No.
In my opinion, “Christmas stories” are ones that whole families could watch.
Which is not the same thing, at all.
The quintessential Christmas movie, Miracle on 34th Street has at its heart the spirit of Christmas spreading among the masses, including a large corporate entity which expects to make a tidy profit off it (NOTE: I consider commercialization of Christmas fully in the American spirit of the holiday).
The spirit of Christmas is not at the heart of Die Hard. Rather, it’s Bruce Willis being a wiseass while wasting some loser criminals. Christmas is only part of the setting, some of the set decoration and a few related one-liners. The Christmas spirit doesn’t spread among the masses and those expecting to profit off it fail. That’s not a Christmas movie kind of story or ethos.
HI JACK!
In the original film, Fred Gaily, after successfully proving that Kris was the one, true Santa, finds the house that Susie has been dreaming of. He and Doris think it is just a coincidence, until Fred sees a cane, a cane just like the one Kris had, sitting in the house. He gets a worried looks and says, " [doubtfully] Maybe… And… maybe I didn’t do such a wonderful thing after all."
I never get that line. What does he mean?
If Kris was indeed the one, true, Santa, then he did a good thing!
I don’t think that “wonderful” was intended to mean “good.” Rather, that he was musing about whether his successful defense/argument had been that miraculous. More along the lines of a defense attorney admitting that it was easy to get his client off because his client was actually innocent.
That makes sense!
Now back to our Die Hard is/is not a Christmas movie discussion.
But…have we considered that John’s success in escaping from the bad guys just MIGHT not be due simply to his own abilities? Might there be some other entity working or interceding on his behalf?
I don’t think this aspect of “Miracle at the Nakatomi Tower” has been fully explored yet.
I mean, what are the chances? Two bullets left, two bad guys left? That’s some kind of Christmas Miracle!
True dat!
It does seem to me that there are an awful lot of Christmas miracles going on.
This isn’t original to me; I saw it on Facebook. “Die Hard isn’t a Christmas movie because it occurs on Christmas, it’s a Christmas movie because it’s about a social obligation with a family member that you didn’t want to participate in but spirals more and more into an unending nightmare”
Cracked me up! 
Bonds of kindship triumph over material considerations. Estranged relationship made whole during a gathering. Alcohol related party shenanigans at the uptight office.
Somehow a few have decided schmaltz is the only way to make a Christmas film. We don’t even notice the sappy exchange about a kid getting shot in the middle of an action film between two strangers over the open air waves during a hostage and terrorist incident.
Case closed
For Holiday films I prefer Rudolph over Love Actually. I have a lot of problems with that film.
Maybe it needs it’s own thread, like Rudolph. 