5. Christmas Day Isn’t Important
Think long and hard about this one, and you’ll probably find yourself as stumped as we do, but Christmas movies assign no actual importance to Christmas Day. That may seem like a ludicrous statement to make when there’s an entire genre just to facilitate festive entertainment, but it’s true. Almost every single Christmas movie concerns the lead-up to Christmas, and usually Christmas Eve/Christmas Night, but not the actual day of the 25th of December.
Christmas classics like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Jingle All the Way, Home Alone, and Elf all concern the build-up to Christmas rather than the day itself. The true Christmas spirit seems to be captured more in stories that concern the excitement leading to Christmas rather than the actual result, and in many ways, this is actually better. It helps to avoid creating unrealistic expectations about Christmas Day, even if it does put the focus on seasonal anticipation rather than on the day itself.
This weird trope sometimes spills over into idiocy, with people giving and receiving gifts on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. In Christmas movies, family gatherings happen on the 24th rather than the 25th, which just isn’t the way the majority of people celebrate the holiday. It’s a strange idea because it seems to misunderstand the holiday in a major way (although, admittedly, it’s still not as strange as the amount of Christmas movies that aren’t even about Christmas).