Hey everybody, I hope you have had a wonderful holiday season and are gearing up for a fantastic New Year! 

Since we just celebrated Christmas a few days ago and everyone has been in the mood to watch Christmas movies, I figured I would take a moment to write down some reasons why I feel Die Hard is absolutely, positively, without a doubt a Christmas movie.  The best Christmas movie ever, in my ever so humble opinion!

Let's start with a few simple facts:

• The entire movie takes place at a Christmas party, on Christmas Eve (What kind of bastard throws a work party on Christmas Eve?)
• There are Christmas trees, Christmas lights, and references to Christmas throughout the entire movie
• There are several Christmas songs on the soundtrack, including Christmas in Hollis, Ode to Joy, and Let it Snow, as well as an ominous Jingle Bells instrumental riff
• Theo the hacker quotes 'Twas the Night before Christmas in his warning that the feds are moving in -- ok, he doesn't QUOTE it so much as PARAPHRASE it.  I don't believe the original poem included the line "four a-holes coming in the rear in standard two-by-two cover formation."
• When Theo doubts being able to get all 7 locks open, Hans Gruber asks him to believe in "Christmas miracles."
• The last quote of the movie is Argyle the limo driver saying, "If this is their idea of Christmas, I gotta be here for New Year's!"

Now let's take a look at some of the arguments people bring up for why they think Die Hard is NOT a Christmas movie.

I've seen this strange one lately - "It's not a Christmas movie, it's an action movie set around Christmas time."

Huh??  Yeah, if it's set around Christmas time, that makes it a Christmas movie!  Are you going to argue that Halloween is just a "horror movie set around Halloween time?"  Or that Leprechaun 6: Back 2 Tha Hood is just "a dark comedy set around St. Patrick's Day?"  Of course not!  Those are, respectively, Halloween and St. Paddy's Day staples!!

I guess The Charlie Brown Christmas special is just an animated short set around Christmas time?

Or, hey, did you know that Die Hard was released in July?  Therefore it CAN'T be a Christmas movie, right?  RIGHT??

Hmmm, interesting, yeah.  Well, did you also know that Miracle on 34th Street was also released in July?  Who among us is going to question THAT one as a Christmas movie classic?  Christmas in Connecticut was released in August.  Holiday Inn was released in September.

Why anyone would argue that a movie's release date affects the setting or era of the actual film itself boggles my mind.  I mean, Pearl Harbor, a movie specifically about the events of December 7, was released in May.  The Racquel Welch movie, One Million Years BC, was actually released in 1966... AD.  And all of the Star Wars movies, despite their opening crawls, were filmed and released neither long ago, NOR in a galaxy far, far away.

But, but... Santa is not in Die Hard!  There are no reindeer!  No elves!  There have to be those things to make it a Christmas movie!

Let's see... Do any of the following have any of those sacred movie elements?  It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol (ANY of the millions of versions), Love Actually, The Holiday, The Preacher's Wife, Remember the Coopers, and so on and so on.

Heck, even White Christmas doesn't have any of those things, and that tells you it's a Christmas movie right in the title!  No Santa or reindeer, just two stick thin women singing the same song about sisters sixty-four times.

Also, there is a Santa HAT in Die Hard - John McClane puts it on the dead terrorist with the "Ho-Ho-Ho Now I have a machine gun" sweatshirt.  Does that count?

Oh yeah?  Christmas is a time for love and peace!  No true Christmas movie would have so much violence!

Krampus, Black Christmas, Violent Night, Santa's Slay, just to name a few...

Oh, and let's not forget Home Alone, and especially Home Alone 2, where the violent things Kevin McCallister did to those two bandits would have killed them a dozen times in real life.

Time to bring out the closing arguments - Bruce Willis and John McTiernan have said, on record, Die Hard is NOT a Christmas movie!!!!

Wow, that is a great point.  The main star and director of the film itself HAVE said in interviews that they do not think Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

However...

It's important to note that movie stars and directors are not infallible and quite frequently make inaccurate statements, whether through being ignorant, duplicitous, or flat out wrong.

I seem to recall Paul Verhoeven saying in interviews that Showgirls was "a good movie."  And that, to this day, John Travolta insists his movie Battlefield Earth was "a beautiful film."

And Bruce Willis is certainly not free from mistakes... Anybody remember Hudson Hawk?

So what say you?  Sound off in the comments below!  Do YOU think Die Hard is a Christmas movie, or not?  What makes you feel that way?

And if you're really inspired, tell me whether you agree that Die Hard 2: Die Harder is ALSO a Christmas movie!

If you like my writing, please consider tipping me here and leaving a comment, and if you want to read even more, check out my books on Amazon!  The first one is called Learn Me Good, and it's all about rookie teacher Jack Woodson who goes through a baptism of fire after leaving his engineering job and teaching a rowdy group of third graders.