This is the seventh in a multi-part article series running from November 1 to December 27. It discusses the themes and meaning of Christmas movies, digs into specific tropes, and unpacks the true nature of Christmas. The first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth essays can be found here.
Another thing one notices when he surveys the field of Christmas movies is the shocking lack of overt Christianity in many of the genre’s most popular entries. When one imagines the most popular films of the lot, shockingly few mention religion explicitly or in passing. A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, Jingle All The Way, and Elf have nothing to say about Christianity. It’s usually a background detail when it does appear in most Christmas films. It is merely that thing that is a part of a character’s life so deeply ingrained that it isn’t commented upon. Hallmark movie characters are frequently religious, but it is more of a cultural signifier in most of those movies than an expression of the plot.
Surprisingly, many classic Christmas films from a more religious time similarly lack overt religiosity. Holiday Inn, Remember The Night, Shop Around The Corner, or White Christmas are almost largely absent of religion. In older films, religion is often only mentioned if it’s directly part of the premise, such as in It’s A Wonderful Life or The Bishop’s Wife. Bing Crosby’s Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary’s are about a Catholic priest and can’t avoid the topic, but even they tend to focus on his private life more than being statements about the spirit of the season.
Plenty of Christmas movies will allude to Christian ideas, but they’re usually in the abstract. The Polar Express is explicitly a film about regaining one’s faith, but it is far more generic than faith in Jesus Christ. Elf’s climax is rooted in whether cynical New Yorkers can be led to believe in Christmas amid modernity. Even Christmas Carol adaptations rarely have much to say beyond depicting the supernatural and ending on the line “God bless us, everyone!”
Given everything we’ve discussed, this shouldn’t be surprising. Christmas is playing to a large audience of non-Christians and Christians alike. As film critic Sonny Bunch writes:
“Given that December 25 now rivals Fourth of July weekend as a marquee release date, I guess its not surprising than so few Christmas movies are religious in nature. If you’re trying to cram people into 3D IMAX cathedrals with laser-aligned sound and convince them that popcorn and Diet Coke are worthy substitutes for the body and blood of Christ, you probably don’t want to remind them of the fact that they’re ducking out on paying respect to the guy who died for their sins.”
Even at the height of Christianity in American culture, overt religious expression was still controversial. In 1960, Gallup found that 93% of Americans identified as Christians, while 63.3% were church members. According to Pew Research, that number has rapidly declined to only 63% of Americans identifying as Christians in 2022. This meant though that these shorts were released into a culture where religious attendance was more expected and normalized, and that reflected in their secular television programming.
Amusingly, when faith does show up in Christmas movies, it is often in very unexpected places. A handful of contemporary and popular Christmas movies do explore religion in a meaningful way, even if in passing, and it is worth digging into them, as well as how Christian filmmakers approach the holiday within the bubble of the faith-based film industry.
Purpose Amid Disillusionment – A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
It’s all downhill from here folks! Thankfully, the 1965 animated Peanuts Christmas special remains the gold standard for faith-based content in Christmas filmmaking. Famously, the film’s producers were flabbergasted by the special that Charles Schultz and Bill Melendez turned in; a slow-paced melancholic reflection on holiday malaise, discontentment, and authenticity. Schultz proved them wrong, and from 1965 to 2020 it remained an annual staple of television programming for the CBS Network.
Charlie Brown begins the special by lamenting that he isn’t feeling the emotions of the Christmas season. “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t understand Christmas I guess.” As becomes clear, the consumeristic nature of the holiday is leaving him dry. He likes Christmas cards and presents, but they aren’t what is important. After speaking with the enterprising Lucy at her therapy booth, he agrees to host the school nativity play to get active and find an outlet, which immediately fails as the students refuse to take his direction.
With the performance approaching, the group decides they need a Christmas tree and dispatches Charlie Brown to get a large artificial one, which he dislikes the idea of. Amid the trees, he finds the last living pine tree; a tiny dying branch that constantly sheds needles. Charlie believes he can make the most of it, but he is openly mocked by the other kids for his choice. At his lowest point, he turns to Linus and admits he doesn’t know what he’s doing, to which Linus recites the text of Luke 2:8-14. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill toward men. That’s what Christmas is really about, Charlie Brown.”
This scene remains one of the most fascinating in television history, as open proselytizing was rare even in the 1960s. There are secular readings of the moment as well that reconcile this. As YouTuber Patrick H. Willems argues, “[Linus] isn’t saying the point of Christmas is worshiping Jesus. It’s that the holiday began as a small religious celebration in which on a dark night people came together and helped each other out in a display of kindness and generosity.” Even if it’s not directly telling people to go to church, the moment is pointing to the nativity as the heart of the holiday from which meaning flows. It is this knowledge that ultimately allows Charlie Brown to walk out into the cold December night with a sense of joy, purpose, and connection to his friends.
