Is This A Christmas Movie?

Die Hard is a Christmas movie. At least that seems to be the line, or the joke. But skeptics say, "It's not really festive." So, what is a Christmas movie? Most lists of Christmas movies start with It's a Wonderful Life . But 90% of that film doesn't happen around any specific holiday, and really isn't very festive. Meet Me In St. Louis is shown frequently on TCM this time of year - but it's probably as much a Halloween movie as it is a Christmas movie - if we're just going by screen time. Based on holiday settings, I guess we should all be happy that Stanley Kubrick made a Christmas movie....

But this is probably the fun of defining "Christmas" movies. There are Christmas westerns ( 3 Godfathers ), noir ( Blast of Silence ), war ( Joyeux Noel ), musicals ( White Christmas ), etc... Pretty much every genre has a Christmas take - there's even Christmas movies for the non-holiday season ( Christmas in July ).

I'm not really sure what my favorite Christmas movie is. But the next time someone asks me, my response should probably be "in what genre?"