A new survey commissioned by MyMerryChristmas.com has determined that 46 percent of annual Christmas movie watching happens between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
The survey, conducted over a three day period offline in 7 American cities, reveals some surprising facts about summer Christmas movie watching in America.
More than 1 in 3 Americans will see something Christmas-related at home during the dog days of summer and of those a whopping 82 percent watch a Christmas-themed show on purpose.
The primary reason people watch so much Christmas during the off-season? Simple. There just isn’t time to see it all when it is Christmas in December.
MyMerryChristmas.com has conducted regular surveys since 1998 and this survey actually stemmed from another that wanted to determine if President Trump had actually affected how people were saying “Merry Christmas”, as he has claimed (he hasn’t, by the way).
But one of the ancillary questions on that survey, asked many times before in the past, was about Christmas movies. In studying those results a curious trend emerged that caused us to commission another survey just about Christmas movies.
Perhaps most revealing in the survey was not the fact that Christmas movies are watched but rather which Christmas movies were viewed during the summer months. Of more than 1800 respondents, here is the compiled top-ten of Christmas movies of summer:
- Bad Santa
- The Muppet Christmas Carol
- The Polar Express
- Scrooged
- The Santa Clause
- While You Were Sleeping
- Home Alone
- Die Hard
- Christmas Vacation
- Elf
This is a vastly different list than you traditionally see about Christmas movies in December. Some of these movies traditionally never make the top 25 much less the top 10 in December.
But where are the customary classics like It’s a Wonderful Life?
Those movies, the survey says, are seemingly reserved as must-watch, during the season.
The summer top ten tends to be movies that respondents claim they just didn’t get time to watch the previous year.
The Hallmark Channel made a splash in the news early this year for their announcement of the production of 34 new Christmas movies in 2018.
That heavy production schedule is indicative not only of how popular Christmas is as a movie theme but also of the appeal of year-round Christmas movies. Hallmark famously airs Christmas movies of the past to terrific ratings during the months of summer – a counter-trend to traditional television viewing habits in America.
Another interesting tidbit revealed by the summer Christmas movie survey is that the decline of Hollywood’s traditional summer blockbuster has seen the gap filled by the tried-and-true Christmas movie. 76 percent of respondents said they spend more time watching Christmas movies during the summer and less time watching the latest release at the local theater simply because old Christmas movies are more reliably entertaining.
For more information about our Christmas summer movie survey, please take a listen to the latest episode of the Merry Little Podcast.
