channel, be honest, your primary concern isn’t finding something NEW.)
However, if you’re searching for Christmas spirit, it would behoove you not only to look at the films since the turn of the millennium. Go back in time and rediscover the classics, the hidden gems, and the movies that have fueled Christmas for generations now.
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He considered mentioning Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, but that’s a film that should only be attempted by trained professionals such as Joel Hodgeson, Michael J. Nelson, and the rest of the MST3K and RiffTrax crews.
Blake M. Petit 