Added by Joreth on 6 Dec 2020 04:58

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Winter Holiday Marathons

I'm not a fan of Christmas movies. I'm not a fan of Christmas, come to think of it. I find most of the holiday media trite and overplayed, and a shockingly large percentage of it with horrible messages wrapped in glurge. I'd just as soon as not, thanks. To keep from becoming a total crank during the winter holiday season, I have put together a list of Christmas-adjacent movies that range from "I don't hate it" to "love this movie!". Since they don't make movies for all the other winter holidays that are celebrated this time of year, including my own.

"Christmas-adjacent" means a movie that isn't a traditional Christmas story. My personal definition of "Christmas-adjacent" means that Christmas has to feature or be an important element in the story, but the plot isn't about a classic Christmas moral, or even necessarily about Christmas itself. It could be an action or horror film that takes place on Christmas, or it could be a snarky or grumpy-about-Christmas movie or it could be some other sort of non-traditional take on things. And, yes, it could even be something pretty solidly "Christmas" but with a new spin on it.

Trying to host online movie marathons, however, required me to group movies together 2 or 3 at a time. Not all of my favorite winter movies on my list grouped well together, so I needed to add a few more to fill out a theme. So here are my suggestions for the ultimate non-overplayed Christmas marathons:

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Christmas Musicals

Classic musicals about Christmas.

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Superhero

Superhero films that take place on or around Christmas or are about Christmas.

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Bah Humbug!

Remakes or retellings of A Christmas Carol featuring the Scrooge character.

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Black Comedy

Black comedies about Christmas, with dark humor.

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Christmas Action

Standard action movies set on or about Christmas. To make it a trilogy, cut out Die Harder, but you might want to skip Long Kiss Goodnight if you saw it in another marathon.

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Family Christmas

My personal favorite nostalgic family-friendly Christmas movies

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Christmas Horror

Horror movies about or on Christmas, with some gore and "supernatural" elements (yes, cryptids count as "supernatural").

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Mystical Christmas

Movies with a mystical or "otherworldly" element. For a trilogy, cut out Nightmare Before Christmas for being either a Halloween movie or if you've seen it in one of the many many many other showings of this movie at this time of year.

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Red Leather Action Hero Santa

This was originally a Kurt Russell double feature, but then Violent Night came out and it didn't fit any other category, nor were there any other similar movies that I wanted to put with it. CC is definitely a family series and VN is definitely for adults but they both feature a Santa in red leather that is more of a contemporary action figure than the typical jolly fat man. They are all definitely "action" films (for their respective target audiences), but unlike the Action Christmas category, the protagonist is the supernatural character of Santa, not a regular action film that just takes place on Christmas. And they might have supernatural characters and "action", but they don't fit the "horror" category either because "horror" is distinct from "action". So until a CC3 comes out, or until I find more Die Hard But With Santa type movies that I like, I'll put them together for now.