It’s 1983 and I’ve just turned five. Bush Christmas is playing. In a year where I would have seen Return of the Jedi, I sit silently in the flickering dark absorbed by this Australian take on a Christmas movie.
Does my chronology check out? Did I actually watch this on a later re-release? Did I see this in the twin cinema at Bondi Junction or in the Greater Union complex on George Street in the city? Almost four decades later, and it scarcely matters. What’s important is that somehow this movie memory has lingered with me.
So, it probably comes as no surprise that every 1 December, my Letterboxd profile rapidly fills with Christmas movies. Festive films remain an important part of my annual viewing, and it scarcely seems to matter how many For Your Consideration screeners I also need to get through.
In search of a perfect Christmas movie
From an early age, my notion of the miracles of Christmas came from an uneasy mix of very special episodes (that usually played in Australia sometime in May), Rankin-Bass claymation, and a reluctant annual visit to Christmas Eve mass.
So, what do I now look for in a Christmas cracker?
A wise Interweb person said that there were three types of Christmas movies. Movies about Santa, films where people are changed by the Christmas spirit, and Die Hard.
A perfect Christmas film probably has a combination of all three. Take perennial favourite A Christmas Story (1983) as an example. It’s got an infamous visit to Santa (involving a slide). Ralphie’s gift motivation leads him to reconsider his ways, while going to a Chinese restaurant for Christmas dinner is a kind of change. It ends with a boy going to sleep with a gun under his pillow. What more could you ask for?
It was watching this year’s Violent Night (2022) that made me think about why I love Christmas movies so much. I had fun with the over-the-top antics of a kickass Santa Claus (played by David Harbour), but I ultimately loved it as a reaffirmation of the intangible magic of Christmas.
With that in mind, a perfect Christmas film for me isn’t something that I can easily fit into a single container. (Although if I did, it would no doubt be a snow globe). Christmas for me is as much about summer heat, or white wine in the sun as Tim Minchin put it, as it is a winter wonderland. So, why does the northern hemisphere’s notion of the festive season persist in our hearts and minds?
Nostalgia
Much of it has to do with how we choose to remember the past.
A Christmas Story plays into this. It’s the reason we keep rewatching Die Hard, Home Alone, or Love Actually almost every year. When certain films are made, they often espouse a return to a way of life that may or may not have ever existed in real life. Our watching habits inevitably reflect this.
Christmas for us might be about summer, weeks of high 30°C temperatures (100°F+), trips up or down the coast, and a slice of pav in the backyard. Yet despite my early fondness for Bush Christmas, local festive films have never really had a big success here. A Sunburnt Christmas (2020) worked because it was our answer to Bad Santa. Yet the local landscape remains as dry as a dead dingo’s proverbial because Christmas on film is a post-Dickens reality — even in the Antipodes.
If the big city gal went to the quaint small town in a Hallmark movie and thought ‘Bugger it, I’m headed back to Chicago,’ we’d feel ripped off. The assumption is that people in small towns live easier lives, apparently with nothing stressful all year save Christmas preparations. (Of course, given the amount of decorations, they probably spend a good 6 months just packing them away).
It helps that these films are also filled with literal figures of our collective pasts. Danica McKellar (The Wonder Years), Lacey Chabert (Party of Five), Tamera Mowry-Housley (Sister Sister) and Jodie Sweetin (Full/er House) are just some of the regular faces in a Hallmark Countdown to Christmas.
Irreverence
Watching a traditional Santa film is one thing, but we love seeing a booze-motivated burglar in Bad Santa. Queensland may have banned Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), but a crazed Santa impaling someone on antlers lives rent free in my collection.
Christmas has a long tradition of role reversal, whether it was medieval drunken revelry or misers getting their comeuppance in classic tales. So, films that don’t take the holidays seriously perhaps best reflect those hedonistic origins. There’s the excesses of the prolific Christmas horror genre (Black Christmas, Elves, Jack Frost to name a few), stoner comedies (A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, The Night Before), and bona fide favourites like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
Then there’s those that really head out off the beaten track. There’s Satoshi Kon’s Tokyo Godfathers, itself a reworking of the John Ford western 3 Godfathers. Have you seen the insanity of Hulk Hogan in Santa With Muscles? If you haven’t seen Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, a 1972 musical in which Santa tries to free his sleigh from the sands of a Florida beach, maybe count your Christmas blessings.
Yet it’s not the irreverence alone that makes a Christmas movie special. This year’s Violent Night works precisely because it marries hyper-kinetic bloodletting with a genuine sense of Christmas magic. These films push us to the edge, subvert the genre, and then gently remind us that the magic of the season still exists.
Magic
A little bit of Christmas magic is an essential ingredient to a Christmas movie.
For most of us, it probably starts with any adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a time-travelling ghost story. I will watch a version of this at anytime and in any place. (It helps there are so many of them). Indeed, I have two traditions every year: reading a different copy of the book just before Christmas Eve, and standing on my balcony at yelling at street urchins the following morning.
You can argue all you like, but the superior version of the film is The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). Explantations are unnecessary. When I was younger, I was obsessed with Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983), a more compact retelling of the tale. There’s the more grinchy Scrooged (1988) with Bill Murray, a 1999 TV movie with Patrick Stewart, and various musicals (including 2022’s Spirited). Almost every cartoon character has done a version, from Bugs Bunny to The Real Ghostbusters. (Hell, Mr. Magoo did a version).
Of course, anything with Santa is pure magic as well, and there are literally hundreds of films about different versions of Santa. For me, it began with Santa Claus: The Movie (1985), an origin story that plays much better in my memory. Yet now we have The Santa Clause (1994) and its sequels, Elf (2003), Santa Baby (2006), and The Christmas Chronicles (2018). St. Nicholas, Père Noël, and Father Christmas all have cinematic lives beyond their regional origins. Krampus has become a cottage industry.
I love Santa stories so much, I have begun to write one of my own. It’s early stages yet, but it incorporates many of these legends I have come to love over the years. You better watch out for it.
Bingo
My relatively newfound obsession with Hallmark films is well-documented in my article Bacon me crazy: Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love Hallmark Movies. The Christmas of 2020 was the end of a long and difficult year for many of us. What started as an innocent foray into Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Sweater is now a 60-film diary entry and counting.
We’re at the point that my partner has developed bingo cards for us to play along with every year. If you watch a film with a big city gal heading to a quaint small town, having a bad first impression with a hunky guy in a plaid shirt, only to rekindle lost romance through ice skating and an exaggerated reaction to drinking hot chocolate — that’s probably a bingo. (Don’t judge us too harshly, but you’ll often hear the words ‘Dead parent! Bingo!’ coming from our flat in December).
Which only goes to show that while my Christmas traditions have changed and evolved over the last four decades, Christmas movies have remained a constant. My perfect movie takes on many forms, and half the fun is in finding the new ones.
So, with that in mind, Merry Christmas to all and to all — happy watching.
