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- 15 Dec, 2025 *
December is for many, at least on the Northern hemisphere, a dark and cold month, which invites to more indoor activities. Such as watching movies, which often means Christmas themed movies or simply movies many tend to watch, and re-watch, this time of the year. This is my second contribution to the Grizzly Gazette advent calendar.
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/ /blog /about /now /ideas /postroll /bookmarks /guestbook
- 15 Dec, 2025 *
December is for many, at least on the Northern hemisphere, a dark and cold month, which invites to more indoor activities. Such as watching movies, which often means Christmas themed movies or simply movies many tend to watch, and re-watch, this time of the year. This is my second contribution to the Grizzly Gazette advent calendar.
Since the holidays are about traditions, good Christmas movies tend to have great staying power as they get shown again and again every year on TV - or nowadays appears on the front page of streaming services. One of the oldest movies that still remains popular is It’s a Wonderful Life from 1946. Super classic golden age Hollywood with its feel good Christmas spirit ending (it is rather tragic at first), that understandably still is many peoples favorite Christmas movie.
The first two Home Alone movies are undeniably among the most popular modern Christmas movies. It captures the modern day chaos of a family Christmas, with of course great gags and a timeless entertaining story. The house has become iconic, with articles still being written about it, and it continues to be the source of internet debates about real societal issues such as housing prices. Even though my kids don’t understand English and can’t really read the subtitles yet, the movies really speaks for themselves. It can be enjoyed just fine with only a basic idea of the dialogue, as the visual story telling, and cartoonish gags, are self-explanatory.
Whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not has been making its round on the internet for at least a decade or more. I remember initially it was mostly laughed off as just a joke, but now it has become a fully canonical Christmas movie. It is on all the lists among with the rest and now a recurring thing on TV. In some way, I think it has ruined a bit of the fun about Die Hard with it now being fully accepted as a Christmas movie.
The holidays for many people mean time off with schools closed or some vacation days before New Years, which means more time to watch long movies. I know many have it as a sort of tradition to watch The Lord of the Rings-trilogy around Christmas. It makes sense to curl up with something nice and cozy for 10+ hours and their original theatrical release was also in December. For others in may be Star Wars or the Harry Potter series. Something about that week right after Christmas seems very fitting for long epic movies. For myself, I don’t have something I rewatch every year, but last year I saw Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy again, and the year before I watched the 7 hour Sátántangó over three nights. This year, I am planning to see Lawrence of Arabia again somewhere between Christmas and New Years.