What Do Christmas Films Tell Us About America?

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:17

With Christmas just around the corner, it's time to dust off those old DVDs, whip up some eggnog, and cozy up on the sofa with your festive favorites. But why do Christmas films resonate so much? Is the genre a bit more important than we like to think?

And ultimately, what can Christmas films really tell us about America? Welcome to America A History podc.

I'm Liam Heffernan and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places and the events that make the USA what it is today.

To discuss this, I am joined by an academic who recently completed her PhD at UCL on mid century Hollywood politics through a case study on Christmas films. Welcome back to the show now, Dr. Vaughan Joy.

Vaughn Joy: 00:01:20

Thank you so much for having me.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:22

Liam, thank you so much. Yeah, you're becoming a bit of a regular on the podcast, so congratulations. Your first one as a proper doctor.

Vaughn Joy: 00:01:30

Thank you. Thank you. This is the first thing that I have done professionally as Dr. Joy, so this is my debut.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:38

Oh, we are privileged to have you. And of course we've got you here talking about something that you know a lot about, which is Christmas films.

So I guess I realize the question I'm about to ask is probably a lot bigger than it is worthy of just an opening question, but I think we need to understand the Christmas movie as a genre. So how would you define the Christmas movie?

Vaughn Joy: 00:02:05

It is a massive question and I think one that has lots of answers. I have a couple that are my go tos. So one, a Christmas movie is a movie you watch at Christmas.

I think that that's the most important cultural delineation of a Christmas film because a lot of people like to watch like James Bond or Harry Potter at Christmas time.

And while you can say like, oh, there's a Christmas scene in one of them, like, it's, they're not like about Christmas, but they're films that people watch at Christmas. And I think that that gets kind of sidelines the whole argument of Die Hard where if you watch it at Christmas, it's a Christmas film, period. Done.

My other definition of Christmas would include Die Hard.

It's a film that is set at Christmas or relies on Christmas for story structure and plot driving, where the plot can't really happen or wouldn't really make sense at another time of year. It's relying on Christmas as a time of year or a holiday, or uses the Christmas spirit in some way to further the plot.

So that's the definition that I use in my, my dissertation.

Liam Heffernan: 00:03:20

That's, that's Interesting, because I've.

I've always had a slightly unpopular opinion that a lot of our favorite Christmas movies are not actually about Christmas, they're just set at Christmas. And I. I think I. You put it really well. Just saying that actually it's.

If the Christmas spirit drives the story forward, that's what kind of makes it a Christmas film. Because I always use, like, Home Alone as an example and even sort of a bit more tenuously, sort of Jingle all the Way. The actual.

The actual narrative is not about Christmas at all. It's about a guy trying to get a toy for his daughter. It's about a kid left at home while his parents go on holiday.

That especially could happen at any time of year. And yet it's a Christmas film.

Vaughn Joy: 00:04:06

I. Yeah, I think. I think you need some sort of element of the timing, the setting, it being Christmas.

And that's why they're going on vacation, why it's. It's so weird that he's left at home. That is balanced with the Christmas spirit. It's weird he's at home because it's a time for family.

You're supposed to be with your family.

And that invoking Christmas in that way automatically imports all of these kind of cultural values and ideals where you're expected to spend the holiday with family.

If it was set in July and the family went on vacation and the kid was home alone, it would just be a film about the robbers trying to break in, pretty much. But because he is home at Christmas, we feel more about it.

And I think that that is the distinction is that the element of Christmas forces you to feel a different type of way about what is happening with a basic plot.

Liam Heffernan: 00:05:09

Yeah. And I guess actually that the perfect example of that is Home Alone itself.

Because if you just watch Home Alone 3 versus Home Alone 1, it doesn't resonate as well.

Vaughn Joy: 00:05:18

No, but hit the same.

Liam Heffernan: 00:05:19

Yeah. Yeah. But I feel like, also with Christmas films, there's.

There's always this kind of natural race against time element that's built into the story because, you know, whether it's two people figuring out that they're madly in love with each other or, you know, a mom getting home in time to see her abandoned son at Christmas. It has to happen by Christmas, right?

