Christmas Movies That Have Aged Terribly

While Halloween has its share of horror movies and Valentine's Day is always accompanied by a rom-com or two, Christmas blows the competition out of the water when it comes to movies tied to specific holidays. It's a genre unto itself — between made-for-TV specials, streaming originals, and the annual slew of big-screen heartwarmers, there are dozens of Christmas movies every year. Some of them are even pretty good and wind up becoming traditions in their own right, something to watch over a cup of hot chocolate while you're decorating the tree.

But while some Christmas classics get better every time you watch them and bring their own little brand of holly jolly nostalgia, there are others that just don't hold up. These are the ones with the flaws that only get magnified over time, from dubious messages and weird ideas about what kids like about Santa to some truly regrettable choices in subject matter. Here's a not-so-fond look back at some Christmas movies that have aged terribly.

Since its release in 1994, The Santa Clause has become a holiday staple, and it's easy to see why. Former cocaine dealer Tim Allen stars as Scott Calvin, a businessman who accidentally kills Santa Claus and then has to take over for him when he finds himself wrapped up in every child's favorite thing, the magical, whimsical world of contract law.

Not only is this another movie that opens with Santa Claus dying — something that a lot of movie executives seem to think kids really want to see — it adds a whole layer of legal wrangling that, in retrospect, seems downright demonic. This is a movie based around the idea that the identity of Santa Claus is passed down through the generations when someone murders (or in Scott's case, manslaughters) the existing Santa. If that wasn't enough, fulfilling the role of Santa is an irresistible magical compulsion that requires you to completely abandon your life in order to serve at the bidding of this endless legacy of death and contractual obligations. 

There's even a body horror element to it, where becoming Santa robs you even of your own physical autonomy, twisting you into the form it has chosen. It gets even worse in the sequels: You find out that the magical contract also comes with a forced marriage, and that you have to defend your right to be Santa against challengers who want your power for their own which — and this cannot be stressed enough — they could always get just by killing you and putting on your jacket. The Santa Clause is a movie in which just being a cheerful gift-giver is a curse. 

In case you've missed out on the ongoing discourse about Love Actually, the short version is that by juggling nine different plots, it becomes a sort of Christmasy chimera that whiplashes its viewers back and forth between stories with very different tones. Weirdly enough, the best are probably the ones that skew pretty far from traditional Christmas themes. There's John and Judy (Martin Freeman and Joanna Page), who fall for each other while working as stand-ins for a movie's sex scene, chatting casually while robotically dry-humping in the nude while production assistants try to get the lighting right; David and Natalie (Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon), a new Prime Minster who nearly causes an international incident when he falls for a newly hired member of his staff; and Daniel and Sam (Liam Neeson and Thomas Sangster), a grieving father who encourages his son to learn drums to impress a classmate, who would herself go on to be the voice of Marceline the Vampire Queen. 

And then there are the other plots. Billy Mack learning about True Friendship could've been cliché, but ends up being genuinely emotional. Harry and Karen's story of office infidelity is uniquely heartbreaking. Colin's trip to America is... well, not exactly sweet, but probably as charming as a story about having an orgy in a Christmas movie could possibly be. The real trouble comes from what is likely meant to to be the movie's most romantic storyline: Juliet, Peter, and Mark.

The idea of Mark (played by Andrew Lincoln, who would go on to bring a similar vibe of on-the-edge desperation to his role as Rick on The Walking Dead) confessing his feelings and promising to love Juliet (Keira Knightley) from afar probably seemed like it would come off as romantically chivalrous. The further away we get from the film, though, the more the idea of this handsome incel pining over his best friend's wife and arranging a secret, stalkerish confession that involves a photograph of a dead body seems creepy as hell. And that's before you get to the weird, smiling betrayal of Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who deserves better) placing his implicit trust in a "best friend" who can't even shoot  a wedding video without turning it into a series of creepshots. 

The original Miracle on 34th Street has been in the Christmas Movie Hall of Fame since its release, right up there with A Christmas Story and It's a Wonderful Life. The story's message of belief in the best of people, undoubtedly inspired by the "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus" letter, is still resonant today, and Edmund Gwenn set the standard for playing Santa Claus that's rarely been equaled since. It even has an ending so cleverly constructed that it still holds up over 70 years later.

The 1994 remake is... fine. It's not bad by any means; Richard Attenborough makes a fantastic Santa, and Mara Wilson is legitimately in the running for the best child actor of all time, so at the very least, it has that going for it. It's perfectly charming in its own right, but it's a pretty direct remake, so once the novelty of having a "new" version of the story wears off, there's really no reason to go back to it in favor of the 1947 version. When Macy's, which had literally filed for bankruptcy two years earlier, turns down the opportunity for a movie-length advertisement because they feel like the original "could not be improved upon," you know you're probably on the wrong track.

