For most of the year 1945, much of the world was still at war. World War II touched almost

every part of public life and public consciousness. So it was inevitably reflected on the big

screen in 1945, with movies like Keep Your Powder Dry, where Alanna Turner joins the Women's Army

Corps, and God is My Co-Pilot, the big screen adaptation of a real-life account of service

with the Flying Tigers. And another film, one that begins with a dramatic battle sequence.

A U.S. Navy ship is sunk by a German U-boat. Everyone on board parishes except for two soldiers

who manage to escape with their lives only to spend the next 18 days adrift and starving on a

small lifeboat before they're rescued. And that movie, surprisingly, is a comedy. But even more

surprising, it's also a Christmas movie. Or, to be more accurate,

it's considered one now, even though it wouldn't have been in 1945. When is a Christmas movie

not a Christmas movie? Well, for starters, when it's released in August like the movie in question

was. And also when it arrives before a time when the very notion

of Christmas movies even existed. It's easy to look at a movie with modern eyes and say,

well, if it takes place during the Christmas season or includes Christmas themes or imagery,

then it's a Christmas movie. But that's not how it's always worked. Here's something to consider. Nowadays, we think of

Galileo as a scientist. His career of inquiry, discovery, and scholarship, and his undeniable

contributions to our understanding of the world fit perfectly with our modern notion of science,

scientists, and the scientific method. But the word scientist wasn't even coined until almost

exactly 200 years after Galileo died. It's more fitting to say he was a scientist in modern

parlance. And so too, many of the movies we now consider Christmas movies are only Christmas

movies in modern parlance. So if movies depicting Christmas

weren't always thought of as Christmas movies, what happened between then and now?

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