Five Christmas films to revel in

Haunting, salving, teary, side-splitting and glorious - our recommended festive films.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

Muppet characters dressed as Dickensian characters stand in a snowy street.

'Dickens made the fatal error of not putting Muppets into his story.'

‘Tis the season to be jolly and watching a good film with a cup of tea and a biscuit, while the freezing wind and rain whip at the window, can be one of the jolliest things you can do this year. The genre of ‘Christmas’ has only grown and grown over the decades, so if you’re stumped by the myriad of choices – often dreadful schlock that feature the word ‘Prince’ and ‘Christmas’ in the title superimposed over a picture of two ludicrously attractive people staring lovingly into each other’s eyes in a blizzard – take comfort in my Top 5 Christmas films.

Note – this is my top 5. My personal top 5. These are not the ‘best’ Christmas films. You will not find It’s a Wonderful Life on here. It is glorious and lovely, but I saw it too late in life, and just don’t emotionally resonate with it as much as other Christmas films. I will not apologise. You will not see Die Hard. It is indeed and iconic action film, with a superb Alan Rickman performance, and it is indeed set at a Christmas party…but that isn’t enough to make it a ‘Christmas film’. I WILL NOT APOLOGISE!

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas

An animated scene shows a grandmother readng a story to children on her lap in front of a fire.

I would have put this film higher up the list if not for the fact that it straddles two seasons – All Hollows and Christmas. This film is iconic, however. The stop-motion animation gives the whole affair an extra haunting air. The music is superb – I still find myself humming What’s This every few weeks. The story is unhinged (what else do you expect from Tim Burton?) but to just the right degree, and behind the ghoulish setting and mad-cap story there is a good old-fashioned moral-of-the-story for children and adults alike to enjoy. Nightmare is a marvellous reminder of what it means to have the Christmas spirit, and the great thing about it is that it’s a film you can enjoy any time from October 31st!

4. Bad Santa

A dishevelled looking Santa, without a beard, stares to the side.

Billy Bob Thornton is mesmerising as an ‘eating, drinking, sh***ing, f***ing Santa Claus’. This is not one for the kids! Thornton’s Willie T. Soke is a professional thief who, with his dwarf assistant, get jobs as a grotto Santa and Elf in shopping malls during the festive season so as to case the place and rob it…but this time is different. Soake’s degeneracy has become a serious liability, and his instability and vulgar sexual exploits catch the attention of John Ritter’s mall manager and Bernie Mac’s security chief. Soake is spiralling out of control, but perhaps a romantic relationship with Lauren Graham’s barmaid and a chance encounter with a vulnerable young boy (to whom Soake becomes the least appropriate father-figure) might just be his salvation, and teach him the spirit of Christmas. The script is jet-black funny, and all the performances are spot on – although this is entirely Thornton’s film to shine in. Lewd, rude, and crude, but with a heart of gold (deep down under all the effing and jeffing), this film is the perfect antidote for those who find the jollity of the festive season a little twee.

3. The Holiday

A couple, wrapped up in winter clothes, flirt with each other.

This film has Jude Law in it. This ought to be enough to commend it to you, but I’ll go further. This film has Jude Law playing a jumper-wearing widowed single-dad, who can turn the humble napkin into a delightful children’s entertainment, and who gives smouldering glances across a crowded pub. Before you all rush out to watch it, let me finish the blurb. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslett are two women, unlucky in love, who decide to swap homes for the Christmas holiday. Winslett is escaping a toxic infatuation and finds solace in a friendship with a nonagenarian scriptwriter from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and a possible romance with Jack Black (giving a genuinely restrained and enjoyable performance). Workaholic Diaz is desperate to learn how to switch-off, relax, and maybe give love a chance. She finds solace in…Jude Law’s many lovely jumpers and smouldering glances. This is not a film to be described but experienced. Its camp and frothy and silly, but its also just really lovely and gets the tears going every time. If my recommendation isn’t enough, listen to my wife – watch this film over Christmas!

2. The Muppet Christmas Carol

Kermit, a frog talks to rats dressed as Victorian children.

It’s a well-known fact that you can’t improve upon the indominable prose of Charles Dickens…WRONG! Dickens made the fatal error of not putting Muppets into his story. Rizzo and Gonzo take on the role of narrators of the story, Kermit does a sparkling turn as Bob Cratchit, and Michael Cain stars as the best on screen iteration of Scrooge (go on, fight me on this!). It’s the well-worn story brought to life by glorious songs – every year I start to sing “Tis the season to be jolly and joyous” to myself – a side-splitting script, and a clear and tender reverence for the original story and its central message. I defy anyone, child or adult, to sit through to the end this wonderful film and not want to keep Christmas in their heart every day. If you don’t like this film then I can only guess that you’ll be visited by ‘Marley and Marley, WOOOOOOOOOOA’!

