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Let’s give Moana its own space since it reflects something else. By finishing in fourth place yesterday, the latest Disney animated winner beat every other film released since Thanksgiving. The movie is six weeks old, yet it’s outperforming titles as new as going wide last weekend. That’s remarkable in and of itself, but it also speaks to the overriding (lack of) quality of December’s non-Star Wars/Minions releases. With $2.1 million yesterday, a straight 50% drop from Monday’s $4.2 million, Moana is closer to fifth than to third, but I still wouldn’t be surprised if it caught Passengers over the next couple of days. It’s earned a LOT more customer loyalty.

The rest of the top ten is a horror show and the reason why BOP has rarely done daily box office articles outside of major holidays and the summer. We struggle to muster enthusiasm for titles earning one million a day. Yesterday’s fifth place entry, Why Him? is actually the success story of the top ten in terms of post-Twelve Days survival. It “only” fell 41% from $3.1 million to $1.8 million. La La Land was in a photo finish with it on Monday, but the awards contender fell from $3.1 million to $1.6 million, a still respectable 46% drop.

In fact, mid-40s to low-50s is about the expected range for post-Twelve Days box office. Assassin’s Creed, for all its many faults, falls tidily into this curve. It dropped 45% from $2.7 million on Monday to less than $1.5 million yesterday. Fences, on the other hand, felt the sting much worse. It dropped from $3 million on the official holiday to less than $1.4 million yesterday, a 55% fall. The other two titles in the top ten, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Collateral Beauty, behaved as expected. The Harry Potter prequel (of sorts) declined 52% from $1.5 million to $718,000, while the failed awards season contender dropped 46% from a little over $1.2 million to $672,000.

When you look over these numbers, the most important thing to keep in mind is how much a “holiday” elevates box office. Even though government officials received January 2nd as their New Year’s Day vacation day, it still enjoyed inflated box office. That’s in spite of the fact that it fell on a Monday. The instant the holiday ended and people went back to work on Tuesday, the bottom fell out.

We can demonstrate this from a quick calculation about the top ten, one that aptly demonstrates the holiday skew. The combined box office revenue for the top ten on Sunday – and remember that January 1st and 2nd are still technically estimates – was $56.7 million. On Monday, that tally held relatively stable at $54 million. That’s a drop of less than 5% from Sunday to Monday, which isn’t supposed to happen. On Tuesday, the holiday inflation vanished, and the ultimate outcome of the clock striking midnight is that the ten plummeted to a combined total of $24.8 million. That’s a 54% drop in a single day. What we’re seeing now is the actual demand for these films rather than the elevated box office due to the holidays.

On a final note, the anti-holiday box office statistic is easily understandable given the paragraph above. On Saturday, New Year’s Eve, the combined top ten earned only $48.5 million. Due to the rare calendar configuration and how much a holiday falling on Saturday negatively impacts its box office, a Monday beat a Saturday in terms of top ten box office. That shouldn’t be possible, but it’s a prime example of how much the Twelve Days of Box Office behavior fluctuates based on calendar configuration. Next year, January 2nd will fall on a Tuesday, which means that its box office total will be the same as January 3rd’s in 2017. That’s when the clock strikes midnight next time.

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