5 signs you might be living a Christmas movie
“The Princess Switch.” Image property of Netflix. All Rights Reserved.
Let’s jump to straight brass tacks here. For Christmas this year, since we didn’t go anywhere with COVID doing its own Black Friday sales, we watched a lot of Christmas movies. And I mean a LOT.
Like, at least thirty-one. No, we didn’t watch one a day, but we watched more than thirty over the course of thirty days. It turns out it can be elusive to pin down what makes a Christmas movie (as society has debated for some time). Is a Christmas movie any film set during Christmas (Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, welcome), or does it have to focus on the holiday and the spirit of Christmas (most other movies)?
You could loosely compartmentalize the films we watched into about three categories: movies about Christmastime, movies about Santa, and romantic comedies set during Christmas. I’m keeping this third one as a separate category because in the past few years, Netflix and Hulu have jumped on the big ol’ Hallmark movie bandwagon and unleashed a slew of pseudo-Hallmark feel-goods that span from The Christmas Knight to Holiday in the Wild. It turns out that in some of these cases, Christmas is just the vehicle by which the film crashes you into the fluffiest, doughiest, most contrived meet-cute conceivable. Yeah, brace yourselves.
Rather than try to perfectly “define” what makes a Christmas movie, we instead decided to flag some of our favorite tropes that continually and unexpectedly made guest appearances. We might call these subtle “cues” that you may have found yourself trapped in a place much like the Twilight Zone, but instead populated by carolers, curative cocoas, and timely yet pleasant snowfalls.
1: The Unstoppable Countdown
When you look at your watch, perhaps you expect to see the time? Well, it seems that the moment the clock strikes midnight on December 1st, all clocks are set to Christmas Standard Time. You have no choice but to gauge the passage of time purely in relationship to when Christmas happens. It’s no longer a paltry “December 1st,” but instead a flourishing “24 Days ‘Til Christmas.” As you get closer to Christmas, the countdown seems to slow, and the urgency with which the inevitable approaches hits a fever pitch. It may seem like thirty minutes ago it was Two Weeks ‘Til Christmas, but now it’s the Night Before Christmas, and we’ll be here for a while. The dreaded Countdown ‘Til Christmas is easily the most consistent red flag that you’ve fallen into the well that is the Christmas movie genre. The countdown may even be more common than the Big Man in Red, making numerous appearances across the genre. If you’re lucky, the Countdown may be a mere scene transition in the form of a cheap CG calendar page tearing away. But in the North Pole, you can comfortably expect to have the Countdown prominently featured as an ornate clock, a Wall Street-style scrolling ticker, or other such humbug. And in at least one case, this countdown could be tethered to a magical heirloom advent calendar that your family has secretly kept, capable of granting very specific wishes (I’m looking at you, The Holiday Calendar).
The Daily Star has really gone downhill in the last few years. The headlines are so basic.
“Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmastime.” Image property of The Walt Disney Company. All Rights Reserved.
Don’t worry, time will eventually pass, but don’t expect to make it until New Year’s. If you do, it’s probably just so that you can jump straight on to the on-screen text overlay of NEXT CHRISTMAS, because in Christmas movies, only one month of the year really matters.
2: Snowball Fight!
Oh boy! What fun we’re having! It wouldn’t be a Christmas movie without snow, and also the most common and delightful form of warfare that accompanies snow! It’s surprising how often snowball fights come up. Buddy the Elf totally bizzonks the youthful miscreants of Central Park with his Rookie-of-the-Year-worthy arms. Fred Claus and his broseph briefly have at it as they work through some family drama. And what better way to conveniently find yourself flush and giggling in a soft bed of freshly-fallen snow with a single hottie than to get caught in an impromptu snowball fight with the local town misfits? Maybe bullies are the real matchmakers of Smalltown USA?
A Blockbuster employee once told me Elf was a bad movie. That’s why they went out of business.
“Elf.” Image property of New Line Cinema. All Rights Reserved.
There is a lot of bonding with strangers or children that happens in Christmas movies. Maybe you’re an estranged family member forced to spend time with a relative that you either hardly know or just discovered exists. Well, a quick way to jump you into an intimate level of trust is to team up against an onslaught of powdered projectiles. The same goes for romance. Nothing gets ‘em hot and bothered like a little blitzkrieg. And if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get to change out of those soggy clothes into some toasty fireside sexual tension.
