Maria Jones from The Box of Delights would agree that Die Hard is a Christmas film

There must have been a time when arguing that Die Hard is a Christmas film, or that The Muppet Christmas Carol is the best filmed version of the book, was novel and interesting. That time ended some years ago.

But there is one character in John Masefield's The Box of Delights, a book that, like A Christmas Carol, encompasses the Christmas and pagan sides of the festival, who would certainly agree about Die Hard.

She is Maria Jones, who complains: 

"Christmas ought to be brought up to date. It ought to have gangsters and aeroplanes, and a lot of automatic pistols."

I took that quote from a good essay on The Box of Delights by Bob Fischer. In particular, he argues convincingly that if you read the first book about Kay Harker, The Midnight Folk, and then read the full original text of The Box of Delights, then the revelation that it was all a dream does not come as a great surprise.

A word too for the BBC radio adaptation of The Box of Delight that won my heart in the 1960s.