Some Christmas movies are more relaxing than others.
That’s what digital analytics firm Honcho Search found out when researching the stress levels of popular holiday films.
The U.K.-based company told Fox News it pulled a seed list from an Ultimate Christmas Films Rotten Tomatoes, which included classics family-friendly classics like “A Christmas Story,” “Home Alone” and “Elf” or mature titles like “Bad Santa,” “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas” and “Tokyo Godfathers.” Honcho then downloaded PDF scripts from each film and ran it through a “scientific tensile strength tool” that’s designed to determine which texts are stressful or relaxing.
“During the Christmas holidays we consume a lot of media alongside our family, holidays should be a time to relax, so we here at Honcho thought it would be fun to find out which films are more relaxing for us to watch over the December period,” Jack Minot, Honcho’s head of data and insights told Fox. “Using the TensiStrength method estimates the strength of positive and negative sentiment in text using a score between -5 to 5. The TensiStrength tool analyses the usage of words, considering the combinations of phrases and the language used to determine the sentiment. As an example, ‘I had a bad time at my office party,’ versus ‘I had a horrendous time at my office party,’ returns -2 vs -3.”
Honcho narrowed down the 11 Christmas movies that are the most relaxing to watch using this stress metric, here’s how these holiday titles stack up.
The ‘most relaxing’ Christmas movies, according to Honcho Search
1. The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
2. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
3. The Night Before (2015)
4. The Holiday (2006)
5. A Christmas Story (1983)
6. White Christmas (1954)
7. A Muppet Family Christmas (1987)
8. Better Watch Out (2017)
9. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
