Once December comes around, everyone starts talking about their favorite holiday movies, and “Home Alone” takes the spotlight once again. Besides kick-starting Macaulay Culkin’s acting career, the movie has an established legacy of a hilarious star-studded Christmas movie. But is that all it is?

I’m here to say definitely, unequivocally, absolutely not. In my opinion, “Home Alone” is just another action movie to enjoy anytime you wish. In the same way, we don’t only watch “The Matrix” when we discover the world around us isn’t real or “Mission Impossible” when we’re accused of murdering our spy mentor. 

Instead, “Home Alone” uses Christmas as a catalyst for the chaos that ensues. The holiday is a perfect way to justify how a family could forget their son and not be able to return to him for days on end. It also plays up the sadness of a boy all alone because Christmas is a holiday where families all gather together to enjoy each other’s company, food, presents and more. 

“Home Alone” isn’t a Christmas movie in the same way that “Die Hard” isn’t. The whole plot of “Die Hard” takes place on Christmas Eve when an ex-cop visits his ex-wife and daughters and then has to resolve a hostage situation at a holiday party they attend. Not one part of that sounds like a Christmas movie besides the date, but the holiday is again an important part of the plot. As the ex-cop wouldn’t have visited his estranged family on a random Tuesday, it makes more sense that it would be a national holiday. 

An eight-year-old boy running circles around two adult burglars and honestly beating them with embarrassing ease doesn’t scream Christmas movie. In fact, the majority of screen time in the first two movies is the hilarious pain that Kevin imparts on the crooks in a “Tom and Jerry”-esque relationship. 

My final point is that, like many other action movies, “Home Alone” was drawn out for far too long. There are six “Home Alone” movies out there and only two of them are good, the third one is universally known to be tragic and the sixth and final one released in 2021 shouldn’t even be discussed as it had more similarity to a prank YouTube video than a Home Alone movie. 

As such, I urge you to keep Home Alone 1 and 2 in mind when you’re scrolling through movie options throughout 2024.

On this blog, members of the Carmel High School chapter of the Quill and Scroll International Honorary Society for High School Journalists (and the occasional guest writer) produce curations of all facets of popular culture, from TV shows to music to novels to technology. We hope our readers always leave with something new to muse over. Click here to read more from MUSE.