Journal of Scandinavian Cinema - Volume 3, Issue 3, 2013

The aim of this article is to query the established wisdom that the celebration of consumerist values, as exemplified in many Christmas films, is evidence of a decline of religious significance in the modern world. Rather, I argue that the celebration of consumerism is itself a repository of ‘sacred time’ and that Christmas is one of the most fertile embodiments of religious activity in the world today. I interrogate the way in which Eliade, Tillich and Durkheim understand the relationship between religion and culture, the sacred and the profane, to present a more subtle understanding of the interplay between material and spiritual configurations, to the point that Christmas is a religion because of rather than in spite of its material and commercialized teleology. The intention is to move away from conventional binary language in order to develop a more sophisticated and realistic understanding of where religion can be encountered.

This short subject examines Christmas motifs in Ingmar Bergman’s film Fanny and Alexander with particular emphasis on autobiographical, literary and ethnographic roots, and explores visual and psychological themes defining the contrasting lifestyles of the Ekdahl and Vergérus households: joie de vivre vs rigid moralism; sensuality vs asceticism; light vs darkness; magic vs stark realism; and theatrical performance vs church dogma.

This article examines how Mona J. Hoel activates Christmas and the cabin – two mainstays of Norwegian identity – in her 2000 ‘Dogme 95’ film Når nettene blir lange/Cabin Fever in order to comment upon the increasingly complex and transnational nature of contemporary society, where people move and marry freely across international borders. The author argues that the movie functions as an allegory in which a precariously transnational family event can be read as a stand-in for the small nation of Norway, struggling to maintain its self-image and identity in a period of increasing globalization. The progression of the action in the film follows a pattern similar to that of Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen/The Celebration (1998) – a film that has also been read as a contemporary national allegory – but the substitution of Christmas for a birthday party and a cabin for a hotel directs attention to and questions a specifically Norwegian cultural identity.

Traditionally there has been a general tendency of thematic seriousness and bitter endings in the Scandinavian children’s film. This orientation is influenced by prevailing cultural discourses in the Scandinavian countries on the qualities of children’s cultural products, and by the notion that children’s films ought to familiarize the audience with difficult, dangerous and frightening issues so that children can learn how to deal with their problems. As an analysis of three Norwegian children’s films demonstrates, Christmas films are no exception. Pitbullterje/‘Pitbull-Terje’ (Fröhlich, 2005), I et speil, i en gåte/Through a Glass, Darkly (Nielsen, 2008) and Bestevenner/Rafiki (Lo, 2009) do not portray Christmas as a magical time of year where acts of kindness, or even angels, can solve every problem. Instead, these films use the Christmas setting as a narrative strategy, and through the dichotomy between ‘the conventional Christmas’ and the dark, miserable Christmas experienced by the characters, the emotional impact of the film is enhanced. The young protagonists are not only facing difficult trials like bullying, angst, cancer and war, they are doing so at Christmas, which is supposed to be a time of joyful celebration.

Reisen til Julestjernen/Journey to the Christmas Star, released in Norwegian cinemas in 1976, was first broadcast by the Norwegian public service television station NRK in 1993, almost twenty years later. In 1996 came a repeat broadcast; since then it has been shown every year, becoming part of Norwegian Christmas ritual. What explains that an apparently dated film has attracted renewed and ongoing interest from audiences and media programmers decades later? This short subject investigates thematic segmentation and physical acting as a partial answer to this question. This approach establishes that the complexity and depth of the film’s themes contrast with the simplicity of the plot and acting style, allowing profound meanings to be expressed through discrete and exaggerated body language.

The short subject argues that the short animated film, Sagan om Karl-Bertil Jonssons julafton/Christopher’s Christmas Mission, which is screened annually on Swedish public service television to the delight of around a million spectators, offers sharp satire criticizing lingering class inequalities in the 1970s, despite decades of Social Democratic rule.

This short subject discusses the 100-year-old Swedish tradition of special film premieres on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

This article aims at characterizing the Danish Christmas calendar as a TV institution and a meeting place for the traditions of the almanac, folklore and the history of culture. Against the background of a brief outline of the history of Danish Christmas calendars, the article explores ways in which this traditional genre has succeeded in renewing itself. The so-called Pyrus series, TV 2’s Christmas calendars during the mid-1990s, exhibited folklore, myth and cultural history in a combination of entertainment and information. They were succeeded by calendars such as Jul i Valhal/‘Christmas in Valhalla’ (2005), Absalons hemmelighed/‘The Secret of Absalon’ (2006), Mikkel og guldkortet/‘Mikkel and the Golden Card’ (2008) and Pagten/‘The Covenant’ (2009). Some of these added cultural criticism to the repertoire of the genre.

The 2007 television Christmas calendar, Yallahrup Færgeby/‘Yallahrup Ferry Town’, upsets the normal conventions of Danish television Christmas specials, shifting attention away from the cosy aspects of the holiday season, and towards unsettling aspects of the contemporary urban Danish landscape. The 24-episode series, which uses puppets as part of an easily recognized satire of the classic 1974 Jullerup Færgeby/‘Jullerup Ferry Town’ calendar, focuses on the social challenges confronting two adolescents, Ali and Hassan, as they negotiate life in a dysfunctional urban school. The two boys, whose ethnic heritage is ‘other than Danish’, cycle through nearly all the Orientalist stereotypes of the immigrant in Danish culture, yet manage to emerge at the end of the series with an evolving sense of self that neither plays into the assimilationist policies of the Danish government nor aligns with the crippling stereotypes of criminal immigrant youths unable to find meaningful positions in Danish society.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale deploys a combination of two apparently conflicting narratives: the Christmas and Santa Claus story on the one hand and an apocalyptic story, including the presence of a Satan-like figure, on the other. This results in a film that questions the origins of the Santa Claus story and adds a darker, apocalyptic influence to it.

This short subject discusses what might be understood as Santa Claus’ essence, which is the logic of and limits to his overarching generosity, as depicted in the film Christmas Story (Wuolijoki, 2007). The plot centres on the orphan Nikolas, who grew up to be Santa Claus. Young Nikolas moves to a new home every Christmas Day, and every Christmas he crafts presents for the children of the family he has left. Thus, at the core of the film lies an interesting vision of the relationship between hospitality and generosity, which is the film’s greatest merit. For many theorists hospitality and generosity are self-contradictory notions, which is why they need to be rethought every time they are put into practice. The article examines the relationship between the two concepts as it emerges from close analysis of Christmas Story.