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Is Love Actually a celebration of love, or a two-hour HR incident with tinsel? Is Home Alone a cosy Christmas classic, or a study in how cheerfully American culture celebrates a kid maiming grown men with paint cans and a blowtorch? And, of course, is Die Hard actually a Christmas movie?

This December, the Big Ideas Book Club is trading a book for a lively exploration of Christmas movies, with familiar favourites such as Love Actually, Home Alone, Elf, The Holiday, Die Hard, It's a Wonderful Life and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation giving just a taste of what we might discuss. This will be a casual and social event, so there's no need to brush up on your Derridean deconstruction, Foucauldian discourse analysis or Žižekian cultural theory.

That said, while there's no book to read for this event, we've prepared an optional guide (link below) to spark ideas about themes commonly explored in Christmas movies. These include nostalgia and invented tradition; love and romance; loneliness and forced festive cheer; redemption and second chances; and consumer capitalism vs the Christmas spirit. And if the theme of Christmas as a social institution that forces a dysfunctional group of people to perform family harmony once a year sounds familiar, may I also suggest you watch the wonderful Australian series A Moody Christmas, currently available on Netflix and Prime Video (sometimes listed as The Moodys Season 1).

Optional pre-reading guide: What Do Christmas Movies Tell Us About Ourselves and Society? (32 pages)

We'll inevitably spend a lot of time in the Anglo-American Christmas universe, but we'd also love to hear what Christmas, or its closest equivalent, looks like on screen (and around the dinner table) in other countries and cultures.

So join us for a Christmas drink (and optional meal) at 6:30pm on Monday, 7th December, on the 2nd floor of the Keg & Brew Hotel in Surry Hills (i.e. up two flights of stairs). The venue is conveniently located near Central Station and the Light Rail.

We’ll see you there — unless, of course, you’re unexpectedly trapped at an airport, you’ve bumped into your teenage crush while doing some Christmas shopping, or you’re defending your house from burglars.

P.S. Please adjust your RSVP if you have indicated that you will come but are no longer able to do so. This is courteous to others if there is a waitlist.

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These are just some further optional links to consider to supplement the reading of the prepared document. Feel free to pass on other useful links in the discussion section.

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Events in Surry Hills, AU
Book Club
Books and Movies Discussions
Intellectual Discussions
Philosophy
Pop Culture

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