Tag: christmas

A Reflection on Joy at Christmas

At Christmas, the difference between happiness and joy comes into sharper focus. The season itself is often wrapped in happiness, familiar songs, warm lights, shared meals, laughter, and moments of comfort and nostalgia. This kind of happiness is good and gift-like, but it’s also fragile. It depends on things lining up, relationships feeling easy, finances holding steady, and the ache of loss staying quietly in the background. When those things don’t fall into place, Christmas happiness can feel thin, or even painful.

Christian joy tells a deeper story. The joy of Christmas isn’t rooted in perfect circumstances but in the astonishing claim that God chose to draw near, not in power or certainty, but in vulnerability. The birth of Jesus doesn’t arrive in a calm, well-ordered world. It comes amid fear, displacement, political oppression, and ordinary human anxiety. That matters, because it means joy isn’t the denial of darkness, it’s light entering it.

Joy, in this sense, is a steady confidence that God is with us, not just when the table is full and the house is warm, but when the heart feels heavy or the season stirs grief as much as gratitude. It allows space for sorrow without surrendering hope. It says that love has taken flesh and pitched its tent among us, and that nothing, not loss, not uncertainty, not brokenness, has the final word.

Die Hard IS a Christmas Movie

Yes, Die Hard was released in July 1988 as a summer blockbuster, but everything about it shouts CHRISTMAS. It’s both a Christmas movie AND a movie set at Christmas. It’s been criticised for its swearing, violence, and moral ambiguity, but it does contain themes of forgiveness, redemption, reconciliation, healing, and transformation. It also ends with the characteristic warm glow of Christmas movies. The latter being emphasised by the end credits music Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, a recurring thematic and musical motif throughout the movie.

Die Hard has acquired status as a Christmas movie over the years since its release, although others would totally disagree with this attribution. Both sides can be very vocal when expressing their view, some allowing no discussion – it just IS a Christmas movie.

Let’s consider the evidence. Christmas is integral to the story, John McClane (played by Bruce Willis) was in Los Angeles because of the season. The Nakatomi Plaza (where the action takes place) only had minimal staffing because of the Christmas break, this being the reason why Hans Gruber (played by Alan Rickman) chose Christmas Eve to take over the building. There was a Christmas party happening in the building with the head of the corporation present. One crucial scene features a gruesome, yet humorous reference to Father Christmas, and another references a miracle because it was Christmas. Finally, McClane’s wife is called Holly, and the start of this poem is quoted, ‘Twas the night before Christmas.

All things considered, the action had to take place at Christmas. For me, and for many others, it feels like a Christmas movie, that’s the time of the year I watch it. Therefore, it IS a Christmas movie, end of.