A Lifesaving Guardian Angel – It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Few Hollywood films have ever been quite so determined to defend faith as much as It’s A Wonderful Life. As director Frank Capra wrote about the film, “There are just two things that are important. One is to strengthen the individual’s belief in himself, and the other, even more important right now, is to combat a modern trend toward atheism.” Such a claim is hardly an exaggeration, given that the movie begins with God and his angels looking down to Earth with pity as a town prays in unison for one suicidal man to be saved.
The film’s status as THE canonical classical Christmas movie, alongside Miracle on 34th Street, has certainly given it a sense of centrality, with many critics having attacked it vociferously. Early critics called it sentimental and condescending. The FBI investigated it as potential communist propaganda. Political theorist Patrick Deneen has criticized it as capitalist propaganda. Feminist critics have excoriated it as a nightmare that treats a woman’s worst fate as becoming a childless spinster librarian. Salon’s Richard Cohen once dismissed it as “the most terrifying Hollywood film ever made”. The New York Times’ Wendell Jamieson similarly called it “a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people.”
But all the critics are wrong and I’m right! It’s A Wonderful Life is a Christian masterpiece. It is the greatest film ever conceived to explore the concept of a life well lived, admonishing the common life of the good man who thanklessly holds society together. Although George Bailey freely admits “I’m not a praying man,” his desperation on Christmas Eve to find meaning in his fruitless life of self-sacrifice saves him. The appearance of his guardian angel in his final moments of life finally sets him on a path that recontextualizes things and shows what the world becomes when virtuous men are missing.
It all builds until its triumphant final moments when Christmas becomes the catalyst for a miracle brought upon by the love of a tightly bonded community. A lifetime of self-sacrifice and virtue pays off in a way so lovingly triumphant that heaven seems to come to earth with riotous joy.
A Whimsical Worship Leader – Going My Way (1944)/The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)
Bing Crosby’s World War II-era duology of Father O’Malley movies are a fascinating relic from a particular historical moment when Hollywood would still conceive of the idea of making fun movies about clergy. Both films are set in December and follow the same light-hearted singing Catholic priest through mostly plotless musical romps, as he engages with the everyday problems of his parishioners, fellow clergy, school children, and greedy bankers who are constantly trying to foreclose on the church or buy their properties
Crosby’s sincerity and affection for his own Roman Catholic faith hold both films together despite their loose structure. In both films, Father O’Malley is a temporary presence in the lives of the parishes he visits before moving on to the next place to help solve their problems. In the first film, he has to win over the heart of an aging grumpy priest, settle debts between local parishioners struggling with money, win over the heart of a local atheist, and work with a local opera house to perform and record songs he writes on the side to help raise money for the church.
Christmas takes place at the climax of the first film, with Father O’Malley preparing to move on to his next assignment following the Christmas Eve mass in which he helps reunite the curmudgeonly Father Fitzgibbon with his estranged Irish mother for the first time in decades. In the second film, he’s taken on the role as rector of a Catholic school and oversees the nativity play, while its dramatic final confrontation between O’Malley and Ingrid Bergman’s Sister Mary Benedict takes place in the snow, where the coldness of the December snows contrasts with her hope for the future.
Redressing One’s Clouded Priorities – The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
The appearance of angels during a time of distress or uncertainty has become something of a trope in film. It’s A Wonderful Life is the most famous example, but The Bishop’s Wife approaches the subject more comprehensively and from a less pressing angle. These characters aren’t suicidal or broken, so much as misguided and in need of a nudge in the right direction. They’re at risk of damaging a marriage and succumbing to the temptation of worldly glory, but that can be fixed with the right reframing.
Amid the Christmas season, Episcopal Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven) finds himself distracted by his ambition. He is praying for divine guidance as he works diligently to build a new cathedral to replace his older parish, but is hamstrung by financing issues. Immediately, he finds himself visited by Dudley (Cary Grant), a kindly man who reveals himself to be an angel who has appeared in response to his prior prayer. Dudley quickly becomes heavily involved in Henry’s life, befriending his wife Julia (Loretta Young) and assisting people everywhere he goes.
From Bishop Henry’s perspective, Dudley is rather intrusive. He spends his time convincing benefactors to back out of funding the cathedral and instead give money to the poor, instructing the church to fundraise and restore their existing church. Controversially, Dudley begins to have feelings for Julia that he staves off for the sake of his job. The film’s moral though is clear and well summarized in Henry’s Christmas Eve sermon, where he speaks of the newborn Christ.