Vaughn Joy: 00:05:41

Yes. Yeah. The timing element always adds a bit more stress.

And I think that works for Christmas films a lot of the time because it is like a traveling situation so much of the time. Or a will they or won't they? Kind of plot in the rom coms.

And it, again, I think automatically imported by invoking Christmas is that element of stress. The holidays are kind of stressful and they do feel like everything has to happen by Christmas Eve or things don't go right for the holiday.

And it's interesting that this has become a whole cultural phenomenon in film to capture those elements of the holiday in structuring stories about these cultural values and again, ideals and things like that.

Liam Heffernan: 00:06:32

Yeah, I think, you know, we've sort of focused a little bit on sort of narrative there.

But when you look at, like this sort of conveyor belt style churn of, like, Hallmark Christmas movies that come out every year, it feels like narrative is kind of secondary. They just have a fairly template story about a man and a woman who end up falling in love. And that's on the cards from the first second of the film.

But it's set to some nice Christmasy backgrounds and maybe a bit of snowy backdrop. And therefore it's a Christmas film. Right. But we accept that. We accept that that's a Christmas film. We watch it at Christmas.

So it kind of feels like, is it just.

Is there really anything specifically about the narrative that makes a Christmas film a Christmas film, or do we just add some, like, Jingle Bells and off we go?

Vaughn Joy: 00:07:22

So I think it depends on different types. And this is largely what my dissertation was about. So fun to talk about. For me, the holiday romances, they get their story structure. A lot of the.

film formula is rooted in the: 1950

of Christmas films is in the: 1950

It's just through this rosy, tinsel y kind of lens.

And I think that those films really rely a lot more on the Christmas spirit element, the sentimentality, the kind of schmaltzy Christmassy vibes and that stressful timing element.

Other Christmas films rely on different Christmas tropes, like Dickensian Christmas traditions, where we get the kind of redemption arc, the Scrooge factor, the Grinch, like all of these kind of learning about what Christmas actually means or what it can come to mean. Because I would argue that it does also mean the kind of commercialist side and exploitative side.

But it can also and should more mean the kind of human side. Then in other stories we get like the Santa Claus narrative.

And all of these are equally valid Christmas films, especially in American Christmas tradition that is so varied and has so many different influences on it and has adapted and changed over centuries. But those, those are the three real kind of central Christmas narratives.

And then you get more inventive things like Die Hard, like Gremlins that are crossing different genres with Christmas.

So you get action, you get horror, you get superhero Christmas stories like Batman Returns, I think, is it Returns, one of the Batmans, the Hawkeye series from MCU a couple years ago. You get these, like, Christmas stories that are mixed with other genres. And that's where you get more inventive kind of things.

But they all have central tropes that harken back to, like, earlier Christmas traditions, this kind of blanketing, streamlined version of An American Christmas across different films.

Liam Heffernan: 00:10:04

So. Well, so let's talk about that, because this idea of an American Christmas and this idea of sort of.

This sort of seasonal sentimentality, why is that so powerful? And why does Hollywood love to use it?

Vaughn Joy: 00:10:18

It's a great question and one that a lot of people have weighed in on. So starting with just American Christmas, the kind of preeminent historian on this would be Stephen Nissenbaum.

He has a book called Battle for Christmas about 19th century American Christmas and the kind of establishing history of just how it became such a thing in American history. It starts earlier with the Puritans banning. I mean, well, it starts in B.C. times, if we really want to go back.

But for American Christmas, we'll start with the Puritans banning Christmas.

And then it having this kind of resurgence as religious identities changed in the early 19th century and immigrant communities bringing their own traditions from their old countries to the US and diversifying and melding and building all of these new traditions that became so uniquely American, Americanized versions of immigrant traditions from other places. And then we, of course, have back and forths and all over the place.

And Charles Dickens came to the US and met the mill girls in Lowell, read their work and their work heavily influenced him. Writing A Christmas Carol like we have. We have so much give and take.

And Christmas is one of these cultural things that is just so intermingled across traditions and cultures and peoples. And I think that it's.

