- The non-Christmas films are just as important as the festive favourites
- Somehow these films end up on television every Christmas
- Is John Candy the greatest non-Christmas Christmas film actor of all time?
Christmas movies are a law unto themselves. Throw enough snowcapped American city shots scored to Darlene Love and some fairy-lit pubs and bars with decorations that appear to have remained unchanged since 1974 – and people are going to give your film a repeat viewing at some point every December, regardless of quality.
Obviously, there are a selection of classics that take their rightful place in everybody’s festive line-up. Then there are those non-Christmas films that somehow have become just as big a set of staples as Kevin McAllister and Joe Pesci’s running battle, the misadventures of Buddy the Elf and the Griswold’s reindeer eggnog glasses.
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It’s difficult to define what it is exactly that evolves movies with little-to-no relation to the holiday season into titles that daren’t be ignored over Christmas. For every uplifting, family-friendly Disney musical, there’s a ’70s crime epic. For every bawdy ’80s comedy, there’s a comic book blockbuster. For every just-the-right-side-of-schmalzy romcom, there’s a sweeping, historic war epic.
Some of these films are perhaps Christmas adjacent because they are set in cities that have become synonymous with the season via pop culture (New York, Chicago). Some, admittedly, feature a scene or two set at Christmas, which is enough to render them appropriate December viewing without actually pigeonholing them as Christmas films.
Of course, sometimes a first viewing of a film takes place at Christmas and simply becomes a tradition based on the memories associated with it. Or the Dark Knight or Pulp Fiction just so happen to come on while you’re wrapping presents the night before Christmas Eve and they become synonymous with that routine forever more.
Whatever the reason, here is a selection of movies that may not revolve around eccentric Germans taking over Los Angeles skyscrapers or Tim Allen committing manslaughter on Santa Claus – but are still seminal festive watches.
14 of the Best Non-Christmas movies of All Time
Uncle Buck (1989)
I’m not sure if this is the case in the US, but here in the UK, in that mad week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, where no one seems to know what day it actually is, Uncle Buck is always on.
John Candy’s lovable, jobless, fedora-wearing uncle, paired with a just slightly pre-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin, is set against snow-strewn Chicago suburbs, so naturally draws A LOT of parallels with Home Alone, which would arrive a year later.
And while Uncle Buck may not have Joe Pesci muttering like Mutley as he has his head caved in with a paint can, it does give us SUV-sized pancakes, a clown being punched unconscious and Candy almost reducing a bully of a headteacher to tears by telling her to have a rat gnaw the wart off her face. This film should have won 10,000 Oscars.
The Godfather (1972)
OK, ok, ok. So there is technically a scene set at Christmas in Francis Ford Copolla’s 1972 mafia epic. When Michael discovers Don Corleone, his father, has been shot, he is in the giddy throes of Christmas shopping with his girlfriend Kay.
However, this blood-strewn, horse-decapitating, car-bombing Oscar winner is far from a feel-good festive fling. Yet the trilogy will always be resolutely scheduled into television schedules across Christmas, making it essential viewing on a pre-Christmas Sunday with a homemade ragu or lasagne accompaniment.
The Harry Potter series (2001-2011)
So J.K. Rowling may have publicly outed herself as a deplorable human being in recent years but Alan Rickman as Snape is always well worth a watch (Alan Rickman in anything is well worth a watch, to be honest).
What’s more, across eight big-budget, wizarding blockbusters, you get Gary Oldman, Robbie Coltrane, Helena Bonham-Carter, Maggie Smith, Brendan Gleeson, Emma Thompson, Fiona Shaw, Rhys Ifans and Ralph Fiennes all knocking it out of the park.
Possibly the most binged series of non-Christmas films of the season.
Mary Poppins (1964)
A golden-era Disney classic which has been passed down through generations. Musicals will forever be intrinsically linked with Christmas, whether the scores are about holly and ivy or massive, atrocious-sounding words that have just been made up on the spot.
Another British TV regular around this time of year, Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke’s best efforts (and an improbable cockney accent from big Dick) against the backdrop of 1910, pre-Great War London almost feel positively Dickensian.
It’s all chimney sweeps, cobbled streets and those street lamps that people had to light manually by hand. A big, warm hug of a film to enjoy with a box of chocolates the size of the Rockefeller tree.
The Sound of Music (1965)
Nazis, nuns, Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and songs about schnitzel and strudel. This is what Christmas is all about, isn’t it?
The Shining (1980)
Maybe it’s the snow. Maybe it’s Jack Nicholson slowly losing his mind and wanting to off absolutely everyone in sight… Either way, there is a lot going on in The Shining that can relate to Christmas.
