Christmas Movies: 25 Films for the Holidays
Christmas movies are the closest thing film has to a tradition. Most of us aren't looking for something new in December. We're looking for the one we watched last year, and the year before that, with the same blanket and probably the same snacks.
The hard part is the twenty minutes everyone spends deciding which one it'll be tonight. So we built a Christmas playlist: 25 films that cover the whole season. The black-and-white classics, the family comedies everyone can quote, the cozy animated ones, the romances, and a few that start an argument every single year.
The classics
Start where Christmas movies start. It's a Wonderful Life is George Bailey on the worst night of his life, and an angel showing him what Bedford Falls would look like without him. It's darker than people remember and warmer than anything else on this list. Miracle on 34th Street puts Santa on trial and somehow makes you root for the paperwork. White Christmas is Bing Crosby, a snowless Vermont inn and the song you already have stuck in your head.
Then the TV specials that never left: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, with its stop-motion Island of Misfit Toys, and A Charlie Brown Christmas, with a sad little tree and a jazz score that sounds like snow. And A Christmas Story, which is really just one kid's campaign for a Red Ryder BB gun. You'll shoot your eye out.
The family comedies
Home Alone is the one everyone agrees on. A forgotten kid, a house full of traps, and two burglars who never stood a chance. Home Alone 2 takes the same plan to New York and the Plaza Hotel. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is every family holiday going wrong at once, with Clark Griswold trying very hard to make the lights work. Elf is Will Ferrell at his most sincere and the most quotable Christmas movie of the century. How the Grinch Stole Christmas gives Jim Carrey a whole town to be mean to. And The Polar Express is a night train to the North Pole that kids still ask for by name.
Animated and cozy
If you only add one newer film to your rotation, make it Klaus. It's an origin story for Santa about a lazy postman and a lonely toymaker, and it's drawn by hand with lighting that makes every frame look like a holiday card. The Muppet Christmas Carol is the best version of Dickens ever made, and Michael Caine plays Scrooge completely straight to a room full of puppets. Arthur Christmas is Aardman's answer to how Santa gets everywhere in one night. And The Nightmare Before Christmas is on our Halloween list too, because it belongs to both.
Christmas romance
Love Actually is a dozen London love stories in one December, cue cards and all. The Holiday swaps two houses and two lives for the season, and it's pure comfort from start to finish. While You Were Sleeping is Sandra Bullock, a misunderstanding and a family you'd want to spend Christmas with. And Little Women isn't strictly a Christmas movie, but its winter scenes with the March sisters feel like the holidays anyway.
Is it a Christmas movie?
Every year someone at the table says Die Hard isn't a Christmas movie. It takes place at a Christmas Eve office party, it has Christmas music, and it ends with "Let It Snow" playing as paper drifts down over Los Angeles like snow. We rest our case. Gremlins starts as a Christmas present with three rules, and every rule gets broken. Scrooged is Bill Murray as a TV executive getting the Christmas Carol treatment. Edward Scissorhands is, among other things, an explanation of why it snows. And The Holdovers is three people stuck at a boarding school over Christmas break who turn into an unlikely family, and it might be the best new Christmas movie in years.
Every film in the playlist links to its Quartile page, where you can see how it scores across Plot, Acting, Cinematography, Novelty and Ending, and where it's streaming this season. Rate the ones you watch, and settle the Die Hard debate for yourself.
Pour the cocoa. Pick one. Then pick the next one.
Explore the full Christmas Movies playlist →