"Die Hard is a Christmas movie. That once-contrarian categorization has increasingly been accepted over the past couple of decades, at least since an editor with whom I've often worked first declared it in a Slate roundup. As a result, John McTiernan's sturdy piece of one-building eighties Hollywood action may have displaced It's a Wonderful Life as a holiday home-video tradition in certain households."
"These selections come from a variety of genres, including the superhero picture: if you haven't seen Batman Returns in a few decades, you may have forgotten how thoroughly Tim Burton saturates it with Christmas imagery, albeit of a kind suited to the dank, menacing Gotham City. Those who want to crank up the darkness further still would do well to put on the Canadian sorority-house slasher film Black Christmas, which also appears on more than one of these lists."
Die Hard's classification as a Christmas movie has become increasingly accepted over the past decades and has influenced seasonal viewing habits. John McTiernan's one-building 1980s action film now competes with traditional holiday staples as a home-video tradition in some households. That acceptance has encouraged appetite for alternative and subversive holiday films beyond the established canon. Curated top-ten lists present selections across genres, including superhero fare and horror, highlighting examples such as Batman Returns and Black Christmas. The trend includes comedies and dystopian auteur projects that overlay Christmas imagery onto darker tonal registers.
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