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!

Column

Culture

Nationalism

Politics

20 March 2025

4 min read

What Tom Paine really said about globalism and religion

We can’t live without homelands, but we need to be generous with them.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A statue of a 18th century man holding a pen and a book.

Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

We live near Lewes in East Sussex, a town surrounded by genteel Conservatism but which inherits a certain edgy radicalism from Thomas Paine, whose utopian politics emerged there in the eighteenth century to inform both the French and American revolutions.

Paine haunts Lewes and his paraphernalia are everywhere. Walk the streets and it won’t be long before you spot posters quoting his most famous lines, among them “My country is the world and my religion is to do good”, from his seminal work Rights of Man.

He was a vicious critic of all organised religion, leading to the widespread assumption that he was an atheist. More accurately, he was a deist, a believer in a God who could and would deliver a global redemption of humankind, if we could and would only work towards that. The bit that’s most often left out of that famous quote is the phrase: “… all mankind are my brethren.”

Sometimes it takes a prophetic voice from outside mainstream religion to point us towards a world peace and a concord that seems beyond our faithful grasp. As ultra-nationalism is the go-to political ideology of our age, it’s such a voice that demonstrates that these populist creeds are the very antithesis of Paine’s globalist utopia.

There are tinpot nationalists throughout the world – Erdogan of Hungary, Meloni of Italy, Bolsonaro of Brazil, the list goes on – but it’s the superpowers that demonstrate most starkly the contrast between the narrow, inward and dark heart of ultra-nationalism and the generous, outward and illuminated vision of the globalist revolutionary.

It’s not just the contrast between what we currently have on the world stage and what we could have that’s remarkable, it’s the similarities between the psyches and prejudices of the ultra-nationalist super-powers, all of which sacrifice any worldview they might hold on the altar of their homeland self-interest. Take Russia, Israel and the United States. Don’t even start me on China.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is embarked on an imperial expansionism that is positively tsarist. The attempted annexation of Ukraine is only the start, before reclaiming what are purported to be “Russian” state assets in the Baltics and beyond. Putin channels Peter the Great. This isn’t just demented desire for historical legacy, it speaks at home to the restoration of the motherland.

It’s the same incentive for Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. Only continuing to oppress and purge the Palestinian state from its lands can the homeland of Israel be protected. It is precisely to satisfy the ultra-nationalists behind him that pushes him forward.

President Donald Trump in the US isn’t the peacemaker he fantasises about. To “make America great again” he has to put “America first”. This is about satisfying the baying boot boys that form the sump of Trump’s power base. Americans must live high on the hog at the expense of the rest of the world. Hence tariff wars, watch-the-lady trade deals and pan-arctic territorial aspirations.

This is not to say that peoples are to live without homelands. But it is precisely to tell us to be generous with them, to be good neighbours and to govern self-sacrificially.

What these three world leaders absolutely have in common is a worldview that predicates itself on satisfaction of nationalism at home that has to be paid for with suffering elsewhere. What they tell us is the exact opposite of Paine: “My borders are my country and my religion is to do harm.” They might add the sub-phrase: “… only my people are my brethren.”

The difference between patriotism and nationalism spawns many aphorisms. One such is that patriotism prioritises love of one’s own people and nationalism prioritises hate for other people other than one’s own. That’s not quite right, because both still hold the primacy of one’s own people over others, while Paine inferred the primacy of all people.

That’s what ultimately gives religious fervour to his voice. His declared detestation of religion seemingly ignores the tenets of the three Abrahamic faiths of the world, which have in common the welcome of the stranger, a duty to the poor and equality of all before God.

These commandments extend patriotism to love of all people. And, rigorously, they leave no room for nationalism at all. As for ultra-nationalism, we’re in the territory of abomination and sacrilege.

This is not to say that peoples are to live without homelands. But it is precisely to tell us to be generous with them, to be good neighbours and to govern self-sacrificially. That’s admittedly a tall order, but these are qualities that can either be identified in or imported into national identities as diverse as the American Constitution and Zionism.

The methodology for that is, admittedly, demanding. But it requires the ability to look outwards to the world, rather than inwards towards nation. And that becomes a religious vocation.

Our instincts, as nations, are inwards, but our callings our outwards. Sometimes it takes an outsider, like Paine, to point us in the right direction, outwards.

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