Our in-house horror expert sets his eagle eyes instead to the coming season; Conor Bryce lists his top festive scenes in non Christmassy movies.
Christmas really has a funny way of sneaking into movies that aren’t about Christmas. It rarely takes centre stage; instead it sharpens what a story already has to say about belonging, loss, ritual, second chances. Perhaps that’s why non-holiday movies often have some of the best festive feels - without the pressure to keep the spirit going for their full runtime, their fleeting visits sing.
A morning at Hogwarts with found family; a gangster gathering spiked with suspicion; a Santa story that turns sour; an outcast’s declaration of love; a Gotham lullaby - think of this list as a postcard from the edge of Christmas; a glimpse of the holiday when it wanders off-script and tells us something new.
Ready? Let’s start the unwrapping.
Will’s First Christmas (About a Boy, 2002)
Christmas at someone else’s house is beautifully awkward. What do you bring, what do you wear, do they open presents before or after dinner? That feeling is perfectly encapsulated in one of About a Boy’s most touching scenes.
Hugh Grant’s Will is detached and self-contained, but happy with his lot…until he meets Marcus, a socially awkward boy whose home life is dominated by his depressed, impulsive mother. Will’s allergy to sincerity is tested by the tween’s loveable oddness, particularly when he finds himself invited into Marcus’ dysfunctional home for the holidays.
The scene feels painfully real, easily relatable. It’s excruciatingly uncomfortable. And it’s perfect. When Marcus unwraps a dubious gift from his mum - a tambourine - he reacts as if it’s the latest gaming console. The goodhearted performance of gratitude breaks down Will’s walls. As a smile spreads on his face, he thinks, “I had to hand it to the kid. He could be enthusiastic about some truly crap presents”.
An imperfect gathering of people, trying to make happiness with “nut loaf with parsnip gravy”, leads to Will enjoying his first shared Christmas. Marcus’ actions embody of one of the purer meanings of Christmas: being grateful for what a gift represents. And his agenda-free good nature is his gift to Will - the realisation that connection, even the messy, offbeat kind, is worth a lot more than solitude dressed as contrarian cool.
A Very Jimmy Christmas (Goodfellas, 1990)
The Christmas scene in Goodfellas has all the usual festive cues; drink, laughter and gaudy neon lights. It also has something many holiday gatherings hold but few admit - tension you could cut with a knife.
In a bar, gangsters meet to celebrate a recent big score. One of the group, the beautifully-named Johnny Roastbeef, struts in boasting about a brand-new pink Cadillac parked outside, claiming it’s a non-traceable “wedding present” to his wife. But the mood soon sours, with Robert DeNiro’s mob bigwig Jimmy Conway losing his cool at what he sees is careless spending. “What did I tell you?”, he barks. “You don't buy anything, you hear me? Don't buy ANYTHING!”.
Jimmy’s threat is as cold at the weather. He’s already making post-score calculations, weighing up who’s stupid enough to risk exposure. The party soon feels more like an episode of The Traitors than a victory lap. We already know what’s coming, and sure enough most of the crew will soon be found dead - one in a garbage truck, one in a car, another (appropriately) hanging in a freezer. Even Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, on a (literal) high after a job well done, soon picks up on the tremor of future bloodshed apparent in Jimmy’s attitude.
The scene has the same sense of unease that hangs over every Christmas party where too much is going unsaid. Only here a faux pas doesn’t get you an early taxi home - it gets you whacked.
Ice dance (Edward Scissorhands, 1990)
Edward Scissorhands gives us one of cinema’s most striking scenes. It’s short, wordless. No plot twists, no moral spelled out. A boy makes beauty, and a girl experiences it.
Near the end of Tim Burton’s suburban fairytale, the titular blade wielder carves a block of ice into an angel while Kim, the girl he’s loved from afar, dances beneath the falling flakes. His hands are a blur, his face focused with quiet pleasure. She raises her arms and surrenders to the beauty. Visually, Burton drops the colour temperature to shades of blue. Danny Elfman’s score is associated now with countless holiday adverts, but it started here, and it soars. It’s a moment where love triumphs before tragedy strikes. Edward is never accepted by our cold, cynical world, but in this instant he chooses to contribute something truly special anyway. In a movie that doesn’t hide its dark edge, it’s tragic but no surprise when the scene ends with Edward accidentally cutting Kim - he can’t safely embrace the person he’s adoring and adorning.
In the movie’s epilogue, Kim tells her grandchildren that it never snowed before Edward arrived in her life. It turns this scene into something mythical and magical, and it’s also Kim’s way of explaining exactly how he made her feel - he loved her enough to change the weather. As a Christmas moment, it works because it’s full of hope. Snow melts, but love doesn’t.
