Christmas Every Day

"Well, I wish it could be Christmas every day
When the kids start singing and the band begins to play..."

— Wizzard, "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day"

A character or group of characters experiences "Christmas Every Day," sometimes as a "Groundhog Day" Loop or as Christmas literally occurring every day. Sometimes a Whole-Plot Reference to the short story "Christmas Every Day" by William Dean Howells.

The reason for the repeats varies — a character who really loves Christmas might wish that every day is Christmas Day, and it somehow comes true. In these cases, the entire cast might feel the holiday repeating. Alternatively, a "Groundhog Day" Loop resets to teach a character a lesson, often the True Meaning of Christmas or An Aesop about valuing friends and family during the holiday season. This variation will usually have only the protagonist (who, by contrast, dislikes Christmas or only cares about its materialistic aspects) be aware of the resets. Either plot will also center around trying to find a way to break the loop.

Sister trope to Gift of the Magi Plot, How the Character Stole Christmas, It's a Wonderful Plot, and Yet Another Christmas Carol, other common Christmas-themed Whole Plot References. May be a series' Christmas Episode or a stand-alone Christmas Special. Can also be the motif of a Christmas Town.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Kimagure Orange Road: Kyosuke uses his Psychic Powers to repeat Christmas three times, trying to get to the party with the "right" girl (without pissing off Madoka or crushing Hikaru's happiness). No-one else is aware of the repeats.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: In one issue, Jingles allows Archie to repeat Christmas Eve for a day so Archie can have more time to prepare, but the computer he used to turn back time gets frozen into a loop.
• The 2018 Judge Dredd Christmas Episode, "Jingle All the Way" in 2000 AD Prog 2111, is set in March ... everywhere except Gareth Hule Block, where a psychic known only as "Mr Jingles" is making it eternally Christmas, whether the residents like it or not.

Films — Animated

• The first story of Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas is "Donald Duck Stuck On Christmas" which was inspired by the "Christmas Every Day" short story. It involves Huey, Dewey and Louie wishing upon a star for Christmas to be every day. At first they enjoy it, only to discover it's not just Christmas every day, but the exact same day even down to their presents from the previous day getting wrapped up again. After getting fed-up they try to ruin Christmas to put an end to it. However they then notice a card from Donald and Daisy explaining the true meaning of Christmas in being about family rather than presents, to which the boys embrace the Christmas spirit and help everyone else enjoy Christmas, and the time loop ends.

Films — Live-Action

• The film 12 Dates of Christmas, where a woman named Kate relives Christmas Eve over and over. She theorizes that the Love Triangle she's in might be the key to breaking the loop.
• Christmas...Again?! is a Disney Channel film that revolves around this trope: Rowena "Ro" Estevez is unhappy with the changes coming to her Christmas, particularly her father's new girlfriend and her son. After a disastrous day, she meets a strange man in a Santa outfit who asks her what she wants, and she wishes she could redo the day. It doesn't take more than two days before she decides to milk the opportunity for all that it's worth.
• The Hallmark movie Pete's Christmas is about a selfish teenager named Pete who must relive Christmas over and over. Eventually, it leads to self-improvement and newfound appreciation for his family and friends.
• Twelve Days of Christmas Eve: Calvin, a successful businessman who neglects those close to him, gets into an accident and is given twelve chances to achieve the perfect Christmas eve.
• A Christmas Wedding Date: Rebecca flies to her hometown for her old friend's wedding on Christmas Eve, has a horrible experience, and then wakes up again. She realizes that the taxi driver who drove her to the venue is trapping her in a loop until she learns some lessons.
• The Hallmark film Christmas Do-Over sees Kevin trapped in a loop where he’s celebrating Christmas ever day with his ex in-laws after a rock on the road stops him leaving as planned, with the first loop seeing his ex-wife Jill accept the proposal from her new boyfriend Todd. Kevin goes through various iterations as he responds to the loop in different ways, varying from exploiting how there will be no consequences from this day to indulge himself to giving Jill a winning lottery ticket and sabotaging Todd’s plans to propose. After a series of loops where he tries to escape the town, Kevin uses the next loop to accept Jill and Todd’s relationship and the changes in his own dynamic with the family, focusing on giving the family a good Christmas even if he thinks he won’t benefit from it long-term (which wins Jill over as they kiss just as midnight strikes, seemingly ending the loop.
• The 2000 TV movie of A Christmas Carol starring Ross Kemp follows the book plot but adds such a loop; after each visitation Eddie Scrooge would wake up and it was still Christmas morning. After the first spirit, he was extra nasty just to prove it hadn't had any effect; after the second one he wanted to look like he'd changed, so gave people extravagant presents without finding out what they needed; and after the third one he finally got it right.
• An older Freeform (formerly ABC Family) Made-for-TV Movie, carrying the trope name, stars Erik Von Detten as a typical surly teen who goes through the loop after his little sister pressures him to make the wish.
• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life climaxes with a sketch depicting heaven as a glitzy Vegas-style resort, where it's literally Christmas every single day. There's even a musical production number about it, provided by a smarmy Lounge Lizard singer.