“Let us ask what he would wish for most and then each put in his share, lovingkindness, warm hearts, and a stretched out hand of tolerance, all shining gifts that make peace on Earth.”
As film critic Abby Olcese writes:
“This is the moment Henry’s experiences are reflected back to the viewer. Most of us watching the film probably aren’t trying to raise money for a cathedral. We don’t all have precarious positions of power we’re trying to uphold. However, we do often have our priorities directed toward materialism and control of our lives rather than storing up treasures in heaven. The strength of that temptation is particularly present leading to Christmas, where we do everything we can to engineer an ideal holiday, ignoring the call to embrace others in their messy glory, and to let ourselves be vulnerable in front of them.”
A Common Faith – Rankin-Basses’ Christmas Specials
Rankin-Bass productions aren’t generally very religious. By their nature, they’re very safe family films. Is it even possible to be offended by a movie as gentle as Rudolph: The Red-Nosed Reindeer? Regardless, what makes them interesting is the way they pay tribute to the religious culture they came from. Coming out in the 1960s and 1970s, they sat at the middle ground of a culture that was simultaneously highly religious but broadly secular. As a result, the majority of these specials focused on middlebrow and inoffensive Christmas fluff.
A handful of specials though were directly religious. Little Drummer Boy directly addresses the nativity, albeit from an outsider’s perspective. Borrowing from Katherine Davis’ 1941 song of the same name, the special focuses on a young slave boy, Aaron, wandering the deserts of Judea with a parade of friendly animals. He’s anti-social and doesn’t like humans, but his master’s dealings result in his camel being sold to the Three Wise Men en route to Bethlehem. While chasing them down to save his animal, Aaron’s lamb is injured and the Wise Men tell him that the only person capable of saving him is the newborn King Jesus, to whom Aaron meekly approaches with a sincere heart to play his drum and requests a miracle—and that simple act of faith saves the day.
One of the more forgotten Rankin-Bass specials is 1975’s The First Christmas: The Story of the First Christmas Snow, which is set at a seaside Catholic Abbey where a group of nuns are preparing to celebrate Christmas. When a local shepherd boy is struck by lightning and blinded, he’s brought to heal at the Abbey where he is told stories about the beauty of a white Christmas and taught the miracle of Jesus’s birth.
The most curious example of religion in Rankin-Bass though may well be Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, a Santa Claus origin story film that is intended to explain different facets of the holiday to young children. Given that it explains everything from the origins of the elves, Christmas trees, and toys to Santa’s young life and marriage to Mrs. Claus, it can’t help but skirt past religiosity. The film even directly suggests that Mr. and Mrs. Claus are Christians, showing them getting married “before the Lord” at a church wedding. At one point, a warlock who has repudiated his sorcerous ways prays to receive his powers back to light a Christmas tree for the wedding. The film even directly says Santa chose Christmas for his toy deliveries because it was the “holiest” night of the year.
Again, Rankin-Bass weren’t known for edgy content, so none of this is portrayed in a particularly efficacious manner. It’s children’s storybook content, but these allusions all point to the reality that “safe” in this cultural context meant Jewish animators like Jules Bass making films needed to nudge at the idea of Christ’s birth.
Finding Connection at Church – Home Alone (1990)
The world of John Hughes’ 1980s catalogue is a world not too dissimilar from the milieu I grew up in suburban Chicago. It’s a world of hardworking, successful, middle-class families with normal interests and problems. They’re quite flawed, but they’re the sort of folks who cast their aspirations to a common loadstone and do their best to live it out honorably. That very much extends to his children’s movies as well, with Home Alone being fascinating as an expression of common people’s religious viewpoints.
While nobody in the McCallister home is a flag-waving Christian, it is clear that this large Catholic family with five kids are still devout and loyal to their parish, even if a handful of their kids are stashing dirty magazines. Kevin is already familiar with the local parish enough that he seeks it out on his own after his parents accidentally leave him at home over the holidays. In one of the film’s most consequential scenes, Kevin meets up with his creepy neighbor Marley, who he had wrongly assumed was a serial killer, and the two of them talk about the importance of connecting with their loved ones—which ultimately results in Marley saving Kevin in the finale.
Home Alone can hardly be considered a religious film, but the movie uses religion in a clever way. This is a film about connections, strained relationships, and overcoming personal gripes to be there for the people we love during the holidays. Kevin initially feels like the runt of the litter and ignored by his family, and enjoys his brief stint with freedom and lawlessness. But quickly, it proves unfulfilling and dangerous. Naturally, its pivotal scene of connection takes place in a church. Christmas is a time of togetherness, and the film highlights the ways that being alone in that time is harmful. And for the common man, faith is a big part of being rooted and connected to the world.
