Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Yes, there are Christmas Mortality Movies. The holidays come loaded with tinsel, tradition, and, if we’re honest, a surprising amount of existential angst. Year’s end nudges us into inventory mode: Who am I? What have I done? Did I really send that reply-all? Enter the Mortality Movie, a holiday staple that uses ghosts, near-death detours, and cosmic do-overs to help us take stock, then sit back down with the people we love while the cocoa steams.
Two canon titles sit at the top of this snowy hill: It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. They aren’t just sentimental favorites; they’re structured meditations on death, regret, and the radical possibility of change. Let’s unwrap them (multiple versions included), then peek at a few bonus films that pair nicely with cookies and contemplation.
Why the Holidays Breed Mortality Stories
Year’s end compresses time. We feel the weight of what was and what wasn’t. The season’s rituals, lighting candles, setting extra places, telling the same old stories, are acts of remembrance. Mortality Movies plug directly into that electrical outlet: they turn memory into a plot device, grief into a companion, and second chances into the greatest gift under the tree. We can all use a little tear-jerking to balance the jolly ho-ho-ho’s.
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946): The Gift of the Ordinary Day
Frank Capra’s classic is often misremembered as pure sugarplum. It’s not. The heart of the film is a crisis so severe that George Bailey considers ending his life on Christmas Eve. Clarence the angel, an earnest celestial intern, intervenes not by preaching but by showing George a George-less world, stripped of his quiet contributions.
Mortality lens:
The film dares to say the quiet part: sometimes life feels unlivable.
It reframes legacy from “great man” achievements to accumulative kindness.
The “death” of George’s presence is the thought experiment. His resurrection comes when he realizes he really does have a wonderful life and embraces the kindness and generosity that he has extended to others.
Key moment to watch for: After his near-death experience, George runs through Bedford Falls yelling “Merry Christmas!” to things like the Building & Loan and a moderately confused pedestrian. That’s not just jubilation. It’s a liturgy of gratitude for the mundane. If you’ve ever wanted a theological argument for taxicabs and drafty houses, this is it.
Post-movie prompt: Who are the five “ordinary” people whose small acts changed your year? Write them a note while the end credits roll. (Yes, now. You can’t outpace mortality, but you can beat the mail rush.)
A Christmas Carol: Choose Your Ghost Adventure
Charles Dickens’ novella is the peppermint bark of yuletide parables: classic, layered, slightly bracing. The story’s bones stay the same across adaptations—Scrooge, three spirits, a crash course in moral accounting—but each version seasons the stew differently. Here are several worth sampling.
1951: Alastair Sim’s Scrooge
Atmospheric and grave, this version leans into Victorian gloom. Sim’s transformation lands with bruised sincerity; you feel the costs of miserliness, not just its bad PR.
Mortality angle: The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come isn’t coy: we see Scrooge’s neglected grave and the ripple effect of his absence. The message is stark. If you live as if connection doesn’t matter, you’ll die in a world that agrees with you.
1984: George C. Scott’s A Christmas Carol
Flinty and formidable, Scott’s Scrooge isn’t a cartoon miser; he’s a CEO whose spreadsheets have eaten his soul. The production gives generous time to Tiny Tim’s fragility and the Cratchits’ precariousness.
Mortality angle: Class, care, and the arithmetic of compassion. “Will Tiny Tim die?” is not rhetorical; it’s a resource question and a community question. The future isn’t fixed, but it is forecast.
1992: The Muppet Christmas Carol
Yes, there are singing vegetables. Also: Michael Caine plays it completely straight, like he’s in the 1951 version, but everyone else is made of felt. It works. Humor lowers defenses; the moral slips in the chimney.
Mortality angle: Childhood is introduced as a stakeholder. The ghosts are playful, yet the stakes (lost love, lonely death) remain intact. Tiny Tim’s song is a lullaby for the anxious adult we all become.
1988: Scrooged (Bill Murray)
A meta, modern remix set in TV-land. The satire bites, the finale hugs. It’s the messiest and most 80s: shoulder pads, cynicism, redemption via live broadcast.
Mortality angle: Media as mirror. When you turn human pain into content, you risk your own humanity. Choosing tenderness on-air is a declaration: empathy isn’t a ratings stunt; it’s survival.
