Review

Christmas culture

Culture

20 December 2023

5 min read

Five Christmas films to revel in

Haunting, salving, teary, side-splitting and glorious - our recommended festive films.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

Muppet characters dressed as Dickensian characters stand in a snowy street.

'Dickens made the fatal error of not putting Muppets into his story.'

‘Tis the season to be jolly and watching a good film with a cup of tea and a biscuit, while the freezing wind and rain whip at the window, can be one of the jolliest things you can do this year. The genre of ‘Christmas’ has only grown and grown over the decades, so if you’re stumped by the myriad of choices – often dreadful schlock that feature the word ‘Prince’ and ‘Christmas’ in the title superimposed over a picture of two ludicrously attractive people staring lovingly into each other’s eyes in a blizzard – take comfort in my Top 5 Christmas films.

Note – this is my top 5. My personal top 5. These are not the ‘best’ Christmas films. You will not find It’s a Wonderful Life on here. It is glorious and lovely, but I saw it too late in life, and just don’t emotionally resonate with it as much as other Christmas films. I will not apologise. You will not see Die Hard. It is indeed and iconic action film, with a superb Alan Rickman performance, and it is indeed set at a Christmas party…but that isn’t enough to make it a ‘Christmas film’. I WILL NOT APOLOGISE!

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas

An animated scene shows a grandmother readng a story to children on her lap in front of a fire.

I would have put this film higher up the list if not for the fact that it straddles two seasons – All Hollows and Christmas. This film is iconic, however. The stop-motion animation gives the whole affair an extra haunting air. The music is superb – I still find myself humming What’s This every few weeks. The story is unhinged (what else do you expect from Tim Burton?) but to just the right degree, and behind the ghoulish setting and mad-cap story there is a good old-fashioned moral-of-the-story for children and adults alike to enjoy. Nightmare is a marvellous reminder of what it means to have the Christmas spirit, and the great thing about it is that it’s a film you can enjoy any time from October 31st!

4. Bad Santa

A dishevelled looking Santa, without a beard, stares to the side.

Billy Bob Thornton is mesmerising as an ‘eating, drinking, sh***ing, f***ing Santa Claus’. This is not one for the kids! Thornton’s Willie T. Soke is a professional thief who, with his dwarf assistant, get jobs as a grotto Santa and Elf in shopping malls during the festive season so as to case the place and rob it…but this time is different. Soake’s degeneracy has become a serious liability, and his instability and vulgar sexual exploits catch the attention of John Ritter’s mall manager and Bernie Mac’s security chief. Soake is spiralling out of control, but perhaps a romantic relationship with Lauren Graham’s barmaid and a chance encounter with a vulnerable young boy (to whom Soake becomes the least appropriate father-figure) might just be his salvation, and teach him the spirit of Christmas. The script is jet-black funny, and all the performances are spot on – although this is entirely Thornton’s film to shine in. Lewd, rude, and crude, but with a heart of gold (deep down under all the effing and jeffing), this film is the perfect antidote for those who find the jollity of the festive season a little twee.

3. The Holiday

A couple, wrapped up in winter clothes, flirt with each other.

This film has Jude Law in it. This ought to be enough to commend it to you, but I’ll go further. This film has Jude Law playing a jumper-wearing widowed single-dad, who can turn the humble napkin into a delightful children’s entertainment, and who gives smouldering glances across a crowded pub. Before you all rush out to watch it, let me finish the blurb. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslett are two women, unlucky in love, who decide to swap homes for the Christmas holiday. Winslett is escaping a toxic infatuation and finds solace in a friendship with a nonagenarian scriptwriter from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and a possible romance with Jack Black (giving a genuinely restrained and enjoyable performance). Workaholic Diaz is desperate to learn how to switch-off, relax, and maybe give love a chance. She finds solace in…Jude Law’s many lovely jumpers and smouldering glances. This is not a film to be described but experienced. Its camp and frothy and silly, but its also just really lovely and gets the tears going every time. If my recommendation isn’t enough, listen to my wife – watch this film over Christmas!

2. The Muppet Christmas Carol

Kermit, a frog talks to rats dressed as Victorian children.

It’s a well-known fact that you can’t improve upon the indominable prose of Charles Dickens…WRONG! Dickens made the fatal error of not putting Muppets into his story. Rizzo and Gonzo take on the role of narrators of the story, Kermit does a sparkling turn as Bob Cratchit, and Michael Cain stars as the best on screen iteration of Scrooge (go on, fight me on this!). It’s the well-worn story brought to life by glorious songs – every year I start to sing “Tis the season to be jolly and joyous” to myself – a side-splitting script, and a clear and tender reverence for the original story and its central message. I defy anyone, child or adult, to sit through to the end this wonderful film and not want to keep Christmas in their heart every day. If you don’t like this film then I can only guess that you’ll be visited by ‘Marley and Marley, WOOOOOOOOOOA’!

1. Love Actually

Richard Curtis is my favourite director. Every film of his, however flawed (and there a several flaws in Love Actually), is so warm-hearted and good-natured that I can’t help but love them. Love Actually is Curtis firing on all cylinder: a painfully funny script, an ensemble cast of Britain’s finest talent, and a score that plays your emotions like a fiddle. A series of interconnecting love stories – love found, love lost, unrequited love, misdirected love – playing out in the run-up to Christmas, this film will not fail to put a tear in your eye and smile on your face. At times it’s a little too ‘laddy’ – I’m looking at you American sexcapade storyline – and the fact that all these people live in gorgeous houses in Wandsworth in spite of doing no discernible work is infuriating, but the fact that it is number one on this list in spirt of this is mark of just how strong a film it is. The cast list alone puts it at the top: Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson popping in for a bit…EMMA THOMPSON! The raw power of Emma Thompson quietly weeping as she listens to Joni Mitchell and contemplates the implosion of her marriage is stunning to behold. At its heart, it is a simple Richard Curtis film; it wants the viewer to relax in the beautiful spectacle of love, and to know that they are loved. I love Love Actually, and Love Actually loves me.