Being stuck in a city centre, surrounded by slow-walking morons as you’re frantically trying to find a last-gasp bath bomb or a desperation pair of pyjamas that somehow cost almost an entire month’s rent. It’s enough to make you take an axe to the nearest door – but instead of doing that, just leave it to Jack.
Goodfellas (1990)
Again, another all-timer of an organised crime caper with a slight nod to Christmas across its multi-year storyline arc.
Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, fresh out of prison, treats Lorraine Bracco’s Karen to the biggest, fakest Christmas tree and an envelope full of cash as a main present as they live out all their cocaine dealing, wiseguy dreams as a lot of Henry’s friends and associates are murdered one-by-one on the orders of Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Conway.
A blast of The Ronettes and Bobby D greeting Henry and Karen with open arms as they enter the bar gives off the vibes of every actually good Christmas party you’ve ever had the fortune of attending. Appointment viewing every Christmas week.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
Perilously close to being an actual Christmas film. But not quite. Thanksgiving, in fact – but turkey is turkey, isn’t it?
John Candy continues to make his case for being the greatest non-Christmas film actor of all time (or begins his case, actually, as this was released two years prior to Uncle Buck) with a seminal turn as American Light and Fixture’s director of sales, shower curtain division, Del Griffith.
His odd couple pairing with the genius Steve Martin is one of the finest double acts in cinema history. Laughter and tears are generated in equal measure by the unlikely duo’s treacherous, multi-vehicle trek from New York to Chicago, which contains all the soul-swelling family feelings associated with this time of year.
Big coats and sweaters, too many family members gathered in one house, relentless traffic, cancelled flights, binge drinking liquors you would never normally touch. Festive hallmarks dripping from every pore of this classic.
Groundhog Day (1993)
A film dedicated to an entire day in February where a large rodent decides how long winter will last. However, there’s enough snow and small-town Americana romance between Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell to deliver the right amount of festive warmth.
Even if February is historically a short stretch of dark, ice-cold misery that feels more like the extension of January that absolutely nobody asked for, only with Valentine’s Day slapped in the middle.
Harold Ramis took all of that historic negativity and bundled it into an unlikely smash hit of the non-Christmas films genre.
The Great Escape (1963)
A Boxing Day (26 December for all of our American readers) tradition for decades in the UK. This HEAVILY fictionalised account of the mass escape by British Commonwealth prisoners from the German Stalag Luft III Prisoner of War camp may not seem like natural Christmas viewing but terrestrial TV schedulers in the ’70s and ’80s certainly thought otherwise and made the much beloved Steve McQueen WWII epic a staple of the season.
Several other historical wartime dramas have made their way into the British terrestrial calendars over the holidays across the last 40 years, such as Zulu, starring Michael Caine. However, The Great Escape is undoubtedly the one that is most synonymous with the season.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Snow? Check. New York? Check. Road trip to Chicago? Check. Nice cat? Check. Regretful drunken incidents? Check.
The Coen Brothers’ masterful black comedy about a week in the life of Oscar Isaac’s down-on-his-luck folk singer Llewyn Davis ticks off a whole heap of Christmas hallmarks without dropping a single bauble or glass of eggnog anywhere.
Also, the Gaslight Cafe looks like a grand place to get howling drunk over Christmas.
Paddington (2014)
Wholesome, immaculately cast British films set in London could be centred around Wimbledon, the Easter Bank Holiday Weekend or a murder mystery based on The Great British Bake Off and somehow, some way, they would find a way to become part of the furniture at Christmas.
In respect, Paddington is a colossal achievement in non-Christmas film history. My first two viewings of Paddington were in fact across consecutive Christmases, thanks to the BBC and now not a December goes by where the first two in the (now) trilogy don’t grace the television screens of my house and every single one of my in-laws.
Cool Runnings (1993)
Seriously, put John Candy amongst the snow and you’ve got yourselves the King of non-Christmas films. A storyline surrounding the real-life events of a Jamaican bobsled team thrown in for good measure? The man OWNS this genre.
Rocky I-IV (1976 – 1985)
Really, this final entry belongs to Rocky IV and the climactic Christmas Day battle against Communism in Moscow between Rocky and Ivan ‘If he dies, he dies’ Drago.
The Italian Stallion, bearded and jacked to the gills, lifting logs and hot-footing it across the Siberian mountains like a goddamn husky who got into a bag of Human Growth Hormones. This is post-Christmas dinner ‘crack open that bottle of expensive malt we bought Dad as a present’ territory. And while you’re watching IV, you may as well re-indulge yourselves in the first three too.
There are, obviously, plenty more non-Christmas films that could be added to this list, but everyone has their own personal favourites and perhaps personal reasons for having them that may not apply to the masses.
However, as for just north of a dozen to start off with, I’d say this bunch of non-Christmas films are among the best and deserve to grace all your screens this festive season – and every one after it.