Literature

• The Trope Namer and likely Trope Maker is an 1892 short story by William Dean Howells titled "Christmas Every Day", where a greedy little girl asks the Christmas Fairy for...well, Christmas every day. The Fairy agrees to a trial run of one year of Christmases. Everyone gets sick of Christmas pretty quickly, and it takes a turn into Black Comedy when you hear about the widespread poverty (from everyone being forced to spend their money on presents) and the massive deforestation (for Christmas trees) and the psychological effects on the little girl herself.
  In six months she was perfectly exhausted; she couldn't even cry anymore...and by Thanksgiving she was crazy, and just slammed her presents across the room.
• A German short story by Heinrich Boll, "Christmas Not Just Once A Year" (or alternately, "Christmas Every Day"), has a family recovering from a costly war. After one relative suffers a severe mental breakdown at the end of the Christmas season, the rest of the family attempts to keep her cheerful by celebrating Christmas every day, which entails rallying everyone to repeat each day with activities such as decorating the tree and singing Christmas carols. This daily charade eventually creates a horrible strain on the rest of the family.
• Sweet Valley Twins: In one book, Jessica is forced to relive Christmas Eve day until she figures out it's because she's selfish.
• The Isaac Asimov short story Christmas On Ganymede has a MegaCorp getting a man to dress as Santa to motivate the native aliens to work. It works until they demand annual visits. They mean the time that Ganymede takes to orbit Jupiter which is once a week.
• Birthday Boy features a similar variant, which involves the protagonist celebrating his birthday every day.
• In Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, the final section involves the Dwarfers being trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine resembling Earth, with Lister retiring to a town called Bedford Falls, which he's amazed to discover is exactly like Bedford Falls in It's a Wonderful Life. As time passes, however, he begins to notice some things about his new life don't make sense, including the fact it's been Christmas Eve every day since he got there.
• In In the Land of Eternal Holidays by Anatoly Aleksin, the main character wishes for the winter vacation and New Year celebrations to go on forever. At first, he is delighted when his parents tell him to skip school, he goes to the same New Year festival every day (and scoops all the prizes due to being the only kid in attendance), and any wish of his, however wild, gets magically granted. However, he gets bored to death by the beginning of February, and eventually wishes to just get back to normal.

Live-Action TV

• In Elmo Saves Christmas, Elmo wishes for it to be Christmas every day using a snow globe. This causes things to go From Bad to Worse; everyone is broke due to having to buy presents and Christmas trees every day, Christmas trees have become endangered due to the high demand resulting in Grover running out of trees to sell, the Fix-it Shop goes out of business due to it being closed on Christmas and Maria and Luis being out of practice, Big Bird is sad that Snuffy is celebrating Christmas in Cincinnati with his grandmother and won’t return to Sesame Street, and the carolers have gradually lost their voices from singing too much. By the time we see the last version of this, even the Count is getting tired of the endless Christmases, regardless of it meaning he gets an unlimited number of Christmases to count. Oscar the Grouch is the only one who likes it being Christmas every day, not just because of everyone else's misery, but also because he gets tons of garbage in the form of wrapping paper and used Christmas trees. In fact, he protests when Elmo announces that he is going to use his last wish to turn everything back to normal, telling him to wish for roller skates instead (since that was Elmo's original plan).
• The Jamie Foxx Show episode "Christmas Day-ja Vu": When Jamie King's friends and family buy him some gifts, he buys himself an extravagant ski outfit, instead of returning the sentiment. A mall Santa places a spell on him, where he keeps pestering Jamie if he's learned the True Meaning of Christmas, while Jamie's reliving that moment over and over again.
• In Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman's special "'Twas the Night Before Mxymas," Mr. Mxyzpltk traps Metropolis in a time loop over Christmas eve. Things get a bit worse each time, to eventually result in The End of the World as We Know It. World War III is looming by the time Lois and Clark fix things.
• The ABC sitcom You Wish! did this with its own Christmas episode, thanks to the genie granting his master's kids one free wish as a present and the boy foolishly making this one. The danger was Cabin Fever from all the snow, as the girl was Dreaming of a White Christmas when she made her wish. Somehow, learning the True Meaning of Christmas caused it to end.
• When Simon takes over as Santa in The Santa Clauses he implements a daily Christmas with drones delivering whatever presents you want for a few. The elves consider it a bad thing because it takes away the excitement of waiting for Christmas and most of them fade away until the old Santa comes back.

