Thanks to Veronica Ramshaw, Film Librarian at Archer Libraries and Archives for assisting with the research for this blog!
It’s December. It’s dark and cold, but also many of us will be celebrating secular or religious holidays. What better way to celebrate the holidays than embracing hygge, grabbing a hot chocolate or other delicious, warm beverage, and watching a holiday movie? After all, December is when holiday movies, primarily Christmas movies, take over cable TV, streaming, and theatrical releases. So let’s talk about holiday movies and what is, or isn’t a Christmas movie.
With this in mind, let’s discuss a very important question: Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?
I looked for polls and surveys asking if Die Hard is a Christmas movie and the results are…
Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. I found six surveys, in every single one the majority of respondents said no!
Survey 1: YouGov UK 2017 – 30% of people think it’s a Christmas film, 52% do not.
Survey 2: US based survey by The Hollywood Reporter and Morning Consult 2018 – 25% say yes Die Hard is a Christmas film, 62% say no.
Survey 3: 2019 Canadian Survey by Abacus Data – 25% say yes it’s a Christmas film, 55% say no.
Survey 4: 2020 YouGov US Survey – 42% of those polled say yes, 43% say no Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.
Survey 5: YouGov UK 2021 – 44% of participants say yes, 47% say no.
Survey 6: Canadian 2022 Survey from Cineplex – only 36% of those polled consider Die Hard a Christmas movie.
All these surveys featured a variation of the question “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? If you have not seen or do not know the movie answer ‘I don’t know’.”
My heart breaks to see this data, so let’s dive into what is or isn’t a Christmas movie.
There’s no clear-cut definition of a Christmas movie, and a lot of the debate is focused on opinion, but I was able to find some core themes of Christmas movies from articles from The Hollywood Reporter, CBC, the Unspooled podcast, and an interview with critic Craig Outhier. I also asked our Film Librarian to do a quick search for scholarly articles, but most of what we found focused on the sub-genre of Hallmark style Christmas movies. It’s important to realize that despite the Hallmark style Holiday movie machine producing highly formulaic stories focusing on love, romance, nostalgia, and good fuzzy feelings, traditional or classic Christmas movies do not fall into those themes. After all, A Christmas Carol is a ghost story.
So, an unofficial, almost entirely opinion-based list of common themes in Christmas movies:
- Must include a Christmas setting at some point during the film
- Meaningful use of Christmas in the film – often described as “Could the plot be described without Christmas and still make sense?”
- Characters going through a transformation
- Reunion with family
Opinions will vary, but to me, Die Hard is my go-to holiday movie. It’s got action, humour, romance, family drama, and of course Alan Rickman. However, does it fit into our Christmas movie themes list?
| Christmas Movie Theme | Die Hard |
| Christmas Setting | Yes, takes place at the Christmas party on Christmas Eve |
| Meaningful Use of Christmas in the Film | Yes, Christmas enhances the plot and emotional arcs of the characters |
| Characters go through a transformation | Yes |
| Reunion with family | Yes |
So there you have it. Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
If you haven’t seen Die Hard or want to rewatch this holiday classic, you can access it through the Archer Library and Archives Criterion on Demand Database or borrow a physical copy from Regina Public Library.
Author: Kaetlyn Phillips