It's that time of the year again.  Depending on who you are, this season can last anywhere from six months if you’re in charge of the Hallmark Channel's programming schedule, to as little as one day if you’re completely uninterested.  For me, it's about a month, starting after Thanksgiving and really ramping up as I approach the Prime 2-day shipping threshold.  I almost hate to admit it, though, this time of year is kind of magical.  The leaves have just turned, so we had all that color (if you happen to live near trees, which I do not, but I read about fall in a book once), that first nip in the air, the first time pulling out a nice, warm scarf and sipping on a hot chocolate (or, if you’re me, just a coffee or tea, hot chocolate is too sweet), that first snow, when you can get back in your childhood shoes and see snow as a pretty white blanket for the world and not a massive frustrating form of persistent precipitation that makes getting around a pain in the ass.  

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with Christmas.  I’m not Christian; in fact, I wasn’t really raised with any particular religious teaching, though my parents tried, my brother and I formed an unbeatable alliance of tantrums and made it really not worth their while to try anymore.  But we always celebrated a form of secular Christmas.  My mom didn’t want us to feel bad or left out when all our friends were talking about their Christmas and Hanukkah presents, so she granted us a yearly Christmas, on December 25th, believe it or not.  We even used to put up a tree when we were really young.  What a coincidence!  

Anyway, over the years, I developed this love/hate thing with Christmas.  I couldn’t stand the phony good cheer and forced meaning on the day; it has all the major pitfalls of a major holiday and all the fake smiles of an unctuous and conniving underling.  I love to poke fun at the pressure we put on ourselves over Christmas—honestly, being a bit of an ass myself, I do enjoy poking fun at anything I find to be held arbitrarily sacred, which, well, includes a lot of holidays.  But I also like Christmas.  Sometimes the good cheer doesn’t feel phony.  Sometimes I like the sense of togetherness and despite the inevitable tension of a 21st century family get-together, it’s nice to be able to connect with the extended family as well.  And frankly, I love giving gifts.  I love it.  I’m an incredible gift giver, if I do say so myself.  I used to keep a notebook with gift ideas for my closest loved ones (now it’s a note on my iPhone), listening to the things they talk wistfully about, as I jot down my thoughts like a private investigator, trying to sift through and find the perfect gift.  You know, that thing a person wants, but would never actually buy for themselves?  Like that one story my mom told me about her favorite pen that she had growing up in the village or when my brother couldn’t shut up about how cool nightvision goggles are.   

People have all sorts of opinions about Christmas—that it's too commercialized, that it’s the most wonderful time of year, that it’s embattled in a never-ending war (it’s not; it’s cool to say “Happy Holidays” to people if you don’t know if they celebrate Christmas, and there are other holidays than Christmas at the end of the year, shout out to Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and any others I don’t know about in my own personal ignorance), but, if you’re like me and you weren’t raised Christian, but still celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday, Christmas brings one word to mind.  

Cookies.

I mean movies.  TV shows occasionally have interesting Christmas specials, but I grew up in the 90s.  Christmas episodes tended to fall into a small number of categories.  Christmas is lost somehow (parents trying to teach a lesson, intending to restore Christmas once said lesson was learned, some sort of Christmas thievery, et al), the accidentally got a seasonal employee fired and need to make it right, or the ever popular festive hostage situation (usually a down and out Santa Claus, but not always).  Christmas movies also fall into repetitive categories, but some really stand out.  So here are my top five Christmas movies of all time.  Perhaps, as you can imagine, growing up with a non-traditional Christmas, my tastes in Christmas movies may run a bit into the non-traditional as well.

5. Elf

I’m a late-comer to Will Ferrell fandom.  I never really cared for his SNL run and had seen him in little else at the time.  So I was properly skeptical when Elf came out, even though I liked him in Old School, I wasn’t sure he could carry a movie for me (though films like Stranger Than Fiction, Everything Must Go, Talladega Nights, and The Other Guys got me firmly on his side as time went on), but I am always a sucker for Zooey Deschanel’s manic pixie dream girl (it’s my trope weakness) so I was willing to give it a try.  But I was pleasantly surprised by what was a funny, charming, and surprisingly heartfelt movie.  I generally don’t like fathers and James Caan’s surly dad is no different, but I love the way that his family immediately takes to Buddy the Elf and all but turns on Caan.  Ferrell brings some earnest naïveté to the role which really endears him to you.  Maybe it’s no It’s a Wonderful Life, but I could easily see it becoming a future Christmas movie classic.  Also, it does showcase some of Zooey Deschanel’s lovely singing voice, which is always a plus. 

4. Home Alone

Every kid had a hand drawn layout of their home and possible traps once this movie came out.  Home Alone is the original Christmas movie to me, the first one I can ever remember watching, other than those old Frosty the Snowman film strips they had you watch in school.  Essentially Die Hard for kids, Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister was the gold standard for fully independent children in the 90s.  He could go grocery shopping on his own (a feat I still struggle with in my 30s), he was a crack shot with a BB gun, his cardboard standee game was second to none, and the kid knew his way around firecrackers like none other.  I was never clear as to why the McCallisters had so many cardboard standees, but he made lemonade out of those lemons all day.  Plus, he used Micro Machines as a self-defense weapon!  Need I say more?