Music

• The Wizzard song, "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day" provides the page quote. In the UK at least the song is the Trope Codifier.
• In a similar vein is the Mackenzie Ziegler song "Christmas All Year Long".
• The subject of Sia's song "Every Day Is Christmas".
• Gil McLachlan's 2008 childrens' edit of "Big Rock Candy Mountain" says that on the titular mountain "Your birthday comes around once a week and it’s Christmas every day".
• Mitch Benn disagrees with Wizzard:
  Would it be fun? No, not very,
  Nobody could stay that merry,
  We'd all be dead by February,
  Thank God it isn't Christmas every day.
• Kenny Rogers: His 1981 holiday album Christmas has a track "Christmas Every Day." This is more of a positive, religious example, as the lyrics challenge the listener to remember the story of Jesus' birth, keep the spirit of the season in their heart, and follow His word every day (thus, celebrate "Christmas every day") rather than just in late December.
• The experiments in "CryptoSanta" by Lemon Demon were trying to open other dimensions filled with presents in order to bring about Christmas every day. Though it's implied they'd be sold rather than given.

Webcomics

• In the Christmas 2021 strip of Housepets!, King demands to know how it can be Christmas already, and is reminded that the characters are currently in Heaven, and it can be Christmas whenever they want. He questions whether Christmas means anything without the anticipation, and is told he can have that whenever he wants as well. And if he's not comfortable with that, he can have someone else make the decision. So he worries that he'll accidentally give this hypothetical person too much power over him.
  Bailey: You'll have to forgive King. Whenever anything good happens to him, this is how he copes.

Websites

• SF Debris's short story titled "You Better Watch Out" inflicts this on a criminal as punishment, doomed to take up the role of Santa Claus and deliver presents to everyone on Earth for eternity.
• This very cute story from Not Always Romantic pretty much invokes the trope. A man buys a CD of his wife's favorite Christmas song so that "it can be Christmas whenever you want."
• SCP Foundation:
  • SCP-4255 is similar to the SF Debris story above, except the guy's crime was Time Travel and he was caught by the Time Police.
  • Played for Horror in SCP-5000. The Foundation is mentioned to have utilized various temporal anomalies to make it Christmas every day... so that SCP-4666 will remain active and keep murdering families all year as part of their plan to exterminate humanity.

Western Animation

• The Christmas episode of Ben 10, "Merry Christmas", deals with the Tennysons having to save a village that's been stuck in Christmas since 1932 thanks to a curse placed on them by the inventor Mr. Thomas Jingles. Said curse also turns Ben and Gwen into elves and Grandpa Max into Santa Claus.
• The first Christmas special of The Fairly OddParents! is titled "Christmas Every Day!" and shares this premise when Timmy wishes for every day to be Christmas. However, the plot goes in a different direction: it isn’t a time loop, time just stops moving forward, so every day is December 25. The consequences come quickly: snow piles up everywhere; the banks, stores, and schools stay closed; Santa begins running out of ideas for gifts, being obligated to continue giving kids whatever they ask for; the elves go on strike from the increased workload; and eventually, all the other holiday mascots try getting rid of Santa to reclaim their holidays. Worst of all, Timmy can’t undo his wish, as the entire population of fairies lends most of their magic to Santa Claus every Christmas so he can deliver gifts to the whole world. When they finally undo it by asking Santa to give them December 26, this trope is added to the list of banned wishes in 'Da Rules', Cosmo and Wanda noting that a person has to really screw up to merit that kind of response.
• Canadian cartoon The Bagel and Becky Show had a plot in the episode "The 12 Quadrillion Days of Christmas", in which Bagel wishes on a wishbone for it be to Christmas every day so that he can eat all the fruitcake pancakes to his heart's desire.
• The Trope Namer story by William Dean Howells got an Animated Adaptation in 1986.
• Zeke's Pad has a variation: Not wanting to go back to school, Zeke uses his pad to make every day a holiday. He quickly gets sick of it because of the excessive celebrations, and finds himself longing for school.
• Another variation occurs in Henry's World; Henry wishes it could be his birthday every day, but quickly realizes that a "Groundhog Day" Loop of endless birthdays is not as fun as it seems.
• The birthday variation also happens in an episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, where Jimmy hypnotizes his parents into thinking his birthday is tomorrow, so he can get a new chemistry set as a present. After a week or so of birthdays, his parents think he's an adult and expect him to move out. Thankfully, this turns out to be a prank, as they'd secretly been broken out of their trance the previous day.

Real Life

• An electrician from Wiltshire, England has claimed to have celebrated Christmas every day since 14 July 1993 (except for a brief abstention at the end of 2015). Every morning he unwraps presents from under his tree and eats some mince pies. Then he posts a Christmas card through his own letterbox before going to work. Every afternoon he returns and prepares a full Christmas dinner with roast turkey. After dinner he watches a recorded copy of the Queen's speech, then goes out to buy a present, wrap it, and put it under the tree before bed.
• Under the Commonwealth, in Britain, after the overthrowing of Charles II, the Puritans banned Christmas as a "Pagan celebration", causing protests, with rioters in Canterbury taking over for two weeks, decorating the city with holly.

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