Amazon Prime includes “Die Hard” among its holiday movie listings, thereby making it formally and legally canon that it’s a Christmas movie.

The argument over whether the 1988 Bruce Willis action-comedy “Die Hard” is or is not a Christmas movie has been a low-stakes parlor game for years.

I’m upping the stakes: It’s a goddamn Christmas movie and anyone that argues otherwise is wrong and a bad person that should be shunned by polite society.

And I make this absolutely deadly serious and not-at-all frivolous contention as a militant atheist who celebrates the holiday as much for its orgiastic ancient Roman Saturnalia and Yule roots as it being an orgy of unrestrained consumption set to “Jingle Bells” and some Levantine supernatural mythology from the early Early Roman/Classical Antiquity era that got out of control.

Let me lay out my case for “Die Hard” as a Christmas movie:

1. As noted in the caption above, Amazon Prime Video includes “Die Hard” on its carousel of holiday movies to stream. And whatever knee-bending oligarch Jeff Bezos says is law. It’s canon. We cannot dispute our feudal tech lords or our packages may take longer than 48 hours to arrive.
2. Christmas is integral to the film’s plot. Alan Rickman’s band of well-funded Eurotrash thieves needed the building to be almost empty of all but the principals of the L.A. branch of the Nakatomi Corp. They need them to all be in one place. The Christmas party accomplishes that. You’re not getting that at St. Patrick’s Day or even a Halloween party, which the critical top executives are not staying around long for. Employees attend Christmas parties on the thin hope there may be corporate announcements of bonuses or other perks (which were actually realistic in 1988). And there’s a big spread of free food and booze and apparently cocaine. It also was a big enough deal for the company to pay for John McClane’s flight and a limo ride. Not happening at Easter.
3. Christmas is at the end of the calendar year, meaning the Nakatomi Corp. appears to be getting its fiscal third-quarter financials wrapped up, which probably accounts for the presence of $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds in the company’s fancy vault.
4. You don’t get “Now I have a machine gun Ho Ho Ho” if the movie is set on July 4th. The “Ho Ho Ho” gives it the juice.
5. Without the Christmas setting, you also don’t get banger lines like Hans Gruber saying, “It’s Christmas, Theo. It’s the time of miracles. So be of good cheer and call me when you hit the last lock.”
6. John McLane needs the packing tape for the pistol hidden on his back. Sure, it could have been some mail room tape, but the “Seasons Greetings” packing tape adds that additional element of satire that helps make the film great. God, it is said, is in the details.
7. The utility guys and Deputy Chief of Police Dwayne Johnson don’t want to cut power to a whole grid of downtown Los Angeles on Christmas Eve.
8. The traditional Christmas songs work PERFECTLY in this movie and it’s hard to imagine a different soundtrack that creates such a funny and stark juxtaposition between a traditional happy time and violent criminals killing and blowing up much of an office tower in downtown Los Angeles. The contrast of the season of compassion, charity, and good cheer against the thievery, violence, death, and terror works best at Christmastime.
9. It’s a bit of a lazier point, but the film has also become a holiday classic because of the relentless inertia of time and nostalgia — it’s regularly aired throughout the Christmas season because of the film’s holiday aesthetic and tone and because it’s a tradition now. Inertia matters.
10. Miss Gennaro/Mrs. McClane’s first name is Holly.

And what’s the ultimate message of the film? The cop bound mostly to a desk because he accidentally shot a kid and cannot bear to draw his gun anymore gets his Christmas miracle: He’s able to once again kill someone with his service revolver. Nothing could be more of an American sentiment at Christmas than a cop finding it within himself to kill again.

Case closed.

So where does “Die Hard? fit among my favorite Christmas movies? I’m glad you didn’t ask. Here are my 2024 rankings:

1. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
2. Scrooged
3. A Christmas Carol (1984 George C. Scott version)
4. Badder Santa (unrated version of Bad Santa)
5. Die Hard
6. Office Christmas Party
7. Trading Places
8. A Bad Mom’s Christmas
9. 1941
10. Home Alone

The field: Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, Home Alone 2, Bad Santa 2, The Holdovers, A Muppet Christmas Carol, Why Him, Elf, Eyes Wide Shut, Gremlins, A Midnight Clear, Joyeux Noël, White Christmas, Lethal Weapon, The Ref, Krampus, Fat Man, Violent Night, Jingle All the Way, The Night Before, and the only part of “Love, Actually” that’s tolerable is at the end when Billy Mack tells his longtime manager Joe that he loves him and they get drunk and watch porn together. Also, fuck “A Christmas Story.” True Vacationheads loathe that dreck.

Anything not listed above, I didn’t see it or I didn’t like it. I didn’t include TV specials but one I want to mention that is dark as fuck and excellent is the 2019 three-part BBC/FX miniseries “A Christmas Carol” starring Guy Piece as Scrooge. Holy shit. I legit think it’s the one Dickens would most approve of. Not one for the kids.

In case you missed it, I laid out for you my favorite Christmas songs last month.

Merry Christmas, everybody, and yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers!

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