Non-Conformity Is No Longer an Option – Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
If there were ever a film that captured the stifling nature of obligations during the holidays, it is Christmas With The Kranks. Despite being written by novelist John Grisham, the film is also one of the most melodramatic and dystopian portrayals of the topic on film, showing a world where even the slightest non-conformity is enough to draw the righteous hatred of collective society. When Luther and Nora Krank decide to skip Christmas for one year to save money and go on a relaxing cruise, this act of rebellion turns them into societal pariahs at war with everyone they know.
Given that their daughter has just left the country to join the Peace Corp, they don’t see the purpose in spending another $6,132 on expensive parties and decorations. However, they’re also a focal in their community. They attend the local Catholic parish, host the largest local annual Christmas party, and are highly engaged in local charities. Nora refuses to entertain the possibility of going on the cruise unless they honor their charitable obligations to the parish, which Luther reluctantly accepts. When they’re caught preparing for the cruise half-naked in a tanning booth by her priest, Nora feels (metaphorically and literally) exposed by the watchful and judgemental eye of God
In Christmas With The Kranks, Christianity is just one part of the Christmas system that watches over society and makes demands. Though the movie ultimately comes around in favor of the spirit of the holiday, with the entire neighborhood helping them prepare a last-minute Christmas party, the overbearing nature of the holiday remains on full display. The protagonists, with the proverbial name “Krank”, might be intended to be anti-heroes on paper, but it is hard not to agree with Nora’s rage by the film’s midpoint and just scream with her that their anti-Christmas defiance is justified by the irrational cult-like behavior around them.
Religion as a Social Obligation – Four Christmases (2008)
How many of us as young children always groaned on Christmas Day when our parents told us to put on our nice clothes so we could go to church? Who wants to stop having fun, watching movies, drinking hot cider, waiting for turkey dinner, and playing with new toys long enough to sit still in church for an hour? When church doesn’t mean something to you yet, it feels like a boring obligation.
This is a feeling similar to the one the leads in Four Christmases feel after returning to one of their parent’s homes, only to discover she’s become a religious fanatic. The exact nature of that faith is unclear. She has a statue of the Virgin Mary on her front lawn, but her church appears to be a charismatic megachurch. The filmmakers don’t seem to know the difference between Catholicism and Evangelicalism, so the exact nature of the awkwardness is muddled by ignorance. Regardless, it still reflects what the Gen X filmmakers are trying to say about their personal disconnect with their parent’s religion. They’re just afraid of it as their characters are.
As we discussed in a previous article, Four Christmases is part of the 2000s-era phenomena of sex comedies that are actually about adults trapped in extended adolescence learning to grow into mature and healthy adult relationships. Religion proves to be quite the vessel for that lesson, given that Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon’s characters are conscripted at the last minute to play Mary and Joseph in a church nativity play. It’s that child’s frustration about being dragged to church but blown out of proportion by adults who aren’t mature enough to tolerate their parents for more than a few hours.
Running Away From Maturity – The Night Before (2015)
That the genre of Gen X anxiety movies would remain alive and well through the 2010s is a testament to the films of Seth Rogan, whose films like Neighbors and Knocked Up explore the anxieties of adult consequences crashing down on immature people who aren’t ready for them in ways that felt refreshing and funny. The Night Before is a fascinating continuation of this line of thought that explores a moment of complicated change in the lives of three adult men.
Following the tragic death of Ethan’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) parents in a car crash, his best friends Isaac (Seth Rogan) and Chris (Anthony Mackie) have made a decade-long tradition of roaming New York City every Christmas Eve night, getting drunk, taking drugs, attending parties, and enjoying each others company. But given that Isaac is about to have a child and Chris is busy with a football career, the tradition is about to end, necessitating the three go out for one last time to honor the goofy Christmas tradition they’ve created for themselves with one more night of insanity.
Given that The Night Before is a film about adoptive traditions, these new traditions end up clashing with the older traditions of the holiday in surprising ways. Isaac’s wife is a Roman Catholic, and amid one of his drug trips, she asks him to join up with him for a Christmas Eve mass in which the drugged-up middle-aged Jewish man has a panic attack at the realization that his ancestors might’ve been responsible for Jesus’ death. But these are just the tip of the iceberg for Isaac’s anxieties, as he keeps recording drunken rants on his phone, having panic attacks about how his wife’s pregnancy is going to ruin his life.