There is one change, but in this case, it actually makes the movie worse. Unlike the original resolution of having the post office deliver letters to Kris Kringle, thereby taking his identity out of the court's jurisdiction and allowing the trial to believably end without having the judge confirm or deny the existence of Santa Claus, the remake takes a different path. This time, the judge is inspired by the words "In God We Trust" on a dollar bill, and rules that faith and belief are core values of the United States of America, and therefore this guy might be Santa, which is Pascal's Wager applied to Santa Claus. Again, it's fine, but it's also the kind of awkward, quasi-religious reasoning that you'd expect to be delivered by a smarmy Kirk Cameron.

Saying that Jingle All the Way hasn't aged well might imply that it was actually well-received at the time, but that's not really the case. It was heavily panned by critics, owing to its wildly uneven tone and a weird mixture of cynical satire and cartoonish slapstick. Still, while some Christmas oddities become cult favorites — Santa Claus Conquers the Martians rules, actually, especially if you watch it with friends — the years have not been kind to Jingle All the Way.

The first big blow to the movie's reputation came immediately after its release. The entire plot of the film revolves around Howard Langston, a suburban dad and mattress salesman who is suspiciously built like an Austrian bodybuilder, trying to get his hands on the year's hottest toy: an action figure of Turbo Man, every child's favorite superhero! Since the film was released the same year that fistfights were breaking out over Tickle Me Elmo dolls, it seems like this would be a subject that was perfectly suited for satire. The problem was that 20th Century Fox actually released a Turbo Man doll that retailed for $25, rushed into production while the movie was being filmed, and released it alongside an 89-minute movie about how much everyone wanted a Turbo-Man doll. 

Beyond the doll, though, the movie's jokes just don't land — and these days, the use of a bomb threat for comedy goes over about as well as you'd expect.

Before we go any further, we need to settle one thing: we all agree that "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer," the inescapable novelty song, is about a murder, right? Like, we all know that Grandpa definitely killed Grandma on Christmas Eve because he's been having an affair with Cousin Mel and the entire family has decided to cover it up by telling the children that she must've been an unwitting victim of Santa Claus? Okay, good, we're all on the same page. 

With that in mind, the very idea of adapting Elmo & Patsy's only hit single into an animated Christmas special for the whole family is ludicrous, but the way that Phil Roman decided to go about it was even weirder than you expect. In an attempt to include every piece of plot hinted at in the song — including the murder part — it's reimagined as every kid's favorite kind of story. That's right, everyone: it's about corporate takeovers and lucrative franchising opportunities! 

The animated version categorizes Grandma as the owner of a general store who is betrayed by Cousin Mel, who wants to sell the shop for a profit to a larger corporation. Grandma then gets literally run over by Santa Claus and gets amnesia, and is missing for nine months while she's recuperating at the North Pole because Santa Claus, who makes a list, checks it twice, sees you when you're sleeping, etc., has no idea who she is. Eventually Santa gets arrested for kidnapping, but it turns out Mel poisoned Grandma's fruitcake, and the corporation winds up working with Grandma to franchise her stores. For the kids!

We could probably deal with Santa being brought to trial for a federal crime, but a massive corporation turning out to actually be good is a little bit too far for these days.

In Home Alone, Kevin McCallister is simply left... well, home alone. His parents rush out and forget that he's sleeping upstairs.  

In Home Alone 2, Kevin accidentally boards a flight heading in the opposite direction of his parents, leaving him in New York while they're in Florida. Watching the sequel now, with a 21st century adult's view of what it's like to go through an airport, this becomes a good deal harder to believe. Kevin's family checks in at the curb when they get to the airport, then rush through the place to get to their gate, never once slowed down by a long TSA line or even a pre-check line. Kevin gets separated, and follows a guy who looks like his Dad from the back to the wrong gate. That part works, but then Kevin runs into an airline employee and knocks his boarding pass into the air while begging to be let on the plane his "Dad" just boarded. Another airline employee then just takes Kevin's word that his boarding pass is in the pile, and they put him on the plane. Rather than going to directly talk to "Dad," Kevin just grabs an empty seat, then puts on headphones to drown out any chance of him learning he's on the wrong plane. 

Basically, it was much easier to just hop on a flight in 1992, and that makes Home Alone 2 a bit less believable now.

It's important to accept that most Christmas movies take place in a kind of heightened reality that makes people do somewhat over-the-top things for the sake of the holiday season. If you accept that, you'll have a much easier time digesting many Christmas movies, but there are some that still strain our ability to play along. Surviving Christmas is one of those movies, and it just gets worse with time.

The film follows an advertising executive who, desperate to connect with someone for Christmas, goes to his childhood home and pays the family living there a vast sum of money to pretend to be his family for the holidays. They agree, and mayhem ensues. 

There are a lot of little twists and turns in the resulting story, but it all boils down to this: Drew, the protagonist, had a rough childhood that he doesn't like to talk about, and he'd rather cover it up with money than really confront it. He covers it up with so much money, in fact, that he even pays the family extra to host a dinner for his girlfriend in which they pretend to be his relatives. The whole point of this is that he learns an important lesson about family at the end, but the point also seems to be "If you have unlimited money, you can do whatever you want." At a time when things like income inequality and economic strife are frequently discussed, it's not a message that plays well.