It's incredibly important to American identity because in the 19th century it was very much not, and even still today, very much not a religious holiday. There are some ties to Christianity and Christianity traditions, but a lot of it is either secular or pagan or it just comes from local traditions.

And throughout the 19th century, it gradually became a public American holiday. It became a federal holiday. It began using patriotic element emblems in its kind of expressions and iterations.

And then it became fully commercialized.

It went from kind of Christmas bazaars and these smaller Christmas markets that like hearken back to German markets and winter festivals to the Macy's store window at 34th Street. And that development into the commercialized holiday made it just prime for cultural entanglements.

We'll say it being used in these cultural media sources like film and Hollywood really grasped onto the profitability of Christmas and then with just like expert precision, exploded the profitability of Christmas and really, really made all of these diverse and disparate ideas and traditions and rituals about Christmas into a streamlined visual. Really, for the first time in the American Christmas tradition, they made all of these things national and then international icons.

th Street,: 1947

Liam Heffernan: 00:13:53

ld challenge that and say the: 1993

Vaughn Joy: 00:14:03

Right. Okay. Well, yeah, I guess my references are a bit dated. I studied the post war.

th Street, White Christmas in: 1954

Liam Heffernan: 00:14:47

I mean, let's talk about It's a Wonderful Life then, because, you know, it's. I think it features on every list you'll ever see of the greatest Christmas movies of all time.

It's really endured for decades still repeated on TV every single year. And yet the film itself, in tone, in narrative, it's quite bleak. It's not a conventional kind of schmaltzy Christmas film.

So how exactly does something like It's a Wonderful Life endure and be remembered as a Christmas movie?

Vaughn Joy: 00:15:24

So this, this is a fascinating thing that we talked about for a long time in my thesis defense last week. I know a lot of people find it very dark, but I think it's. It's an incredibly Uplifting and optimistic film.

see the timeframe is between: 1909

We see the Great Depression. We see Runs on the banks. We see George living through all of these things. World War II, like, it's a just hit after hit after hit for Americans.

e sitting in that audience in: 1946

The last, like, 40 years, we had a little bright spot in the 20s for some of us, not even all of us, and we're still just kind of, like, reeling from it.

And what I think It's a Wonderful Life does is this beautiful reminder that Americans still have each other, that you have all gone through it, and you may have lost a lot of people throughout, but you. You are still here, and the people in the cinema with you watching it are still here, and you are together. And the story is quite depressing. If you.

If you really focus on George, you see a man who is giving everything that he has got through his whole life, sacrificing constantly, as a lot of these people in the cinema would have done for the last few decades, especially in the last four years, throughout the war. So much sacrifice and rationing and all of these things, and you feel the weight of all of that.

But if you watch it from a collectivist kind of standpoint, throughout the entire film, you see townspeople helping George. Everyone is sacrificing for each other, and we're not really supposed to focus on that. The story's about George. You're looking at George.

But it is a very strong element of the film. The first time you see George, he is being gifted a suitcase so that he can go travel. Like the townspeople are constantly helping one another.

And I think that's the uplifting message. If we can get away from looking at the individual and think about the collective, then it is a very uplifting film, in my opinion.

Liam Heffernan: 00:18:01

I guess that's a very valid point. And I do wonder on that basis, if maybe It's a Wonderful Life does this a bit more impactfully than other Christmas films.

But I do wonder if, actually, maybe we don't give the genre as a whole a bit more credit. Because, you know, when you.

When you kind of peel back the tinsel and kind of look under the surface, are Christmas films actually telling us a Bit more than we generally like to acknowledge about America and American life.

Vaughn Joy: 00:18:34

Well, I certainly think so. I wrote a very long dissertation about it. But, yeah, I really think that they do, and I think that's true for a lot of genres.

For any film, it's worth really sitting critically with what you are watching, what depictions you are watching. Is this supposed to be a typical American?

There are a lot of questions that you can ask of every film that I think deepen them in many ways, but especially Christmas films, because there are these layers of sentimentality, these centuries of building immigrant traditions into one another, and this gorgeous kind of melding of cultures that became the American Christmas tradition.

