Die Hardis a Christmas movie. At this point, the heist at Nakatomi Plaza is as established in the Christmas canon asA Charlie Brown Christmas,The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, orIt’s a Wonderful Life. The holidays aren’t just a time for movies, however.
Die Harddidn’t just become a Christmas moviebecause of its setting, but because it’s so rewatchable that it instantly became tradition, despite being far from traditional. However,Die Hardcame out in 1988. It’s long past due that the Christmas classics induct another unexpected addition; it’s time to admit thatSkyrimis a Christmas game.
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Making a Christmas Classic
There are a few obvious ways thatSkyrimappeals to the holiday spirit. Not only didThe Elder Scrolls5 release on July 22, 2025, just in time for the holidays, butSkyrimliterally takes place between the snow-capped mountains of a land magical land filled with bearded men and elves.
However, there are plenty ofgames likeSkyrimwhich take place in cold climates or within the fantasy genre that just wouldn’t be able to hack it as a Christmas classic. There are some good reasons thatSkyrimin particular has a far more unique opportunity than most games to establish itself as part of the festive tradition.
Christmas moviesand songs come round once a year–they help bring people back to good memories from previous years, and the ritual of watching or listening to them helps establish a sense of community around reliving those moments. The memory of past positive memories helps to create more positive memories, and the next year remembering those moments helps the cycle of nostalgia continue.
The reason people often talk about Christmas songs or movies and not Christmas video games or even TV shows is because songs and movies are shorter and easier to repeat. It would take far longer to replay agame likeThe Witcher 3every holiday season than it would be to watch a movie likeDie Hard, not to mention likely increasingly tedious. This is whereSkyrim’s true potential as a Christmas game reveals itself.Skyrimisn’t a perfect game by any means, but it has incredible replay value. Even some of the often-criticized aspects ofThe Elder Scrolls’ formulacan help in this regard: when players enterSkyrim’s open world, they are free to go anywhere and make their own story.
Unlike most other games, it’s easy toreturn toSkyrimyear after year without the game feeling repetitive. If the player wants to experience a new story, they can simply head off in a random direction and see what they find. It even makes sense in the context of the game’s opening, as a prisoner who escaped execution by a matter of seconds wouldn’t want to hang around.
Skyrim’s pine forests, snowy mountains, and fantastical creatures make the game’s great outdoors feel like a winter wonderland, albeit one with dragons, civil war, assassins, vampires, werewolves, political intrigue, and the living dead. The interiors and player houses have that cozy Christmas feeling. Inns have big log fires and bards to sing by them while travelers escape the cold, while players can decorate their own houses to their hearts content, especially with theHearthfire DLC.
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Mods and Nostalgia
Players who have explored every cave and crevasse thatSkyrimhas to offer in its retail release can still return to the game every holiday season to get something new. There areSkyrimsurvival modsto make the game world’s harsh landscape seem larger and more intimating than before. There are dialog mods that restore a huge amount of cut dialog from the game, including ones that restore content cut from the game’s original introduction.
Players can use mods likeJK’s Skyrimor Holds the City Overhaul to turn the game’s towns and cities – a little lackluster by the standards of 2020 – into denser, more believable hubs. Players can use mods to fine tune the game such that it feels as fresh as it did when it first came out of the box back in 2011, while still undeniably beingSkyrim.
The Elder Scrolls 5may be a single-player game, but theSkyrimcommunityis what truly makes it a Christmas game.Die Hardmay have drawn attention to itself as a Christmas movie because it took place during the holidays, but it has remained a classic because people return to it year after year to re-experience it.
For 9 years, the modding community that built up aroundSkyrimhas stayed remarkably strong, allowing fans to return to the game every year and experience something totally new or remastered but familiar. Modders might not be Santa’s elves, but Santa’s elves can’t deliver the theessential mods for an immersiveSkyrimplaythroughon both PC and Xbox down a chimney, and they certainly don’t work to upgrade old presents every year.
Christmas has so much to do with nostalgia, and repeating and creating traditions helps tap into that nostalgia directly. Even the yearly argument over whether or notDie Hardis a Christmas movie at all has become a tradition in some sense. For those who don’t like looking to the past, if nothing elseSkyrimremains a great game to play when it’s cold and dark out. It has left a long-lasting impression on a huge amount of gamers, withSkyrimselling 20 million copiesbetween its initial 2011 release and 2014. From there, the modding community has been able to find ways to stop the rose-tinted goggles from falling off, allowing players to update, improve, and remaster the experience every time they come back to it, be it the holidays or otherwise.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrimis available now on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Switch.
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