Back to my main thought, IMHO a Christmas movie, besides taking place at Christmas, resolves the conflict in the plot through understanding, compassion, the spirit of giving - you know, Christmasy virtues like that. Needing to consult the Book of Armaments should be right out.
As if calling Die Hard not a Christmas movie wasn’t bad enough, now you have to go and cast out The Lion in Winter from the Christmas movie catalogue? For shame!
As Siam_Sam said, Bruce Willis is a senile old coot.
The Lion in Winter actually has a special place in my heart. When I saw it for the first time (in a repertory movie theater, remember those? Years after its release, anyway), my parents were in Year 7 of their long-running divorce war, my father had disowned me just days earlier for being unwilling to sign some statement he was going to use in a court filing against my mother because I didn’t know whether it was true - and it was a genuine relief to watch a movie about a family even more messed-up than my own.
But it never even occurred to me to think of it as a Christmas movie. (You may have been whooshing me there, though. 
)
No woosh. It’s generally considered an alternative Christmas movie (all the family is there because of Christmas, including Eleanor of Aquitaine who is only let out of imprisonment due to Christma)s. And also known for the Christmas tree which would never been there in the 1100s (it’s about 700 years too early)
More to the point, Bruce Willis is an actor. Not the novelist, not the screenwriter, not the director. He wasn’t their first choice, or their second, or even their 5th. His opinion counts for no more than mine.
How about a poll?
A Nov. 14-17 [2019] Morning Consult/The Hollywood Reporter survey found that 62 percent of 2,200 U.S. adults did not consider “Die Hard” to be a Christmas movie, a number that remained unchanged from a survey conducted from Nov. 15-18, 2018. Twenty-four percent said they did consider the Bruce Willis action flick to be a Christmas film.
The margin of error for both polls is 2 percentage points.
When asking those who have seen “Die Hard,” the verdict remained the same: Sixty-three percent of the 1,604 respondents who had seen the film said it didn’t belong in the Christmas section, while 30 percent of that group said it did.
Really? He only, you know, starred in the movie and the sequels. It’s a cornerstone of his career. I think his opinion counts for just a wee bit more - OK, a lot more - than anyone in this thread, and I’d say that even if he disagreed with me.
And you’d be wrong, of course. An interpretive artist is not a creative artist. The fact that he did well in it, or has done well by it gives him no special authority to define it.
It’s worth noting the the screenwriter was given pretty much full creative freedom so long as he didn’t deviate from the Christmas in LA setting, because it’s, you know, a Christmas movie.
From a link somewhere upthread:
Die Hard is a Christmas movie, full stop.
Steven E. de Souza, who penned the film’s script more than 30 years ago, is adamant about that. But days ago at his Comedy Central Roast, the film’s star, Bruce Willis, told a wide-eyed audience “Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.”
In response to this controversial claim, de Souza has a plethora of evidence that proves the action star is, well, just plain wrong.
Stalag 17 is arguably a Christmas movie. Much of the action involves the prisoners’ Christmas.
The only way to solve this is to define 'what is a Christmas movie"
That can be anything form “there’s a Christmas tree in one shot” to “the overall theme and plot are based upon a Christmas legend”.
See, I define “christmas movie” as films which are about Christmas.
If the director says it is a Christmas movie, then it is a Christmas movie-Debate settled.
‘Die Hard’ director confirms it’s a Christmas movie (radio.com)
The writers and the director say it’s a Christmas movie.
But Bruce Willis, who was pretty much a nobody when he was cast in the role (and only got it because other actors turned it down), says that it’s a BRUCE WILLIS movie.
Of course, he also said it during his own roast, when you’re supposed to say ridiculous bullshit for maximum effect. So even though he sounded like a total self-serving jackass at the time, I’m happy to give him a pass.
He wasn’t nobody. He was very well known… as box office poison. That’s why he wasn’t mentioned in the ads for the movie.
I assume you’re being funny. At the time of the non-Christmas movie under discussion, he was the lead actor in a grand total of two movies… Plus that little-known series Moonlighting, where he won an Emmy.
The director of Blade Runner says Deckard is a replicant. Aside from showing he doesn’t even understand his own movie, he’s as wrong as McTiernan.
As The Movies that Made Us documentary in Netflix about Die Hard reported: to be more precise, Bruce Willis was seen by many as poison for action movies thanks to how Willis was typecast by many thanks to Moonlighting. The studio and producers got in a bit of a panic when audiences laughed as soon Willis appeared in the early trailers.
Good thing that the testing audiences found early that that was not the case. But they had to change the focus of the ads early on, the posters changed to show just the tower and some explosions, later after the movie showed that it was a hit the posters changed to show Willis again.
Wait a tick, if we are going to give the writer the “word of God” then one should remember that (as far as others reported) the script writer reported that he did consider Die Hard a Christmas movie.
That’s what I came in here to say. When he says it isn’t a Christmas movie, what he says next is the important part. “It’s a fuckin’ Bruce Willis movie!” In this moment, he’s taking credit for the greatness of the movie. He’s saying Bruce Willis is better than Christmas. He’s making a joke at the expense of folks who do view it as a Christmas movie and he’s stroking his own ego at the same time. He’s quipping at the bad guys while emptying a clip at them. What he is not doing is engaging in serious, reasoned analysis of what genre this particular bit of cinema falls into. That is not what folks do at Comedy Central roasts.
If you are willing to disregard the word of those who are in authority to know, in favor of those who tell you what you want to hear(no matter how frivolously such “information” is tossed out), then I guess there is nothing more I can do to convince you.