10 Holiday Movies Released at Odd Times of the Year

Modern audiences have grown accustomed to a pattern of TV broadcasting: war stories over Memorial Day weekend, frightening flicks before Halloween, and Christmas themes in December. Yet surprisingly, the original debut dates of these seasonally flavored films were not coordinated with the calendar, whether due to obstacles, indifference, or even intent.

Related: Top 10 Christmas Movie Moments

10 The Shop Around the Corner

The heartwarming dramedy The Shop Around the Corner unfolds during the run-up to Christmas, as two coworkers in a leather goods store in pre-WWII Budapest bicker constantly, unaware that they are falling in love as anonymous pen pals. However, holiday decorations were already down by the time it was released on January 10, 1940.

Director Ernst Lubitsch planned to begin filming before the end of 1938, but the deal fell through. The timetable was pushed back again when he changed studios. Lubitsch then made Ninotchka (1939) while waiting for his preferred stars, James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, to become available. Once work finally began, the movie was shot in twenty-eight days.

This plot may sound familiar, having been recycled twice without the holiday setting. In the Good Old Summertime (1949) changed the venue to a music store to create a vehicle for Judy Garland. You’ve Got Mail (1998) brought the love/hate into the computer age with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks at competing bookstores.^[1]

9 Holiday Inn

In Holiday Inn (1942), Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire sing, dance, and compete for the same woman at a country inn that only does business at select times. Though its scenes are structured around holiday-specific songs, the film had its New York City opening in the holiday desert of August. Only later would it become a December TV staple, thanks to its Oscar-winning hit “White Christmas.” (These days, the “Abraham” number for Lincoln’s birthday is often cut due to its use of blackface as part of a plot device.)

Current events had a significant influence on the film’s content. When the bombing of Pearl Harbor occurred during production, the patriotism of the segment honoring Independence Day was amped up with images of munitions production, military exercises, General MacArthur, and President Roosevelt. Likewise, Astaire’s dance number “Let’s Say It with Firecrackers” had so many real explosions added around his feet that crew members had to wear goggles.

On a more playful note, the introduction to November has an animated turkey jump between Thursdays on a calendar page, a reference to the confusion before Congressional action standardized Thanksgiving as the fourth, rather than last, Thursday of the month to encourage a longer Christmas shopping season.^[2]

8 Christmas in Connecticut

In a major holiday mismatch, Christmas in Connecticut (1945) opened on the Fourth of July. Barbara Stanwyck plays a magazine writer who entertains her readers with accounts of her domestic skills in the rural home she shares with her husband and baby. In reality, she is single and childless, lives in a New York City apartment, and cannot boil water. When her publisher insists that she prepare a homecooked dinner for a World War II veteran, hijinks ensue as she pulls together a borrowed farm and family plus a holiday feast.

The movie itself had its share of fakery. The New England country house featured was the same California set used for Bringing Up Baby (1938). The sleigh ride scene was filmed on a Warner Bros. sound stage, with soap-flake snow as phony as the lead character’s cooking skills. But with the war finally coming to an end, this celebration of romance and returning soldiers was a perfectly timed hit, even if audiences stepped outside from a Christmas charade into the summer sunshine.^[3]

7 It Happened on 5th Avenue

Premiering It Happened on 5th Avenue on April 5, 1947, in Miami, Florida, was an equally peculiar choice for a story that takes place at Christmastime in Manhattan. The comedy-romance was originally announced in 1945 as the first project of director Frank Capra’s new production company, but he chose to make It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) instead.

Capra then sold the rights to Monogram Pictures, a studio known for B-movies and Westerns that wanted to upgrade its image with classier fare. Filming began on August 5, 1946, and was completed by mid-October, yet the movie waited almost six months for release.

Even with a change in directors, the movie is loaded with Capra-esque themes: a homeless man and others needing refuge move into the vacant mansion of “the second richest man in the world,” who has gone south for the winter. Complications arise when the millionaire’s adult daughter unexpectedly returns home. Under the guise of being poor, she falls in love with one of its other “guests” and then manages to reunite her divorced parents.

The script received an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Original Story but lost to yet another Christmas film released later that spring and set just across town.^[4]

6 Miracle on 34th Street

20th Century Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck believed more people went to the movies in the summertime, so Miracle on 34th Street (1947) had its debut on June 4, 1947, with the word “Christmas” dropped from its title. Its cryptic trailer made no reference to the holiday or gave the slightest clue to its plot. Previews merely listed the stars and praised the film as “Hilarious! Romantic! Delightful! Charming! Tender! Exciting! and even Groovey!”

Multiple cameras were set up along the route of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 28, 1946, to capture this one-take opportunity. Edmund Gwenn’s Santa Claus addressed the real crowd in front of the Macy’s marquee, and scenes inside Macy’s were filmed at night after business hours. Although audiences may have come in from the heat, the onscreen winter was all too real. During the closing scene when young Susan ran to her dream house, it was so cold that cameras froze, and a neighbor invited the crew inside her home to warm up while they were repaired.

