HOLIDAY VIDEOS : ‘Comfort and Joy,’ Comedy and Action

Some people can only take Christmas in nibbles. They’re wary, nervous about the sentimental onslaught striking head-on. These folks need a shot or two just to face “Miracle on 34th Street” or “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

To get into the spirit a bit more glancingly, there are alternatives. Several movies have used Christmas as a distant backdrop, a light comedic foil or even an action setting without turning the big day into the main reason for being. Among them:

Christmas is lurking around “Comfort and Joy,” but it’s the goofy humor that has the high profile in Bill Forsyth’s 1984 British release. Bill Paterson, playing a troubled disc jockey, finds himself at the hub of a mess involving gangsters and ice cream cones.

This isn’t the cleverest work by the filmmaker responsible for the small and pleasurable “Local Hero,” but it’s smarter than most comedies out there. Laughs amid danger a la mode generate an enjoyable quirkiness.

In “The Apartment,” the holidays find Jack Lemmon falling for Shirley MacLaine, the sweetheart in a nowhere affair with business hotshot Fred MacMurray. Billy Wilder’s 1960 picture is rich with comic pathos as Lemmon plays the nice schnook who can’t say no to executives in his firm using his apartment as a sex lair. MacLaine and Lemmon have a gentle, hang-dog chemistry, and everything works out fine in the end.

One of the better Eddie Murphy movies (which isn’t saying much) has to be “Trading Places” (1983). The plot is weary: A couple of rich stiffs (Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy) test their theories about environment and heredity by switching hustler Murphy with one of their grasping underlings, played by Dan Aykroyd. Set against Christmas’ happy vibes, the flick is a little spiteful, but Murphy’s street humor is fresh and antsy.

Denis Leary has even more attitude in “The Ref,” which was in theaters earlier this year. Leary (the in-your-face blond comic from those Nike commercials with Bo Jackson a couple of years ago) plays a crook trapped in a suburban home on Christmas Eve. Crime is a nasty career, so he has to deal with a neurotic couple and their annoying relatives.

If you want load-and-fire action, the first “Die Hard” (1988) is worth unwrapping. Bruce Willis plays the hero who comes home to find his wife at the mercy of terrorists who have crashed her office Christmas party. That irks Willis (he was looking forward to some neighborhood caroling), and he sets about ruining the holidays for the bad guys. No time to relax in this one.

Is “Home Alone” destined to become a seasonal staple? Man, let’s hope not. But this 1990 flick was so popular that it demands inclusion on this list. The eerily cute Macaulay Culkin is left behind as his brainless family goes on their Christmas vacation. Then some burglars show up. He outwits them in a slapstick style that might even scare the Three Stooges. This is a noisy empowerment fantasy for kids.

Although “Meet Me in St. Louis” isn’t necessarily thought of as a Christmas movie, it does feature the holiday standard “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” This Vincente Minnelli musical from 1944 about a family’s experiences in 1903 during the St. Louis World’s Fair has gone down as a classic, mainly because Judy Garland lets her pipes loose on all the Ralph Blane-Hugh Martin tunes, including “The Boy Next Door” and “The Trolley Song.”

From Garland to the grotesque. Even horror fans have a flick they can hang a wreath on. “Silent Night, Deadly Night” (1984) is a splatter movie about a psycho who likes to dress up as Santa during his murder rampages. Your eyes glass over and your jaw slackens while watching this one.

Santa swinging an ax? Whatever happened to lumps of coal in your stocking when he was feeling cranky?