And when you think about these films in that context of them being part of centuries of just American identities growing and changing and adapting and being influenced by international events or changing international events, like, you get so much more out of thinking about George when you just watch It's a Wonderful Life, Cold on its own. It's a good film. You enjoy it. You probably feel a bit like, oh, that was kind of dark, but at least it ended on a happy note.

arc. What does that say about: 1946

I think London. Like the fact that Scrooge was redeemed then, and Potter never is. He never even has consequences.

What does that say about our society that we don't condemn Scrooges, we just let them go, but tell our townspeople that they should be happy, they have each other? What is that kind of message?

And I think that we should be playing that little game with all of these Christmas films of, like, where does this sit in the very broad and fascinating history of Christmas traditions?

Liam Heffernan: 00:20:50

You know, looking at a film like It's a Wonderful Life in that context of when it was produced, I think is really important in understanding how Christmas films can kind of embed themselves in.

In the canon of the genre, because I feel like there's such a strong element of how much it resonates at the time it's released as well, in terms of how. How we, as a. As a society sort of cling on to it because it becomes a piece of nostalgia if it resonates at the time. And. And I would.

I would think back to, like, a British Christmas film like Love, actually, you know, now, you know, it's over 20 years old. And there are a lot of quite outdated sort of elements to that.

But I think you could watch that back with a sense of nostalgia if you enjoyed it at the time it was released, because it kind of takes you back to that, to that time.

Vaughn Joy: 00:21:41

Yeah. And I think that those two actually are really interesting pairing because they both address national or international traumas.

Like Love actually opens with talking about 911 and Richard Curtis in his interviews about Love actually has said some very beautiful things about the requirement for art to meet the moment and to address the emotional state of the audience and inspire the emotions that you want to see in your audience. Richard Curtis was very, in his words, he was very shaken by 911 and the possibilities that it would have for the future.

And he made Love actually as his own kind of therapy to remind people that there is so much hate and fear and threat in the world, but there's also love. And love actually is all around us. Like it's a very schmaltzy kind of thing.

But it's also an incredibly cathartic kind of film for Richard Curtis and a lot of the audience. And I think that people still grasp onto that kind of sentiment in these films. It's a Wonderful Life didn't do too well. It was fine.

It had mid length success in 46 but it came back into public consciousness in the 70s when it lapsed into public domain and it was aired kind of constantly on TV in the 70s and then there was a deal with NBC and it was a whole thing and. But it still aired annually.

But it's constant, kind of like showing at Christmas in the 70s I think was again like a really cathartic kind of thing for people who still living in the Cold War. It was this like pre atomic bomb idea. Ideal world. They don't really address the bomb in Its wonderful life.

So it captures this like earlier kind of sweet townsee like feel that a lot of people could feel safe in.

Liam Heffernan: 00:23:50

Yeah.

Vaughn Joy: 00:23:51

And I think Love actually does the same thing. They're, they're both these like let's cuddle up and remind ourselves that we have each other even when times are really tough.

Liam Heffernan: 00:24:00

But do you think that that's, that is where the power of Christmas films are? Because again, you know, thinking about Love actually it deals with a very big and at the time very controversial issue of the US UK relationship.

And when we're talking about: 2003

And yet a film like Love actually is able to take this huge thing and wrap it up in a way that's actually quite palatable and quite processable by mass audiences. But it's actually saying a lot about that whole thing.

I feel like Christopher's kind of has that ability to sort of do that and sort of make these quite uncomfortable things feel a bit more manageable.

Vaughn Joy: 00:24:47

Yes, I fully agree with that.

And that'll take us back to something that Stephen Nissenbaum, the historian that I mentioned earlier about the 19th century, something he says in his prologue to Battle for Christmas, which I think is just one of the best encapsulations of what American Christmas is.

And I'm going to butcher the quote, but he says ultimately that the kind of rituals and traditions that we have around Christmas have this magical kind of behavior to expose what we have been, what we are at the moment, and what we are becoming despite ourselves. And I think it's such a beautiful idea that Christmas is kind of this, like, math equation.

