Sothysen Tuyhor Introduction
This brief essay exploring the idea, rough genre or attribute of the “Christmas movie” began with an incredibly committed debate between me, two other journal writers and co-chief editor Marilyn about what counts as a Christmas movie. Such opinions about the nature of the medium of course do not arise as a sudden declaration. It naturally occurs upon the moment that us film lovers are asked a question about favourites and are allowed to embellish each other with all manner of quality justifications or vouchings for the niche. I cannot quite recall how this initial discussion evolved into Marilyn stating that Die Hard (1988) is not a Christmas movie but that premise alone pushed me to somewhat threaten her with a writing in the journal on why she is perhaps too conservative on the idea of the Christmas movie. This was especially the case when she also denied The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) that same “honour” of being a Christmas movie. Most important for me to state before any discussion goes forward, I am not really a big fan of Christmas. At least not in the sense that it will ever get close to being a favourite holiday. I share none of the religious connection, I know the holiday itself to be such a strange construction made through continuously tacked on additions from various groups that completely betray a dominant concept of authenticity and year on year I have become more tired of its commodification and commercialism. All that remains perhaps is the excuse of fried chicken, if I feel like going a more Japanese route, and the idea that there is a time of year to try and salvage oneself mostly on the moral end. Because of these complications I naturally am much less protective of the boundaries of this mini-genre. For me, Christmas just needs to be prevalent enough to count.
This gets to my core arguments. The Christmas genre needs at a minimum to have the presence of the holiday, perhaps endeavour to include some of the moral, philosophical and spiritual foundations, the so-called Christmas spirit, and at its most firm involve the common symbolisms, objects, characters and mythologies of Christmas. I push for the idea that this ad hoc framework or way of classifying allows for the idea that some films are more Christmas-y than others but still fall within a given sphere. For what is most significant for films which we seek to classify within an area or genre so grounded in holiday-based, religious and cultural intersections with the medium is that the works engage with common trends but still have their own respective ways of engaging with genre and subject matter.
Christmas is Christmas is Christmas
A film that, for a significant part of its diegesis, features Christmas or is considered to have fulfilled this quality by the audience and broader culture will or can be regarded as a Christmas film. To be more specific, a Christmas movie is such if it wants to be so and if we the people deem it so. Nathan Scoll (2023) says this through a deeper analysis of Die Hard with genre theory, identifying that “Die Hard has become a Christmas movie simply because enough of an audience and marketplace deem it so”. This rather constructivist approach is by far going to be the most subjective, for it lies on the culmination of individual determinations, segmented by cultures. Perhaps a country with a different Christmas tradition, or people with different perspectives on Christmas, may think otherwise. Hence, the conundrum with Marilyn. However, most important to this condition of classification, in my opinion, is the two key aspects, the work’s diegesis and audience interpretation. If a work were to not include Christmas at all then naturally one would not expect an audience member to intuitively strike up or fathom the word “Christmas”. Last year I rewatched Dune (2021) on Christmas day, that does not mean that the film is a Christmas film, nor did I ever think it was. The concept of Christmas is quite clearly and comfortably far and non-existent for the world of Dune. For Die Hard, we as audience members know that it is set temporally within the holiday season. Christmas is on the minds of the characters, and therefore to some minimally fulfilled extent the film, as well as a good chunk of us as audience members. A film or creative work can have many readings and there is no surprise that the popularity and therefore substantive validation of this genre classification stands.
Scoll importantly mentions the word “marketplace” and I think that we should still be conscious that this classification is partially accountable to marketing and corporate influence. But from a descriptive standpoint, which for simplicity is what we are pursuing here, it is safe to say that where a given film would touch on Christmas to a significant enough extent and the appeal to the people has deemed it as valid, then we can quite safely call it a Christmas film. Of course that raises the question of what counts as a “significant enough extent” within the diegesis and how much of the people or culture will have deemed a Christmas movie its place. I will leave these respective subjectivities and Sorites paradoxes. Perhaps something important for the former, however, is whether the film itself has the “Christmas spirit”.
Tone it down. Jesus can hear you.
When I say the “Christmas spirit”, I define it along the lines of love and compassion predominantly derived from a Christian origin. Perhaps add on some family, charity and goodwill to get some points of blessing as well. This in turn helps to frame the Christmas spirit as a moral, philosophical and spiritual foundation or dimension to a given work’s themes. I wish to classify this as a second level of how Christmas-y a film may be. It would perhaps help to compare films that are explicitly grounded in Christian thinking and those that are not as two key extremes. This is done to reinforce both the first level and the unique position of this framework’s openness to other cultural, religious and philosophical interpretations of and interactions with Christmas as a holiday and genre.
The most committed and notable film in terms of Christian values in a Christmas in film is of course It’s A Wonderful Life (1946). Frank Capra’s classic offers a vision of appreciating life, love and caring for others. A grand tale of friendship that occupies a higher-paced bildungsroman to stage a highly individualistic but nonetheless considered approach towards a human’s selfless love. Of course this is within code-era USA, where the dominant perspectives very much focus on a male lead who lives out the values and traditions of post-war American Christianity. Regardless, the first end of the spectrum is there.
