Christmas in popular culture


themes have long been an inspiration to artists and writers. A prominent aspect of Christian media, the topic first appeared in literature and in music. Filmmakers have picked up on this wealth of material, with both adaptations of Christmas novels, in the forms of Christmas films, Santa Claus films, and Christmas television specials.
It also includes animation, comics, and children's books, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and Frosty the Snowman.

Films

Many Christmas stories have been adapted to movies and TV specials, and have been broadcast and repeated many times on TV. Since the popularization of home video in the 1980s, their many editions are sold and re-sold every year during the holiday shopping season. Notable examples are the many versions of the ballet The Nutcracker, the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life, and the similarly themed versions of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, in which the elderly miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by ghosts and learns the errors of his ways. By contrast, the hero of the former, George Bailey, is a businessman who sacrificed his dreams to help his community. On Christmas Eve, a guardian angel finds him in despair and prevents him from committing suicide, by supernaturally showing him how much he meant to the world around him.
A few films based on fictionalized versions of true stories have become Christmas specials themselves. The story behind the Christmas carol "Silent Night" and the story of "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" are two examples.
Films revolving around the Nativity story of Christmas are regularly produced such as The Nativity Story, The Star, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. Sometimes, family films and classics boasting special effects and/or uplifting messages, but having no real relation to Christmas, are telecast during the season as part of the holiday programming. The Wizard of Oz, for instance, was always telecast during the Christmas season between 1959 and 1962. The action film Die Hard is seen by some as a Christmas film, as it takes place on the holiday, and is often viewed during the season, although whether or not Die Hard should be considered a Christmas film has been debated due to its story not being about the holiday itself. Others in this category include Iron Man 3, Lethal Weapon, Batman Returns, Eyes Wide Shut, Female Trouble, Shazam! and Doctor Zhivago.
In the United Kingdom, during the 2000s ITV usually showed a James Bond and/or a Harry Potter film during the Christmas Holidays whilst the BBC showed the Chronicles of Narnia and/or High School Musical films. And for many years Channel 5 have shown American/Canadian made-for-TV Christmas films during the weeks before Christmas.
In North America, the holiday movie season often includes release of studios' most prestigious pictures, in an effort both to capture holiday crowds and to position themselves for Oscar consideration. Next to summer, this is the second-most lucrative season for the industry. In fact, a few films each year open on the actual Christmas Day holiday. Christmas movies generally open no later than Thanksgiving, as their themes are not so popular once the season is over. Likewise, the home video release of these films is typically delayed until the beginning of the next year's Christmas season.
American Christmas-themed films are also broadcast on the Hallmark Channel and its companion channel Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, which during the holiday season generally feature new films along with reruns of favorites from prior years. Actresses Candace Cameron Bure, Lacey Chabert, and Danica McKellar, along with actor Niall Matter, are frequently featured in lead or major roles. The films themselves generally feature a similar theme of a person who has "lost the Christmas spirit" and through "Christmas magic" regains it. Another theme plays on the "big city-small town" dynamic, whereby a lead character has either left a small hometown for the big city, or a big city person has to go to a small town, in either case deciding that the small town is where they should remain. A main character will also have a Christmas-sounding name and/or the small town will.
The settings are usually in the northern United States, or in a mountain area, where snow are used as a backdrop for the film.
As of 2020 The Grinch is the highest grossing Christmas film of all time. Green Book was the last movie with a Christmas setting to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Television specials and episodes

Before 1962, when Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol premiered, true Christmas specials made for TV were either adaptations of stories such as A Christmas Carol, or the Nativity Story, or episodes of variety shows highlighting Christmas music. They were often hosted by such celebrities as Perry Como, Jane Wyatt, or Florence Henderson.
This all changed once variety shows began dying out in the late 1980s and Rankin-Bass began producing more and more Christmas specials.
One notable television special usually seen at Christmas was Amahl and the Night Visitors, commissioned by NBC and telecast annually in the U.S. from 1951 to 1966. It was the first opera written especially for television. Composed by Gian-Carlo Menotti with a libretto in English by the composer, the opera told of a disabled beggar boy living with his widowed mother in the Holy Land. They are visited by the Three Wise Men who are on their way to see the Christ Child, and when Amahl offers his crutch as a gift, he is miraculously cured. In 1978, it returned to television, with less success.

United Kingdom

TV programmes which have had special Christmas episodes in the United Kingdom include Top of the Pops, Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, Stars in Their Eyes, Only Fools and Horses, and more recently, Doctor Who, Top Gear, Downton Abbey, The Repair Shop and The Masked Singer.
The 1982 animated tale The Snowman has been screened for many years during the Christmas period, and the 1991 short animated film, Father Christmas, by the same artist and company, is usually broadcast around the same time.
Adaptations of novels from Charles Dickens are also common around Christmas time. Along with A Christmas Carol, these also include Bleak House, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, among others. These adaptations usually feature all-star casts.
Christmas Day begins at 12 at night with the showing of Midnight Mass on the BBC. In addition, the monarch annually broadcasts a 10-minute speech on Christmas Day at 3 p.m. Many long-running British soap operas have Christmas specials, usually involving a dramatic storyline developed over several weeks which culminates at Christmas. Often these stories are tragic, involving a death, divorce, a dramatic revelation or similar event.
Most Christmas specials in the UK are specially commissioned separately to a production season, and many are extended from the usual episode length. For example, the 2007 Doctor Who Christmas special was 71 minutes as opposed to the standard 45 minutes, was broadcast six months after the third series had finished and four months before the fourth series started. UK Christmas specials may or may not feature the holiday itself as part of the narrative.
While the season receives almost universal acknowledgement on British TV, some channels and programmes have tried "alternative" or "anti-Christmas" ideas. One example is Channel 4 which has run an Alternative Christmas message since 1993. In 2009, two movie channels renamed themselves for the season; Sky Movies Screen 2 became Sky Movies Christmas Channel and Movies 24 became Christmas 24. From 2010, changes to Sky Movies line-up meant that Sky Movies Showcase was used for Sky Movies Christmas Channel. On 16 November 2012, two music channels renamed themselves; Bliss became Blissmas and Greatest Hits TV was rebranded as Christmas Hits TV.

United States

In the United States, many television series produce a Christmas episode, although seldom outside of a season's production block. Stand-alone Christmas specials are also popular, from newly created animated shorts and movies to repeats of those that were popular in previous years, such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and A Charlie Brown Christmas. Some local affiliates provide the Yule Log, a block of time either on Christmas morning or both during the evening hours of Christmas Eve and Christmas morning showing footage of a fireplace, coupled with popular Christmas music. Some local affiliates that provide the Yule Log simulcast Christmas music from a radio station playing it.
Every Christmas Day, ABC airs a Christmas parade at Walt Disney World Resort and along with its sister cable network, ESPN, NBA games featuring some of the league's best teams and players, broadcasting a doubleheader ; the NBA's Christmas Day games are notable as they historically serve as the league's first game telecasts on over-the-air network television each season. NBC airs the Vatican Midnight Mass service at St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve night, and usually airs an ice skating special. Additionally, CBS usually airs college basketball games the day after Christmas while NBC airs a Premier League soccer match that same day.
Christmas specials based on classical music have also been well received. Among them, in addition to the previously mentioned Amahl and the Night Visitors, have been the many telecasts of the ballet The Nutcracker, and concert specials featuring musicians such as the Boston Pops, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Cincinnati Pops, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.