Christmas: Watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001) as a Christmas Movie

Perhaps I’m just biased by a memory of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone being promoted as a Christmas movie during its initial theatrical run in 2001. It showed young Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) in his robes and scarf holding his white owl, Hedwig, in a snowy courtyard in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I seem to remember a tagline that went something like, “Return to Hogwarts for the Holidays,” to get audiences to return over December, after the big premiere in November 2001. Ever since, my brother Anders has joked about calling it a Christmas movie. Is there something more to the assertion?

I recently rewatched the movie after probably a decade, and the idea of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as a Christmas movie popped back into my head. Certainly, there are numerous superficial affinities for viewing the first Harry Potter movie during the holidays. It’s a family movie, one that small kids and older kids and adults can all enjoy. That’s certainly a selling point. I can see why it’s played on TV, like The Sound of Music, during this time of year. Furthermore, the movie has acquired such a comfort and familiarity for many people that it’s perfect for viewing during the holidays, when we often return to favourite movies we like to watch on an annual basis. 

I was also struck by how the first Harry Potter movie, viewed 20 years out, plays more like a 90s movie than a product of today. Of course, it’s closer in time to a movie such as Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991), but it’s also closer in execution to family adventures of the 1990s, such as the original Jumanji (1995), than it is to, say, a modern Marvel Cinematic Universe or phase-2 Jumanji movie. 

Again, maybe it’s just my personal bias, but I also associate the Christmas holidays with the academic calendar, especially university. Advent is exam time, and then there’s the bustling off home during the holidays. The boarding school setting of Hogwards speaks to such associations for the winter holidays, when “going home” is something many of us do.

Scenes such as those in Diagon Alley play not only like Back-to-School shopping, but they also evoke the wonder (sometimes) of shopping for Christmas. Wonder is also something some of us are fortunate to feel during the Christmas season. And wonder is really the key feeling generated by the first Harry Potter movie (and not all the others). Throughout Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone we are meant to be amazed at the magical world Harry discovers. 

I recognize all of this is fairly subjective, but the evocation of feelings and associations is a significant feature of why we return to certain movies again and again, especially during the holidays.

But there’s also the content of the movie. Christmas, more than any other holiday, even Halloween, is an occasion always mentioned in the Harry Potter books and the Christmas break plays a key role in the first movie. Harry doesn’t go home for the holidays, and Ron (Rupert Grint) ends up staying with him, and they enjoy a tender gift exchange scene. This idea of Harry being at home in Hogwarts is affirmed at the film’s close, when Harry says he isn’t going home, not really, as he looks affectionately back at the school, his new home.

Christmas, however, doesn’t just play a superficial role in the storyline. If we look at the narrative structure of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, we also see parallels to the story of Christ’s birth, in no small part because J. K. Rowling is attuned to the hero’s journey and the structure of those stories, and Harry is very much a Christ-figure. It’s not an allegory, mind you, but a hero story with parallels to Christ’s story.

In the first movie, Harry is The Boy Who Lived, as Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) calls him. His birth, which a wicked and powerful tyrant tried to snuff out, is a miracle. His infancy is a defeat of the Dark Lord in some way, which, like the Incarnation, is also mysterious. And, like Jesus who fled (with his family) to Egypt to escape being killed by wicked King Herod, Harry is sent away for a time, where he grows up away from the limelight. His return though is heralded as something important. When Ollivander gives Harry his wand and the John Williams’ score swells and the camera generates the vertigo effect, there is something messianic about that moment, and we can only wish for a Jesus-focused Christmas movie that could conjure some of the same wonder.

(The mention of John Williams’ great score is worth further comment. It’s not an accident that John Williams’ music defines a lot of Christmas feelings for people, largely because of his score for Home Alone (1990), which brings together and adapts so many well-known Christmas carols and tunes. Williams’ score for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone helps strengthen the film’s Christmas association.)

From a non-religious point of view, the film also embodies the dominant secular meaning accorded to the holiday season, which is the importance of family and (increasingly) found family, which is to say, our friends. Harry both discovers where he feels at home, discovers the love of his deceased parents, and discovers his new family of friends at Hogwarts. Countless secular Christmas movies echoe these themes, but few expound them more effectively.

All this is to say that, yes, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is not a Christmas movie categorically, but it is a family movie that has strong reasons to be viewed during the winter holidays, when many of us celebrate Christmas. It’s worth a watch this Christmas, particularly on a cozy couch surrounded by friends and family—or on that winter holiday when we happen to be alone, and need to feel close to others.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001, USA/UK)

Directed by Chris Columbus; screenplay by Steve Kloves, based on the novel by J. K. Rowling; Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Richard Harris, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman, Warwick Davis, Richard Griffiths, John Cleese, Ian Hart, John Hurt, Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, Julie Walters.

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