Gremlins.
Christmas film?

Gremlins opens with a Christmas present and spends most of its running time in a small town under snow, with carols, a decorated square and a man in a Santa suit. On iconography alone it counts more Christmas than plenty of films that are sold as Christmas films.

The case against is everything else. The creatures are a comedy of chaos rather than goodwill, the ending owes very little to what Christmas means, and one of its best-remembered scenes is a monologue about why somebody hates the season. Plot dependency is the question to watch: could the present have been a birthday present?

Like Die Hard, it opened in American cinemas in summer, and like Die Hard, that tells you nothing about what is on screen. Expect to agree on the tinsel and fall out over the ending.