Is Home Alone a Christmas Movie? Only if Die Hard Is.

Some *holiday movie-ology* thoughts on the annual Die Hard debate

It’s the week before Christmas, which means that our household (like most I know) is deep into Christmas movie season. Thus, we’re also deep into the annual social media debate: is Die Hard a Christmas movie? I haven’t done much with it, I was a film major in college. And I have no dog in the fight (or bomb in the tower? I didn’t even see Die Hard until 2021!). But I do want to invite us to think about this semi-unanswerable question more objectively: because if Die Hard is a Christmas movie, so is Home Alone. If Die Hard isn’t one, Home Alone isn’t either.

There are some movies which are undeniably “Christmas movies.” The whole plot of Christmas with the Kranks, for example, centers around a daughter’s love of Christmas, what her parents will do for Christmas, and what happens when she returns home for the annual Christmas party. The Star is undeniably a Christmas movie, in that while it involves talking animals, these center around the birth of Jesus. A Charlie Brown Christmas is about a Christmas pageant. Elf is a Christmas movie… because how on earth could it not be!? And so forth. 

There are also some movies which have nothing to do with Christmas. They don’t consequentially mention Christmas; they didn’t come out around Christmas; nothing in the plot turns on the fact that it’s Christmas. Independence Day, for example, is utterly unrelated to the much-beloved holiday. So are Titanic, Chariots of Fire, and Prince of Egypt. In fact, most movies that have ever been made fit this category. Some movies are undeniably NOT Christmas movies.

But then there’s a third category – a gray in-between, filled with the fog of confusion. This middle, “is-it-or-isn’t-it” category has historically been reserved exclusively for Die Hard, but I submit that it truly includes many other movies. These are the movies that are (or are not) Christmas movies, merely because they happen to happen at Christmastime. And since film execs are real good at making money and they know Christmas sells, these movies are often released around Christmastime. But in most, the holiday itself is either just kind of “there,” like a prop, or is treated like a beloved actor’s cameo in the film; Christmas is a “special guest star.”

Think about it: could Home Alone could have happened at any other point in the year? Turns out, robbers rob homes year-round, families go on vacation in the summer months as much as the winter, and I’ve personally left something at home while traveling – in April, August, and October! Home Alone happens to happen at Christmastime. So does that make it a Christmas movie? 

Similarly — and significantly more sadly — a quick Google search of terrorist attacks proves that ill-motived people have trapped people, made threats, and done damage to both buildings and psyches in every month of the year. Die Hard happens to start at a company’s holiday party. But does that make it a Christmas movie?

Both Die Hard and Home Alone involve bad guys, doing bad guy things. Both Die Hard and Home Alone involve an unlikely hero — neither of whom, in fact, were supposed to be in the building when the bad things happened. Both even involve the hero forcing a bad guy (or two) to fall: John McClane by removing his wife’s watch; Kevin McCallister by cutting the rope Harry and Marv are traversing. And c’mon - both heroes even have “McC-“ names! Could the movies be more similar? I’m not the first to see similarities between these two classic movies… but in considering our question of category, we must take their relationship a step further.

Die Hard’s holiday party could have been a retirement party, company birthday party, or celebration of the company going public. Kevin’s Uncle Moneybags could have brought the family to Paris for Bastille Day, Spring Break, or the Tour de France. Take Christmas out of either movie, and sure you lose a little nostalgia, and might have to reconfigure a scene or prop or two. But everything and everyone else in the movie could have happened, exactly as it did happen — over any holiday, or on any day of the year.

Just to make sure and make everyone mad, The Holiday fits this category too. People have gotten dumped and escaped the pain throughout history, rebounding with their proverbial Jude Laws or equally-sexy Jack Blacks. Christmas is at best a convenient sidebar in The Holiday. Recently, The Princess Switch series and most of Hallmark’s one billion B- (or C-?)-level “Christmas” movies (their moniker, not mine) have similarly used Christmas as the convenient timing to concurrently spark characters’ romances and send viewers’ ratings higher by playing on our emotions… But other than placing a wedding or significant scene on Christmas Eve or Day, most of these movies could similarly have happened Any. Day. Of. The. Year.

You get my point: some movies are undeniably Christmas movies; some are undeniably not so. And then there’s a third category, which objectively includes many more movies than the one that’s debated every year. Yes Die Hard came out in July (1988), compared to Home Alone’s November (1990) release. But Christmas is as much a factor — and only as much a factor — in the plot of Die Hard as it is in the plot of Home Alone… and The Holiday, and many other, beloved and n’er-debated Christmas movies. We must consider this category with sober objectivity, and ask the same question of all the movies that fill it.

So… is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Only if Home Alone is. Is Home Alone a Christmas movie? Only if Die Hard is. There are too many similarities between the two to answer the question in any other way. What say you? Thanks for reading, and for considering the Three Categories of Christmas Movies with integrity and objectivity. 

Merry Christmas ya filthy animal, and yippee-ki-yay, motherf'—ers. I’m glad we could solve this great debate once and for all.