Christmas is supposed to be a time of fun and good cheer. Exchanging presents and sitting by the fireplace with a mug of hot cocoa in hand while a good old-fashioned Christmas movie plays is the perfect holiday activity.

Watching a heartfelt holiday flick is a popular seasonal pastime, but these films can be boring and uninteresting. Many Christmas movies are uneventful and repetitive.

Take “Home Alone.” It’s a classic feel-good Christmas film that leaves viewers cheery and elated. Movie producers, however, kept making sequels. Due to the huge success of the original movie, “Home Alone” has a whopping five films in its series. Despite a good start to the first and second movies, as the series progressed, they declined in quality and popularity. Rotten Tomatoes gave the first “Home Alone” a subpar rating of 63 percent, but the two preceding movies scored even lower at 30 percent. Sequels usually aren’t as good as the classics, especially in this case.

Remakes are also a popular way to overuse the same story. “The Grinch” has three revamped films under its belt, a new one just released in theaters Nov. 9. Although it was a hilarious movie, all its sequels have the exact same storyline. Why would someone pay to watch a new film that has the same plot as the previous one?

In addition to sequels and remakes, nearly all Christmas movies are cliche: an unfortunate soul manages to find love and happiness at the end of the story. In “The Grinch” and “A Christmas Carol,” the protagonists share the same character arc. Both the Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge don’t have any Christmas spirit in the beginning of the movie. Then they are coerced into being happy and cheerful by other characters – one a little girl, and the other some magical ghosts, respectively.

“The Princess Switch” and “Elf” are also examples of the genre’s repetitive nature. “Elf” is about, Buddy, a human raised by elves who embarks a journey to find his father, Walter Hobbs. At the end of the movie, Buddy bonds with his dad over the true spirit of Christmas. During “The Princess Switch,” two look-alikes switch places and realize the spirit of Christmas by falling in love with their polar opposites. This movie is extremely predictable.

Nearly every Christmas movie is about facing hardship to embracing love. There is little variation. Although Christmas is about happy holidays and spreading good cheer, one cannot ignore the repetition in these films. The predictability in the storylines and the monotonous sequels and remakes are completely unnecessary and ruin the Christmas spirit.