Let's settle the debate. Die Hard.

No! I’m not here! LA LA LA LA

When my kids wake up on Christmas morning, all excited, I’m gonna hand them both a cup of hot chocolate, sit them on the couch, and make them watch Die Hard before they get to open presents. It’ll be like all those years I had to suffer through the opening chapters of Luke, but actually awesome. Trying to decide if I should make them watch Die Hard 2 as well…

Spoilers for the sixth season of Supernatural: When Sam had no soul, he didn’t need to sleep and he barely needed to eat. Like, a cracker would sustain him, I think. He was also a remourseless killing machine, so, upsides and downsides.

You should follow it up with, “Yippee ki-yay, kids. Open a gift.” Maybe cut the lights like the FBI guys or something. Be sure one of the gifts is a Twinkie.

Die Hard is a movie about a family overcoming their problems to reunite on Christmas Eve. One of their problems happens to be European terrorists. It’s also about the power of friendship and helping someone down and out get back on their feet. In this case a cop learning that it’s ok to shoot people again. I don’t know what’s more American than that.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is not a Thanksgiving movie.

Discuss.

I’m going to assume you’re not being willfully obtuse and that this is an earnest question. Let’s break down what I think could commonly be agreed upon to be a central concept of Christmas: giving. And let’s start with It’s a Wonderful Life. What is the movie about? Well, it kicks off because George believes he has failed in his life’s purpose, to help people. I won’t belabor the whole plot but his guardian angel shows up and convinces George that he has not, in fact, failed. He has helped many people in many ways. He has improved their lives. He has given. He is appreciated. Even if this didn’t take place on Christmas Eve during the events of the movie, it’s fairly obvious why those themes might resonate on that particular day, yes?

Now let’s take a look at Die Hard. What’s it about? It’s about a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time who happens, through a set of pretty thrilling events, foil a robbery and take down the thieves attempting it. What does that have to do with Christmas? Honestly, I could give a damn if this is what you want to watch on Christmas Eve, and if you want to convince yourself that this somehow makes it a Christmas movie, knock yourself out. But even if we agree that there aren’t any rules around this sort of thing, we if we’re going to attempt to communicate then we should probably recognize that words matter. And this:

This doesn’t actually communicate anything.

Not that I needed any convincing, but I only just realized: John’s wife is named… Holly.

Pretty accurately sums up my feelings on this.

I only realized that after seeing Fox’s trailer above.

Clearly there are movies that you watch around Christmas time. That for me, makes them Christmas movies. For some it might be Die Hard. For us it would be The Sound of Music. That is a fucking Christmas movie and I defy anyone to say otherwise.

Because of the dubbing lag, Die Hards were actually summer movies in my country. Excepting it snows at the end.
Actually we don’t even have the concept of seasonal movies (or specials, again, same 6 months lag back when watching TV was a thing) here because of this. It’s all relative.

If you’re talking about when it was released, then Die Hard was also a summer movie in the United States as well. That’s when you release big action movies.

Then nothing makes sense, this is madness!

The original Miracle on 34th Street was also released in the summer, for instance. A Christmas movie doesn’t have to be released around Christmas time.

So, I always kinda assumed that the whole "Die Hard is a Christmas movie!* was lovable, quirky nerd humor/meming, like “There were no Matrix sequels” or “Jar-Jar is secretly a Sith Lord pulling the strings of the entire Star Wars plotline by himself.” You know, something funny all us geeky sorts could kinda laugh about in our shared-via-cultural-osmosis sphere of nerdy knowledge, enjoying the inside joke before settling down to watch a gory action flick on a holiday ostensibly about peace on Earth and goodwill towards men and some Lich-to-be spawning in a low-level Zone to avoid detection by heroes until he was old enough to master his spellcraft and become immortal.

But, instead, I come into this thread and find out that though it may have started that way, it’s now gone the route of bacon. Let me explain.

Bacon is a tasty, tasty food. It’s salty and rich and a little sweet. It’s at once chewy and toothsome and crispy and snappy. It’s a core component of many classic dishes and meals, and has places in all three of the day’s meal-times. It’s affordable, widely available, and pretty easy to cook well.

But then the internet and nerds started meming about it. Bacon goes from “pretty good thing!” to “zomg bacon is the best thing evarrr” and we go from “Sometimes I sprinkle a little bacon onto my maple cookies because the saltiness pairs well” to “I lattice-wrapped a hamburger patty in strips of bacon and deep-fried it before serving it on a bacon-jam slathered brioche roll that was baked with bacon bits mixed into the dough and had the typical butter subbed for bacon fat.” Bacon shirts became a thing, for some unfathomable fucking reason. The identifying call of redditors in the wild, hoping to find more of their ilk (and still somehow laboring under the bizarre idea that they were interesting or unique for using the world’s, like, third-most-popular website) became “The narwhal bacons at midnight!”

For some people, the joke became a gospel, bacon became the greatest foodstuff on Earth, and any sense of irony or subtlety was lost at the altar of excess. The joke had become self-aware and begun to walk the earth, clogging the arteries of a generation of weebs.

AKA, I’m with you, @divedivedive. Here there be crazy people!

Sincerely,
Armando, who sometimes jokingly refers to The Nightmare Before Christmas as a Thanksgiving movie, because it’s so intimately tied to both Halloween and Christmas that he must split the difference and watch it at the midway holiday, rather than trying to choose one or the other.

Hmm. I’ve never seen Die Hard, but I’m going to have to vote Yes on the strength of Brooklyn 99’s “Yippie Kayak, Other Buckets” episode being clearly Christmas-themed.

Dude.

Dude.

Duuuuuuuuude.

Dude.

Dude.

C’mon dude.