It does, in at least the version with Patrick Stewart.
okay – that doesn’t really affect my point, which wasn’t exactly how to classify Dicken’s Christmas Carol, but that what you think matters about Christmas is going to affect what you think makes a movie a “Christmas Movie”.
I think every movie you said before this sentence is a Christmas movie. Gremlins and Die Hard are not any more than Plains, Trains and Automobiles was a Thanksgiving movie.
In those three movies, the writer or director has a story to tell that had nothing to do with the holiday. The holiday in the movie, as a previous poster said, was a MacGuffin. It was used as a backdrop to start the series of events in the plot.
For example, Die Hard was set at Christmas as a reason for McClain to be in LA and for the terrorists to attack at that time. They could have picked a different reason, but Christmas worked just fine. In Gremlins, Christmas was used as a reason that Billy was given Gizmo as a gift. His dad was an unsuccessful travelling salesman and probably wouldn’t given Billy a gift at any other time, nor would he have gone into a crazy obscure Chinese shop in desperation (the only one open in the small town where he was) to get such an exotic gift. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles needed a reason why Steve Martin needed to get home instead of he and John Candy having drinks for a few days until a plane was available from Wichita to Chicago.
All of these used the holiday as a plot device and had nothing to do with the holiday–no matter if you view it as religious or secular or both. Would anyone consider Psycho a “bank embezzlement movie”?
No, anyone who thinks Gremlins is not a Christmas movie needs to rewatch it. It was just on TV on Christmas day, and it is so centered around Christmas. In addition to Gizmo being a Christmas gift, we get Christmas carolers, characters dressed as Santa, Christmas music, Christmas trees, Phoebe Cates’ whole monologue about why she hates Christmas. Sure you could do the same story at another time of year (see Gremlins 2), but that would be a different film. This film is a Christmas movie. You could take Christmas out of pretty much any movie that isn’t directly about Santa Claus and just do a story about a family getting together for someone’s birthday.
But none of that was important to the story. It could have all happened on October 11 and nothing meaningful about the movie changes. Nobody would then describe it as an “October 11 movie.”
Nothing in the movie was Christmas a meaningful element. Nothing about anyone finding Jesus, no miracles, nobody getting the Christmas spirit, or finding the true meaning of Christmas.
I know this is just a fun argument to have, but I don’t see how your side can exclude from the definition of “Christmas movie” ANY movie so long as the backdrop is near Christmas or there are holiday displays around.
I use the example of The Big Lebowski. Surely you don’t consider that a bowling movie. Bowling was a subtext. These guys could have played cards in the evenings and the story is the same: Lovable loser finds himself in the middle of a kidnapping plot and is bumbling around getting the money.
The movie Kingpin, however, is a bowling movie because the story is driven by bowling, just like how Tin Cup was a golfing movie. Those sports were integral to the movie. The stories were about bowling and golf, respectively.
