Thursday, December 17, 2009

What Makes A Christmas Movie?

So what do you think makes a movie a "Christmas" movie? I had a discussion about this with a couple of friends at work yesterday and it ended in blood and tears. Not really, but I'm lending some Christmas movies to one of them and in the stack I included Meet Me In St. Louis and In the Good Old Summertime. Some thought that the inclusion of these films in the "Christmas" movie category was a little questionable since the movies don't take place entirely during the Christmas season.

Now, I admit In the Good Old Summertime seems like an especially unlikely Christmas movie given the name, however, if anything it's mistitled since very little of the movie actually takes place in the summer. In my head they're both Christmas movies because the climax of the films takes place at Christmastime, and they give me Christmas warm fuzzies! Plus, Judy Garland sings a Christmas song in both of them. If that's not Christmas, I don't even know what is.

The beauty of these hybrid type movies is that you can watch them in June and not feel weird about it, but come December, they're extra fabulous.

So what do you think? Am I just so obsessed with Judy Garland that I've lost touch with reality and made her every day films into Christmas films in my head? Does a movie have to be 100% Christmas to be a Christmas movie or can it have a little more variety?