Your little friends are wrong. They're affected by a skepticism that denies what it can't see. But, yes, Virginia, Die Hard is a Christmas movie. It's as certain as the Christmasiness of the Christmas wreath or the mistletoe. Do your friends find those to be Christmas decorations? What have those thing to do with Jesus or Santa? Maybe they enjoyed Christmas symbolism long ago, but few see such that in them today. And yet, thankfully, these things still find a Christmasy place in our hearts. And heavens! Why would we want less Christmasy stuff in our hearts?! Why should fewer things be Christmas things? It would just make Christmas smaller, poorer.
Not a Christmas movie?!? You might as well say Home Alone is not a Christmas movie. You could get your father to hire a hundred scientists to examine him under a microscope, and they'd never find a crumb of fatherness, but he is still your father. Likewise, they could break Home Alone down to its every particular and then quantify its relative Christmas quotient in terms of snow, Christmas songs, and Santa references, and they could do the same with Die Hard, but they'd be overlooking some thing huge:
Die Hard has become a part of Christmas.
That show has been so frequently watched over so many many Christmas times that now, on such occasions, it helps people feel a little more Christmasy inside. It has become associated with the holiday. This bit of magic is something that happens to a movie. It is not a part of the movie, so the reductive analyst will never find it. It takes Christmas magic to see it.
Not a Christmas movie?!? Thank God it is. Decades after it was made, it continues to make hearts feel a bit more Christmasy at Christmas time.
Merry Christmas.
Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “About”). Get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.