Welcome to the Party, Pal. Die Hard Is a Christmas Movie.

“I’ve got a question for you,” a filmmaker friend once said to me on a drizzly December evening as we walked through New York.

“Ok, shoot.”

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“Is Die Hard a Christmas movie.” No question mark on his question, lobbed more like a writing prompt, a challenge to discern where I came down on the contentious debate.

“Don’t be crazy,” I said. “It’s not. Christmas movies are A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, and Home Alone. Their entire plots revolve around Christmas. They’re about Christmas? The Santa Clause, Elf. Die Hard is an action movie that just happens to be set on Christmas Eve.”

“Ok.” And that was that. But despite my bombastic response, I hadn’t seen the movie in years. So I resolved to re-watch it as soon as I walked through my front door. I was scurrying home anyway because despite the fallen darkness, it was only 5 PM. Winter is disgusting like that.

The defining characteristic of a Christmas movie isn’t whether or not it’s set around Christmas or Christmas visuals pepper the background of shots but rather, would it still be the same movie if it were set outside of Christmastime? And after that re-watch, I had to flip flop and admit that Christmas is central to the plot of Die Hard.

Hans Gruber, the villainous mastermind, purposefully times his heist to take advantage of the lull in activity around the holidays. Other than the employees at the office Christmas Eve party, the building is devoid of people. Even the security is seriously lax. One unlucky guard at the lobby desk, who’s dispatched with a silenced shot to the head, and one more guard who gets picked off a short time later.

That’s it. Two guards. Because it’s Christmas Eve and who else is going to patrol the building when they could be at home arguing with their loved ones about—what did people care about in 1988?—whether George Bush would ever throw up on a high-ranking official‘s lap, and of course he wouldn’t.

Was it prudent of a major company? No, but then, major companies do stupid shit all the time in real life so that they don’t have to pay for union-mandated holiday pay..

Just look at that festive headwear. You can’t see it in this video still, but underneath “Now I have a machine gun,” McClane wrote “Ho-Ho-Ho.” Take a look below. Now isn’t that the most accurate observation of our mixed feelings toward the holidays?

I don’t expect to end the years-long debate. I just expect people to reorient their entire annual Christmas traditions to revel in the greatness that is the story of a Scrooge who overcomes his antisocial tendencies to recognize that loved ones are more important than silly pride. The Grinch, Scrooge, John McClane.

And to those who protest that Die Hard is too violent for their family, I say that if they can handle the unedited version of Christmas Vacation (and they should), then they can handle Die Hard. Using the free version of JustWatch (also available as iOS and Android apps), as I regularly do when I’m trying to stream a movie, Die Hard is currently available to stream on, well, shit, a lot of places.

It’s on Prime Video, Hulu, and Fubo, and it won’t cost you a penny if you already subscribe to those services. No subscription to any of those? You can watch it for free right now on Tubi.

Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.