There’s nothing better than sitting by the fire with a warm blanket and a cup of hot cocoa and turning on the TV to see which holiday films are on.

Holiday movies are a great way to get you and your loved ones in the mood for some Christmas cheer. However, if your family is anything like mine, then your favorite part of watching holiday movies is tearing them apart. When we watch movies we like to pretend like we are the two critics in the Muppets and we tend to laugh harder at our comments than the movie. So, with the holiday’s coming up, I decided to get our stupid comments in writing.

Here are some major plot holes in your favorite Christmas classics… Sorry.

Home Alone

I’ll start with the worst offender. I’m pretty sure every human being has seen this movie at one point or another. So let’s start at the beginning, what did Kevin’s parents do for a living? Can someone please tell me what Kevin’s parents did to afford this massive house, a trip to Paris for their entire immediate family, and have 1,000 children. Also, what has this little 8-year-old boy done in his past to make his family hate him this much? I mean, I get it, I was the runt of the family too but even the adults can’t stand this kid. They are all annoyed with him in the beginning because he wanted help packing his suitcase. I don’t know any 8-year-old that would be able to pack a reasonable suitcase, the kid just wanted some help. The actual process of Kevin being left home alone is interesting to me. So, Kevin accidentally spills some milk on the plane tickets after fighting with his brother. While attempting to clean up, the family accidentally throws away a plane ticket. His father manages to throw away the one plane ticket that is Kevin’s? Also, the family scrambles for the airport to catch their flight because they slept in. Fair enough, except the car comes to pick them up at 8 AM! There are 15 people in the house and not one person was up by 8? Not one set an alarm on their watch or anything? I’m no early riser, but it’s not that improbable of a time to wake up at.

Let’s talk about the black and white movie. Kevin uses a clip from a movie to fool the pizza delivery boy into thinking an adult was home. But because Kevin is a little psychopath, he also plays the part where a guy threatens the other with a gun and then shoots him, causing the delivery boy to flee. Why? For what purpose? Also, the delivery boy 100% would have called the police and said, “Hey, I just got shot at by an old man at this address, you should check it out.” Lastly, anyone who has ever owned a VHS knows how hard it is to accurately rewind any movie to the exact part you want it, therefore I find that scene improbable.

So Kevin overhears the burglars say they will be back at 9’oclock. Kevin is out walking and goes to church until 8’ o clock. So Kevin came up with a plan, drew a map of his house, colorized said map of his house, got all the supplies, set the traps, and made mac and cheese with two minutes to spare… Okay. I also really enjoyed how Kevin went through all the trouble of trying to seriously injure the burglars instead of calling the police.

Further evidence that cute little Kevin is destined to be a serial killer one day.

Elf

Elf is one of the more recent Christmas classics and a go-to when hanging out with friends. I love everything about the little elf workshop, but let’s be honest. Have you seen how greedy kids are these days? Every 10-year-old has an iPhone and these elves are making jack in the boxes and etch-a-sketch’s. This is not 1959. Also, they have a maximum of 40 elves making toys for every child on earth. This movie brings up one of my biggest pet peeves in Christmas movies. In movies where Santa exists and adults still don’t believe in him, where do the adults think the presents come from? Elf seems to be the kind of movie where Santa just brings you a couple things, but still. None of the parents are like, “Hey, I didn’t buy you that skateboard.”

Can someone explain to me what the average Elf vs Human height ratio is because if you pay attention it’s different in every scene? Sometimes they are at his hip and other times they are barely at his knee like in the scene where Buddy overhears the elves talking about how he is a human. If you look at the size of the elf furniture it doesn’t look like humans are really that much larger. Speaking of which, it always really bothered me that when he walks in on Jovie in the shower he says, “I didn’t know you were naked” when in an earlier scene it literally showed Buddy naked in an elf shower. He knows what a shower is!

