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.

1. Home Alone

2. Elf

3. Love Actually

4. How the Grinch Stole Christmas

5. The Santa Clause

6. The Nightmare Before Christmas

7. Arthur Christmas

8. Gremlins

9. The Polar Express

10. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

11. Die Hard

12. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

13. Scrooged

14. Jingle All The Way

15. The Muppet Christmas Carol

16. It’s a Wonderful Life

17. Miracle on 34th Street

18. White Christmas

19. Bad Santa

20. 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.