Christmas on the Screen Reviewing the Evolution of American Spirituality by John A Zukowski Book Read Online And Epub File Download
Overview: Christmas movies are revealing windows into religion, consumerism, family, and American pop culture, and Zukowski offers a compelling, highly readable guide to this long-flourishing genre. Exploring classics as well as flops, he illuminates both the resilience and the limitations of the holiday's celebration on screen." –Leigh E. Schmidt, Washington University in St. Louis, author of Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays.
Christmas on the Screen Reviewing the Evolution of American Spirituality by John A Zukowski Book Read Online Chapter One
EVEN AT A YOUNG AGE, I FELT CHRISTMAS WAS CONNECTED TO POP CULTURE.
In an era before home video, I marked the TV Guide so I wouldn’t miss A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. After I discovered classic Hollywood cinema, I also watched It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bishop’s Wife, and Remember the Night. Christmas wasn’t the same if I didn’t see them. Recently, when loading them up for another annual viewing, I wanted to figure out why.
It was more than nostalgia. The Hollywood war-era Christmas classics and the TV specials of the 1960s and 1970s portray spiritual awakenings and redemption stories. I saw three common elements in these spiritual conversions: validation of the transcendental, a rejection of materialism, and a move toward community.
But when watching more recent Christmas films I saw a startling difference. Beginning with the Christmas films of the 1980s, instead of spiritual and moral realizations, Christmas movies largely depict how to navigate dysfunctional families during the holiday. And many recent films subvert the traditional Christmas film themes by ignoring the transcendental, embracing materialism, and limiting community to immediate family.
When I researched the Christmas movie genre, I discovered this was largely unnoticed. And there were few serious studies of the Christmas movie genre. So I decided to explore the genre and track its changes over the years.
But first I had to define a Christmas film. By one estimate at least a quarter of the top-grossing films feature Christmas scenes.1 So how much time must a movie devote to Christmas to be a Christmas movie? About half an hour of Meet Me in St. Louis takes place during the Christmas season. Does that make it a Christmas film? It’s a Wonderful Life features most of its action in a flashback that doesn’t take place during the Christmas season. So if the standard is the amount of time set during the Christmas season, The Apartment—a movie not usually associated with Christmas—has more time devoted to the Christmas season than It’s a Wonderful Life. And what about movies such as The Bells of St. Mary’s and When Harry Met Sally, with key scenes set around Christmas but most of the film not taking place at Christmas?
Movies with Christmas scenes aren’t full-fledged Christmas films—even if important scenes or climactic scenes are set during Christmas. A significant portion of a movie must be set during the Christmas season to be a Christmas film. So Meet Me in St. Louis, with a quarter of its running time set on Christmas Eve, is a Christmas film, while The Bells of St. Mary’s, with just a few Christmas scenes, isn’t.
But are all films that devote considerable screen time to the Christmas season actually Christmas movies? Not necessarily. Some movies utilize the Christmas season for the imagery of Christmas, the emotional context associated with it, or simply a plot device to gather characters together. For example, Diner and Just Friends use the Christmas season as a reason for characters to return to their hometown. But the holiday itself isn’t adequately integrated into the narrative. Other movies, such as The Thin Man, the film noir Lady in the Lake, and the neo noir Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, use Christmas as an ironic device to contrast associations of home and family with crime or detachment from community.
To be a true Christmas film it’s necessary that a movie integrate Christmas into the story so the Christmas season affects plot and character development. This means assessing on a case-by-case basis how much impact Christmas has on the characters.2 In the comedy Diner, Christmas doesn’t have a transformative impact. Yet Christmas is transformative to characters in a black comedy such as The Ref and the existentialist crime drama The Ice Harvest. In films such as Lethal Weapon and In Bruges, Christmas is lodged somewhere between being a transformative and non-transformative influence.
The next question is how to define the genre in general. Every year a debate recirculates on the internet about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not. Can an action film be a Christmas film? Despite the consistent iconography of Christmas music, decorations, and imagery used in Christmas films, the Christmas movie genre isn’t a separate genre. Christmas films integrate into other genres. Christmas films can be musicals, Westerns, film noir, stoner comedies, crime stories, coming-of-age stories, action moves, as well as comedies and dramas. So, yes, Die Hard is a Christmas film.
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