How we act at Christmas minus who we are the rest of the year is who we actually are. Like, it's who we want to be.

And you can use Christmas as this idealizing factor of, like, we're not that great at the moment, but we could be, and this is our best version of ourselves because it's Christmas, like, wrapped in that kind of tinsel.

Or you can use it as a social mirror and say, we're doing some awful things, like Dickens does with A Christmas Carol, and, like, we need to change using that kind of tripartite, temporal, past, present, future idea.

Or you can, like, Christmas is this vehicle to have a very harsh look at who you are as a nation or a person or a locality, and to make a decision about who you want to be the rest of the year.

And I think that's why Christmas films have this power to confront issues like US UK relations, or national trauma of World War II and the Great Depression, or the Dickensian exploitation and monopolization of resources.

They can do that with this sheen of not really moralizing in a patronizing way, but moralizing in an ambitious way of we can do better, and we probably should.

Liam Heffernan: 00:27:06

I feel like when we've spoken on the podcast before, every time you know, we've chatted about the Oscars, we've chatted about Barbie, and now we're chatting about Christmas films. And every time we touch on this idea of, you know, art imitating life, life imitating art. And I just wonder how that plays out with Christmas films.

You know, is there.

Is there almost a sense that Hollywood creates an almost aspirational element to Christmas and how it should be celebrated, which is then adopted by us in. In. In real life. Or is Hollywood simply reflecting back, you know, how we celebrate Christmas?

Or is there this, you know, bit of tug of war between the two going on?

Vaughn Joy: 00:27:49

I think it's a tug of war. I think it's. It's give and take. Sometimes it's a reflection, sometimes it's a call to action.

There's a: 1947

And very early in the film, a veteran is being evicted from his apartment in order to make a skyscraper of expensive condos, whatever. And he says, while he's being carried out by police, that they're in violation of some law, some code, whatever.

And he cites the number, and the police say there is no such legislation against evicting veterans. And he says, well, there ought to be. For a Hollywood film to be calling for legislation to protect veterans and provide them housing, like, that's a.

ssue that's happening. And in: 1949

And I'm not saying that it's. It Happened on Fifth Avenue caused the housing act to happen, but it was part of that movement.

It was part of that cultural moment and social moment to protect veterans.

So I think Hollywood can definitely be used as a call to action, but then it can also reflect certain things, like It's a Wonderful Life, reflecting the kind of national trauma, and Same with Love, actually, of reflecting the emotional state of the moment and making some sort of narrative and message about it that either, like, you know, things. Things are pretty bleak, but we will get through, or things are bleak and we should. We should do something about it.

Like Hugh Grant in Love, actually. We should. Yeah.

Liam Heffernan: 00:29:54

I mean, it's almost like there's something just very unifying about Christmas in, you know, whether everyone's feeling happy, whether everyone's feeling sad, whether everyone's. Everyone's feeling scared. We can do that together. And Christmas is a chance.

And I feel like where, you know, in real life, we do that as families, we do that as friendship groups.

Hollywood and Christmas films have a way of then putting that on the national stage and making us all collectively feel like we're kind of in this together or celebrating Christmas together.

Vaughn Joy: 00:30:27

Yeah, I really think so. And I think another. Another point that Christmas films really excel at is finding a kind of most common denominator, Christmas experience.

hat is a Christmas story from: 1983

A lot of us, especially Americans growing up in the 20th century, have a memory of sitting on a mall Santa's lap or a department store Santa's lap, as in miracle, or wanting a specific toy that we weren't really supposed to want or like. There.

There are certain, like, experiences at Christmas that when invoked, you have an emotional connection with the film and you can be like, oh, I remember when I was a kid and I, like, really wanted to sit on Santa's lap, but the line was too long and we couldn't. It ruined Christmas. Like.

Like, there are these kind of, like, just Christmas moments that get the audience emotionally invested in a way that doesn't really happen in a lot of other genres. You don't.

You can't really picture yourself as, like, Chris Evans in some action film or something, but you can picture yourself as little Ralphie wanting the rifle or, like, laughing at a friend who got stuck in the snow or something.

