Christmas films and family: the festive gift that keeps on giving

Over the next fortnight, many of us will be feasting our eyes on some of the finest Christmas films available at our fingertips.

While we’re spoiled for choice, one person who’s watched more than most is author and historian Tom Christie, who has just completed the fourth and final volume of his book series on festive flicks and their enduring themes.

Early Christmas films

His deep dive begins with early productions like It’s A Wonderful Life from 1946, and 1947’s Miracle On 34th Street.

“If you go back to around 1945 to 1947, you get all of the key themes laid down,” he said. “Friendship, over-commercialisation, not forgetting the reason for the season, they’re reaffirmed, reinvented and subverted over time but people keep coming back to them.

“We live in such a divided, rarefied world now, where there are a lot of arguments, so it interests me that we still relate to those themes of community and people getting together, reaching beyond differences. Cynicism has never quite managed to douse that flame.”

© Everett/Shutterstock

Those themes continued through to the mid-1950s but as society and technology changed, so too did the festive movies consumed.

“There’s this school of thought within Hollywood that with 1954’s White Christmas, they’d reached peak Christmas,” Tom said. “There’s a period of wilderness with a whole range of weird and wonderful films – some of them really good and some just completely off the charts.”

The 1960s & 70s

The final volume of his book series, out now, focuses on the 1960s and 70s, a ‘Bermuda triangle’ era for Christmas movies.

There were still some noteworthy productions. The Silent Partner, a 1978 film Alfred Hitchcock apparently wished he’d made himself, is one of Tom’s favourites. But at the other end of the spectrum is what he says is the worst film he’s ever seen, 1972’s Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny.

Behind this bizarre, psychedelic film was Barry Mahon, whose wartime heroics partly inspired Steve McQueen’s character in The Great Escape. Once back in the US, he became Errol Flynn’s assistant and decided he wanted to get into film-making. After a friend’s Florida amusement park was put out of business by Disneyland’s arrival, they decided to make movies there.

Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny sees Father Christmas (minus reindeer) crash-landing in Florida and summoning kids to bring various animals to pull the sleigh. The fantasy then cuts to an adaptation of Thumbelina that lasts longer than the rest of the film before returning to Santa’s predicament.

“Absence of plot was a bit of an issue,” Tom laughed. “You go back to Santa and there’s this terrifying siren and in comes the Ice Cream Bunny on a fire truck.

“We don’t know why he’s called that – he doesn’t eat, sell or give away ice cream – but everybody seems to know who he is. The Bunny offers to take Santa back to the North Pole on the truck. It’s never entirely explained. There’s obviously no engine because you can see a guy pushing!”

© Julie Howden Photography

The period also brought some modest hits like slasher film Black Christmas (1974) which laid the groundwork for the likes of Friday The 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street and the Halloween series.

Come the 1980s, the likes of Santa Claus The Movie kick-started the genre again and forged a path for films such as Scrooged. Home Alone brought back themes of the celebration of the nuclear family in the 1990s, but films such as The Santa Clause and All I Want For Christmas also showed how the family dynamic was changing.

Hallmark and Scotland

With the advent of cable, and later streaming platforms, the explosion of content in the last two decades has brought countless more Christmas movies, including made-for-TV Hallmark specials.

“There’s only something like seven discrete Hallmark plots,” Tom said.

“Usually an executive comes out to a small rural area and falls in love with Christmas there. People know what to expect and can’t get enough. With all the different companies and channels out there, you’re looking at 100 new Christmas films every year.”

© Channel 5/Paramount

Many of these films now have Scotland as a setting, with Christmas centred on castles and ceilidhs where an American arrives and falls in love with the culture and a tartan-clad love interest.

Netflix hit A Castle For Christmas teamed up Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes in 2021, and there have also been 2023’s Christmas In Scotland, 2020’s Lost At Christmas and more.

“It’s interesting what the Americans think our Christmas is like,” Tom said.

“It’s Christmas by way of The Corries, Jimmy Shand and a bit of Burns, an interesting grab bag of Scottish culture as people abroad see it, as opposed to how we envisage it.

“Part of that is to do with Hogmanay being the central celebration up until the 70s and 80s, before that gradual shift into a more homogenised idea of Christmas.”

They don’t always get it right – one film calls a local delicacy a ‘Smokie Arbroathie’ – but Tom reckons the films have great value.

© Mark Mainz/Netflix/THA/Shutterstock

“Because all these wonderful things happen right under our noses, it’s quite easy to forget or neglect them,” he said.

“Sometimes it takes an overseas eye to spotlight them. Not only do these films encourage people to see Scotland themselves, it encourages us Scots perhaps to enjoy Christmas that little bit more too.”

What to watch this year?

If you’re not sitting down to watch Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny this year, Tom reckons new Netflix film Carry On, starring Taron Egerton as a blackmailed security guard on Christmas Eve, is a good choice.

© Netflix, Inc./Sam Lothridge

“It’s apparently due to supplant Die Hard as the big question of whether it’s a Christmas film or not. I think that may well be this year’s sleeper hit.

“I’d recommend everyone to go off the beaten track – there are so many weird and wonderful films out there to discover.”

---

A Seriously Groovy Movie Christmas: Festive Cinema Of The 1960s And 70s by Tom Christie is available from Extremis Publishing