Part 1 – Semantics
“It was December 24th on Hollis Ave in the dark
When I see a man chilling with his dog in the park
I approached very slowly with my heart full of fear
Looked at his dog, oh my God, an ill reindeer”
With the first few lines of Run-D.M.C.’s “Christmas in Hollis,” and a firm insistence that “this IS Christmas music!” we as audience members are told in no uncertain terms that “Die Hard” IS, in fact, a Christmas movie. As a somewhat recent convert myself, I must admit to extreme periods of “Die Hard” evangelism every year since Christian first insisted that I watch this 1988 classic.[1] So, consider that full disclosure and fair warning that my position is anything but objective on this subject.
I have wanted to write this post for a few years now, but other seasonal content (cards,[2] trees,[3] etc.) has regularly taken precedence on this blog… and in the meantime everyone and his brother has written a treatise on why “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie. As much as I would love to just take this opportunity to run the numbers on visual, audio, and dialogue references to the holiday to prove the point (and people have [4]), I found that in doing research for this post, the real question was around what we define as “Christmas movie.”
In reality, those lines are a lot fuzzier when you factor in various perspectives informed by family traditions and individual interpretations of film. And it was this much more subjective and hard-to-define “Christmas spirit” component in the list of Christmas movie criteria that led me to question the interplay of intention and impact in holiday filmmaking – something I have not yet seen in any blog-based critiques on this subject.
Defining “Christmas Movie”
First, there does not appear to be any single authority when it comes to defining what a “Christmas movie” is. I had hoped for a little guidance from the experts at Internet Movie Database or Rotten Tomatoes, but their contributions to the argument were just “definitive” ranked lists of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, with little visibility into their black box of criteria, though Rotten Tomatoes did say their ranking had to “play around with the spirit of Christmas and the holidays as a central theme,” [5] and both lists included “Die Hard.” (Completely biased kudos to IMDB for nailing my favorites in their ranking: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Die Hard,” and Alastair Sim’s “A Christmas Carol” were the top three, with “A Christmas Story” rounding out my standard holiday lineup in the number seven spot.[6])
Fortunately for me, a couple sources were brave enough to weigh in on actual “Christmas movie” criteria for this exercise. For instance, Reel to Reel Movies provided an elegant “pick two of three” list.[7] According to this film critic, in order to be a Christmas movie, a film must:
- be set primarily during Christmas season (between Thanksgiving and New Year’s)… or during an equivalent holiday in fictional worlds (such as Life Day in the Star Wars universe)
- include traditional Christmas figures, such as Jesus or Santa
- include a traditional Christmas theme, such as love, hope, generosity, faith, redemption, family, or fear
An article from The Hollywood Reporter gives a little more leeway to this broad genre.[8] In their view, defining a Christmas movie is…
- partially an issue of the setting – it must be temporally related to Christmas
- partially an issue of genre – it must feature some of the joy, love, and nostalgia for the season … or on the flip side, some aspect of loneliness, cynicism, or family dysfunction brought on during the season
- very much an issue of the meaningful use of Christmas in storytelling – the fact that it’s Christmas must enhance the story in some way
- an issue of tradition – it’s “a film that we love to revisit with friends and family at Christmastime”
Let’s look a little more closely at that third point from The Hollywood Reporter: the meaningful use of Christmas in storytelling. That is the point that really clinches the “Die Hard” argument for me.
[Image source unknown]
A Christmas Movie vs. A Movie at Christmas
I have friends who argue that other movies are Christmas movies by virtue of the fact that they are set at Christmas. As an extreme example, one friend from college likes to joke that sci-fi horror movie “Event Horizon” [9] is his favorite Christmas movie. And, technically, it hits two of Reel to Reel’s criteria: it is set at Christmas and has a distinct central theme of fear. But the fact that it’s Christmas is a “blink and you’ll miss it” reference at the beginning of the movie – there is no holiday significance as the ship’s crew is slowly tortured and driven insane.
One of my slightly more feel-good Christmas traditions is watching “The Lion in Winter,” [10] but I wouldn’t call that a Christmas movie. Sure, the characters are assembled for a Christmas court, but there are no themes of love or sacrifice, no redemptive character arcs, and really no reconciliation at the end – it’s just the Plantagenets committing to being a dysfunctional family once again the next time Dad lets Mom out of jail for the holidays. Christmas isn’t meaningfully incorporated into the story, even though they’re exchanging presents.
When it comes to “Die Hard,” yes, the events of the movie could have happened any time of year: New York cop John McClane could have been going to visit his kids and estranged wife in LA for any occasion; iconic movie villain Hans Gruber and his team could have picked any day of the 365 to pull a heist for that $640M. But as The Hollywood Reporter notes, these themes – particularly John’s and Sgt. Powell’s redemption arcs, John and Holly’s reconciliation, and even the thieves’ excitement over essentially unwrapping a big gift – are all enhanced by the season in which the plot is set. (Even the guys over at Cinema Therapy consider this movie a Christmas classic that doubles as a blueprint for saving a rocky marriage.[11])
Image credit: [12]
For a “hard-R” movie that includes blood, explosions, and at least 20 murders, the mood still remains surprisingly light thanks in part to subtle, playful holiday references, particularly where the music is concerned. The one diegetic (characters can hear it) Christmas song in the movie that doesn’t involve someone humming/singing/whistling to himself sets itself up for the quotable punch line “this IS Christmas music!” The one non-diegetic (only the audience can hear it) Christmas song in the movie swells at the end as we fade to black after a romantic kiss in a limo, driving off into a gentle snowfall of office papers. Everything else, whether a well-placed punctuation of sleigh bells or a trumpet fanfare that evokes toy soldiers going to battle, is incorporated into the score. Even “Ode to Joy,” which isn’t actually a piece of Christmas music, still is – fundamentally – joyous and remains a key aspect of the more buoyant, festive musical themes throughout the movie.
~
This post quickly got out of hand, much like Hans Gruber’s master plan to overtake Nakatomi Plaza. Next week’s installment will continue with thoughts about the question of intent vs. impact in making a Christmas movie. In the meantime, where do you fall on the “Die Hard” argument?
Thanks for reading!
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095016/
[2] https://radicalmoderate.online/christmas-cards-and-their-environmental-impacts/
[3] https://radicalmoderate.online/real-vs-plastic-christmas-trees-part-1/
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UekHfQnFHe8
[6] https://www.imdb.com/list/ls000096828/
[7] https://reeltoreelmovies.com/2020/12/23/what-makes-a-christmas-movie/
[9] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119081/
[10] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063227/
[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBHejcVG4ww
[12] https://imgur.com/gallery/jUcsK
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