3: The Precocious Only Child
I wasn’t an only child, I had the benefit of an older brother to intermittently love/hate, fear/respect, bother/ignore. But when you’re in a Christmas movie, only-children are much more convenient. I mean, one child actor is enough, right? Do they really need siblings? Maybe they can have siblings, but we’ll relegate them to occasional out-of-state cutaways (Home Alone & Home Alone 2) so we can focus on who the story is really about- this one child having very specific Christmas experiences. If you meet this child, beware. They understand much more than we could ever possibly glean from our limited time on earth at their age.
Alex is about to go full on Food Network judge on his dad’s well-intentioned breakfast. Turns out that when you’re a precocious only child, you’re just a step away from culinary insults.
Image property of The Walt Disney Company. All Rights Reserved.
Charlie from Santa Clause keys into the Rose Suchak Ladder in like, seconds. Have you ever heard of that? That’s straight-up crazy sauce. How did he know there’s a magical ladder company? So many questions. Susan Walker of Miracle on 34th Street has the street smarts we’ve come to expect from Christmas movie children. She understands Mr. Kringle is an employee. But also, she understands that he is, really is, Santa Claus. And little Alex from Noelle? He’s a secret pint-sized top chef. Watch him totally roast his dad’s cooking like a miniature Gordon Ramsey. I guess what I’m getting at is that this hyper-intelligent species of Christmas movie only-children are to be feared. Where do their powers come from? Do they use them for good year-round, or only when Christmas is in danger?
4: Blatant Disrespect for the Field of Mental Health Treatment
Now that the millennium is in its twenties, it feels like we’ve matured to a place where we can talk about mental health like it’s a real thing, and not just something that Freud made up so we could all make fun of him with his stupid couches and cigars while we bury our childhood trauma and unresolved feelings of guilt and shame. We’ve got movies like Good Will Hunting and Analyze This in the late 90s showing the progress we’ve made since the tongue-in-cheek “head-shrinker” archetype of bygone times. However, you can just throw that all out the window once Christmas is involved.
Therapists are always wrong about Christmas, and especially about Santa. Always. Wrong. Remember when the mental health evaluation in Miracle on 34th Street made Richard Attenborough the guy who just thought he was Santa? Boooo psychology, boo I say! The man is Santa Claus, and I demand a brief courtroom drama proving it! Santa Clause leans heavily into mocking mental health professionals. New nice-guy stepdad Neal is the most sweater-wearing-est of anti-Santa shrinks available. You would expect Mr. Reinhold to be a better Judge of character, amirite? (Boo. Hiss. Please don’t leave the blog.) Even Noelle rocks a run-in with a mental health professional, who conveniently faints when presented with undeniable proof that reindeer can fly and probably a lot of other things that sound ridiculous. Bit of a cop-out, really.
Most of us are just one weenie-whistle away from wearing ugly sweaters and destroying children’s hopes and dreams.
Image property of The Walt Disney Company. All Rights Reserved.
So if you’ve noticed that the mental healthcare professionals around you are hellbent on disproving the existence of Santa and pressuring you to view the holiday as just a holiday, then you’re probably smack-bang in the center of a Christmas movie. Don’t let the haters hold you down, man. Let that Christmas Spirit fly free.
5: Nothing Says Christmas Like Metacommentary
It turns out that when it gets down to it, Christmas movies are distinctly self-aware. They love to pay homage to the glowing classics that they climbed over to get to your eyeballs. This can have the effect of either humbly tipping a hat to an iconic character or scene, or sucker-punching you in the face with a “hey, remember this thing you loved? Well, let’s not do that.” Fred Claus probably lands on the cheeky side by snatching a perfect clip from A Charlie Brown Christmas: “Charlie Brown, you’re the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas, and turn it into a problem.” Nailed it, Linus. That’s all Christmas movies in a nutshell. Home Alone 2 has Kevin watching the OG animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas! in his limo just in time for the Grinch’s wonderfully nasty grin to melt into Tim Curry’s equally wicked smile, thereby christening him the de facto Grinch of the film.
Vince Vaughn just eating peanut butter from the jar and catching a Christmas flick before his world is turned upside down by his yuletide spirit of a brother.
Image property of Warner Brothers. All Rights Reserved.
Of course, Netflix has taken this to a whole new level by just showing their other Christmas movies on TV screens in their original Christmas movies. Life imitating Art imitating Product Placement or something. I don’t know. It’s very weird.
These are just some warning signs that you may have stumbled right into a Christmas movie. These are by no means exhaustive. You want exhaustive? Maybe next year we turn this into a Seriously Nerdy bingo game or drinking game or trope-y snowball fight. Just you wait and see.