Merry Christmases: How Hollywood Treats Our Favorite Holiday

Christmas movies come in two kinds of flavors: There's the Zany Frantic Slapfest. And there's the Comforting Holiday Heart-Warmer. A simple rule of thumb to tell them apart: The former, like the newly released Four Christmases, appears in theaters. The latter, like the several hundred examples that will play on the Hallmark Channel, Lifetime, and ABC Family over the next month, go straight to cable. But just like Coca-Cola and Coke Zero, a long complex list of ingredients distinguishes them -- and as our holiday gift to you, we've documented them here.

  Zany Frantic Slapfest Comforting Holiday Heart-Warmer

Examples

Four Christmases

Four Christmases

also

Deck the Halls

Christmas with the Kranks

Surviving Christmas

Jingle All the Way

A Boyfriend for Christmas

A Boyfriend for Christmas

also

Christmas Do-Over

A Carol Christmas

Comfort and Joy

Moonlight and Mistletoe

Protagonist played by:

Ben Affleck

A-list movie star

Tori Spelling

Former B-list TV star

Artistic inspiration

Three Stooges

Three Stooges

It's a Wonderful Life

A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life

Major quest

Obtaining hard-to-find Christmas ham

Obtaining hard-to-find soul mate

Common thematic elements

Surviving Christmas with assault and battery

Yelling, screaming, comic assault and battery

Three Days

Moping, timetravel, mistaken identities

Characters who move the plot along Deck the Halls

Difficult siblings, scheming neighbors

A Boyfriend for Christmas

Magical angels, Santa

Signature image

Puking baby in Four Christmases

Puking baby

First kiss snowglobe

First kiss amidst gentle snowfall

Intended effect

Deck the Halls terrible Christmas photo

Make people trying to escape
their families on Christmas by going to the
multiplex realize their families aren't so bad

Romantic movie scene

Give hope to lonely singletons battling Xmas blues

Actual effect

Reese Witherspoon battling children

Makes movie critics seriously reconsider Reese Witherspoon's artistic integrity

Tom Arnold

Gives hope to neurotic sitcom actors' career blues



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