Coincidentally Christmas? Holiday Background? Unimportantly Christmas?
Rocks fall, everyone miraculously survives.This trope is also very broad, which makes it harder to name. There are examples of stories where a christmas tree is seen once in the background and that's the only reference to the season. There are also examples that very obviously take place entirely on christmas but simply aren't narratively about the holiday, and there are examples of stories that span long periods of time but have a small portion of the plot set during christmas (like many stories that chronicle a year).
I also feel like maybe this shouldn't be only about christmas. Maybe it could be called 'Background Holiday', though admittedly it seems to happen most often with christmas. But i can think of a few examples where it just happens to be Halloween, but there's nothing Halloween Special or Horror about the work.
No. Not Ambiguous Holiday. That sounds like something that it's hard to tell what holiday they're celebrating. It's not ambiguous that it's a holiday. It's just not the focus of the work.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickHoliday Backdrop? Set In The Season? I do like Out Of Focus Holiday.
Rocks fall, everyone miraculously survives.![]()
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Holiday Backdrop sounds like the work is not afraid to show off the holiday but isn't focused on it like say Lethal Weapon 2, the opposite of what this trope is.
It Was A Holiday According The Supplemental Materials Is the best I can think of..
Some of these examples don't seem to fit very well. Just looking at the Film section...Three Days of the Condor, ok, that's a good example, it's set at Xmas but that has zero to do with the plot. Die Hard...that even provides the page quote but that doesn't seem to me like an example. The fact that the movie's set during the Christmas season is why they're having the party there in the first place and why Bruce Willis is visiting. The Sure Thing...well, the Christmas holiday is why they're on break and free to travel cross-country. I guess there's a YMMV element to this. Does a movie set in December have to feature Santa and gift-giving to avoid this trope?
How about Irrelevant Holiday? or to be more precise, "Plot-Irrelevant Holiday"
edited 2nd Mar '15 11:11:52 AM by Madrugada
It's not so much as a plot irrelevant holiday so much as its invisible, as not even say decorations are seen in the work, it might as well be any other day of the year but nope it's X day.
Maybe Invisible Holiday?
Well then how do you tell it's Christmas at all, if there's no sign of the holiday? In Three Days of the Condor we can see it's Christmas because there are trees and decorations up everywhere. Ditto the opening scene of Psycho.
Well there might be two tropes here
1) It is only in the supplemental materials does one find out that it is Christmas or another holiday. Take the Gundam entry for instance, the final battle for 3 separate series happen on Christmas. There isn't a tree or light in sight, one of them's date is revealed in the Supplemental Materials the other two it's revealed in the sequels.
2) Holiday Backdrop for stuff like Lethal Weapon 2 and those ones you brought up, where it's the Christmas season and it's well announced but the plot has nothing to do with Christmas.
edited 4th Apr '15 9:36:38 AM by Memers

The name is misleading: all other tropes with ‘Have/Did I Mention’ refer to excessive mentioning, while this refers to the polar opposite. Motion to change it to Happens to Be Christmas, or something.