Isaac’s anxiety about his wife’s religion and baby are intertwined because they’re both fears about submitting to something larger than one’s self. Similarly, Chris’ mother, who is a Black Baptist churchgoer, repeatedly asks the boys throughout the film if they’d please go with her to church and pray with her, and Chris repeatedly scoffs at the request until the story’s end. He’s above such things until he isn’t. The movie treats faith as something mature that waits for you in the distance, something you figure out when you’re older and wise. But when you refuse to grow up, you become reliant on vices and escapism to avoid the eventuality of maturity, and it takes admitting that to yourself to overcome it.
Appropriately for a Christmas movie, it takes the sudden appearance of a literal and unexpected Capra-esc guardian angel to help these characters find their way to the right path. Despite its crudeness, The Night Before circles around into a touching little movie about growing up and coming to terms with life.
Overbearing and Exhausting Neighbors – The Grinch (2018)
I’m going to assume that the inclusion of any amount of Christianity in a remake of Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas is entirely a fluke or a reflection of recognizable consumer trends. The original film has nothing to say about faith, merely alluding to the idea that Christmas “isn’t something bought in a store … [but] a little bit more.” Regardless, The Grinch is produced by Illumination, the creators of Despicable Me and Minions; a studio infamous for its low-brow child’s content, hyperkinetic pacing, highly recognizable needle-drop music cues, and cheap slapstick. They aren’t a studio willing to pass up a recognizable Christmas carol, especially one that can be used with some lightly satirical double meaning.
Early in the film, the titular Grinch has exhausted his winter food supplies by stress eating and has to descend into Whoville to restock his pantry. As he enters town, he finds himself stalked and chased throughout the streets of Whoville by disturbingly aggressive carolers singing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, as though to suggest that the hoards of singers, snapping their fingers like West Side Story gangsters, were assaulting the protagonist with Anglican hymns.
I suspect the song was chosen for its iambic lyrical qualities, as it works well cut to the scene as an aggressive song that simultaneously captures the feeling of having Christmas jammed down one’s throat against their will. That said, the fact that Jesus is canon to the citizens of Whoville raises further questions… But like the last three examples, religion exists in this context as a way to express the larger idea of how hard submitting to something larger can be. The Grinch’s heart is too small to appreciate Christmas, so the sincerity of a hymn feels like being hit upside the head with a brick.
Ultimately though, its inclusion is just a reflection of the reality that secular society is weirdly tolerant of Christian themes and ideas during Christmas. Plenty of non-religious people belt hymns like Gloria In Excelsis Deum or Hark the Harold without thinking about their themes, just because they’re associated with Christmas songs.
Opening Estranged Hearts – The Christmas Chronicles: Part 1 (2018) and Part 2 (2020)
Two children sit outside of the massive doors of a large Chicago Catholic Church. Through its door, the soft sounds of “O Christmas Tree” can be heard by a church choir. “I haven’t been to church since he…” says a young boy, reflecting on the death of his father. “Why did he have to go into that fire? He had a wife and two kids and he gave it all up.”
Netflix’s Christmas Chronicles movies are amusing precisely because of how low-tech and low-concept they are (at least the first one). The second one is a more traditional Christopher Columbus movie. But the first film thrives on Kurt Russell’s gruff and sarcastic but friendly rendition of Santa, which gets used to great effect having to solve mundane problems like how to get around Chicago without money or a car, or avoiding getting arrested because the cops think Santa is a deranged nutjob.
While both films suffer from messy scripts, they both briefly brush up against Christianity in curious ways, with the aforementioned conversation happening on Christmas Eve as the two children, lost thousands of miles from home with Santa, struggle to overcome their father’s loss. The second film is far more direct, directly suggesting that St. Nicolas of Mira had been a bishop who changed his vocation to protect forest elves from persecution, and, in turn, received a portion of the Star of Bethlehem to run his workshop. It’s a curious combination of Christian and Pagan elements, showing both that the season flows from the religious and isn’t fully broken from it, even if people themselves struggle to connect with it.
The Saints Live Through You – The Santa Clauses (2022)
The surprisingly complex and convoluted lore of the four entries in Tim Allen’s Santa Clause franchise is something we’ve already touched upon. But for now, it’s worth considering how Christianity briefly plays into the franchise given how much historical Santa Claus lore it draws on. With the first entry in the series in 16 years, Allen returns to the franchise as an aging Santa Claus looking for someone to replace him. Scott Calvin is tired of making mistakes and starts seeking out an apprentice Santa in a story arc that’s lasted multiple seasons. In the fifth episode of the first season, a momentarily retired and burnt-out Calvin is approached by his former Elf assistant Bernard to learn about the history of his position—wherein he discovers he’s the 18th Santa Claus in a line going back to St. Nicolas of Myra; depicted as a Bishop in full regalia.
