10 non-festive Christmas movies that became a holiday tradition
As oxymoronic as it sounds, Christmas movies don’t strictly have to be Christmas movies, which is one of the many reasons why the annual Die Hard debate continues to draw such fervent opinions from either side of the divide.
There are a litany of tropes, trappings, bells, and whistles that have become associated with feature-length festive frolics, and ticking off a handful of those boxes has been established as the bare minimum to qualify. Certain titles are nigh-on obligated to be revisited annually once December arrives, but there are others that aren’t universally accepted as must-watch every year.
That doesn’t mean they’re not Christmassy in nature, though, regardless of whether their stories, settings, plot, or even characters don’t quite fit into the categories most closely associated with the subgenre. And yet, the following ten have still managed to carve out a status of their own as traditional movies with plenty of Yuletide merit that will be revisited by many.
Erotic thrillers, blockbuster fantasies, comic book adaptations, incendiary dramas, literary adaptations, and espionage epics are all present and accounted for, which just goes to show the sheer malleability of how a Christmas film can be defined.
10 non-festive Christmas movies:
10. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
A 159-minute psychological erotic thriller about a married couple seeking to live out their sensual fantasies by infiltrating a mask-wearing secret society’s orgy hardly screams festive cheer, but Christmastime iconography is slathered all over virtually every scene of Eyes Wide Shut.
The aesthetic of the film is suitably dreamlike, and even though it’s not the sort of film anybody would watch during the most wonderful time of year when surrounded by friends, family, and loved ones, the litany of decorations and Christmastime staples prevalent in the background root Eyes Wide Shut firmly in the period.
Even if great swathes of the story are provocative, titillating, and stripped-back examinations of the human subconscious, it also can’t be overlooked that the story ends with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s characters standing in front of the world’s biggest toy store. Christmassy? No, not really, but that hasn’t stopped Eyes Wide Shut from becoming an annual tradition anyway.
9. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Andrew Adamson, 2005)
Veteran character actor James Cosmo playing Father Christmas is a fairly obvious explanation as to why the first instalment in the ultimately abandoned The Chronicles of Narnia franchise ticks the boxes as a festive favourite, even though the sweeping fantasy is hardly what anyone would call a standard Christmas film.
Sure, it was released in December and, as mentioned, features Santa Claus among its cast of characters – never mind the obvious religious influences over C.S. Lewis’ source novels – but Cosmo’s jolly old Saint Nick serves more as a harbinger of doom, considering his arrival coincides with Tilda Swinton’s White Witch beginning to lose her power.
His presents for the Pevensie children are also weapons as opposed to toys, so it’s clear that he didn’t make his grand return to Narnia to mess around and spread good cheer. Fantastical worlds smothered in snow scream Christmas whether they’re doing it intentionally or not, but the presence of Santa himself has understandably elevated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe into an annual staple.
8. Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990)
There’s plenty of snow to be found in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, but its enduring appeal as a non-traditional Christmas film comes from a place of thematic resonance instead of any overt nods towards the festive period.
After all, the first two-thirds of the story takes place in the baking sun, but it’s the feelings of loneliness and isolation that plague Johnny Depp’s title character that spoke to many. Christmas is touted as being the time when people come together and spend quality time with their nearest and dearest, but it isn’t always that easy or straightforward for everyone.
That being said, there’s no shortage of humanity, heart, family, and goodwill to be found as Edward begins to find his place in the world, which is why it’s become such a popular title for a December rewatch despite its lack of obvious Yuletide elements.
7. Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2013)
Shane Black has barely lent his name to anything that doesn’t reference Christmas in one way or another, and even a mega-budget comic book blockbuster couldn’t stop him from carrying on the habit of a lifetime that’s seen him indulge his love of the occasion in everything from Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang to The Long Kiss Goodnight and The Last Boy Scout.
Iron Man 3 doesn’t focus a great deal of its attention on Christmas, but there’s plenty of snow and twinkling lights on display, in addition to the gigantic tree on display in Tony Stark’s mansion before it gets blown to pieces by Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin.
Beyond that, Robert Downey Jr’s first Marvel Cinematic Universe outing in the aftermath of The Avengers finds the main character isolated, stripped of his armour on both a figurative and literal level, all while being plagued by feelings of loneliness and the belief he’s failed all of those closest to him. A superhero epic revolving around an existential crisis is hardly jolly stuff, but studio chief Kevin Feige himself has confirmed Iron Man 3 qualifies as a Christmas film.
6. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Peter R. Hunt, 1969)
Christopher Nolan’s favourite James Bond movie stands out for several major reasons, which extend to being George Lazenby’s one and only outing under the tux and its shocking ending that finds 007 getting married before immediately having his wife murdered in cold blood.
That doesn’t come across as the perfect way to wrap up a stealthy Christmas film, but Bond’s budding relationship with Diana Rigg’s Tracy di Vincenzo is indebted to the spirit of the season. Their escape from Blofeld’s forces in the Alps takes a detour through a whimsical winter village, which is when the secret agent realises love has taken precedence over duty for the first time.
There are also the angels, which in this case are the Angels of Death, a dozen beautiful women brainwashed by Blofeld. If any other movie featured a character encountering angels before finding love and proposing against a snow-capped backdrop, then most would be convinced it was a Christmastime romance and not a globetrotting spy story.
5. Little Women (Gillian Armstrong, 1994)
Greta Gerwig’s adaptation has plenty of time to become an annual part of the Christmas diet, but seeing as it was only released in 2019, Gillian Anderson’s version has had a lot more time to become an integral part of the festive schedule for multiple generations.
The saccharine sentimentality associated with the annual festivities isn’t exactly ladled on thick, but the scenes set in and around the Christmas period find the key characters reflecting on where they are in life and where they want to be, something the majority of society considers at least one when the festivities are in full swing whether they want to admit it or not.
New beginnings, fresh starts, and leaving the past behind to look forward and embark on a brand new era is another sentiment heavily intertwined with the spell between December 25th and January 1st, with Little Women using Christmas as a garnish as opposed to a main course. By extension, it’s now a holiday staple that doesn’t quite fit into the standard box as a Yuletide feature.
4. You’ve Got Mail (Nora Ephron, 1998)
Romantic comedies and Christmas go hand-in-hand, with Hallmark and Netflix firing them out at a rapid rate that’s alarming more than anything else, but it’s one that doesn’t specifically exist as a seasonal story that’s become one of the most popular and heavily-revisited in the years since its release.
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan reunite and confirm they hadn’t lost a shred of the chemistry first established in Sleepless in Seattle, but it’s their eventual coming together that hammers home the Christmastime themes of You’ve Got Mail without devolving into an all-out tinsel-and-tree spectacular.
There are several sequences set in and around the holidays, of course, but they’re used to make it patently clear to the audience that his Joe Fox and her Kathleen Kelly are missing that certain spark in their lives that would make Christmas just that little bit more magical. Wouldn’t you know it, they find it with each other.
3. Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)
A moving, powerful, and extraordinary adaptation of an equally accomplished novel by Patricia Highsmith, when you look at Carol on a superficial level, it’s about as Christmassy as they come.
After all, Cate Blanchett’s title character is named after the joyful songs that remain irrelevant for 11 months of the year, the colour palette maintains the warm-hued reds and greens that have become symbols of the holiday period, there’s a scene focused entirely on shopping for a tree, the palpable undertones of a scene that involves nothing more than wrapping presents, and the fact a London cinema once carried a special offer that would see somebody wrap gifts while the ticket-holder sat in their seat and watched the movie.
2. Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)
The movie may have seen Judy Garland debut instant staple ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ during a final act that’s almost entirely about the importance of family during the festive season, but that doesn’t mean Meet Me in St. Louis can be called a standard holiday film.
For one thing, it was billed by MGM as a ‘Glorious Love Story with Music’ in all of the marketing materials, while the story itself takes place over the course of almost a year from the summer of 1903 to the spring of 1904. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition is the key event driving the narrative, which didn’t begin until April 30th.
Divided into chapters that trace the Smith family and their dynamic, with the various principal players getting caught up in drama that touches down during a sun-kissed summer and a spooky Halloween before the Christmas-set sequence leaves many destroyed snowmen in its wake. An undisputed classic of the musical genre, Meet Me in St. Louis can be watched at any time of year, but the third act has seen it find plenty of favour in December above all others.
1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Chris Columbus, 2001)
For a movie that stretches for over two-and-a-half hours, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone contains just one scene set during the Christmas period – which runs for less than three-and-a-half minutes – but that’s done nothing to see it become a staple part of the festive calendar.
Only four of the eight installments were released in November, but perhaps the first two arriving in cinemas in the weeks leading up to Christmas are what conditioned at least one generation to binge the entirety of the Wizarding World saga once the nights started getting longer. It might be the start of a monolithic blockbuster series, but the central theme of a young child forced to live with a family who doesn’t want him prior to discovering a brand new one that instantly welcomes him in is as universally Christmassy as it gets.
