Is Trading Places a Christmas movie, too?
What about “Batman Returns”?
Likely it is a secondary Christmas movie. It has Santa and a lot of ho, ho, hoes.
Is Trading Places a Christmas movie, too?
Of course!
Kind of. It starts out during the Christmas season but the Plot takes us past New Years and the Climax happens during the first trading days of the New Year. Christmas is long past by the time the heroes of the film are on a boat in the Caribbean.
The typical Christmas movie will wrap everything up before or at Christmas. It will end with a carol or contemporary holiday song. So you leave the movie with some Christmas spirit. You're usually left with the knowledge that the main characters are all going to spend Christmas with loved ones at home.
Die Hard while not intending to be a Christmas movie uses Christmas to heighten how evil the terrorists are. John McClane (Bruce Willis) is inadvertently saving Christmas by saving his wife and the people held hostage. The choice of let it snow, let it snow, let it snow at the end of the movie adds the perfect irony since it doesn't snow in LA and the only thing that is spread along the ground are dead bodies. So the weather is certainly frightful and home is going to seem pretty good at this point.
McClane also learns something about the rift between he and his wife. His anger over her taking a job in LA and using her maiden name is pretty insignificant when it compared to possibly losing her forever. His career, her career don't take on the same importance. Indeed in the sequel we learn John moved out to LA to be a cop to be close to his family. There always has to be moral in a Christmas story.
One thing Trading Places does do well in its use of Christmas is when Dan Aykroyd's character hits rock bottom dressed as Santa Claus stealing food from the cormpany Christmas party, only to end up drunk on the subway passed out. Could anyone have more of a complete downfall? and on Christmas no less.