How Seasonal Demand for Christmas Movies Builds and Then Quickly Falls | Charts

The demand for Christmas-related content is one of the best cases of seasonal demand in the U.S.

After staying unnoticed most of the year, there’s a revival of the demand for Christmas movies and shows in the last two months. Traditionally, the Christmas atmosphere begins to slowly take place after Thanksgiving in the U.S., when holidays become the main subject of conversations and people rush to do Christmas shopping.

According to the average daily demand for Christmas movies, we can see people start looking for Christmas movies some days before Thanksgiving. In the last few years, the demand for these movies began to rise around 40 to 45 days before Christmas, in the middle of November. At Thanksgiving, which took place between 27 to 31 days before Christmas over the last four years, the demand for Christmas movies is already on the rise. This growth tends to accelerate after Thanksgiving, reaching its peak on Christmas Day. However, the demand for Christmas content doesn’t last long after Christmas, falling abruptly after Dec. 25. After 9 to 12 days, the demand for these movies has already returned to pre-Thanksgiving levels.

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So far, the demand for Christmas movies in 2022 has been promising, rising above past years’ levels nine days from Christmas. On Dec. 19, the average demand for a Christmas movie reached 6.5 times the demand for the average movie that day, the highest number of the last four years. It’s safe to assume that the average demand is heading to a higher peak on Christmas Day 2022 than the peak of 2021 when the average demand for Christmas movies exceeded 8 times the demand for the average movie. This higher demand is largely thanks to the recent release of successful Christmas movies like “Violent Night,” “A Christmas Story Christmas” and Netflix’s “Falling for Christmas.”

Although highly in-demand Christmas movies are still being made and released in 2022, most of the top 10 Christmas movies of this season are old movies, including the top two movies, 1993’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and 2000’s “How The Grinch Stole Christmas.” Of the top 10 movies, six were released before 2005 and only two were released after the beginning of 2020.

The high demand for “The Nightmare Before Christmas” this year, a movie produced and conceived by Tim Burton, is influenced by the Netflix show “Wednesday,” released in late November. The show, which has Tim Burton directing half of the episodes, has an aesthetic style that resembles “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and many other Tim Burton productions.

The very high longevity for “It’s a Wonderful Life” really stands out on the list. The movie was released in 1947 and still managed to be 14.2 times more in demand than the average movie in 2022. The 75-year-old movie is the sixth in the Christmas movies ranking this season.

It’s also worth noting that, although all of the 10 movies are considered Christmas movies, they’re very diverse among themselves. The top movie is an animation with Burton’s colorful gothic aesthetic infused in its DNA and the next two movies are elements of the Grinch franchise, both family comedies. Other family comedies on the list include “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” “The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two” and “Elf.” The rest of the movies are  “Shazam!,” a Superhero movie set during Christmas; “The Polar Express,” an animated fantasy adventure movie; “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a family drama; and ‘Violent Night,” an action comedy.

Daniel Quinaud is a senior data analyst at Parrot Analytics, a WrapPRO partner. For more from Parrot Analytics, visit the Data and Analysis Hub.