Lesson: The Only 4 Christmas Movies Ever Made/ExerciseL1

Listening Exercise

I'm

that you've seen a lot of Christmas movies in your

. But did you know that there are only four types of Christmas

that have ever been made? That's right: Four. And they've been made over and over again. So I've got Matt Gallager here to walk us through them. And the first one is the "Christmas Redemption Story", which is really just Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol retold.

M.G.: That's your hmm guy who

the season, having a big life-changing event. It could be hmm Christmas vacation, hmm Santa Claus, hmm Bad Santa comes to mind a lot, lot, lot of that plot.

Secondly, is the holly jolly-blood bath.

M.G.:That is "Your Christmas is in trouble" one. Which is great

the villain doesn’t get, uh, doesn’t get redeemed so much as he gets thrown off a roof by Bruce Willis usually, uh, or some piece of slapstick violence. It's like a Home Alone, uh, Gremlins comes to mind, uh, which I completely

was a Christmas movie until I went back and watched it.

Ok and the third type of Christmas movie that you're gonna see is what we'll call "All in the

". And this is where you've got this big dysfunctional family and they hate each other, it's

, but…

M.G.: Christmas is the time to kind of gloss over that. That seems to be the basis for a lot of these. My favorite Christmas movie, uh, is "Trapped in

", with Nick Cage and Dana Carvey. And it's a

family! It's like three guys who are all just

out of jail who decide that their family is the reason for the

.

The final Christmas movie you'll see over and over again is "The Christmas cash-in".

M.G.: Find a story that might not even work any other time in the

, but if you slap a santa hat on it, all of the sudden it's an excuse to put out what is honestly an inferior

and pass it off as a Christmas movie and everybody loves it. The classic one is the, is, “The Star

Christmas Special”, that's so bad it's become

.

And that's it: The only four Christmas movies ever

! So we'd like to know what your favorite Christmas movie is and if it fits in the list. Or if you think there's another type of Christmas movie out there, let us know. And Happy Holidays.