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Hobbits may be smaller than humans, but one of them continues to dominate the box office realm. For the eighth time in 11 days, Team Bilbo finishes in first place in North America. In today’s update, we will briefly evaluate its performance as well as the rest of the top five.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug won day four of the Twelve Days of Box Office with a total of $7.8 million. It was down 26% from Sunday’s $10.6 million. As a reminder, Monday is a weekday while Sunday is not. Ergo, the titles in release ordinarily fall somewhere between 45 and 65% on Monday. The Dragon vs. Dwarves movie did not do anything particularly impressive yesterday. Instead, the explanation is the holiday elevation of box office.

Consider that last Monday, December 16th, Lord of the Rings 5 (or -2?) earned $6.2 million, a 65% decline from its Sunday intake of $18 million. That was ordinary box office behavior. Astute readers immediately recognize that the film earned $1.6 million yesterday than it did eight days ago.

There are two types of movies that perform like this: James Cameron movies and late December releases. And James Cameron’s two most successful titles were also late December releases. You get the picture. The Hobbit 2 increased from last Monday solely due to the holiday season. With a wide range of North American consumers on vacation yesterday, they had ample free time catch a flick.

I will demonstrate this with the rest of the top five so that you can grok the process. Regaining second place yesterday was Frozen, the instant animated classic from Disney. Its Monday gross was $7.2 million, an increase of 6% from Sunday’s $6.8 million. Even more impressively – and I am probably underselling it – Frozen spiked $5.6 million (!!!) from last Monday’s $1.6 million. Now is a good moment to remind you that Frozen was the number two film on that day. Did Frozen get any better during the past week? No. I don’t think Frozen could get any better since it’s so wonderful. The sole change in its behavior is the ample vacation time of Disney fanatics.

The notable exceptions to the above are the third and fourth place entries. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues and American Hustle play by slightly different rules as the new releases last weekend (disregarding American Hustle’s previous limited engagements). The most recent debuts experience more financial fluctuation early in their runs due to frontloading factors. No, American Hustle is not certain to be frontloaded, yet there is still a cooling off period with regards to its box office. We will see the same thing with tomorrow’s Christmas Day releases.

Keeping the above in mind, Anchorman 2 fell 31% to $5.8 million. In the process, the Will Ferrell comedy dropped to third place although that aspect is primarily due to the odd ascension of Frozen rather than any inherent issues with Anchorman as a product. American Hustle declined from $5.5 million on Sunday to $3.6 million on Monday, a marginally steeper 36% daily drop. If we bring the other top five entry, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, into the conversation, it grossed $2.3 million Monday after making $2.8 million Sunday. That is 20% depreciation. Relative to last Monday’s $1.3 million, Catching has increased around 73% (there is some rounding involved with the calculations).

What the above exemplifies is that the new releases drop a bit more than the titles already in the marketplace for a while. Everything that was available last Monday increased a massive amount yesterday, which doesn’t happen at any other point during the year. This phenomenon is as fascinating as it is predictable. As a reminder, December 24th box office will not be as strong as you may expect since it is a travel/celebration day for many. December 25th will absolutely dwarf it in terms of box office. To wit, Christmas Day will be the strongest box office day of the rest of the year.

I cannot delve any deeper into the top 12 because a lot of studios did not report box office today. I support this move for two reasons. The first is that everyone should be off on national holidays. The second is because any time I do not spend on this column can instead be enjoyed under the mistletoe with the missus. I sincerely hope that those of you reading this have similar loved ones to embrace over the next few days. If you don’t, find someone. It’s Christmas. Get your stocking stuffed.