1938 & Other Versions of A Christmas Carol
The 1938 Reginald Owen edition is brisk and cozy; later versions (animated, musical, Hallmarked) can be delightful gateways. The constant? Death as tutor, not tyrant. The Spirits don’t punish, they illuminate.
Pro tip viewing order:
Start classic (1951 or 1984) for gravitas.
Cleanse the palate with Muppets.
Spike the cocoa with Scrooged.
This is the Dickens tasting flight… complex, sweet, and just irreverent enough.
Shared Anatomy: How These Stories Work on Us
A brush with the void. Near-death (It’s a Wonderful Life), foretold death (A Christmas Carol), or the death of possibility (lost loves, squandered time).
A guided tour. Angels or ghosts curate our greatest hits and misses. No one gets better in the abstract; we need scenes.
A pivot to presence. The moral isn’t “don’t die.” It’s “live connected.” Give money, time, mercy. Also, goose.
Communal closure. Finales return us to the table: toasts, reconciliations, found family, and, critically, laughter. Mortality gives urgency; community gives meaning.
Bonus Pairings for a Reflective Holiday Queue
These are surprise Mortality Movies that you might not know about.
The Bishop’s Wife (1947): Heavenly intervention for a strained marriage and a weary clergyman. Mortality is quieter here. It’s more about dying dreams than dying bodies.
The Family Man (2000): An alternate-life detour says every choice births a ghost life you didn’t live. The film, set at Christmas time, asks which ghosts you can live with.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993): Death imagery meets delight; identity crisis as holiday crossover event. It’s both Christmas and mortality in stop-motion animation from director Tim Burton.
Klaus (2019): An animated film focused on the origin myth of kindness. Not a death story per se, but shows how grief and isolation thaw under acts of service. It’s very on-theme for “live while you can” cinema.
Hosting Mortality Movies (Bring Tissues, Keep the Humor)
Open with a question: “What does a ‘good life’ look like at our table?”
Pause once. After the Ghost of Christmas Present or Clarence’s reveal, take two minutes for everyone to jot a name they’ll reach out to this week.
End with toasts. Name what you’re grateful for, including the tough stuff that taught you something. If someone toasts the dog, that’s correct etiquette.
The Takeaway, Wrapped with a Bow
Holiday Mortality Movies don’t try to eliminate fear of death; they disarm it by restoring scale. The grand, cinematic miracle is not that angels earn wings or misers buy geese. It’s that ordinary, imperfect people choose each other in the cold and call it Christmas. Watch, weep a little, laugh a lot, and then, like George and like Scrooge, go do the next small, kind thing. Happy holidays!
Gail Rubin, Certified Thanatologist, writes the Substack column Mortality Movies with The Doyenne of Death®. Subscribe for free or support her work with a paid subscription.
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Gail Rubin, CT, is author and host of the award-winning book and television series, A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don’t Plan to Die, Hail and Farewell: Cremation Ceremonies, Templates and Tips, KICKING THE BUCKET LIST: 100 Downsizing and Organizing Things to Do Before You Die and The Before I Die Festival in a Box™.
Rubin is a Certified Thanatologist (that's a death educator) and a popular speaker who uses humor and films to get the end-of-life and funeral planning conversation started. She "knocked 'em dead" with her TEDx talk, A Good Goodbye. She provides continuing education credit classes for attorneys, doctors, nurses, social workers, hospice workers, financial planners, funeral directors and other professionals. She's a Certified Funeral Celebrant and funeral planning consultant who has been interviewed in national and local print, broadcast and online media.
Known as The Doyenne of Death®, she is the event coordinator of the Before I Die New Mexico Festival and author of a guide to holding such festivals. Her podcast is also called The Doyenne of Death®. She produces videos about the funeral business and related topics. Her YouTube Channel features hundreds of videos!
Rubin is a member of the Association for Death Education and Counseling, the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association, Toastmasters International and the National Speakers Association. Her speaking profile is available at eSpeakers.com.
Gail Rubin has been interviewed about funeral planning issues in national and local broadcast, print and online media. Outlets include The Huffington Post, Money Magazine, Kiplinger, CBS Radio News, WGN-TV, and local affiliates for NPR, PBS, FOX, ABC-TV, CBS-TV and NBC-TV. Albuquerque Business First named her as one of their 2019 Women of Influence.
Sign up for a free planning form and occasional informative newsletter at her website, AGoodGoodbye.com.