Worst. Christmas. Ever. (Gremlins, 1984)
Let’s get this out of the way right now. Gremlins isn’t a Christmas movie - it’s a darkly comic creature-feature with a snowy backdrop. But it also contains one hell of a holiday moment - odd, bleak, and as dark as a lump of coal.
It arrives without warning, slyly tucked away like a sprout in a tin of Quality Street. In a moment of calm as they seek refuge from the marauding miniature monsters, heroine Kate explains to hero Billy why she hates Christmas. She shares the story of her father dressing as Santa, climbing down the chimney, breaking his neck and remaining wedged in there, discovered days later by the smell. It’s an insane autopsy report, delivered without mercy, in an otherwise gleefully mischievous movie. And somehow it works.
Phoebe Cates’ Kim delivers the memory with straightforward sincerity. There’s no cue to tell the audience to laugh or cry. Just her voice, clear and steady, recollecting the grim absurdity of a man dying mid-Santa impersonation. It’s no surprise that director Joe Dante reportedly experienced studio protests to cut the scene. Thankfully, he didn’t back down. On paper it sounds deranged, but in practice it hits harder than a snowball to the face.
This is less sleighbells on the roof and more ghosts in the flue. It’s a Wonderful Life can keep its angel wings, Gremlins delivers a more interesting revelation - that even the jolliest time of the year can hide something unspeakably terrible. Hats off to Gremlins 2 for poking fun at the over-seriousness of the scene, and Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice for including a bonkers cameo from Kate’s deceased dad. Diabolical.
…And Women (Batman Returns, 1992)
Batman Returns contains some of the best seasonal moments ever smuggled into a summer blockbuster, and nowhere does the holiday spirit feel stronger than in its closing scene: Bruce Wayne, sitting in the back of his car as it makes its way through a snow-covered Gotham City. He murmurs “goodwill toward men... and women” to his butler Alfred, before we catch a fleeting glimpse of archvillain Catwoman, and the Bat-Signal splitting the winter sky.
Bruce’s words feel like an attempt to soothe a heart that’s been running on fumes for too long; a (Bat)man wishing for tranquillity despite living in a world allergic to it. His city glitters like a snow globe that’s been dropped one too many times - chipped and scratched, but still capable of beauty. Catwoman’s head tilts mischievously at the Bat-Signal, shining like a star that refuses to fade, a beacon for two people trapped between costume and conscience. Thought dead by both Bruce and audience, Catwoman’s reappearance is the movie’s closest thing to a Christmas miracle; less Silent Night and more wicked wink.
In Gotham City, peace on earth doesn’t arrive by sleigh. It’s fought for in alleyways, declared through bloodied lips, glimpsed briefly in the uplift of a leather cowl in the snow. And like for Batman in these closing seconds, Christmas is often about keeping the light on, hoping your loved ones will find their way home.
Paulie’s Breakdown (Rocky, 1976)
In a movie stuffed with trumpeting horns and punch-the-air victories, the sight of a drunken man, ranting and stumbling with a Christmas wreath hooked over one arm, hits harder.
This is Christmas, Philadelphia-style. Paulie, played with unhinged sadness by Burt Young, storms through the doorway decorated like a failed Nativity. Instead of gold, frankincense and myrrh, he brings jealousy, self-pity and rage. His breakdown is equal parts tantrum and confession. He’s angry at his friend Rocky’s good fortune, furious that his sister Adrian has found love, and disgusted with himself for being left behind.
Paulie takes every seasonal cliché - family unity, forgiveness, goodwill - and annihilates them. He trashes the room and scream accusations like a man caught between wanting attention and absolution. Adrian, while acknowledging her brother’s pain, finally stands up to him, and in doing so she stops prioritising his needs and starts demanding her own.
You can keep your cinematic snowfalls and cookie-scented cheer. Give me Paulie with his plastic wreath and bad decisions, Adrian delivering hard truths to a brother who needs to hear them, and Rocky knowing she needs to win this on her own. Blue-collar misery shot through with tenderness, people choosing each other, faults and all. Here, the fight that matters isn’t in the ring; it’s in the hearts of a family trying to hold itself together. Adrian and Rocky will eventually reconcile with Paulie, and that is a far richer kind of Christmas spirit than the jingling of any bell.
Season’s Greetings (The Addams Family, 1991)
It might sound like sacrilege, but this scene belongs here. It’s definitely a Christmas moment, just not one that’d be found in a John Lewis advert. At first we feel like we’ve wandered into the wrong movie. Then those four familiar notes play, fingers click twice, and we get a rug pull for the ages.