Zanuck also thought the story was too corny to succeed, but this yuletide classic earned three Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor for Gwenn and Best Original Story for its screenwriter Valentine Davies, as well as a nomination for Best Picture.^[5]

5 Easter Parade

When composer Irving Berlin wanted an old-timey tune for a 1933 musical revue, he repurposed the melody from his 1917 number “Smile and Show Your Dimple” with new lyrics to create “Easter Parade.” Years later, he reused the song in Holiday Inn, and, like “White Christmas,” this sentimental favorite ultimately inspired a spinoff story of its own.

However, the resulting film missed its spring target date and did not reach theaters until June 30, 1948, because of delays caused by casting changes. The original leading man, Gene Kelly, broke his ankle while playing volleyball and was replaced by Fred Astaire. Ann Miller stepped in for Cyd Charisse, who suffered a knee injury on another film.

Even with its new cast, the production had its share of drama. Costar Judy Garland had recently been released from a sanitarium for treatment of mental health issues and drug dependency, and her psychiatrist recommended that director Vincente Minnelli, her then-husband, be taken off the picture to reduce her stress. Miller performed her rapid-fire tap numbers wearing a back brace due to an injury she had suffered when her drunken (soon-to-be-ex) husband had thrown her down a flight of stairs while she was pregnant.^[6]

4 We’re No Angels

We’re No Angels showcases Humphrey Bogart in a rare comedic role. He is joined by Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray as three escapees from Devil’s Island on Christmas Eve, 1895, who plan to rob a struggling shopkeeper to fund a getaway. In response to the family’s kindness, the trio decides “cutting their throats might spoil their Christmas.” Instead, they plot to save the couple and their daughter from greedy relatives, with the aid of a small poisonous snake named Adolphe.

Paramount purchased the rights to the French source material in mid-February 1952. During the lengthy merry-go-round of development, trade magazines variously announced Van Heflin, Audrey Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Gig Young, and two members of the Los Angeles Rams as part of the cast.

Once Bogart was attached to the project, Michael Curtiz, who had won an Oscar working with Bogie on Casablanca (1942), was brought on board to direct. Principal photography was completed in early August 1954, yet this quirky Christmas tale sat on the shelf until July 7, 1955.^[7]

3 The Ten Commandments

Though today it is an Easter/Passover broadcast tradition, The Ten Commandments (1956) first dazzled audiences on October 5. But even without a holiday tie-in, director Cecil B. DeMille’s last film was easily the box office leader of its year. This three-hour forty-minute Technicolor spectacle was an expansion of DeMille’s 1923 silent film of the same name, in which the first part had portrayed Moses leading his people out of Egypt, followed by a contemporary tale that demonstrated the human cost of breaking the commandments.

Completing the movie was a miracle in itself. Executing DeMille’s vision required not only the famous parting of the Red Sea but also 1,200 storyboard sketches, more than 14,000 extras, and 15,000 animals. After years of pre-production, the 73-year-old DeMille suffered a serious heart attack in 1954 during three months of filming in Egypt.

Back in Hollywood, he completed almost four months of shooting on set, followed by fourteen months of post-production work. While perhaps not concerned about release dates, DeMille did reportedly time filming to enable Charlton Heston’s three-month-old son, Fraser, to play baby Moses.^[8]

2 Ben-Hur

The other perennial Easter epic, Ben-Hur, clocks in at only eight minutes shorter than its Old Testament companion piece. It took about as long from conception to release on November 18, 1959. MGM planned to begin shooting in July 1954 but encountered delays due to multiple script revisions and changes in the director, producer, and major studio executives.

By the time filming began in Rome in May 1958, set construction was long underway. The track for the chariot race covered 18 acres (7.3 hectares) and took six months to build. The race itself fills ten minutes of screen time but took ten weeks to shoot and ate up one-quarter of the $15 million budget ($162 million in 2024). Even though director William Wyler maintained a sixteen-hour, seven-day-a-week schedule, filming took nine months to complete. Recording the lengthy musical score alone required twelve sessions over a seventy-hour period.

MGM’s long wait and huge financial gamble paid off, with a five-fold box office return and a then-record-setting eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Charlton Heston, his only career nomination.^[9]

1 Die Hard

Despite its frequent F-bombs, a body count of eighteen, and a release date of July 12, Die Hard (1988) has long been heralded for its many holiday elements, beginning with Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis” in its soundtrack. The action ramps up as Bruce Willis’s character, John McClane, and his estranged wife, notably named Holly, attend a company Christmas party. Festive trees and ornaments deck the halls of the building under siege. McClane even leaves a bad guy in an elevator wearing a Santa hat and a sweatshirt that reads, “Now I have a machine gun ho-ho-ho.”

Director John McTiernan is on record that Die Hard evolved into a Christmas movie during production, and 20th Century Fox came to agree. The studio brought the film back to theaters in November 2018 and released what it called a “30th Anniversary Christmas Edition” on Blu-ray with a trailer promoting it as “the greatest Christmas story ever told” and the tag line: “CHRISTMAS MOVIE? YIPPEE KI YES!”

Peter Billingsley, who played young Ralphie in A Christmas Story (1983), endorsed the Christmas claim during a podcast conversation with Die Hard cinematographer Jan de Bont in December 2023. Billingsley said of this rare holiday thriller, “Most importantly, I think it embodies the themes of Christmas of acceptance, forgiveness, love and family.”^[10]