My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It’s just not December without that movie in my house.

Attributed to Tom Hanks, the line plays as deadpan, self-deprecating humor: it juxtaposes the cozy ritual of “traditional Christmas movie” viewing with All Quiet on the Western Front, a grim antiwar story. The comic effect comes from the mismatch between seasonal sentimentality and harrowing battlefield realism, implying either an unusually dark household tradition or a deliberately ironic exaggeration. Read more broadly, it also gestures at how personal “traditions” can be idiosyncratic and how canonical films—especially those about war—can become annual touchstones for reflection rather than comfort. Without a verifiable source, however, the safest reading is as a quip circulating as an anecdote rather than a documented statement.