Calvin is surprised to actually meet the legend himself and briefly exposits the history of the famous Cappadocian Saint; that he was the son of a rich man who forsook his wealth to give to those in need and dedicated his life to serving others. He doesn’t mention God, but he speaks to the purpose of his mission and reminds Calvin what drives him. “I live through you! Remember, it’s all about the giving!”
As we discover, the exact logistics of how Calvin became Santa end up proving unnecessarily complicated and boringly fated, especially given that Calvin merely stumbles into the position in the first film by accidentally killing Santa and putting his coat on. As it turns out, he was fated by destiny to become Santa Claus and was chosen by the previous elf to be the first human Santa. St. Nicolas’ role in the lore was the founder of all the magic and spirits of the holidays we’ve met in the prior films. His act of giving had (literally or metaphorically) created Christmas as it was.
It’s a surprisingly earnest subtextual expression of the holiday’s religious roots in a fantasy-comedy context. Season 2 even takes this further by repeatedly name-dropping Jesus as the founder of the holiday.
The Season Brings the Best (and Worst) Out of Us – The Holdovers (2023)
The version of 1970s New England we see in Alexander Payne’s recent masterpiece is one at the end of a long tradition in American politics. It shows the twilight era of the elitist Episcopalian and the inheritors of the modern American aristocracy. Barton Academy is an expensive boy’s prep school, with many of its students being the sons of politicians and wealthy businessmen. Most of them are fated to end up in Ivy League universities, even if their parents have to bribe their way in.
Explicitly, the school is depicted as being Episcopalian, with students being forced to attend chapel services. Despite this, none of the characters in The Holdovers are deeply religious. Paul Giamatti’s character is an over-educated and pretentious history professor who prides himself on his deep knowledge of ancient history, at one point handing out copies of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and calling it “the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita all rolled into one, and the best part is not one mention of God!’
Regardless, religion hangs over the film. In one notable scene, Angus rebels against his circumstances by sneaking into the chapel and drinking the communion wine to get drunk. He also chides a fellow student for threatening him by jokingly saying “Jesus is watching!” The soundtrack is also littered with classic Christian hymns.
If anything, the characters we meet in this film are far too damaged, depressed, and proud to reach out to God because they can’t even reach out to each other. They’ve all lost too much and struggled to connect with others, but that is part of the genius of The Holdovers. It has rapidly become one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time preciously because of its depiction of lost alienated characters coming together during the holidays to gain a new respect for one another, resulting in one of the greatest and most bitterly personal self-sacrifices in recent cinema—one man giving up his failing life and career so that another young man can have one more chance to unlock his potential. These characters don’t know God, and yet they know each other and see the goodness within enough to want to defend it.
The Reason for the Season – Nativity Films
With secular films largely exhausted (although I’m surely missing a few), let us now turn to films that are explicitly about the holiday’s Christian origins. Hollywood has produced dozens of Christmas movies and Bible epics throughout its long history. Curiously, nativity films are still relatively uncommon. As with most “Christian” films, they are low-budget indie films financed by religious organizations to sell as straight-to-DVD specials to niche audiences. The previously mentioned The Little Drummer Boy certainly qualifies as a more well-known Christmas special, but there weren’t many mainstream adaptions shy of a few Jesus epics that dramatized the event in passing.
But the past decades have seen a significant increase in them as Christian filmmaking has grown. The past two decades have seen at least six notable nativity stories on film (discounting the Veggie Tales adaptation of Little Drummer Boy).
The first and most notable of these, coming out in the wake of the mega-successful The Passion of the Christ, was New Line Cinema’s The Nativity Story. Of all the ones we’ll discuss, it is easily the best of this lot of films. The film stars Oscar Isaac in one of his early career roles as Joseph, and follows the full story of the nativity from Mary conceiving Christ to their escape to Egypt. The film is mostly dull, with infrequent flourishes of character development and originality, but does benefit from uniquely solid production design and historical detail. Much care was taken to make the film look accurate to the ancient Roman world, and its cast of largely non-white actors lends it authenticity.
Isaac in particular carries most of the film, building a version of Joseph that is the most fully developed and empathetic character in the film. The film makes it clear that he has every reason to be skeptical of Mary’s claims of a spontaneous pregnancy, particularly given the cast’s general skepticism every time God and his angels seem to be acting upon them, but he chooses mercy despite himself. As The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday argues:
“The most intriguing thing about The Nativity Story transpires during the couple’s extraordinary personal journey, advancing a radical idea in an otherwise long slog of a cinematic Sunday school lesson: that Jesus became Who He was not only because He was the Son of God, but because He was the son of a good man.”
