Deacon Steven Greydanus offers his Top Ten Christmas movies

Sez he:

1. Here is the hard, cold truth about Christmas movies: There are none. Not one! True fact. Like Santa himself, Christmas movies do not exist.1
2. Having said that, there is, of course, one and only one Christmas movie: It’s a Wonderful Life. That is literally the only Christmas movie, that’s it.
3. Except for also The Muppet Christmas Carol, and nothing against your favorite Christmas Carol adaptation, which is almost certainly good,2 because nearly all of them are.3
4. And yes of course Die Hard, get over it everyone.
5. There is no 5, just those three, the end.

He continues from there with sundry ill-informed opinions deriving from his years of trauma as a film critic that have reduced him to a sad, strange little man who has my pity. But in the Spirit of the Season, I will both forgive him and send you over to his Substack both to read the rest of his article and to suggest you read more of his excellent stuff and then subscribe.

Also, may I jiust say that if you stitch A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS, “Night of the Meek” from THE TWILIGHT ZONE, and HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (the Chuck Jones work of genius and not the hideous Jim Carrey act of desecration) together and call it a “cinematic Christmas fantasia” or something like that, you’ve got a Christmas film worth 10,000 LOVE ACTUALLYs (which I have never seen due to all the red flags thrown on the Holiday field in countless bad reviews from dissatisfied customers, but I just know I’m right).

Like Steve, I will not be taking any questions, so profound is my rightness on this assertion.

You’re welcome!

PS. The one good thing to come out of the crime against humanity that is the Jim Carrey GRINCH is that it unleashed Steve Greydanus’ genius for film reviews written in Seussian poetic style.

Read and fall to your knees in wonder and gratitude at this work that redeems the irredeemable!