Did anyone else notice how the hype for A Bad Moms Christmas fizzled before Thanksgiving?
At the other extreme, who else remembered that this Monday marks 25 years since The Muppet Christmas Carol hit theaters? Namely two weeks before Christmas of that year?
Forget the debate over entertainment value. The two aforementioned American Christmas movies represent a fresher topic. They epitomize the absurdly premature and questionably late release dates, respectively, for seasonal features.
A Bad Moms Christmas was originally slated to premiere on Nov. 3 this year. That would have constituted caving to the Christmas creep egregiously enough.
But then it moved from the conventional Friday release slot to the common runner-up Wednesday. This meant coming out the day after Halloween, and three full weeks before Thanksgiving Eve.
In this country, Black Friday ought to be a reasonable starting point for the holiday season. The season’s length can therefore range between 27 and 33 days, including the Dec. 25 culmination.
That window should generally assuage the widespread craving for Christmassy entertainment. And while that appetite’s insatiability is a visible problem, it makes little sense to squander portions of the season’s four-to-five weeks.
Yet that is what The Muppet Christmas Carol did in 1992. With Thanksgiving occurring on Nov. 26 that year, Christmastime’s proper timeframe was 29 days. By premiering on Dec. 11, the movie waited until after the season’s halfway mark.
Granted, there were surely enough interested theater-goers after Boxing Day. But watching a movie of that subject matter then is as overkilling as it would be pre-Thanksgiving.
And then there are the Christmas-heavy films that have creeped into the paying public’s reel rooms at other points on the almanac. Per the Internet Movie Database, some of the most widely beloved classics were, in a word, calendar misfits. The original Miracle on 34th Street started summoning audiences in June of 1947.
At least the 1994 remake premiered in the latter half of November. But even then, it was still a week before Black Friday.
The following films had better proximity to that de facto green-and-red light. If nothing else, these American Christmas movies set the standard for commonsense release timing.
Honorable Mention: Deck the Halls: Nov. 22, 2006
Thanksgiving never falls any earlier than Nov. 22. As such, in most years, the date is simply too soon to start trading in turkeys for tinsel.
But since it was Thanksgiving Eve in 2006, the timing of Deck the Halls was much more passable. With that said, it would not have killed the box-office bounty to wait until Nov. 24, aka Black Friday.
In that event, it still would have played for a month’s-length Christmas season. And it would have qualified for this list’s top 10, likely the upper tier to boot.
Honorable Mention: Silent Night (Nov. 30, 2012)
Only the last two days of November invariably overlap with their month and the proper American Christmas season. It is impossible to unleash a holiday flick too early on those dates. But at times, the window will have been open for a week when they arrive.
As it happened, Thanksgiving was Nov. 22, its earliest possible date, in 2012. If there is any time when it makes sense for a Christmas movie to coast until a week after Black Friday, it is a year of that nature. Even so, why wait if you do not have to?
Regardless, by the time of its release, Silent Night still had a solid 25 seasonal days to fit into the theater. Well, seasonal for horror fanatics, anyway.
T-8. Scrooged (Nov. 23, 1988), Arthur Christmas (Nov. 23, 2011) and Bad Santa 2 (Nov. 23, 2016)
By the criteria behind the honorable mentions, Nov. 23 is the earliest possible date for Black Friday. But as it happened, that date was a Wednesday in each of these films’ respective years.
Still, two of them revolve heavily around a Santa figure. The other centers on a TV network head engrossed in a holiday special.
Both of those elements factor into the Thanksgiving parade. In that vein, theater-goers getting an early start on their long weekend were excused for pursuing day-early tastes.
7. Christmas with the Kranks (Nov. 24, 2004)
This too was a Thanksgiving Eve release. With that said, Nov. 24 falls within the reasonable Christmas season boundaries twice as often as Nov. 23 does. It is as simple as that.
T-5. Four Christmases (Nov. 26, 2008) and Bad Santa (Nov. 26, 2003)
Among the seven dates Christmastime can appropriately again, Nov. 26 is wedged in the middle. It is therefore fitting that the two mainstream American Christmas movies released on that date constitute the middle of this ranking.
Once again, though, Nov. 26 was the eve of Thanksgiving in these years. Had Bad Santa waited a year (Leap Day included) and started Friday, Nov. 26, 2004, it would be a contender for No. 1.
Or better yet, if either film had waited another 48 hours, they could have secured for a top-three slot.
T-3. Santa Claus: The Movie (Nov. 27, 1985) and Black Nativity (Nov. 27, 2013)
Like each of the six movies behind them, these two got away with a false start before football’s busiest Thursday. But at least Nov. 27 falls exactly four weeks before Christmas.
Moreover, this is the latest possible date for Thanksgiving Eve. In five years out of every seven, it falls on Black Friday or later. Accordingly, of all the strictly pre-Thanksgiving dates, it can get away with impatient yuletide fervor the most.
With all of that said, it was still not yet the proper season in 1985 or 2013. Between that and what works in two other movies’ favor, these two are lucky to tie for bronze.
2. The Nativity Story (Dec. 1, 2006)
It was a full week after Black Friday, but also the Friday right before the start of Advent season. That important Sunday in the church fell on Dec. 3 of the year in question.
Given those extenuating circumstances, this film uniquely helped itself for this ranking by holding back until December. Christmas movies with a strict secular focus, such as 1989’s National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, lack that allowance. That movie hit theaters a week later than it could have, as Nov. 23, 1989, was Black Friday.
1. The Ice Harvest (Nov. 25, 2005)
Of all the prominent American Christmas movies, this is the only one to have hit the screens on Black Friday. It does not hurt in the least to know that its events span over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Sure, the comedy-action-thriller hybrid is far from a conventional holiday genre. But there is clearly a demographic that seeks a conglomeration of those themes. And as long as films debut on Fridays, anything with substantial Christmas elements belongs on the Black Friday premiere docket.
If future American Christmas movies take nothing else from The Ice Harvest, they should take that timing strategy.
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