The next major nativity film would be The Star, a CGI animated children’s movie produced by the Jim Henson Company that takes the unusual direction of telling the nativity story from the perspective of the animals surrounding the newborn baby Jesus. The film explores their motivations and desires to join a royal caravan, putting their desires aside to protect Mary and Joseph from a pair of evil dogs dispatched by King Herod to hunt the newborn King. As with Little Drummer Boy, the adaptation sidelines the actual nativity story to a side plot to tell an original story that climaxes with the first Christmas.
It wouldn’t even be the only recent nativity animated film either, with 2020’s Three Wise Men releasing to limited fanfare in spite of its narration by the great Andy Griffith.
With the rise of independent Christian filmmaking, many companies have produced their own versions of the nativity in recent years. The extremely low-budget Kevin Sorbo vehicle Joseph and Mary was released in 2016 to poor reviews, but was mostly notable for focusing on other aspects of the life of the holy family through Joseph’s death and Jesus’ childhood. Despite being ostensibly a Christian film, its plot is bizarrely a revenge story and has some unusually brutal death scenes. It also manages the feat of being the most amusingly WASPy nativity film to date, with ancient Israel packing more generally handsome white people than Northern Europe.
The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins would also dramatize the nativity with the pilot episode of his critically acclaimed and successful series. The short 20-minute pilot mostly focuses on the perspectives of the shepherds running to Bethlehem to see baby Jesus and doesn’t reflect the content of the full show. It’s just a proof of concept for what the show would become.
The most ambitious recent nativity film might well be Journey To Bethlehem, the 2023 directorial debut for Glee and Captain Underpants music producer Adam Anders, which attempted to tell the full story in the style of a sweeping broadway musical. It comes close to the best features of The Nativity Story at times, but the squeaky-clean musical numbers and mediocre execution mostly weigh the film down. It didn’t do well in the box office upon release in December 2023 and it’s mostly been forgotten in the year since.
The most recent such adaptation is Netflix’s controversial biblical epic Mary, a low-budget biopic released to coincide with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Despite its director being Roman Catholic and famous pastor Joel Olsteen executive producing, the film was panned from the get-go as problematic. Roman Catholic apologists chided its portrayal of the Blessed Mother as irreverent and heretical, while pro-Palestine political activists criticized the film’s lead actress Noa Cohen for her Israeli-Jewish background.
The movie attempted to offer a “fresh take” on the life of Mary, with its opening line saying “You may think you know my story. Trust me, you don’t.” This mostly manifests in an opening that draws from the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James, in which Mary is born to her parents Anne and Joachim as a miracle child. The subsequent film approaches the story of her conceiving Christ and the torturous effect is has on her life, bringing down violence from the Jewish community around her and political oppression from the nervous King Herod. She doubts God’s plan and prays for understanding amid her fear; a depiction that Catholic apologists have criticized as a diminishing of her perfect faith and holiness.
Mary is the most recent but hardly the most interesting Nativity film yet conceived, but like the rest it suffers from cheap production design and inconsistent storytelling. Biblical stories can be hard to tell because you cannot rely on dramatic license without offending faithful Christians, and many of these stories don’t lend themselves to being dramatic and cinematic. Unfortunately, this particular retelling stands apart just by being more violent and revisionist than other versions and doesn’t use either of those traits to its strengths.
The Worst Christmas Movie Ever – Saving Christmas (2014)
Finally, last and least, we descend to the lowest circle of hollow religiosity for one of the most infamous Christmas films of the decade. Abandon all hope ye enter here.
With the rise of independent Christian filmmaking in the past two decades, popularized by films like Facing The Giants and God’s Not Dead, the market for faith-based films has only increased. Enter Left Behind and Fireproof star Kirk Cameron, partnering with Liberty University to produce a movie about the importance of the holiday amid the challenges of the season. Little did he know though that the subsequent project would become so turbulent.
Saving Christmas was immediately review bombed upon release in 2014, developing one of the most rancid reputations online as one of the most ridiculous Christmas movies ever made and being shredded to pieces. Coming out at the height of the culture war battles surrounding “the War on Christmas,” it was roundly mocked as poorly acted, paranoid, and shallow. It proceeded to win four Golden Raspberry Awards and retains a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The movie is effectively a combined pseudo-documentary, evangelical sermon, and informational video about Kirk sitting in his car with a fictionalized version of his brother-in-law having a lengthy debate about the true meaning of Christmas and desperately begging him to touch grass. The brother airs dozens of contemporary grievances about the greed of his family, its commercialism and its negative effect on the world, the alleged Pagan roots of various traditions, and the lack of Biblical roots for many Christmas traditions. In response, Cameron delivers multiple speeches about how Christ is actually the root of each holiday tradition.
