#363: Must-Watch Christmas Movies—Anthony Esolen

This week: Magdalen College Professor Anthony Esolen is not only an eminent man of literature, he is also a walking encyclopedia of cinema. That definitely included movies set against or directly about, Christmas. In this free-wheeling conversation featuring brushes with fame and interconnectivity of actors who worked with the same directors, we hit many favorites and also some lesser-known Christmas movie nuggets.

In this episode, you will learn

• Reasonable criteria for what makes a Christmas movie a Christmas movie
• How everybody seems to miss the non-stop blasphemous swearing in Die Hard (1988)
• The culture degradation as manifest in the way Christmas was treated by Hollywood in years gone by
• Why many Christmas moves seem to include notes of sorrow and grief
• Reasons why the Golden Age (1934-1966) produced the great movies about or set against, Christmas

Resources mentioned in this episode Movies

• It Happened on Fifth Avenue
• The Man Who Came to Dinner
• Penny Serenade
• The Shop Around the Corner
• Remember the Night
• Christmas in Connecticut
• An Affair to Remember
• The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
• The Bishop’s Wife
• Meet John Doe
• White Christmas
• Holiday Inn
• Miracle on 34th Street
• Die Hard
• Love, Actually
• Joyeux Noel
• The Apartment
• And course: It’s a Wonderful Life!

Books

• Christians in the Movies: A Century of Saints and Sinners by Peter Dans
• Sex and the Unreal City: The Demolition of the Western Mind by Anthony Esolen
• Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture by Anthony Esolen