I grew up in 90s Birmingham, conceivably the least magical time and place in human history. As much as I love my home town, it was basically a big grey sprawl complete with relentlessly dreary weather – a place that peaked during the Industrial Revolution (the splashy regeneration projects of the 00s were a decade or more away). Santa did visit us, but it can’t have been the highlight of his night. And yet it didn’t really matter at Christmas, because I had Christmas films. With the press of the remote control, my living room would be filled with a warm, festive glow that would somehow project out to brighten the whole city.
There is endless debate about what constitutes a Christmas movie, but for me it’s always been any film that – even in passing – projects a vision of Christmas more romantic than Christmas in 90s Birmingham, ie almost anything.
Jack Frost, the eccentric 90s kids’ film in which Michael Keaton is reincarnated as a talking snowman, is a Christmas film. The Shop Around the Corner, the classic 1940 Budapest-set romcom, is a Christmas movie (decades later it was remade into You’ve Got Mail, which is not a Christmas movie). And sure, if the market is dominated by fantasy visions of America then I think that’s absolutely OK. I am pretty certain Christmas in New York or in some random Pennsylvania suburb is not in fact exactly as Elf or Gremlins depicts it – I think we’ve all long accepted that the fantasy America is often a lot more fun than the actual America.
Some Scrooges would argue that holiday movies give us ludicrously unrealistic expectations of Christmas. Guaranteed snow! Guaranteed Santa! Choirs on street corners! Beautifully decorated houses! Good will to all men! General shenanigans!
But I’ve always found that school of thought quite surface-level. As I got older and fell in love with 80s American movies set at Christmas, such as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story and even Gremlins, I learned that Christmas films aren’t always schmaltzy, sentimental, and good will to all men. But in being set at Christmas, I found their vision of snowy, light-strewn American suburbs impossibly romantic (even while at the same time acknowledging that Gremlins is mostly a weird comedy about a murderous pack of evil demon things).
Not only do Christmas films add to the magic of the season, in some ways they are the magic. Two hundred years ago, did people enjoy Christmas as much as we do now? No! Because they couldn’t just bung Elf on the telly and revel in its mix of goofy New York hijinks, lush wintery fantasy, and Will Ferrell dressing up in a silly costume.
The fact is we are all fully conversant with what to expect from IRL Christmas. We know the weather will be unexciting, we’ve given up on spotting Santa, and we’re more or less resigned to the fact that the main activity of the day will be an overlong, passive aggressive lunch. And this is OK. We don’t have annual national riots about the lack of snow, and anyone old enough to remember our last white Christmas – that would be 2010 – may recall that the reality isn’t as picturesque as you might hope and is actually quite annoying if you’re attempting to travel anywhere.
I hit an all-time festive low point on the morning of Christmas Day 2020, AKA Covid Christmas. Deprived of the usual family fun, the day was running out of sparkle after the opening of presents. I took my kids to the local park, vaguely hoping for some sort of weather based miracle. Alas: the sky was an unappealing greyish brown, the weather was unseasonably warm, and about the most magical thing that happened was a crow stealing my eldest’s packet of cheese puffs.
So we went home and did the only thing that made sense: we watched the hell out of The Polar Express, the 2004 animated Christmas movie about a multitude of characters – most of them played by Tom Hanks – journeying to the north pole on an adventure-packed train journey with the express intent of restoring its child passengers’ faith in Father Christmas.
Suddenly, all was well again. It was Christmas. There was magic. There was snow. My kids were happy. I was back on the nice list.
Christmas isn’t the way it appears in the movies. Of course holidays can be stressful. But put on a good Christmas movie, tune everything else out, and you have your real magic right there.
