Countering the Dominant Ideology of the Christmas Movie Genre

Abstract

In the world of cinema, a strange phenomenon emerged in the 1940s and continues to this day: this is the phenomenon of the Christmas movie. This paper investigates the question of what defines a film in the Christmas movie genre and what its ideological underpinnings are. The method of this project was to assess existing literature on Christmas movies, take extensive notes on a myriad of different Christmas films, and then to examine the patterns that emerge within this body of works. The conclusion of this paper is that there exists a clear Christmas movie genre, although not every film set at Christmas falls into this category. There are three narrative models for the Christmas movie: “Christmas Carols,” “Santa Claus,” and “Home for the Holidays.” These films uphold a conservative ideology that uses the device of nostalgia to uphold the values of 1950s America as the time of the “Golden Christmas.” In recent years, however, an alternative Christmas movie tradition has emerged. In Happiest Season (2020), Holiday Heart (2000), and Black Nativity (2013), the device of epiphany is used for the purpose of unsettling the status quo of the Christmas movies. These films suggest the lack of diversity found within the Christmas movie in the categories of race, gender and sexuality, and class.