It’s barely even a movie at times; more like a Kirk Cameron electronic Christmas card (I can’t charitably explain how bad a 20-minute dance number in the epilogue is in words…). As my film critic colleague Tyler Smith put it to me, it’s borderline experimental.
But in hindsight, the movie probably doesn’t deserve such hate. It’s bad, shallow, and poorly conceived, but it’s also not offensive or harmful in a way that deserves 0% approval. It was definitely a recipient of political acrimony, which was natural for gasoline being thrown into an active culture war battle; which would hit peak absurdity just a year later when Starbucks infamously began removing Christmas symbolism from coffee cups in favor of a minimalist red design and drew widespread condemnation.
A decade hence, it’s mostly an artifact of evangelical Christianity’s bizarre relationship with American pop culture during the Obama administration. Much like God’s NOT Dead and American Sniper, it’s a mark of the cultural anxiety of its moment. The fears of slow-creeping commercialization and secularization needed to be fought back against but without coherency and vision. Christ needed to be kept in Christmas. The vibe needed to be stopped from deteriorating at all costs, and so Kirk Cameron was ritually sacrificed on the altar of good taste to make that happen.
Saving Christmas actually shares a great deal with the films we’ve discussed thus far. If The Night Before and Four Christmases are about secular adults fumbling around in the dark in their quests for adult maturity, this film hold an equal claim to that. But instead of dramatizing and exploring people’s anxieties about the holiday, its talking down to them like a bad sermon. It’s far too arrogant to find the humanity in its premise. In a weird sort of way, those trashy Christmas comedies found the true religious spirit of Christmas exactly because they were running away from it. It’s a testament to The Bishop’s Wife and Charlie Brown Christmas that they literally end with sermons and don’t feel preachy. But that’s what good art does—it shows you things without telling you what you ought to think about them.
Redeeming the Faith-Based Genre – The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024)
Thankfully, the faith-based film market has improved in the decade since Saving Christmas. Dozens of studios have popped up across the country that have grown a capital and talent base that has allowed them to tell more ambitious and better-crafted stories, with recent entries like Jesus Revolution and The Sound of Hope being remarkable improvements on the prior saccharine excesses of the genre.
Enter Dallas Jenkins, the creator of the mega-successful TV series The Chosen, who was signed on in 2023 to adapt the popular Christian children’s novel The Best Christmas Pageant Ever into a film for Lionsgate. A filmmaker at the height of his creative power is given the best source material of his career, and it results in one of the sweetest faith-based films to come out of the genre—largely due to its willingness to be hard-hitting when it needs to.
“You don’t look much like Mary,” says a cruel church mom to young Imogene Herdman, the leader of a clan of poor outsiders who walk into church one Sunday and throw the culture of the church into shock. The church, on the cusp of one of the small town’s largest local events, is stressed by having to pull a nativity pageant together that is (allegedly) vital to the town’s economy. But the unchurched Herdmans are the town’s most hated children, known for their violent tendencies, unruly ways, disobedience, and proclivity to steal and commit arson. “Even Jesus wouldn’t suffer the Herdmans,” says one of their schoolmates.
The pageant’s director, Grace Bradley (Judy Greer), is certainly weary of the Herdmans attending church at first, particularly after Imogene insists on her family getting lead roles in the pageant. However, Grace quickly grows to see a deeper truth at play. When she first enters the church, Imogene is completely ensnared by a painting of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus, which she says is “sweet and pretty.” Unaware of the Bible, she immediately deduces that she wants to be like that woman and starts researching the story, getting her first library card, and telling her sibling that the pageant is a chance to escape who they are and be someone else for one.
Much like Saving Christmas, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is about seeing Christmas anew through fresh eyes, but it lacks the dismissiveness and lecturing of its predecessor. The Herdmans are explicitly outcasts hated by the church community. The movie rejects dismissiveness as a rejection of the gospel itself. The least of these are also made in the image of God, and finding a way to reach out to them is our explicit mission. It’s easy to get caught up in the failures of the season, commercialism, pride, and selfishness. It is easy to be safe and take the normal path, but closing hearts is not what the Great Commission calls Christians to do.
The best Christmas stories are not the ones that protect the superficiality of Christmas but that understand the heart of the story, and those often come in unconventional packages. And in a strange way, this modest faith-based film has managed to become a minor modern classic for explaining that better than most religious films.