Christmas films and series
One of the first Christmas films is Santa Claus from 1898, directed by George Albert Smith, a pioneering filmmaker from the so-called Brighton School. The first adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was in 1901. For more than 120 years there have been around a hundred adaptations of this English novelist’s most famous work. The history of Christmas series, on the other hand, is much shorter, as the history of television is shorter, but with the development of mass media, Christmas programmes and episodes gradually began to appear in America and the UK.
There is not much time left until Christmas. Today, we ask dr Dawid Junke from the Institute of Cultural Studies at the University of Wrocław about whether the pre-Christmas period without Christmas films and series is possible.
I think so, even though I am a cultural scientist dealing with films I would say that Christmas itself is even good to experience without too much audiovisual content. I believe that these preparations for Christmas or the moment when we want to feel the atmosphere of Christmas, here I would have some problem with the answer. Of course, the creation of this atmosphere is something bigger than just audiovisual content, we have all the decorations and some sales, consumption machine that goes with it.
If we want to do something for ourselves, to get in the mood before Christmas itself or during the holidays, I think it’s natural that we revisit famous film classics, TV series, and it’s also characteristic because it’s a slightly different mode of viewing than the usual, everyday one. It’s what we call ritualistic viewing, because we return to the same titles year after year. Once we watch them for the first time, and if we like them enough, we’ll come back to them every year just like Christmas rituals.
Are there Christmas films or series inspired by literary works? Do Polish Christmas films relate their themes to foreign films of this type? What feature films appear on American television at Christmas time? Do we find Home Alone, directed by Chris Columbus, among them? We encourage you to listen to the interview!
Interview and editing: Maria Kozan
