Plus: 20 movie families to spend your holidays with
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
The question “What is a Christmas movie?” might seem straightforward. But there’s one film that has scrambled the logic of the holiday movie for years now—at least for those who probably spend too much time online. “Because of the dreaded incentives of social media, we force debate upon ourselves all the time, even at the most wonderful time of the year,” my colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote in 2021. “According to Google Trends, search traffic for the phrase Is Die Hard a Christmas movie jumps every November and December.”
Today’s newsletter doesn’t purport to solve that particular debate, but it will explore the many meanings of the holiday movie, from its inherent cheesiness to its ability to move people in rare ways.
On Holiday Movies
The Cheesy Endurance of the Made-for-TV Holiday Movie
By Megan Garber
The Hallmark Christmas flick has become a genre in itself—one that insists, against all odds, on the inevitability of the happy ending.
Is [REDACTED] a Christmas Movie?
By Kaitlyn Tiffany
No one realizes that their own take on Die Hard as a Christmas movie helps sustain a powerful curse on the internet—not even the guy who started it all by accident.
The Most Unsettling ‘Christmas Carol’
By Tom Nichols
Why my father and I loved George C. Scott
Still Curious?
Other Diversions
P.S.
If you’re in the mood for a sharp critique of a piece of Christmas entertainment, check out my colleague Caitlin Flanagan’s essay “Don’t Subject Your Kids to Rudolph.”
— Isabel
Why the Holiday Movie Endures
11
0
23.12.2023
Plus: 20 movie families to spend your holidays with
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
The question “What is a Christmas movie?” might seem straightforward. But there’s one film that has scrambled the logic of the holiday movie for years now—at least for those who probably spend too much time........
© The Atlantic
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Mort Laitner
Donald Low
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