3. Love Actually

So maybe this one hasn’t aged that well, and maybe there are some problematic depictions of love, but I’ve still got a soft spot for Love Actually.  As I’ve gotten older and fallen in love a few times myself, with the included subsequent heartbreaks, I appreciate certain aspects of this film more and more.  While I loved the hopelessly romantic cue card scene from the Walking Dead’s Rick Grimes and the little drummer boy/All I Want For Christmas/frightening airport security storyline, now it’s the stories without the happy endings that speak to me most.  Emma Thompson’s heartbreaking performance, Bill Nighy’s lonely realization, Liam Neeson’s grief, and Laura Linney’s devotion to her brother all thoroughly draw me into the film as I still wonder how the main characters somehow know Martin Freeman’s character when their paths seemingly never cross with anyone but Colin’s possibly porno director friend (that storyline was never really clear to me, I can’t tell if it’s softcore or they’re body doubles, or what).  So while people may be tuning to see Hugh Grant and Colin Firth charmingly befuddle themselves into finding their new lady loves in the end, it’s the quiet dignity of Emma Thompson and Laura Linney especially that make this one of my holiday favorites.  Seems like it’s always women who suffer and have to exhibit that quiet dignity in their suffering, but I didn’t write it, I just think it’s a cute movie. Although I’m not sure if Rick’s cards to Keira Knightley were romantic or creepy anymore.

2. Bad Santa

If It’s a Wonderful Life is the most Christmas-y Christmas movie I’ve ever seen, Bad Santa is the most anti-Christmas-y Christmas movie around.  And that is exactly what I love about it.  So much of this film is just plain wrong, but there’s something sympathetic about Bill Bob Thornton’s two-bit, piece of shit criminal Santa that makes me overlook the aspects of the movie that should bother me.  Maybe this is a movie I should be embarrassed about, like The Hangover or Gone in Sixty Seconds, but damn it, I just like it.  The foulmouth Santa juxtaposed against a traditionally wholesome time of year, when we’re supposed to come together and wish good will upon each other, just tickles me in that way a less mean-spirited movie just doesn’t seem to be able to.  I mean, we’ve all had a case of the holiday blues at one time or another, and sometimes it’s good to indulge in that negativity for just a little while.  I like the holidays just fine, but that doesn’t mean they’re not without their stressors.  I mean, who hasn’t wanted to drink their December evenings away in bar after bar at least once in their lives, right?  It can’t just be me…right?  Anyway, this movie also had the fringe benefit of getting me to try watching Gilmore Girls because Lauren Graham was positively delightful and then that became my guilty pleasure show for years.  But don’t tell anyone about that, it’ll be our secret.  

1. Die Hard

Let’s settle the debate right now.  I know some people are under the mistaken impression that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.  Let’s examine the evidence to the contrary.  

1. It takes place over Christmas.

2. It takes place at a Christmas party.

3. Almost all, if not all, the music is Christmas music.

4. Including Hans Gruber humming “Ode to Joy” in the elevator on the way to his various terroristic activities.

5. Sgt. Al Powell aka Carl Winslow aka Reginald VelJohnson was singing “Let It Snow” before being called to Nakatomi Plaza.

6. I have a machine gun, ho ho ho. It’s not like he said “I have a machine gun, Happy Arbor Day”. Need I say more?

7. The themes and motifs include the importance of family (John trying to mend fences with Holly, Karl getting revenge for his brother), sharing a nice meal together (John tells Karl that he’s going to kill him, then cook him, and then eat him), and the spirit of giving (John leaves Tony’s dead body as a gift to Hans and his team, he also gifts Sgt. Powell Marco by somewhat unconventional means, I admit).

8. Holly’s name is literally Holly; that’s as Christmas a name as you can get this side of nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones.

9. “It’s Christmas, Theo. It’s the time of miracles.”

10. Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza even said it was, using White Christmas as a benchmark.

11. It’s basically It’s a Wonderful Life.

Okay, so it’s not exactly It’s a Wonderful Life and some of those points were a bit facetious, but overall, it stands that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.  I mean, how is John McClane really that different from Kevin McCallister and how are Hans Gruber and his merry band of international terrorists all that different from the Wet Bandits?  Not only that, it is the archetypal modern action film.  Every movie that came after it that was even remotely like it was held up to Die Hard as the gold standard.  The closest we’ve come to such a great standalone action film since was John Wick.  Everything about this movie is perfect—the lines, the delivery of the lines (if not the accents), the pacing, the stakes, the climax, the denouement, the false ending—it couldn’t have been a better constructed movie.  There are very few perfect movies—Jurassic Park, The Princess Bride, The Empire Strikes Back, and 2 Fast 2 Furious* come to mind—and Die Hard is one of them.  And the concept of a perfect movie is an interesting one that I will discuss, at length, another time.  And as such, Die Hard rightfully takes its place as my number one Christmas movie of all time.  

So, there you have it.  Those are my top 5 Christmas movies of all time.  Agree?  Disagree?  What are yours?  Any way you slice it, though, if you’re celebrating anything this time of year, I wish you all safe and happy holidays.  

*Look, I know it’s not good, okay?  I just like it.