“Welcome to the party, pal,” yelled my apartment’s TV as we put up our Christmas tree this year. Why? you may ask. Because Die Hard is not only an amazing movie, it’s also one of the rare action Christmas movies in the world.

Yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Everything from its Santa-decorated robber/terrorist with writing saying, “Now I have a machine gun HO-HO-HO,” down to its festive use of RUN-DMC’s Christmas classic, “Christmas in Hollie.”

This film has aspects that truly makes it ring out as a Christmas movie, its soundtrack being a big selling point. Of its 11 tracks, five of them are Christmas songs.

Another aspect is the main plot is kicked off due to the holiday. John McClain is only in California because his wife works at Nakatomi Plaza. This makes him travel from NYC to LA to be with his family for the holiday.

But McClain must first stop at the Nakatomi Corp.’s Christmas party, and that’s when Hans Gruber enters with his robbers. The plot can only happen on Christmas, thus making it a Christmas movie.

Not only does this film have Christmas as a central plot point (reason that McClain is at Nakatomi Plaza), it also focuses on the value of family and why we tell the people in our lives we love them. Most of all it has an amazing maverick cop stopping terrorist/robbers. Yippee ki-yay and have a happy holiday season.