Another One About the True Meaning of Christmas

With Christmas arriving this year on the same day I’ve elected to publish new blog posts, I had two choices: post a slapdash piece about something holiday-related on Christmas Day or post a slapdash piece about something holiday-related a bit early.

So here we are.

I recently had the pleasure of hosting a Christmas movie pajama party at my apartment. We watched Home Alone, Elf, and the first 30 minutes or so of The Muppet Christmas Carol before the chorus of gentle snoring cued the night’s conclusion. All of these movies I’ve seen multiple times, and while I enjoy each for the laughs and nostalgia they provide, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I get something new out of repeat viewings.

This is more of a feature than a bug of Christmas movies. Almost all of them are about the “true meaning” of Christmas, even if they don’t all agree on exactly what that true meaning is. And this consistency, however ham-handed, is what gives Christmas movies their staying power.

Consider Love Actually, which has earned the coveted title of “holiday classic” while apparently no one was looking. So has Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause. Neither movie is particularly bad (though I’d agree with Christopher Orr that Love Actually isn’t particularly good), but transpose them into another genre and the idea of their becoming “classic” seems baffling. It’s not particularly hard to imagine, given that Love Actually spawned a number of similarly-structured rom-coms likely to be found in a DVD bargain bin near you. And those two aren’t outliers; plenty of medium-good Christmas movies have earned their holiday-classic-halo via the same formula: slightly above average returns at the box office and the passage of time.

Thus, Christmas movies enjoy an advantage not in spite of being thematically one-dimensional, but precisely because they are. They comfort us because they tell us what we already know; they reinforce our personal and cultural narratives.

And that, I think, really is the true meaning of Christmas.

We conduct a series of odd rituals – bringing trees inside, hanging over-sized socks above the fireplace or nearest equivalent, singing uncomfortably rape-y songs – that may or may not be directly related to our beliefs about the holiday itself. But the act of sharing these traditions, however arbitrary, brings about an enhanced sense of connection with the people we love.

The shared revelry in this or that Christmas movie, the tradition of watching it every year, is another festive part of forming our own holiday narratives. To quote Jonathan Gottschall:

“We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.”

Stories that, around this time of year, are rumored to involve sugar plums.

So it’s safe to assume that plenty of other medium-good holiday flicks await us in the years ahead, and their status as “holiday classic” only a few years thence.

But the true meaning of Christmas (movies) isn’t box office profits or a Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s the traditions we’ll construct around them with our family and friends and significant others meeting the rest of the family for the first time; the quote-offs, the inside jokes, the sing-a-longs. It’s that gingerbread feeling.

So as this year comes to a close, whether you’re in the trenches of the War on Christmas or eschewing the holiday altogether, take a moment to step back and observe your narratives as they unfold all around you.

I think you’ll find tangible, powerful, nondenominational holiday magic therein.

Like this:

Merry Christmas!