The Christmas Chronicles (2018)
Directed by Clay Kaytis
No — The Christmas Chronicles is not woke, scoring 11 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
The Christmas Chronicles arrives as a Netflix holiday confection, which is to say it arrives without a theatrical box office to conquer and without much interest in conquering anything beyond the viewer's remaining seasonal goodwill.
Consciousness Markers
The cast includes Black actors in notable supporting roles (Martin Roach as Officer Poveda, Lamorne Morris), but they exist naturally in the story without any commentary on their presence.
Kate is a plucky, proactive young girl who drives much of the plot, but the film makes no feminist argument or commentary; she is a standard family-film protagonist.
The film carries a gentle, conventional message about Christmas spirit, family, and belief, but it never lectures the audience on social or political matters.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext appear anywhere in the film.
The film contains no engagement with racial themes, history, or consciousness whatsoever.
There is no environmental or climate-related content in the film.
No critique of capitalism, wealth, or economic systems is present; the film is a straightforward holiday fantasy.
The film does not address body image, size, or body-positivity themes.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are depicted or discussed.
The film presents no revisionist or re-examined historical narrative; it is a contemporary fantasy.
Why it received this score
The Christmas Chronicles arrives as a Netflix holiday confection, which is to say it arrives without a theatrical box office to conquer and without much interest in conquering anything beyond the viewer's remaining seasonal goodwill. Kurt Russell plays Santa with a weary twinkle, and the plot concerns two children in Lowell, Massachusetts who stow away in his sleigh, crash it over Chicago, and spend the night reassembling Christmas. The film knows exactly what it is. A family comedy with a budget, a chase scene, and a jailhouse rendition of an Elvis song.
For the purposes of our ledger, the picture is remarkably unburdened. Lamorne Morris and Martin Roach appear in supporting roles, and the film treats their presence as ordinary fact, which is to say it makes no argument about it at all. Young Kate is resourceful and drives much of the action, but the screenplay never converts her into a thesis. There is no racial meditation, no environmental sermon, no economic grievance, no commentary on bodies or brains. The naughty list, it turns out, is not a metaphor for systemic anything.
What remains is a gentle homily about belief and family, delivered with the softest possible hand. Santa tells a skeptical police officer that Christmas spirit is declining, and the film means this literally, as a logistical problem involving arrests and sleigh fuel. No viewer will feel scolded. The emotional beats concern a dead firefighter father and a son learning to hang an ornament again, which is sentiment rather than sermon. It is a competently assembled, thoroughly conventional piece of streaming content, and it will be forgotten by New Year's, which is precisely the fate it has earned.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Siblings Kate and Teddy try to prove Santa Claus is real, but when they accidentally cause his sleigh to crash, they have to save Christmas.
Questions about The Christmas Chronicles
Is The Christmas Chronicles woke?
No — The Christmas Chronicles is not woke, scoring 11 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Christmas Chronicles have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 25.
How does The Christmas Chronicles compare to other 2018 movies?
It ranks #184 of the 325 films from 2018 we've scored; their average is 20. The wokest is Return (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.