We are all really quick to judge Buddy’s father for being a jerk to him in the beginning. But, to be fair, this guy just randomly shows up who is clearly mentally unstable claiming to be his son. The next day he gets arrested for assaulting a department store Santa. We know as an audience that Buddy is for real, but Buddy’s dad still just thinks he’s insane and he still lets him stay in his house. Elf also has one of my other pet peeves in holiday movies which is Santa relies on Christmas spirit and “seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing.” So because there’s not enough Christmas spirit to make Santa’s sleigh fly he needs an engine that breaks towards the end leaving him in Central Park. This would make sense except Buddy’s little brother made the sleigh fly because he was excited about getting a skateboard. You are telling me that there is not enough spirit in the entire world? It’s Christmas Eve!

The Polar Express

First of all, creepy CGI Tom Hanks will always be creepy. And can someone please tell me exactly who the Polar Express is meant for? I mean we can judge by the main character and the storyline that it’s meant for children who are reaching the age of skepticism. However, I would say a good 90% of the kids on that train are really happy about seeing Santa at the North Pole. The unnamed main character is the only one that thinks he’s having some weird fever dream. Also, I can honestly say that if I was between the ages of seven and nine, I would not jump on a strange train that just magically appeared in the middle of the street even if it was going to the North Pole.

This train has presumably hundreds of children and there’s literally no supervision. We have conductor Tom Hanks, the two engineers in the front, and all the acrobatic waiters who give the kids hot chocolate but I don’t count them because I’m pretty sure they were a hallucination of some kind. Speaking of hallucination, the whole second half of the movie literally makes me sick. Between the scene where the ticket goes flying out the window (which has beautiful scenery but is completely improbable) and the scene where for no reason at all the railroad track turns into a rollercoaster, motion sickness realness.

I did think this movie did a really good job with the North Pole. However, could they make the elves any creepier? That one scene where little Billy doesn’t want to let go of his present and the elf says, “It’s in good hands, trust me” is by far the scariest moment of any Christmas movie. And it’s no wonder Billy doesn’t want to let go of his gift, the poor kid never got one. That’s confusing to me too, in a universe where Santa doesn’t exist poor Billy never got gifts because he was poor but in this universe, Santa literally just forgot about this kid for eight years.

Although this movie is heartwarming, I can’t help but think that the majority of the kids probably thought the polar express was just a dream because they didn’t have a bell to remind them it was real. So, either way, these kids probably will end up not believing. Maybe one of them will tweet out one day, “Hey, anyone else have a dream where you got on a train to the North Pole with a conductor who weirdly looked like Tom Hanks?”

Christmas with the Kranks

This is one that we watch every year and one of my personal favorites. Unfortunately, it bugs the heck out of me every time I see it. First off, I don’t understand exactly why everyone is so mad at them for skipping Christmas. It’s not like they live in this super small town where everybody knows everybody’s business - they live on the outskirts of Chicago. Everybody in the fifth largest city in North America knows the Kranks? And they care that they are skipping Christmas? Why? If anyone I worked with/ lived next to told me that they weren’t celebrating Christmas to go on a cruise, I would literally envy them.

The Kranks are clearly a couple who go all out for Christmas since they spent over $6,000 on Christmas last year. So, even if everyone was mad at them, chances are they have a decent amount of decorations lying around that they could just throw up to shut their neighbors up. I don’t understand the need to totally boycott everything Christmas related.

If you pay close attention, this movie has zero concept of time. Halfway through the movie, there is a sign that says “2 days till Christmas” and then in the next few scenes and montages about two days light to dark happen and it’s still not Christmas! Then in the beginning of the movie when they drop Blair off at the airport it is the “Saturday after Thanksgiving” then when Blair comes home on Christmas and Luther Krank says he’s been planning the vacation for six weeks but Luther didn’t get the idea for the vacation until he saw the ad for the cruise ship after dropping off Blair.

Next time you gather around the fire for a Christmas movie marathon, make sure to ruin it because it is a whole lot of fun. The best part of any Christmas viewing is watching it with the ones who make it feel like Christmas every day, so don’t poke holes alone! I hope you have a spectacular Holiday and have fun viewing!