A love story that busts out tears, a comedy that lasts forever in chats, an exciting action movie that catches people’s blood on fire, or a fiction movie that’s just produced during Christmas. What exactly counts as a Christmas movie? And the answer to this question can be varied from who you’re asking.
As Christmas approaches, watching Christmas movies appears to be one of the most popular forms of entertainment. Then it leads to questions: How do we define Christmas movies? How do we decide what to watch? Being a foreigner from another culture that does not even have Christmas break, I’m lost and confused.
Recently I have been catching up on what people call the “holiday movie” tradition, but except movies that obviously have “Santa” appearing in the scene, others are not clearly associated with Christmas in my opinion. Surprisingly, people seem to have strong feelings for Christmas movies and will defend it when I doubt it!
Ian Rankin, Junior thinks that “It has to be happy, and have positive energy, and kindness involved.” This quote can be defined in different terms, but generally speaking, this is an easy opinion to agree with.
“Though Die Hard is an action movie with robbers, it’s during Christmas time so it counts as a Christmas movie,” said Summit sophomore Makenk Fill. Sometimes it’s not about the type of movie, instead, it’s about the time that the story takes place.
“Romance movies first come to mind when I think about Christmas movies,” explained Reed Hobi, a junior at Summit. In one of the following answers, he said that his favorite movie is “Love Actually” which supports his answer.
“Christmas movies are cheerful and definitely with hot chocolate vibes,” said junior Keirl Watson. Though I don’t know what “hot chocolate vibes” mean, “cheerfull” is a common element that can be found in Christmas movies.
Well then, what matters the most? Is it the matter of Release Date? Is it the matter of Genre? Is it the matter of settings?
The general consensus is that all of those elements are equally important when constituting a film as a Christmas movie. In summary, Christmas movies usually contain romance or comedy, but it can also be action movies as long as it’s during the Christmas season. Overall, everyone has their own special Christmas tastes, it sometimes can be really confusing and off track, but there’s always a good reason behind that definition!