1. Love Actually

Richard Curtis is my favourite director. Every film of his, however flawed (and there a several flaws in Love Actually), is so warm-hearted and good-natured that I can’t help but love them. Love Actually is Curtis firing on all cylinder: a painfully funny script, an ensemble cast of Britain’s finest talent, and a score that plays your emotions like a fiddle. A series of interconnecting love stories – love found, love lost, unrequited love, misdirected love – playing out in the run-up to Christmas, this film will not fail to put a tear in your eye and smile on your face. At times it’s a little too ‘laddy’ – I’m looking at you American sexcapade storyline – and the fact that all these people live in gorgeous houses in Wandsworth in spite of doing no discernible work is infuriating, but the fact that it is number one on this list in spirt of this is mark of just how strong a film it is. The cast list alone puts it at the top: Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson popping in for a bit…EMMA THOMPSON! The raw power of Emma Thompson quietly weeping as she listens to Joni Mitchell and contemplates the implosion of her marriage is stunning to behold. At its heart, it is a simple Richard Curtis film; it wants the viewer to relax in the beautiful spectacle of love, and to know that they are loved. I love Love Actually, and Love Actually loves me.

EMMA THOMPSON!

Podcast

Culture

S&U interviews

14 October 2023

4 min read

My conversation with... Molly Worthen

Belle TIndall is fascinated by the intellectual fascination that drove Molly Worthen’s inquiry into faith.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

A woman seated at a table gestures with both hands while talking

Can you think your way into Christianity?

Can your mind lead the way into something that transcends understanding?

Is it possible to ‘fake it until you make it’ when it comes to belief in God?

These are the questions that hold our conversation with Molly Worthen together. Molly, for those of you who aren’t yet acquainted with her work, is a journalist and associate professor of American history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For the past decade, her intellectual sweet spot has been the religious and intellectual history of North America. Flowing from her fascinating research are books such as Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism, as well as pieces for the New York Times, The Atlantic and The New Yorker.

Intellectual fascination was her gateway into faith. She used homework, deadlines, schedules and challenges as tools with which she worked out and fine-tuned her beliefs.

In this episode of Re-Enchanting, Molly very generously walks us through her own story; from a child who would cover her ears when being read Bible stories, to a young adult who could relish the oddity of religious experience from a distance, to a journalist investigating various Christian communities, to a baptised Christian attending a mega-church. It’s quite the journey, but I shall leave it to Molly to unpack the full story, seen as she tells it with the vigour and detail of a historian.

I find Molly’s story captivating for many reasons, the primary one being that her intellectual fascination was her gateway into faith. She used homework, deadlines, schedules and challenges as tools with which she worked out and fine-tuned her beliefs. She says herself, ‘I needed to process to be rigorous’. How interesting is that?

Reflecting on the conversation that Justin and I had with Molly, I realise that there are three, rather distinct and yet wholly common, misconceptions about faith that she shatters. I don’t think that she was intending to, I’m not even sure that she was aware that she was doing it. But her fascinating crossing from agnostic to Christian has some interesting philosophical by-products.

She asserted that she didn’t want to ‘convert out of cowardice’ nor was she interested in succumbing to ‘a bribe’.

Firstly, the focused methodology with which Molly approached theism in general, and Christianity in particular, simply dispels the notion that a belief in God must render logic and reason redundant. On the contrary, Molly took step after considered step into her new-found set of Christian beliefs. Her story is one of measured assurance, of ‘not being 99.9 per cent’, but being ‘far north of 51 per cent’.

Secondly, Molly challenges the assumption that faith is sought out as a method of opting-out of the harshest parts of reality. That it’s held as some kind of cosmic ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card – the ‘jail’ being whatever un-graspable, un-controllable, un-bearable aspect of reality sits most heavily upon us. There’s a common notion that religious people have found a coping mechanism, that they’ve institutionalised their denial and spiritualised their escapism. I’ve often found that notion an interesting one, mostly because I wish that it were true. But it doesn’t quite work that way. Believing in an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-loving God does not mean that one can avoid looking directly at suffering, pretend that it isn’t there, or that it somehow doesn’t ultimately matter. On the contrary, it often requires one to look at it, and wrestle with it, for longer. Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan’s masterful Faith, Hope and Carnage is an ode to a belief system that resides in the midst of Nick Cave’s pain, as opposed to pulling him out of it. Molly, perhaps from all of her years of research, seemed to know this. She asserted that she didn’t want to ‘convert out of cowardice’ nor was she interested in succumbing to ‘a bribe’. Surely you are convinced by now that Molly Worthen is about as fascinating as it gets?

And finally, it was interesting to hear Molly speak of the choices, both micro and macro, that have led her to where she now finds herself. After all, faith is a choice. It reminds me of the philosopher, William James, who proposed that there are certain beliefs that can’t be evidenced until they are believed. For example, you cannot determine whether a chair will hold your weight until you sit on it believing (at least to a reasonable extent) that it can. This is partly (but profoundly) true of God; while one can ponder the empirical evidence for the existence of God for a lifetime, it is often the case that experiential evidence for God is available once you believe it. This doesn’t mean that belief must be a wholly blind choice, that would only negate my first point, but it is a choice. Again, Molly wonderfully encapsulated the tension of this notion in recalling that,

“what was really preventing me from engaging with this evidence is my own commitment to materialism and my own deep epistemological groove. But if I’m willing to suspend that, what happens?... You can walk right up to it and get to the point where you’re still faced with a leap of faith, but it’s no longer a ten-mile leap into the dark, it’s a leap based on a pretty reasonable body of evidence. And it turns out that to reject that leap is itself and act of faith.”

This episode of Re-Enchanting is a personal, and therefore profoundly interesting, one. We speak to Molly, not of how her field of work has been re-enchanted by the mystery and wonder of the Christian story, but how she has. And that makes this episode incredibly worth your time.