A new survey by the British Board of Film Classification has handed a fresh victory to Home Alone in the holiday canon and dealt a blow to Die Hard’s festive credentials. Polling 2,000 people across the UK, the BBFC found that 44% do not consider the Bruce Willis thriller a Christmas film, compared with 38% who do; 17% said they were unsure. Just 5% named Die Hard as their favourite Christmas title, while Home Alone topped the list with 20% of the vote, ahead of Love Actually (9%), It’s a Wonderful Life (8%) and Elf (7%).
The research sheds light on what British viewers want from seasonal viewing. According to the BBFC, 33% of respondents prioritised a “heartwarming story,” with 15% citing family friendliness and 13% looking for humour. Only 2% said they actively sought tear-jerkers at Christmas. BBFC chief executive David Austin said the figures show that “heartwarming, family-friendly stories continue to sit at the heart of the nation’s Christmas viewing traditions,” aligning neatly with Home Alone’s mix of slapstick and sentimental reconciliation.
The new data landed days after Macaulay Culkin reignited the long-running Die Hard debate during a 35th anniversary event for Home Alone in Long Beach, California. Asked about his favourite Christmas films, Culkin told the crowd “Die Hard isn’t a Christmas movie,” arguing that it is simply “a movie that’s set at Christmas,” and quipping that the same story would work if it were set at St Patrick’s Day. The audience booed playfully before he offered to “meet you at the loading dock” to keep the joke going.
Previous polling shows a similar split. A 2023 YouGov survey of British adults found 39% saying Die Hard is not a Christmas movie, 38% saying it is and the rest undecided, while a Yahoo/YouGov poll in the US reported an even starker margin, with 50% rejecting the film’s Christmas status and 26% embracing it. Younger viewers are more likely to classify it as a holiday film than those over 65, according to YouGov’s age breakdowns.
The creative figures behind Die Hard remain divided. Director John McTiernan has argued since 2020 that he sees the film as a Christmas story, while co-writer Steven E. de Souza once joked that “the studio rejected the Purim draft,” tagging his comment with “#DieHardIsAChristmasMovie.” Bruce Willis took the opposite line at his 2018 Comedy Central roast, declaring: “Die Hard is not a Christmas movie, it’s a goddamn Bruce Willis movie.”
Within the Willis household, though, the movie plays firmly as festive fare. Emma Heming Willis has described putting Die Hard on during the holidays as a cherished tradition and has called it a Christmas film, linking the ritual to her husband’s long-standing love of the season as the family adapts celebrations around his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis. Her comments sit alongside the BBFC findings and Culkin’s remarks as the latest entries in a debate that now spans opinion polls, Q&A stages, director manifestos and living-room watchlists.