The transitionary midpoint of the spectrum, meanwhile, emerges in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers (2023). It is steeped in a nostalgic lens on the US, where Christianity still holds somewhat and permeates much of our initial reality. And yet the film does not solely concern itself with just one view. Through it are the lives of three leads, understandably not well loved by the system but, to some extent, still equally loved in the eyes of god. The commentary on the gloomy and cold zeitgeist to fight for something more warm and loving is there but sits well outside of anything too conventionally Christian. This is taken from both the more modern context or timing of the screenplay and its own narrative elements that move away from a dominant perspective (essentially they are not straight, white Jimmy Stewart). The Christmas spirit but a diminished Christian weight.
Essentially on the other end of the spectrum are works which are quite explicit about their grounding in non-Christian origins, settings, values or traditions. This is exemplified in my favourite Christmas film Tokyo Godfathers (2003), an excellent tragicomic adventure of greed, struggle and hopefulness, all bundled in by far one of the most thematically and narratively cohesive stories put out by its director Satoshi Kon. What strikes me as most significant here, however, is that Kon sees Christmas through a most different lens. It is not religious or spiritual. Culturally, for the majority of Japanese culture, Christmas is commercialism, confusion and consumerism. Or at least this is Kon’s key criticism. There is a great irony that Christmastime Tokyo is majority billboards while the church, among other religious and spiritual realms that make an appearance in the film, is sidelined. Such a world is shown to be draining, most particularly to the homeless. In using Christmas as this front to discuss a tug of war between the cultural and spiritual against the commercial and capitalist, Kon is able to present a case where the Christmas spirit is present but is ultimately not overtly concerned with a diegetic or subtextual discussion of Christianity at its values. Instead, a broader spiritual engagement is pursued. For at the end of the day, it is a tale of humanity that most importantly occupies a holiday.
There is of course room here for a broader analysis of how these Christmas films, and perhaps more broadly the genre, interact with a patriarchal, elitist and ultimately rather racist world or structures of greed and capitalism to different ends of discussion. But one can say that they at least engage with the Christmas spirit as a testament to their identity as Christmas films.
A Bell Rings
The final point of common symbolisms, objects, characters and mythologies of Christmas would be clearest for it is an explicit demonstration of an engagement with Christmas as a broad concept. While there is room for arguing that one could feature a well known symbol or object of Christmas and yet work against making their work of the “Christmas” genre, or that perhaps this third level and the first could possibly be achieved without touching on the second. This is perhaps a crux of the framework when faced with Christmas horror that is practically or usually unconcerned with selfless love or compassion. Nonetheless, some room should be allowed to at least discuss those films many quite easily consider to be Christmas classics. Those films like The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), or any film adaptation of A Christmas Carol for that matter, and perhaps even the short but classic The Snowman (1982), though understandably it was originally a book. These films make use of key traditions or depictions of Christmas whether through visual and material inclusion or thematic and ideational engagement to express the values.
I mention this as the final level because there is somewhat of an assumptive step of fulfilling the Christmas spirit after the work includes and is interpreted as being a Christmas film. But where the commitment to bring an intuitively Christmas narrative or work to the screen, along with those that are not but which choose to include it for a thematic and work-related sake, this would apply. Tokyo Godfathers fulfills this latter threshold as Kon makes use of various spiritual objects and images, Christian or Christmas-related included among others, as symbols and motifs to ensure a sustained awareness of if not engagement with his perspective on both the holiday and the system.
Meetings and Partings: Conclusion
This is but one way to look at the Christmas genre and the extent to which we may consider a given film to exemplify “Christmas”. Admittedly, dynamics of including Christmas as subject matter and audience interpretation as such, the engagement with the Christmas spirit and the explicit use of significant Christmas elements will have probably missed out on some other key aspects. Additionally, there is also a question of being critical about this genre and what it offers. There is always room for change to how we approach this concept and thereby address it in a similar way that Christmas as this cultural tradition and object affects our reality. As aforementioned, Christmas has become more consumerist, capitalist and commercial than remained religiously Christian. Sue Saltmarsh (2007), for example, discusses texts related to Christmas, mentioning a way in which “cultural texts are implicated in constructing children, over time, as particular kinds of economic subjects”.
This essay started as a way to be more open and descriptive about what we as audiences consider as a “Christmas” film while still being conscious of those intuitive and reliable works. It is an attempt to reconcile the old and new. At the end of the day, Marilyn can be left to her opinion as such a value judgment over what is and is not a Christmas film is ultimately inconsequential to this level unless of course we are in a wider intellectual and public deliberation. I think it would be safe to say it is more important to live out the Christmas spirit and come together with warmth, love and friendship in preparation for the end of yet another, and quite clearly tough, year.
“And man will live forever more because of Christmas day”
— Lyric from Mary’s Boy Child by Boney M
References
Saltmarsh, S. (2007) ‘Spirits, Miracles and Clauses: economy, patriarchy and childhood in popular Christmas texts,’ Papers Explorations Into Children S Literature, 17(1), pp. 19–27. https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2007vol17no1art1201.
Scoll, N. (2023) ‘Yes, Die Hard is a Christmas Movie: A Semantic, Syntactic, Pragmatic Approach to Resolve the Debate Over Die Hard ’s Genre Status,’ Comparative American Studies an International Journal, 20(3–4), pp. 366–382. https://doi.org/10.1080/14775700.2023.2277073.