The movie opens on a group of jolly carollers, ringing in the holidays. We’re then taken up…up…up to reveal the Addams clan standing on their mansion’s roof, about to dump a cauldron’s contents - what we can assume is boiling oil or tar - onto the unsuspecting troupe below. The scene is not part of the plot, never referenced again. It’s a joke that lasts seconds, but its impression has lasted decades. It gives us permission to root for weirdness, and sets the tone for the entire movie. A moment of macabre, shared by the whole family - it’s just so Addams!
It’s also a message about shunning conformity. The Addams don’t hate Christmas; they just refuse to follow the script. They celebrate their oddness, revel in what makes them delightfully bizarre. A family’s strange traditions and rituals, surely that’s what the holiday is all about? Even if that means dumping a cauldron’s boiling contents on a chorus of exhaustingly upbeat carollers below. *click, click*
Merry Christmas, Margaret Thatcher (Billy Elliot, 2000)
Billy Elliot delivers a devastating festive moment in two acts. Before the thin paper hats and meagre turkey of a truly heartbreaking Christmas dinner, comes an action that encapsulates the balance of grief and resilience the movie is lauded for - Billy’s father Jackie takes a sledgehammer to a piano. Not just any piano. The piano belonging to Billy’s late mother.
A miners’ strike has starved a town. A house needs heat, and wood is scarce. In a few destructive swings, Jackie Elliot turns his back on everything his wife represented - tenderness, creativity, art - in order to provide for his remaining family. And during the dinner that follows, as the Elliots sit down to eat in front of the fire made from the fading presence of Billy’s mother, Jackie, hunting for words to lift the mood, instead finds hopeless tears.
Before Jackie’s breakdown, the atmosphere at dinner is strained to snapping point. But at the centre of it all is Billy, keeping the fire going, throwing on more of the piano’s shattered wood in a gesture of truce. We’ve already witnessed his persistence, not giving up on his dream. Here he’s showing the same determination, not giving up on his father.
Two scenes - destruction and dinner. In one, the past is chopped to pieces; in the other, the present clings on to hope. Together they form the kind of Christmas that hits hard. No comfort, no joy - just a family trying to stay warm, and together, in a cold world.
Christmas at Hogwarts (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 2001)
Nestled in the gothic arches and floating candles of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is a moment about what it means to wake up, for the first time, in a world that actually wants you there. It’s the cinematic equivalent of driving through snow to reach a roomful of people who aren’t disappointed to see you.
It’s Christmas morning at Hogwarts and the school is dressed for the season, with festive charm that would give a Pinterest board an inferiority complex. Harry and Ron wake in their dormitory and rush down to their presents. It’s a modest pile, but opening them feels like a miracle after the relentless cruelty of Harry’s home life. It’s a quiet moment of grace; an orphan finally getting a reprieve.
Director Chris Columbus (from Gremlins to Home Alone to Jingle All The Way, the man is incapable of letting the holiday pass unacknowledged) understands that Christmas means sanctuary. Hogwarts has become a home to Harry, and in his home he can finally experience what the season promises - generosity without agenda or expectation. Ron’s gaudy knitted jumper, a gift from his mother, carries her love - homemade, sincere, itchy. The greatest gift Harry receives is an inheritance - his father’s Invisibility Cloak, a tangible link to the life he never knew.
On Christmas morning, a boy who has been denied love all his life gets to share in the holiday spirit with his best friend. Who needs elves and mistletoe when you can have that?
Christmas Calendar (Prometheus, 2012)
Amid the cosmic terror and existential dread of Prometheus, there’s a small festive moment. A single gleaming bauble of humanity on Ridley Scott’s dystopian sci-fi tree. It’s Christmas a million miles from earth, and everything that makes the holiday both sacred and absurd has hitched a ride on a doomed starship.
A ragtag crew is hurtling through space, halfway to meeting humankind’s supposed creator. Idris Elba’s Captain Janek, looking like a man who hasn’t celebrated anything properly in years, is decorating a miniature tree. When the gesture is questioned by Charlize Theron’s icy supervisor Meredith Vickers, his reply is simple and functional - “It's Christmas. Need a holiday to show time is still moving.” It’s a shard of warmth on a joyless expedition, and that’s precisely why it works - a holiday survives far beyond Earth’s orbit because we need our familiar comforts.
Hope through habit, an insistence on ritual when our species’ existence is about to be thrown under the microscope. The crew of Prometheus are boldly going to ask impossible questions, but this moment hints that they already carry the answers. Out there among the stars, a human holiday flickers on - a small act of defiance; Janek hauling a tree into deep space in an effort to keep the dark, vast emptiness at bay. That’s Christmas, baby.
If you enjoyed this, and are looking for some films to catch over Xmas, check out Conor's 31 Days of Halloween master list below.
Film Ireland Editor
