Why You Might Want To Watch Die Hard Instead of It's a Wonderful Life As Your Christmas Movie

Once you’ve finally munched down your last bite of Christmas pudding after stuffing yourself with Christmas turkey, there’s really not much left to do on Christmas eve… other than wait for the clock to strike 12 while watching your favorite Christmas movie. Turns out, one of your choices for a Christmas movie ought to be something unconventional, like Die Hard.
That’s right, ditch It’s A Wonderful Life, The White Christmas, or even The Holiday, because statistically, Die Hard has outranked them all in a survey. That survey is all about the best or most popular Christmas movies people love to watch.
A website called musicMagpie went through the trouble of coming up with statistical analysis. Here’s their official ranking.
Home Alone
Elf
Love Actually
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
The Santa Clause
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Arthur Christmas
Gremlins
The Polar Express
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Die Hard
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Scrooged
Jingle All The Way
The Muppet Christmas Carol
It’s a Wonderful Life
Miracle on 34th Street
White Christmas
Bad Santa
The Holiday
Of course, Home Alone is still at the top and still the de facto best Christmas movie.
Take a good look at number 11 and there’s Die Hard, one of the most out-of-place movies in this list merely because of its action status. If you must know how musicMagpie came up with the ranking and criteria, they chose the movies under these four key elements:
It must have Christmas references (obviously)
Perform well in the box office
Be a hit with critics and audiences alike
Create a festive buzz year after year
Now, don’t be a Scrooge and argue that Die Hard doesn’t deserve to be that high– Polar Express was a flop among the critics but still ranked higher.