EMMA THOMPSON!

Explainer

Belief

Books

Creed

Poetry

23 May 2025

6 min read

Why a book? The words that change the world and me

Living by a literature that’s imbibed in countless cultures.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A man sits on a pier intently reading a book on his lap.

Ben White on Unsplash.

I have a belief system, a story that I live by, a lens through which I perceive the world. That doesn’t make me unusual or in any way different to you – we all have those, whether we’re aware of them or not. What may make me different to you is that mine are primarily explained to me through a book – or, more accurately, a library of sixty-six books – which we call the Bible.

The story that I live by, that I breathe in and out, is bound. It sits within a cover, it moves through pages, it unfolds according to a contents page – it has genre, it has authors, it has punctuation.

And I’ve never really found this odd.

I think it’s because I’m what Charles Taylor would call a ‘storied creature’, my default is to make sense of the world on a largely imaginative level. I’m also quite romantic; poetically inclined, one could say. It sometimes feels as though words flow through my veins – if you were to cut me open, I may just bleed a puddle of my favourite Jane Austen monologues straight onto the floor. And so, my personality happens to lend itself spectacularly well to living my life according to a spiritual, sixty-six book wide, library. I’ve never really had to wrestle with the strangeness of such a thing, I’ve never sat down and stared the oddness of it in the eye, I’ve never even really asked myself (or God): why a book?

I feel I should pause here, and offer a quick Rory Stewart-esque explainer, just so that we’re all on the same page.

What I, and Christians through time and place, call the Bible is an anthology of sixty-six books, written by around forty authors, in three languages, over the span of 1,400-ish years. Within it, one can find poetry, narrative, apocalyptic literature, erotic literature, lists and figures, instructions and explanations. It is – year in and year out – the bestselling book in the world, with over 100 million copies sold or gifted each year. The New York Times Bestseller List actually omits it from its rundown, because otherwise it would always be so boringly there – sitting comfortably right at the top. No other book ever comes close. Words from this anthology of literature are graven into the floors and walls of the Houses of Parliament, they’re woven into almost every work of Shakespeare, they’re spray-painted clumsily onto billboards in the city I call home.

And so, I guess, in one way, the answer to my question – why a book? – is all of that. The peculiar far-reaching resonance of the methodology speaks for itself. I think of Robin Williams’ impassioned monologue in Dead Poets Society…

‘No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.’

… And I get it. I understand why it was literature that was compiled, why language and words were the tool of choice. For better and for worse, biblical words and ideas have changed the world – they have been ‘the making of the western mind’, just ask Tom Holland. And so, pragmatically, one could argue that the Bible being a book (or a book of books) means that it has successfully imbedded itself in countless cultures, while also transcending them. It’s gone further, lasted longer, sunk deeper than any other form of communication could. Such is the power of words.

But to stop my pondering there feels like I’d be stopping short. I’m not sure that a distant, pragmatic, academic answer is one that I feel satisfied with.

So, this morning, I sat down with a cup of tea, a pen, my notebook, and a newfound curiosity - and I asked myself, and God, why a book?

Why poetry?

Why story?

Why wordplay?

Why have I – an educated, arguably disenchanted, most definitely left-brained, twenty-first century adult - been so willing to let these things mould my interior life? Why am I so moved by them? Moved to action, moved to tears, moved to rage. How can I read something that was written a millennia ago, in a part of the world I have never trod on, and somehow feel as if it is a love letter written exclusively to my own soul?

I think that those are the real questions - the questions to which I have both a thousand and zero answers.

And, like any work of literature, it does not give its meaning up easily – it requires me to sit with it, to excavate it, to gnaw on it like a dog with a bone.

Zero answers, because I fundamentally think that it’s a spiritual thing, a God-designed thing, a thing that sits beyond any explanation I could piece together. The God that I believe exists wants me to know about him, wants me to learn and study, wants me to get glimpses of how thinks, how he works, he feels about me – and you. That’s a wild and wonderous thing. That reality leads me be stunned not only at the methodology, but the desire behind it, as St. Augustine wrote,

‘the whole Bible does nothing but tell of God’s love’.

And so, this literature, to me, is a source of truth, leaning into Iain McGilchrist’s inkling that,

‘the fact that religions and mystical and spiritual traditions have always had to use language in a poetic way doesn’t mean that what they’re talking about is not real, it means it is ultimately real.’

The biblical literature uses words to take us to the edge of them.

And, like any work of literature, it does not give its meaning up easily – it requires me to sit with it, to excavate it, to gnaw on it like a dog with a bone.

Sometimes reading it feels like a balm on my heart, other times it feels like a wrestle in the dirt. But I guess that’s the beauty of it being a book, right? My worldview sits within a piece of literature that is adorned with my scribbles, tear stains, tea spills. A book that meets me every single day, ready to read me as I read it, giving my as many questions as it does answers.

So, why a book? Because now that I think about it, it is odd. The powerful resonance of words for all cultures at all times, perhaps? Or the way that poetry was designed to make a bee line for the deepest parts of us? Or the fact that it is only through language that we can talk about the things that go beyond it?

There are a thousand human-sized answers, if you really need them. I happen to enjoy the mystically-charged zero answers, myself.

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