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!

Article

Comment

Ethics

Fashion

Race

10 June 2025

5 min read

Anna Wintour is not a moral compass

The Vogue editor’s championing of diversity is all very well, but it’s based on what sells

Alexandra Kytka-Sharpe

Alexandra is a writer exploring the role of faith in the arts, fashion, and design

Anna Wintour.

UKinUSA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Last month, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York launched a new exhibition. “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” highlights the history of Black people resisting white supremacy through their sartorial choices. A few weeks after it opened, the 2025 Met Gala, which serves to raise funds for the Costume Institute, was chaired by Black voices across the creative industries, including A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, Lewis Hamilton, Coleman Domingo and Lebron James. The exhibition has already received rave reviews from Black writers and academics, likely in part due to its co-curation by Monica Miller, who literally wrote the book on the subject Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity.

Concurrently, a few hours south of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in Washington DC, Donald Trump was calling Diversity and Inclusion initiatives “dangerous, demeaning and immoral.” A series of policies rolled out across the US federal government has led to the shutdown of not only diversity programmes, but a quiet disappearance of wording and other initiatives that might be interpreted as promoting similar themes.

But the Costume Institute, which does not receive any federal funding, is uniquely free to follow Anna Wintour’s steer. And Wintour, Conde Nast’s Chief Content Officer and Editor in Chief of Vogue, is fighting back. “I feel we need to be courageous”, she told the Washington Post last month. Now, she added, is “a challenging time”.

Until now, Wintour has been an unlikely activist. Vogue has long been criticised for a range of ethical issues that include, including lack of diversity, promotion of unhealthy body standards, and the sexualisation of young women. But are the magazine and Wintour now our bastion for future hopes of racial justice and equality?

In 2020, many of my friends and family ordered books and listened frantically to podcasts about race in America because of the events surrounding George Floyd’s death. In May 2020, a video circulated of officer Derek Chauvin suffocating George Floyd as he called out for his mother, leading to a flurry of protests and debates about the racial bias present in institutions.

In those days, learning about the systematic injustice faced by Black Americans and calling for change felt popular. Everyone was doing it. Books like The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, and How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi filled our Amazon carts and library holds.

These days, many of those books have quietly disappeared from the shelves. For sure, there are those who continue to fight for racial equality. But the winds have changed, with some companies - like Conde Nast - landing on one side, while Google, Meta and Amazon disappear from the horizon.

It’s easier to flip through beautiful images and call it a day, than to be a part of real, diverse communities.

It might seem obvious that brands are not the best source for our moral formation. But the fact is that many of them see themselves as culture-forming and mission-driven. If you don’t have something else to help form your idea of what the world should look like, why not Vogue, with its picture-perfect editorials, or Google, with its future-facing innovations?

For me, my beliefs in diversity and racial justice come from something stronger: my Christian faith and the many Black men and women globally who share this faith with me. It was my reading of Black Liberation theologian James Cone that first showed me the depths of beauty I could gain by understanding my faith through someone else’s perspective. Cone was famous for his book which drew parallels between Jesus’s death on the cross by Roman crucifixion, and the deaths of many Black men by lynching in the American South. Cone stopped me in my tracks, making me rethink a key symbol of my faith. He said this:

“The cross has been transformed into a harmless, non-offensive ornament that Christians wear around their necks. Rather than reminding us of the “cost of discipleship,” it has become a form of “cheap grace,” an easy way to salvation that doesn’t force us to confront the power of Christ’s message and mission. Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a “recrucified” black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.”

It won’t make it into a Vogue editorial anytime soon– but maybe that’s the point.

A faith-based belief in justice comes with challenges. It can feel tiring to face a troubled history of racism in a religious institution. Existing in diverse, faith-based communities brings everything from awkward cultural differences to true and genuine disagreements. The global Anglican communion faces tension between white, liberal progressives in the UK who want to celebrate gay marriage in the Church of England, and an assemblage of Christians of colour in the Global South who maintain strong convictions about traditional views of marriage and gender. Our faith in Christ is the anchor that holds us together. But these are real disagreements; they’re not trivial, and there’s no easy way forward.

It’s easier to flip through beautiful images and call it a day, than to be a part of real, diverse communities. And this is why we can’t rely on people like Anna Wintour to form our vision for the future. As nice and important as it is to promote diversity in models, photographers, and designers, ultimately Vogue will be shaped by what its editors and publishers think will sell on the newsstand.

This is my plea for us all. Let’s not let the shifting tides of any company– Meta or Vogue– decide our ethical convictions towards justice. Let’s rely on something stronger.

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