The Projector #68: Are Our Beloved Christmas Classics Actually Any Good? (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

That's an unfair question. My apologies. Of course there are many great Christmas movies. If nothing else, It’s a Wonderful Life would alone justify the existence of the Christmas movie. But Christmas movies also have a way of tangling themselves up in our coziest, most nostalgic memories in ways that sometimes obscure their quality.

Here’s what got me thinking about it: Last year I did a big list of the greatest Christmas movies for Vulture. It was an extremely fun project, one that also got me to check out some great movies I’d never seen before, like Christmas in Connecticut and It Happened on Fifth Avenue. The not-so-secret secret to this sort of list-making is that it's never objective — it’s an opinion-driven piece, naturally — nor is it scientific. It would be easy enough to do a list of 100 great Christmas films in the interest of inclusivity, but that's a bit much to ask anyone to read. And to keep a list interesting, you have to mix it up a bit. A little bit of Christmas horror, a few cartoons, and so on.

You also have to acknowledge some classics that maybe aren’t your personal favorites but loom so large over the Christmas canon it would be weird not to include them. Case in point, Home Alone. Looking at it with clear eyes, it's not my favorite Christmas film. But I get it. And I get what it means to others. It has its place. And, for me that, was #40 on a list of 40. When a podcast commented on this recently my Twitter mentions briefly flooded with mild outrage.

I also can’t really look at it with clear eyes. My kid loves it, and I have a fond memory of watching it at her grandmother's house during a holiday trip to my mom's in Ohio. (Also, watching it then was the first time my wife and I realized we’d gotten married in the church Kevin visits.) It’s also tied to a specific memory for me. In retrospect, I should have tried to spend more quality time with my dad, a quiet man who needed to be drawn out to engage with anyone. We did take a road trip to a town in northern Ohio to check out a college during my senior year, giving us a bit of rare one-on-one time. Our downtime during that visit included a trip to the movies, a duplex theater (I’m sure it’s long since shuttered) playing Home Alone and Kindergarten Cop. We opted for the former and my dad, who didn’t laugh  loudly or often, enjoyed it heartily. It was nice to be there for it. (I ended up going to a different school, though. But if I had gone to that one David Bowie — father of Duncan Jones, who did enroll that year — would have been at my graduation four years later. Paths not taken.)

So, while there are Christmas classics I enjoy more, I can’t really look at Home Alone with as much distance as I can other movies. I’m guessing I’m not alone in this. Thoughts of Christmas movies get tangled up with where you were and who you were with when you saw them like no other sort of movie. Some end up in the canon less because of innate greatness than the feelings they summon up. In a season of generosity they get, and often deserve, a lighter touch.

Except for Christmas Vacation. That movie is terrible.

With this, The Next Picture Show bids everyone a Happy Holidays and an even Happier New Year! This newsletter is taking next week off so this will do it for 2020. And, hey, let’s all agree to have a better year next year. Thanks, as always, for listening in this one, and for supporting us on Patreon. It really means a lot to know you’re out there liking what we do.

Also, we hope you’re enjoying our current episode on Wolfwalkers. (Awooo! We all love it.) Next week we’ll be posting our Best Films of 2020 episode and, not long after that, a Best TV of 2020 just for our Patreon supporters.

No article links this week, but we’ll have an extra-large selection in two weeks. See you then!