An action film first, sure, but still a Christmas movie. Santa is a main character, it takes place on Christmas Eve, and he relies on several forms of Standard Santa Magic to carry out the violence. And remember that it was Santa’s fundamental connection to “The good little boys and girls” that got him involved in the altercation.
You wouldn’t have any of that with some other mythical entity.
Neither of those are “a Christmas movie” to me.
If I don’t get dry-heaves at least once from kitsch or schmaltz, it’s not a Christmas movie.
ETA: if it’s not kid-friendly, it’s also almost automatically not a Christmas movie. Christmas movies are a subset of family-friendly movies. They have to be PG. There is only one R-rated exception that springs to mind easily - Love, Actually is the rare R-rated Christmas film I’d allow.
Rise of the Guardians used exactly that “tied to kids” premise for Jack Frost for its pay-off. Of course you can transfer that aspect to a different entity, it’s been done.
A Christmas Carol is about a cruel man repenting the error of his ways through a series of visions. The fact that he repents at Christmastime is about as incidental as the fact that Nakatomi Tower is taken over at Christmastime.
…from the Spirits of Festivus?
A Christmas Carol isn’t just a Christmas story, it is the ur-Christmas story, not just in itself, but in the influence it’s subsequently had on what secular Christmas even is.
To suggest it isn’t a Christmas story is just absurdity. Not even wrong.
For what it’s worth, I agree.
But the argument “X could indeed have taken place during any other holiday, and be essentially unchanged (apart from the set decorations)” easily applies to A Christmas Carol. There are a bunch of descriptions of Scrooge seeing Christmas parties, but the plot of the story would be the same if those were other types of family gatherings. And you could just call the spirits the Spirits of Past/Present/Future.
Sure. A middle-aged man is thinking that putting up the aluminum pole this year is stupid, it’s just a fake “Festivus” made up by his father, after all.
Then the Spirit of Festivuses Past shows his what it was like as a young man, the humiliation of never defeating his own Father in the Feats of Strength, how no one ever ate on time because of his own weakness, and how that was always central to his Father’s Airing of Grievances.
The Spirit of Festivus Present shows him what’s happening right now. His Dad is telling his Mom that, “Of course he’s not going to put up a pole, that little punk still knows he can’t take me!”
The Spirit of Fetivuses Yet To Come shows him as an old man, with no family of his own, alone and destitute, because he never had the confidence to defeat his own Father in the Feats of Strength, causing a lifetime of being a loser.
The man wakes up the next morning, distraught, is it still Festivus? He yells at a young man passing by, “You, PUNK! What DAY is IT?” The kid responds, “I don’t know, like, Tuesday maybe?” Hallelujah! It might still be Festivus! The Man runs across town, confronts his elderly old Father, and takes him 3 falls out of 3! Festivus is saved!
I’d argue the only other holiday to carry the connotations of extensive secularized family celebrations we see at the Cratchits (as a contrast to Scrooge) is Jul 4, and that was not a thing in Victorian England. Easter was much less that kind of thing.
Not that that’s the argument I’m making for why Die Hard isn’t a Christmas movie, mind you.
lent is a time for introspection.
none of the offices i’ve been in had any sort of in office new year celebration. sorry drdeth, i’m not seeing the new year thing. perhaps a china based company?
Really, really bad…
If we’re going to count any movie with Santa as Christmas movies, then Santa Claus Conquers the Martians better be on everyone’s yearly viewing list.
Just because it’s a Christmas movie doesn’t mean you have to watch it every Christmas, or even any Christmas. A bad Christmas movie is still a bad movie, after all.
'Tis true.
OK it should be on the list of Christmas movies.
Absolutely, but one would be hard pressed to come up with a reasonable definition for “Christmas movie” that includes it while excluding Die Hard, unless the definition is “a Christmas movie is a movie everybody agrees is a Christmas movie.”
Or as I said four years ago:
I should have checked that someone made the same argument before!
EDIT: Actually, I made the same argument before and I forgot!
I’ve already laid out a couple criteria that distinguish the two - family-friendly and schmaltzy. A Christmas Carol has both, Die Hard does not.
Making the same arguments you forgot you made several years ago is part of the tradition now!
I wouldn’t consider most versions of A Christmas Carol “family friendly”. I’m pretty sure one freaked me out as a child. Sure, some versions are, like the Muppets, but even that has things that could make kids freak out, like the little bunny street urchin freezing in the cold.
Plus, I’m pretty sure I could do a family-friendly remake of Die Hard, if anyone were so deranged as to desire one.
There’s no blood and no violent murders. In a couple of versions, there’s songs. They’re at worst PG, mostly G. That’s family-friendly.
I’m sure you could. But that wouldn’t be the movie most everyone* loves and mistakenly thinks is a Christmas movie.
* I do not love it.
I think a Muppet Die Hard would go over very well!
Sam the Eagle would have to be John McClane, of course. “Yippee-Kai-Yay, Mother’s-Feathers!”
No it would have to be Kermit because Ms Piggy would obviously be Holly Gennaro. Hans Gruber would be a Human but the rest of the robbers would be various muppets.
Reginald VelJohnson would reprise his role.
The jerky office guy would be played by Statler and Waldorf.
Anyway, I think “family friendly and schmaltzy” is maybe good criteria for a subset of Xmas movie (like “family Xmas movie”) but I don’t see why the entire genre would require it.
As definitions go it’s also incredibly subjective (‘family friendly’ is certainly a family by family judgement call) so it’s not super helpful.
I’ll concede that it’s a better attempt at a delineation than anything else in this thread.