Like, you know, like, there's these kind of nostalgic elements to a lot of Christmas films where you can place yourself in the film and that sentimentality means all that much more, and you can take on the messages of these films in a much more personal, invested kind of way.

Liam Heffernan: 00:32:09

Do you think maybe that's why the question of whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie is contentious?

Because there is that element of we can't all necessarily relate to Bruce Willis going around kind of shooting up all the bad guys, but it still has that Christmas element.

There's still very much a lot of the things that we've just been discussing, but on the face of it, it is an action movie and kind of lacks that bit of relatability that we expect.

Vaughn Joy: 00:32:40

That is an excellent question and the first actual dispute of Die Hard not being a Christmas film that I've ever really considered like, or been intrigued by. I think that that's a really, really excellent point of. Is relatability something that a Christmas film needs to have? I don't know.

I personally don't think it does. I'm feeling this out as I'm talking, though, so let me think. I don't think it does.

I think that that might be why some people don't relate to it and say it's not a Christmas, because it isn't that kind of schmaltzy, like, sentimentality that they can get behind or get invested in, in any sort of way. And some people just don't like action films. I don't like horror films. But I would still say that Gremlins is a Christmas film.

Yeah, but, yeah, yeah, that might be part of the kind of issue for some people to call it a Christmas film.

And also, I think it's absolutely fine if people don't think it's a Christmas film, because I think that your personal definition of a Christmas film is what a Christmas film is, and it's not something that you have to argue with, with strangers on the Internet.

Liam Heffernan: 00:33:46

Fair enough. Very fair point.

So putting that one aside for a second, I do want to just come back to the real question of the episode and just wonder, with everything we've discussed, what do you think ultimately Christmas films can tell us about America?

Vaughn Joy: 00:34:07

So in a very broad sense, I think they can tell us a lot about the political, social, cultural and economic moments in which they were made.

When you place it temporally, it will reflect a lot about the contemporary society and how the mainstream Christmas was celebrated in that period and what that then says about all of those other elements of society, cultural, social, economic and whatnot, in a more specific sense for each individual film or each era. I think that they give us a broad arc of American identity.

They tell us whose Christmas traditions are the mainstream and what kind of things were important in that moment.

stmas story harkening back to: 1940

Like, they tell us a lot. They tell us a lot. That's my answer.

Liam Heffernan: 00:35:48

Yeah, fair enough. I mean, I think there's a lot that we can discuss about Christmas specifically and how ultimately that kind of reflects American society back at us.

And certainly as someone who. Who isn't American and doesn't live in America, I think it is.

It is really interesting to see Hollywood Christmas films and how much that I also gravitate towards Hollywood films as a Brit, that there must be something a lot more universal in. In. In Christmas movies than. Than perhaps other genres.

But I think that's one to bookmark for next year because of course we're going to have to talk about this again next Christmas.

Vaughn Joy: 00:36:26

Absolutely.

Liam Heffernan: 00:36:27

For now, Vaughan, thank you so much once again for joining me on the podcast.

And for anyone listening, if you've liked what we've chatted about, we'll put some links in the show notes to some other stuff that you can enjoy and read and watch, etc. But Vaughn, if anyone wants to connect with you specifically, where can they do that?

Vaughn Joy: 00:36:47

I am on blue sky at Gvon Joy and then whatever BSky Social or something. Or I am on Substack with a newsletter called Review Roulette. Yeah, you can find me in those two places.

Liam Heffernan: 00:37:03

Awesome. Yes, we'll link to Review Roulette as well in the show notes for you. And yeah, all about Bluesky. Find me on there as well.

And I am still on X, but I'm gonna be honest, I don't use that very much anymore and on LinkedIn as well. So just search for my name and you'll find me as well.

If you enjoy the podcast, do just take 10 seconds out of your day to leave us a rating and a review wherever you're listening to this and give us a follow as well so that all future episodes appear in your feed as well. And we're also going to leave some links in the show notes so you can support the show from as little as $1.

That really helps us out, keeps us making it and makes us very happy indeed. Thank you so much for listening and goodbye.