Is Die Hard A Christmas Movie?

Right up there with how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll tootsie pop (between 144 and 1000 according to science, three per the wise ol' owl), the longest running, most divisive debate in the American culture is: Die Hard — Christmas movie or not?

Easy answer: Of course it's a Christmas movie! Debate solved, we return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Look, stripped of the filigree, Die Hard is just How The Grinch Stole Christmas, only instead of the Grinch returning all the presents to the Who's down in Whoville, John McClane throws Hans Gruber off the Nakatomi Tower. What could be more Christmas than that? Because, you know, where three are gathered together for the holidays, somebody's gonna wanna throw somebody else off a really tall building.

Although to tell you the truth, for all its violence, Die Hard is more joyful than most Christmas tales, and if there's a good argument against it being a Christmas movie, that's it.

Christmas, more than any other holiday, tends toward the melancholy and bittersweet. Every version of a Christmas Carol centers on that consummate bastard Scrooge, It's a Wonderful Life is about suicide and despair, Miracle on 34th Street puts Santa Claus on trial for lunacy, Charlie Brown is depressed, Rudolph is ostracized, and the Grinch is, well, the very definition of a grinch.

Even the pure comedies involve a lot of angst: will Barbara Stanwyck lose her job, will Buddy the Elf find his dad, will Ralphie Parker shoot his eye out?

But then what can you expect when the original Christmas story is about a virgin who gives birth in a barn? We're dealing with a lot of [stuff], man!

My point, though, is that uh is that ... is that actually I don't know what my point is. I climbed aboard this train of thought without a ticket and no clear destination in mind and now I'm parked on a siding with no idea where I am or how I got here. Well, it's not the first time and it surely won't be the last. (And don't call me Shirley!)

And now the dog is whining at me so I'll wrap this up by saying that wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I hope you're safe and warm and with the people you love. And now I've got to take the dog out or I'm going to have a bigger problem than Christmas on my hands.

A merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

(Fun fact: Reginald VelJohnson who played John McClane's cop buddy Sgt. Al Powell in Die Hard plays the Ghost of Christmas Future in my favorite Hallmark Christmas movie, the completely bonkers Ghosts of Christmas Always, about three ghosts who successfully scrooge some poor schmuck only to discover they scrooged the wrong guy. If you haven't seen it, check it out.)