How Did Christmas Movies Become “A Thing”?
Assorted Flavors features listicles and other movie-related goodies.
By Erin Gold
The first Christmas movie ever made, Santa Claus (1898), may not be a staple of modern holiday viewing, but it set the stage for a most cherished tradition: watching comforting Christmas movies with loved ones. But how did watching holiday movies every year become part of the annual American zeitgeist? Here are four reasons.
1. World War II
Like many aspects of social and cultural traditions in the United States, we can blame and thank World War II. (The explosion of holiday pop music follows a similar trajectory: think the great Johnny Mathis and the incredibly problematic Bing Crosby. But that’s another story!) While soldiers and support workers were spread across the globe, they yearned for home and traditions, especially around the holidays. Humans crave familiarity. Simply put, war is hell and holidays are cozy.
2. Mass Media
Combine that atmosphere with mass media becoming more and more mass by the day, and you get a gigantic export of American culture. Music and movies, especially in the 1940s, dictated these cultural norms. All of a sudden, even if you’d never really had a Christmas tree or been caroling before, these practices and rituals were in your mind. And since American cultural hegemony rose after the war, naturally movies played a crucial role in spreading those traditions.
At the same time, the advent of television made the tradition of movie-watching stick, due to the early Big Three networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC) rebroadcasting old films to fill airtime. This is how It’s a Wonderful Life became so synonymous with family viewing—it aired a ton over the nascent medium around late December when most people were stuck and snowed-in at home. Marshall McLuhan, a noted media scholar who infamously appeared in Annie Hall, said the medium was the message. And one key message of television was that you could stay in and enjoy movies from the comfort of your own home. As TV sets became a more common fixture in American homes, holidays movies became a more solid tradition.
3. Physical Media
In the ‘80s, with the rise of VCRs, this tradition became even more entrenched. You could watch Christmas Bloody Christmas whenever you wanted, not whenever the network wanted to broadcast it. Even if the mood struck in July, so be it. You had a VCR and thus the freedom to watch Christmas movies whenever you pleased. With the later arrival of DVDs, Blu-rays, and a myriad of streaming services, the at-home holiday movie watching tradition continues.. In fact, entire streaming networks have made the holidays their chief moneymakers.
4. The Internet
So, what is your favorite holiday must-watch? According to Newsweek, the most popular holiday movie in the United States is A Christmas Story, followed by Elf. My family reveres National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and The Muppet Christmas Carol (arguably the best film adaptation of Dickens, fight me) every single year. While A Christmas Story and Elf reign supreme with good reason, It’s A Wonderful Life, White Christmas, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Gremlins, Miracle on 34th Street, and of course Die Hard occupy similar spaces in many families.
Unlike other cringey cultural practices from the 1950s, it seems destined that this ritual is here to stay and continues to evolve. Considering how easy it is to share login information, links, and files online, our ways of sharing movies with our loved ones is easier than ever. Our grandparents could only dream about the immediacy of movie watching these days. You simply tap some buttons and voila! Bad Santa is fired up and ready to play on your magical space phone. What’s next for the comfy cozy tradition of watching holiday movies? Only time will tell.